Feb
10
A Candidate for the Next Ig Nobel?
Filed Under (Books & News Related) by M.Varone on 10-02-2009

I’m always delighted to read about new applications of semantic technologies in the field of knowledge management, but what I’m reading here seems like a solution in search of a problem.

While I find semantic technologies to be potentially useful to filter and organize incoming messages (even though, as I wrote in the past, accomplishing such a task in an effective way is quite complicated), I also think the idea described in the article makes no sense:  why on earth should someone have problems knowing the recipients of his/her own messages? If I’m writing a message I already know the recipient, and I don’t need the computer to tell me.

Actually, the idea seems to be targeted to large companies and work messages (instead of personal ones), therefore useful also to other people in addition to those explicitly listed as recipients:  this could make sense, but I still believe in the title of this post…

Feb
02
Cuil Est? Again on Easy Predictions
Filed Under (Myths and realities) by M.Varone on 02-02-2009

While surfing the web recently, I came across a chart published by TechCrunch.

You may remember this dreamlike search engine promising a revolution in Internet search, by indexing a previously unimaginable number of web pages.
Cuil’s fiasco proves that, without innovative technologies and/or approaches, even the most advertised and financed companies (even those founded by Google’s anointeds, in this specific case), are destined to fail.
It seems everything turned out to be a marketing operation, until now without any real effect on the daily activities of Internet users (but this was obvious from the start). Fortunately, money and names are not enough to obtain success: we need innovative ideas and the ability to turn them into real and useful products in relatively short timeframes.