Time Explorer

An interesting new research tool is in prototype state at the Yahoo Barcelona Research Lab. The tool was demonstrated over the weekend at a Human Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR) workshop in New Brunswick, NJ.

The tool organizes news stories according to the years they were published and the years they refer to. So if an article refers to 2020, it would appear under that year, extending the timeline into the future. The tool can be used to gain an understanding of thinking at some point in the past, and also what thinking has taken place about some time in the future.

At present, Time Explorer only contains select stories from the New York Times, but one can see that if it is extended to include a variety of sources and writings beyond news stories, it could be a significant aid to researchers doing survey work.

It adds a new dimension to research, essentially enabling the researchers to become virtual time travellers. This article explains in more detail.
  

Data leakage

Panda Security "recently surveyed 10,470 small and midsize companies -- those having up to 1,000 computers -- in 20 countries. Roughly half said that their organization had been infected by malware at least once in the previous year, and in the United States, 27% said the origin was a USB device."

Some firms routinely block the USB ports in their corporate owned PC's, some by inserting epoxy glue into them.

Seems they are onto something.

Here's more on the survey.

Privacy Under Threat

The infrastructure is all there. All we now need is some repressive and subversive government to plug into it and they can track their citizens right down to when the go to the pub and who they meet with there. The privacy of individuals is under threat more than in recent history. Cameras track your moves in city streets, Software in your smart phones tracks your location and transmits it out over the internet. Almost all information about you that used to be private is now out there on the internet somewhere. Seldom in history has the ground been so well laid for total control over the activities and movements of people.

The latest push comes again from Facebook, already the focus of much controversy. their latest product "places" automatically tells "friends" where you are. In order to avoid this happening, you have to go in and refuse the service. In other words, the default in that you are tracked. This has a lot of people up in arms.

And then, there is the latest uprising against Google Earth, in Germany. They are taking issue with the idea that their homes are clearly visible on the internet. That's after extensive controversy about the inclusion of people in street scenes, a matter on which Google had to do some bending.

Some people view those who object to these privacy intrusions as hopelessly outdated - even neanderthal-ish. Instead of condemning, they should study some history, focus particularly on past oppressive governments, and remind themselves that all that could happen again, and now with much more efficiency.

For a summary of the most recent Facebook discussion, see this article. And for a look at the Google issue in Germany see this one.

Is Hulu's IPO supported by its Business Model?

Hulu Inc has announced plans in New York to issue an IPO this fall. For anyone who doesn't know, Hulu is an internet operator that streams TV shows and movies for comsumption on pc's and mobile devices. Consumers can buy subscriptions to its services.

The company reported gross revenues of about $100 million last year, but no significant profits. It's business model is based on streaming content on its site, under agreements with the content owners, such as ABC and NBC. The hitch is that a lot of their content is made available for free on the owners' websites, either in current streams or in archives.

The issue is - will this business model support a $2 billion IPO, especially in today's skittish investment market. It'll be wait and see until the fall. Here's a short article on the announcement.

Outsourcing Undergoing a Sea Change

Although outsourcing has been with us for several years now, and has increased in popularity more recently, it is now changing to the extent that what we used to call outsourcing will no longer exist. The reason goes back to the original purposes of outsourcing, which were heavily centered on saving costs.

Initially, costs were saved by handing over the administrative and infrastructure costs to a specialist group who could look after those areas more efficiently. Now, however, even greater savings can be achieved by handing over processing to the new cloud specialists, like Amazon and Google. No doubt there will be others.

The cloud specialists do not offer to run special or customized applications; rather they offer generic applications and share them among numerous users. That makes it cheaper. As the systems become more mature and developed, it will be feasible for companies to outsource more of their applications to them. Ultimately, the traditional forms of outsourcing will disappear.

For an excellent article on this topic, check out this link.

The Cloud Suits E-Business Needs

Modern e-business applications, like CRM and e-procurement are built on a collaborative model - collaboration with suppliers, customers and others. Even ERP is shifting to a SAAS environment in the cloud, at least partly for collaborative purposes.

The cloud fits well with collaboration, which essentially involves a system of shared processes. What better way to share processes than to place them in the cloud, where access is more open and can be more easily built to recognize the needs of collaborators.

This means that e-business applications are in the forefront of applications moving to the cloud.

This linked article expands on this point and also provides a podcast of a panel discussion among several experts in the field.