Code search options
Questions come up here from time to time about code search engines, a subject I have not researched. Well, here’s a quick link listing some leading code search engines, both Web (guess who?) and internal. Most interesting may be that the list is so short.
| Categories: Search engines, Specialized search | Leave a Comment |
A computational linguistics filksong
Truth be told, it’s not nearly as good as God’s Programming Language, but it might be worth a few chuckles even so.
| Categories: Fun stuff, Humor | Leave a Comment |
Six blind men and the Twitter elephant
I got a long email today from a Very Smart Person who asked, in effect “What is Twitter for? I don’t get it.” Coincidentally, Rex Hammock posted a good answer yesterday, albeit with a bad title that I won’t repeat. The essence was:
… the most amazing thing about Twitter is this: everyone uses it differently.
It’s a little like trying to explain the telephone by describing what people talk about on the phone. “Telephones are devices that teenagers use to spread gossip.” “Telephones are the devices people use to contact police when bad things happen.” “Telephones are the devices you use to call the 7-11 to ask if they have Prince Albert in a can.”
Like the Internet itself, Twitter is hard to explain because it doesn’t really have a point. And it has too many points. Here’s what I mean: All it does is provide a common-place to relay short messages to a group of people who agree to receive your messages. Here’s the second part of what i mean: When you stop thinking those short messages aren’t limited to “I’m about to get on the elevator” but can be eye-witness accounts of breaking news stories or bursts of business-critical intelligence, or warnings that a gun-man is loose on campus, or shared conversations about political debates you and your friends are watching on TV, the possibilities of what can be done using Twitter becomes amazingly confusing — I think in a good way.
I’ve recently put up two posts on Twitter use cases. For yet another — well, as Shakespeare didn’t quite say, a 140 character limit is the soul of wit. Here’s my (ever-changing) list of Twitter “favorites”. The humor ranges from the sophomoric to the erudite; there are some serious aphorisms as well.
| Categories: Fun stuff, Humor, Microblogging, Social software and online media, Twitter | 4 Comments |
Yahoo wants to follow AOL into the dead pool
Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has put out a shareholder letter in which he commits Yahoo to pursuing the strategies that have already devastated AOL. To wit:
- Yahoo wants to be the internet “starting point” for ever more relatively naive users.
- Yahoo wants to be an advertising “must buy.”
- Yahoo doesn’t need to excel technologically in its user experience.
This is exactly what AOL tried in the late 1990s, except that they also had the best dial-up connectivity in the world. I know; Linda and I were strategic consultants to AOL then.* And we told them that while the rest of their strategy was excellent, it would be to no avail unless their tools matched the quality of what people could get in the office or elsewhere online. Because if AOL’s technology didn’t catch and keep up, people would just laugh and go elsewhere. (Even my parents, who still use AOL mail, go outside AOL for their web surfing. AOL is getting very little revenue from them, and they’re about as captive as AOL users get.)
*Please note — AOL was a great client, but the people we dealt with are (for the most part) long gone, and our NDAs ran out years ago.
That’s brain-dead. Just consider how far technology has taken Google, how fast gaming technology advances, or how fickle internet users are about switching to the latest and greatest online services. What’s worse, Yahoo seems to mean it, given how many serious technology leader types are out on the street in connection with the recent layoffs.
Pretty much the only remaining hope for the Yahoo brand(s) and services is for the Microsoft acquisition to go through, and for Microsoft/Yahoo to unlock the deal’s huge potential synergies — which, while far from being certain, is at least realistically possible.
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| Categories: Microsoft, Yahoo | Leave a Comment |
More Twitter use cases
Monday, I posted about four Enterprise Twitter use cases. Episteme responds that that’s all well and good, but what’s really important is that Enterprise Twitter would lead senior management to communicate in a human way with the team. I agree completely, and think this is one of the big reasons Enterprise Twitter could be an improvement over email for many uses.
That post also illustrates a use of public Twitter. Read more
| Categories: Microblogging, Social software and online media, Twitter | 2 Comments |
Enterprise Twitter
My long discussion Saturday of how to evolve (or replace) Twitter included a short discussion of what might be called Enterprise Twitter. Dennis Howlett just alerted me that there’s been considerable other discussion of the subject recently. For example:
- Dennis reported on an internal SAP Enterprise Twitter research project, and pointed at a number of the other pages I’ll mention. (Note: If that goes anywhere, it will have to be in conjunction with Business Objects.)
- Jevon MacDonald listed pros (many) and cons (few) of Enterprise Twitter.
- Andrew McAfee argues at length that an enterprise needs multiple social networking tools, to match up with different intensities of collaboration among coworkers.
- Niall Cook offers a short, convincing use case for Enterprise Twitter.
- JP Rangaswami also offers use cases.
- Ed Yourdon argues that Twitter is “good enough” for enterprises. But he seems to concede it could indeed be a lot better.
- Paul Gillin praises Twitter’s business potential for us self-employed consultant types.
- Sid offers a number of quick-hit use cases for Enterprise Twitter.
- Bill Ives takes a more skeptical view, focusing on enterprises uses of today’s Twitter.
- Nancy offers many Twitter use cases, some of which are enterprise-relevant.
Here’s my take on the subject.
I see four basic (and somewhat overlapping) use cases for Enterprise Twitter:
| Categories: Business Objects and Inxight, SAP, Social software and online media, Twitter | 22 Comments |
Microsoft could EASILY pay $40/share for Yahoo, in cash
The Microsoft/Yahoo negotiations are underway. Mike Arrington and Henry Blodget are fretting about Microsoft’s stock price decline in reaction to the deal.
It’s all nonsense. According to Microsoft’s 10-K statements, they have $27 billion in cash and equivalents and have $14-17+ billion/year in cash flow from operations. Assume they have to pay $40/share for Yahoo’s 1.4 billion shares in an all-cash deal (meaning they have to borrow around $30 billion). Assume that building out data centers adds a couple of billion of dollars a years in new capital costs. They can still pay all the debt back in three years. It’s all a non-issue, if they think the acquisition is worth it.
So is it? I see tons of synergies, but I’ll confess to not having quantified them. I’m also more optimistic about post-merger execution than many observers are. I do think Microsoft will have to pay up to complete the deal.
And I think Henry Blodget is proposing a false dichotomy when he suggests Microsoft is wrongly favoring ad-supported online software over subscription online software. Ad-supported personal use and subscription-supported enterprise use can co-exist.
EDIT: I forgot about the FAST deal when I wrote this, which will cost a few billion dollars more when it closes. But there was enough slack in the calculations to cover it. Microsoft could indeed pay the debt off over 3-4 years, although it would surely arrange a somewhat longer term for flexibility.
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| Categories: Microsoft, Yahoo | 2 Comments |
The comprehensive guide to upgrading – or replacing – Twitter
Twitter is a rather new communications service, wildly popular in the technology blogging and podcasting communities. There are close to a million registered accounts or users, but I’d guess the active users number in the low-mid five figures. Even at that low usage, Twitter is on overload, plagued with outages and data loss.
Scaling Twitter is a huge challenge. Doing so will involve changing just about every aspect of what Twitter is. A number of commentators have suggested lesser fixes, but none that I’ve seen is apt to work. (Generally, they forget that UI options will need to change as usage grows.) However, I think I’ve come up with an approach that would indeed work, for:
- Arbitrarily high levels of public Twitter use.
- Twitter integration with other communication tools such as instant messaging or IRC-style chat.
- Enterprise or integrated personal/enterprise use of Twitter.
The sections below cover:
- Future metadata needed by Twitter “tweets” (i.e., posts)
- Filtering enhancements Twitter will need as usage scales (and could greatly use already today)
- Present and future Twitter use cases
- Twitter CEP and database architecture (almost everybody else I see writing about Twitter gets this wrong)
- Enterprise Twitter
- Twitter’s competitive vulnerabilities
| Categories: Microblogging, Social software and online media, Twitter | 15 Comments |
A game theorist’s view of Microsoft/Yahoo
Edit: Microsoft/Yahoo could easily end up being an all-cash deal.
Larry Dignan encourages a game theoretic view of the Microsoft/Yahoo merger, following Trip Chowdhry. I actually have a Ph.D. in game theory, so I’ll bite. 🙂
In most negotiation games — including pretty much all in which money can change hands — there’s one outcome that makes the most sense for all concerned. They should agree to that outcome, and haggle about nothing except price.* In this case, the best outcome for Microsoft and Yahoo is a quick Microsoft takeover of Yahoo. That’s what I thought all along, due to a whole lot of Microsoft/Yahoo synergies. Michael Arrington reports, in confirmation, that there are no viable alternative bidders.
*A fancy way of saying that is “The feasible set has a continuous and effectively one-dimensional Pareto frontier.”
In such cases, the haggling over price depends a lot on each side’s “threat point” — i.e., their fallback position, and the (un)desirability of that fallback position for each side. Yahoo’s fallback position is probably one or more aggressive deals with other major internet players. Merely outsourcing its search business to Google would be stupid. Selling the search business to Google could fetch a wonderful price, because Google would be even more entrenched — but for exactly that reason, it would surely fail to pass antitrust muster. That’s why the Amazon idea that’s been floated is so crucial; a Yahoo/Amazon merger would actually be synergistic in its own way, and hence could command a price at least somewhat competitive with Microsoft’s offer.
As for Microsoft — despite successes in individual Internet areas, it has consistently failed to build a coherent Internet business. Yahoo has its own issues, obviously, but on the whole it’s maintained pretty decent Internet status even as its technological efforts have been consistently disappointing. If Microsoft doesn’t buy Yahoo, it probably needs to buy somebody else with a consistent record of Internet leadership, such as Amazon. That would also involve paying a large premium. And here’s a twist: If Amazon for any reason wants to sell to fellow Washingtonian Microsoft at a big premium, it’s best move may be to sabotage the Microsoft/Yahoo deal somehow.
One final note: If Yahoo outsources its search business to Google, the possibility of a Microsoft deal is gone forever. Microsoft can not be assured of winning a waiting game, the way Oracle outlasted Peoplesoft.
Bottom line: The Microsoft/Yahoo deal should and probably will happen, and Yahoo should and probably will be able to squeeze Microsoft for more money than has first been offered.
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Technorati Tags: Trip Chowdhry, game theory
| Categories: Microsoft, Yahoo | 2 Comments |
Survey of search UI alternatives
I’ll confess to skimming rather than reading this long, footnoted discussion of search user interfaces. But if you need to design those things — even internally at an enterprise — it’s worth at least a quick look. Ditto, perhaps, if you design other analysis- or research-oriented UIs.
| Categories: Enterprise search, Search engines | Leave a Comment |