Microsoft Top Execs Reaffirm SharePoint Commitment
August 6, 2015
Doubts still remain among users as to whether or not Microsoft is fully committed to the on-premise version of SharePoint. While on-premise has been a big talking point for the SharePoint Server 2016 release, recent news points to more of a hybrid focus, and more excitement from executives regarding the cloud functions. Redmond Magazine sets the story straight with their article, “Microsoft’s Top Office Exec Affirms Commitment to SharePoint.”
The article sums up Microsoft’s stance:
“Microsoft realizes and has acknowledged that many enterprises will want to use SharePoint Server to keep certain data on premises. At the same time, it appears Microsoft is emphasizing the hybrid nature of SharePoint Server 2016, tying the new on-premises server with much of what’s available via Office 365 services.”
No one can know for sure exactly how to prepare for the upcoming SharePoint Server 2016 release, or even future versions of SharePoint. However, staying up to date on the latest news, and the latest tips and tricks, is helpful. For users and managers alike, a SharePoint feed managed by Stephen E. Arnold can be a great resource. The Web site, ArnoldIT.com, is a one-stop-shop for all things search, and the SharePoint feed is particularly helpful for users who need an easy way to stay up to date.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 6, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
YouTube Wants You to Pay For…YouTube Content?
August 5, 2015
YouTube is free and that is one of the biggest draws for viewers. Viewers pull the plug on cable and instead watch TV and movies on the Internet or via streaming device. While YouTube might be free, video streaming services like Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime offer network television for a fraction of the cable price. Google wants in on the streaming service game and it is already prepped with YouTube. Google’s only problem is that it does not have major TV networks signed up. Slash Gear explains in the article that “YouTube’s Upcoming Paid Service Hasn’t Signed Up TV Networks.” Cheaper access to network TV is one of main reasons that viewers sign up for a video streaming service, without them YouTube has a problem:
“What is most notable, however, is what is missing: TV networks. And according to sources, YouTube hasn’t at this point signed up any of those networks like NBC and Fox. Those networks would bring with them their popular shows, and those popular shows would bring in viewers. That doesn’t mean the networks will never be brought in — sources said there’s still time for them to get on board, as the rollout isn’t pegged for until later this year.”
Google is currently counting on YouTube stars to power the paid platform, which users will be able to watch ad free. Without network TV, a larger movie library, and other content, paying for YouTube probably will not have many takers. Why pay for already free videos, when all you have to do is watch a thirty-second ad?
Whitney Grace, August 5, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Facebook Wants You To Double Think About Using YouTube
August 4, 2015
Facebook does not like YouTube. Facebook wants to encourage users to upload their videos to its network, rather than posting them on YouTube. The Next Web shares how Facebook is trying to become major YouTube competition in “Facebook Throws Shade At YouTube When You Try To Paste A Link.” How is Facebook doing this? First, when a user tries to post a YouTube link, Facebook encourages users to upload to Facebook instead. Most users do not want to upload to Facebook, because it does not offer the same posting options as YouTube or does it?
Facebook has apparently upgraded how users can share their videos, including new features such as adding categories, sharing as an unlisted video, and disabling embedding. One drawback is that this could increase the amount of stolen videos. Some users might upload a stolen video, claim it as theirs, and reap the benefits. Facebook, however, does have user Audible Magic to catch a stolen copyrighted video. A direct quote from a Facebook representative said:
“ ‘For years we’ve used the Audible Magic system to help prevent unauthorized video content. We also have reporting tools in place to allow content owners to report potential copyright infringement, and upon receiving a valid notice we remove unauthorized content. We also suspend accounts of people with repeated IP violations when appropriate.’”
Thievery of original content is an important factor Facebook needs to work on if it wishes to rival YouTube. Popular YouTube celebrities and channels work hard to create original content and YouTube is a proven, marketable network. Facebook needs to offer competitive or better options to attract the big names, but for the average Facebook user uploading a video directly to Facebook is a desirable option.
Whitney Grace, August 4, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Finnish Content Discovery Case Study
July 31, 2015
There are many services that offer companies the ability to increase their content discover. One of these services is Leiki, which offers intelligent user profiling, context-based intelligence, and semantic SaaS solutions. Rather than having humans adapt their content to get to the top of search engine results, the machine is altered to fit a human’s needs. Leiki pushes relevant content to a user’s search query. Leiki released a recent, “Case Study: Lieki Smart Services Increase Customer Flow Significantly At Alma Media.”
Alma Media is one of the largest media companies in Finland, owning many well-known Finnish brands. These include Finland’s most popular Web site, classified ads, and a tabloid newspaper. Alma Media employed two of Leiki’s services to grow its traffic:
“Leiki’s Smart Services are adept at understanding textual content across various content types: articles, video, images, classifieds, etc. Each content item is analyzed with our semantic engine Leiki Focus to create a very detailed “fingerprint” or content profile of topics associated with the content.
SmartContext is the market leading service for contextual content recommendations. It’s uniquely able to recommend content across content types and sites and does this by finding related content using the meaning of content – not keyword frequency.
SmartPersonal stands for behavioral content recommendations. As it also uses Leiki’s unique analysis of the meaning in content, it can recommend content from any other site and content type based on usage of one site.”
The case study runs down how Leiki’s services improved traffic and encouraged more users to consume its content. Leiki’s main selling point in the cast study is that offers users personal recommendations based on content they clicked on Alma Media Web sites. Leiki wants to be a part of developing Web 3.0 and the research shows that personalization is the way for it to go.
Whitney Grace, July 31, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
On Embedding Valuable Outside Links
July 21, 2015
If media websites take this suggestion from an article at Monday Note, titled “How Linking to Knowledge Could Boost News Media,” there will be no need to search; we’ll just follow the yellow brick links. Writer Frederic Filloux laments the current state of affairs, wherein websites mostly link to internal content, and describes how embedded links could be much, much more valuable. He describes:
“Now picture this: A hypothetical big-issue story about GE’s strategic climate change thinking, published in the Wall Street Journal, the FT, or in The Atlantic, suddenly opens to a vast web of knowledge. The text (along with graphics, videos, etc.) provided by the news media staff, is amplified by access to three books on global warming, two Ted Talks, several databases containing references to places and people mentioned in the story, an academic paper from Knowledge@Wharton, a MOOC from Coursera, a survey from a Scandinavian research institute, a National Geographic documentary, etc. Since (supposedly), all of the above is semanticized and speaks the same lingua franca as the original journalistic content, the process is largely automatized.”
Filloux posits that such a trend would be valuable not only for today’s Web surfers, but also for future historians and researchers. He cites recent work by a couple of French scholars, Fabian Suchanek and Nicoleta Preda, who have been looking into what they call “Semantic Culturonomics,” defined as “a paradigm that uses semantic knowledge bases in order to give meaning to textual corpora such as news and social media.” Web media that keeps this paradigm in mind will wildly surpass newspapers in the role of contemporary historical documentation, because good outside links will greatly enrich the content.
Before this vision becomes reality, though, media websites must be convinced that linking to valuable content outside their site is worth the risk that users will wander away. The write-up insists that a reputation for providing valuable outside links will more than make up for any amount of such drifting visitors. We’ll see whether media sites agree.
Cynthia Murrell, July 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
How Not to Drive Users Away from a Website
July 15, 2015
Writer and web psychologist Liraz Margalit at the Next Web has some important advice for websites in “The Psychology Behind Web Browsing.” Apparently, paying attention to human behavioral tendencies can help webmasters avoid certain pitfalls that could damage their brands. Imagine that!
The article cites a problem an unspecified news site encountered when it tried to build interest in its videos by making them play automatically when a user navigated to their homepage. I suspect I know who they’re talking about, and I recall thinking at the time, “how rude!” I thought it was just because I didn’t want to be chastised by people near me for suddenly blaring a news video. According to Margalit, though, my problem goes much deeper: It’s an issue of control rooted in pre-history. She writes:
“The first humans had to be constantly on alert for changes in their environment, because unexpected sounds or sights meant only one thing: danger. When we click on a website hoping to read an article and instead are confronted with a loud, bright video, the automatic response is not so different from that our prehistoric ancestors, walking in the forest and stumbling upon a bear or a saber-toothed hyena.”
This need for safety has morphed into a need for control; we do not like to be startled or lost. When browsing the Web, we want to encounter what we expect to encounter (perhaps not in terms of content, but certainly in terms of format.) The name for this is the “expectation factor,” and an abrupt assault on the senses is not the only pitfall to be avoided. Getting lost in an endless scroll can also be disturbing; that’s why those floating menus, that follow you as you move down the page, were invented. Margalit notes:
“Visitors like to think they are in charge of their actions. When a video plays without visitors initiating any interaction, they feel the opposite. If a visitor feels that a website is trying to ‘sell’ them something, or push them into viewing certain content without permission, they will resist by trying to take back the interaction and intentionally avoid that content.”
And that, of course, is the opposite of what websites want, so giving users the control they expect is a smart business move. Besides, it’s only polite to ask before engaging a visitor’s Adobe Flash or, especially, speakers.
Cynthia Murrell, July 15, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Digestible Content Tool For The Busy Person
July 7, 2015
RSS feeds and Web page readers curate content from select Web sites tailored to suit a users’ needs. While all of the content is gathered in one spot and the headlines are available to read, sometimes the readers return hundreds of articles and users do not have the time to read all of them. True, sometimes users can glen the facts from the headlines and the small blurb included with it, but sometimes it is not enough.
There are apps that gather and summarize a users’ content, but these are usually geared towards a specific industry or an enterprise system. There is a content reader that was designed for the average user, while at the same time it can be programmed to serve the needs of many professionals. The Context Organizer from Content Discovery Inc. is an application that summarizes Web pages and documents in order to pinpoint relevant information. The Content Organizer works via five basic steps:
“1. Get to the point – Speed-up reading by condensing web pages, emails and documents into keywords and summaries presented in context.
- Make a Long Story Short – The Short Summary headlines most important sentences – instant information capsules.
- Accelerate Search – Search the web with relevant keywords. Summarize Google search results for rapid understanding.
- Take Notes – Quickly collect topics and sentences. Send them to WordPad or Word. Share notes – send them by e-mail.
- Visualize – View summaries in context as Mindjet MindManager maps.”
There are three different Context Organizer versions: one that specifically searches the Web, another that searches the Web and Microsoft Products, and the third is a combination of the prior versions plus it includes the Mindjet MindManager. The prices range from $60-$120 with a free twenty-one day trial, which we suggest you start with. Always start with free trial first, because you mind be throwing away money on an item you do not like. With the amount of content available on the Web, any tool that helps organize and summarize it is worth investigating.
Whitney Grace, July 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
The Dichotomy of SharePoint Migration
May 7, 2015
SharePoint Online gets good reviews, but only from critics and those who are utilizing SharePoint for the first time. Those who are sitting on huge on-premises installations are dreading the move and biding their time. It is definitely an issue stemming from trying to be all things to all people. Search Content Management covers the issue in their article, “Migrating to SharePoint Online is a Tale of Two Realities.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft is paving the way for a future that is all about cloud computing and mobility, but it may have to drag some SharePoint users there kicking and screaming. SharePoint enables document sharing, editing, version control and other collaboration features by creating a central location in which to share and save files. But SharePoint users aren’t ready — or enthused about — migrating to . . . SharePoint Online. According to a Radicati Group survey, only 23% of respondents have deployed SharePoint Online, compared with 77% that have on-premises SharePoint 2013.”
If you need to keep up with how SharePoint Online may affect your organization’s installation, or the best ways to adapt, keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com. Stephen E. Arnold is a longtime leader in search and distills the latest tips, tricks, and news on his dedicated SharePoint feed. SharePoint Online is definitely the future of SharePoint, but it cannot afford to get there at the cost of its past users.
Emily Rae Aldridge, May 7, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
SharePoint Server Release Delayed by a Year
April 21, 2015
For users anxious to start working with SharePoint Server 2016, the wait just got a little longer. Microsoft just announced that the next version would not be available until the second quarter of 2016, a delay of full year from initial projections. ZD Net covers the latest news in their article, “Microsoft Pushes Back Next SharePoint Server Release to Q2 2016.”
The article breaks the news:
“When Microsoft announced the name of the next version of SharePoint Server — SharePoint Server 2016 — company officials said the product would debut in the second half of calendar 2015. But on April 16, Microsoft execs said that there’s a new delivery plan, and SharePoint Server 2016 won’t be generally available until the second calendar quarter of 2016.”
The delay doesn’t seem to be related to Windows Server, although it has also been pushed back to calendar year 2016. The new version is still very much anticipated as it promises updates to content management, team connectivity, and hybrid functionality. For users who are closely following all the news, stay tuned to ArnoldIT.com, specifically the SharePoint feed. Stephen E. Arnold maintains his site with a focus on search and all the expertise of a lifelong career.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 21, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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