Posts tagged Answer
Solve for X: Google’s Answer to All World Problems
Feb 7th
Google believes that we can solve some of the world’s greatest problems by working together. We Solve for X appears to be more focused on global problems, using them as opportunities to encourage “moonshot” thinking.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
BMC the Latest to Join VCE’s All-in-One Answer to Exalogic
Feb 1st
On Tuesday, we introduced you to CA Technologies’ Private Cloud Accelerator for Vblock platforms, and if you’re a frequent reader of ReadWriteWeb, you might still be wondering, “What’s a Vblock platform?” It’s an emerging contender in the out-of-the-box, full-service cloud server category from a company called VCE.
And if you’re wondering how a relatively unknown company goes up against the likes of HP, Oracle, and IBM, the answer is by integrating hardware and software from specialists in their respective fields. Consequently, compute power and networking switches comes by way of Cisco UCS, storage capacity is supplied by EMC Symmetrix, and the virtualization layer is supplied by VMware. Yesterday, by way of a new strategic alliance, the VCE convoy added BMC Software’s management software to this illustrious list.
Sponsor
“BMC is always focused on business service management – the management of services that sit above the infrastructure layer,” explains Ken Berryman, BMC’s senior vice president of strategy and corporate development. “We have a best-in-class set of solutions to do that, from orchestration through active management of operations. So when you think about what’s really required to have a successful cloud project, it’s not just enough to have the infrastructure block – the Vblock, which VCE produces. It’s also mandatory to have the right level of management that fits above it, not only to take care of initial provisioning of whatever is operating in the data center, but to manage that over time.”
The first stage of BMC’s alliance with VCE, Berryman tells us, will see integration of VCE’s existing infrastructure manager with BMC’s Cloud Lifecycle Management, which includes automated provisioning of resources in scalable, virtualized “network zones.” Imagine simpler, virtual networks where all the physical resources are pooled together, complete with virtual firewalls and load balancers.
From there, the two companies plan to implement BMC’s ProactiveNet Performance Management Suite, which Berryman describes as “a set of capabilities that allow you to predict future problems, solve them before they occur, and proactively respond to operations issues.” Next will come Atrium Orchestrator, which utilizes ITIL principles for change management in implementing workflows within the Vblock, enabling end-to-end control of virtual environments.
“That’s the initial set of integrations,” says Berryman. “Over time, we would expect more across the full portfolio of business service management solutions… That roadmap is something we will continue to expand, in response to direct customer demand. Certainly, we are able today to provide integrations across a broader set of the portfolio on a custom basis. But what we are attempting to do here is have a very standard, configured, out-of-the-box Vblock with the BMC solutions made for it, so it’s easy to set up, deploy, operate, and manage over time your private or hybrid cloud.”
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Is Screening the Answer to Censorship Internationally?
Jan 18th
Censorship is not a new topic; it has been around in many forms for a long, long time and it looks like it is not going anywhere any time soon. Now it seems more than ever before in the (relatively) short history of the internet has there been so much concern for censorship. With Google [...]
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Microsoft’s Answer to Dropbox Comes to the iPhone
Dec 13th
Personal cloud storage is all the rage these days. Dropbox continues to be one of the most buzzed-about startups and its enterprise-focused counterpart Box is making moves toward the consumer market as well. For music files, Google, Amazon and Apple all offer cloud-based storage lockers and iOS allows syncing of other types of content via iCloud.
iPhone owners not satisfied with the available options now have a new one in Microsoft’s SkyDrive, which launched its first iOS app today. The four-year-old service has been available to Windows users on the desktop and Windows Phone platform for some time. Today, it starts to branch out onto other platforms.
Sponsor
The SkyDrive app is going to be most practical for Windows users, which is not an insignificant potential user base for the app. By bringing it to iOS, Microsoft acknowledges that its own mobile operating system doesn’t have quite the adoption rate that its desktop OS does.
Lots of Windows users are carrying around iPhones, so it only makes sense for Microsoft to let them access their cloud-stored files from the device. Otherwise, most people will instinctively go for a solution like Dropbox. With its 25 GB of free space, SkyDrive is an attractive alternative to Dropbox, who only offers only two. Box’s free account comes with five gigabytes of free storage.
This is just the latest iOS app from Microsoft, who released an application for Bing as well OneNote, which may foreshadow the eventual launch of Microsoft Office for iOS.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
Google Buys Clever Sense: An Answer To Siri?
Dec 13th
As is being widely reported Google has bought startup Clever Sense, which earlier this year launched the local-mobile recommendations app Alfred. Alfred is like “Pandora for the real world” and was dedicated to creating a comprehensive “interest graph.” Clever Sense assigns…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
View full post on Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Yahoo Study Seeks Algorithmic Answer to ‘Six Degrees of Separation’
Dec 6th
Yahoo’s Small World Experiment, led by Duncan Watts and Sharad Goel, Principal and Senior Research Scientists at Yahoo (respectively), aims to conclusively answer the question of degrees of separation. The topic has been much debated and wid…
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Spreecast, a More Social Answer to Google+ Hangouts, Goes Live Today
Nov 10th
A new social video service called Spreecast launched into public beta today, promising users a more social, portable version of the functionality offered by Google+ Hangouts.
Think of Spreecast like a multi-person video chat service mashed up with a traditional, text-based live chat feature. It allows up to four people to appear on camera at one time and invites an unlimited number of viewers, all of whom can make comment and ask questions of the participants. Alternatively, sessions can be held privately.
Sponsor
The service tries to differentiate itself from the Hangout feature in Google+ by making itself available independently of any one social network, while at same time allowing sharing across all of them. Users hosting public Spreecasts can use Google+ to invite people, but it can also use Facebook, Twitter or just about any other social media platform. It also integrates with Facebook and Twitter for sign-ups and comments.
Each Spreecast chat is archived and saved for later viewing, which makes it an ideal tool for educational live chats and business presentations.
So how is this thing being used? Klout CEO Joe Fernandez participated in a chat in September in which he announced an important product update. The editorial team for Al Jazeera’s The Stream has used it to broadcast editorial meetings and invite public participation. Those are just some examples from the product’s closed beta period, so expect to see more use cases unfold if it takes off.
Spreecast is the latest venture from Jeff Fluhr, the former CEO of online ticket marketplace StubHub, which is now owned by eBay. Fluhr said that the social Web we know and love lacks some of the nuances of human interaction, so he set “to bring face-to-face interactions to the Internet in a far-reaching way” with this new offering.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
#pubcon Matt Cutts and Amit Singhal Answer Questions and Offer Advice
Nov 9th
Why is ranking data not available in Analytics?
Cutts: Over 96% of sites get all of their searches within the 1,000 limitation. The last 4% of sites would require 2-3 times more data storage.
Due to the Panda update, lower quality sites are outranking an authority site. Why?
Singhal: Google’s preference is always algorithmic – it is scalable across all sites, countries, and languages. Overall, the Panda update has been a very positive change – the scientific measurements say the Google user experience is better than it used to be. However, they understand that no algorithm is perfect and want people to submit reports of instances like this so they can improve the algorithm.
Cutts: Google is listening. Unfortunately, the changes take time to implement. They use the aggregated reports to try to improve the algorithm. The algorithm is under active development and they want to get it right.
When we search for appliances, why do we only get Sears and other major stores?
Cutts: The web is one of the only places where the small business can move faster than the big guys. The big companies are often big for reason and as a result they can outrank other pages. However, the search engine does give the small business a chance Google Webmaster Tools is somewhat of an equalizer though and small businesses should use this – i.e. big businesses are more likely to use text in images/flash and small businesses will know better. Also, small businesses should concentrate on the small niche.
Are they trying to make the algorithm so perfect that they are missing the user experience?
Singhal: All scientific measures and manual reviews indicate that the algorithm is getting better and that search quality is improving (improving search quality = more relevant, higher quality results).
Google Places Page that got shut down by competitor – is there a better process to stop this type of behavior?
Cutts: The web used to be the “wild west” and there is still a small element of this especially in local. The local area is changing fast and a combination of manual spam fighters and algorithmic changes will get this under control. They are open to ideas on how to prevent malicious deletions of other businesses. They are working on this.
Where is the balance between privacy and data with SSL encryption?
Cutts: The trend is search is becoming more personal and this should continue, which means this is important to Google. People are unhappy that they have lost some of their keyword data. However, if you download your data from Google Webmaster Tools, 96% of people can still see all of their keyword data. They will not back down on the SSL – if anything they may move forward and advertisers may not get the data in the future. People want to know that they are not being snooped on.
Are PRWeb and press releases considered black hat due to duplicate content?
Cutts: Press releases are going to other people and asking them to write about you. Instead, work hard to produce high quality content on your site and people will want to write about you. It is harder to fake natural than be natural.
Singhal: The content must be high-quality and useful from a reader’s perspective. If the content is high quality and you work hard for the users, it is OK.
If I do doorway pages will the whole site get penalized or just the doorway pages?
Cutts: Are you asking how to do doorway pages (incredulously)?!? There is an answer though – it depends on the amount of spam. If there is a huge amount of great content, they will probably only penalize the portion of the site that is using doorway pages. However, if
Singhal: Don’t do it man.
Everyone says I need more links. How do links improve the quality of the site? I don’t want to play this game and I don’t want to do this.
Cutts: What matters is bottom line. Links are a part of search – they represent online reputation. Although there are many tools that report links, none of the tools can tell you which links are trusted by Google (not even Google’s tools). While the link structure looks bad from the outside, the actual linkgraph that Google uses/trusts looks much better. When the New York Times complained about a site with 10,000 spammy links, Google investigated the site and not a single link had slipped through Google’s filter. Only the links Google trusts count.
Is Google going to give more data to webmasters?
Google can either give more data (i.e. 2000 queries instead of 1,000) or give a longer timeframe (i.e. 60 days). They are leaning toward more data – they figure people can just download data periodically and still have access to past data. In an informal survey of the audience they disagree – 60% want longer timeframe and 40% want more queries.
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Poll: Will BBX Be The Answer to RIM’s Sinking Ship?
Oct 20th
Lost this week among the unveiling of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the continued hype of the iPhone 4S and the funny things that Siri says and new Windows Phones coming from Samsung and HTC is the fact that Research In Motion had its developers’ conference in San Francisco and showcased its next generation mobile operating system, BBX.
BBX is the product of what Research In Motion has been working on to bring a unified mobile operating system to bear between tablets and smartphones based off its acquisition of QNX in April 2010. The first BBX phones are expected to ship in early 2012. This is a pivotal moment in RIM’s history. Will BBX help right the sinking ship? That is the topic of this week’s ReadWriteMobile poll.
Sponsor
BBX is akin to both Windows 8 and Ice Cream Sandwich. RIM is attempting to marry the best aspects of PlayBook QNX tablet OS with the long evolution of the BlackBerry OS for smartphones.
RIM will integrate its host of developer environments in BBX including HTML5, WebWorks, Adode Air, Native C/C__ and Runtime for Android. Just like Ice Cream Sandwich, apps built for the PlayBook will be backwards compatible with new BBX smartphones.
The Cascades user interface framework that has brought some of the best looking apps to the PlayBook will also be available in BBX. At the same time, all the good BlackBerry goodness that made the platform popular in its heyday will be supported, from push notifications, messaging and, of course, security.
BlackBerry lost 5% of its market share, mostly to Android, in the summer of 2011. We asked earlier this week if RIM could pull itself out of the downward spiral in which it finds itself with QNX. Can the new BBX deliver RIM out of its free fall? Developers, are you more likely to develop for BBX or is it a wait-and-see approach to see if it is worth the effort? Take the poll and and let us know in the comments.
View full post on ReadWriteWeb
