Watson

I've been trying to figure out what I think of the technology that IBM demonstrated on Jeopardy recently for the past few days. One thing is for sure, Watson is no Eliza.

As is generally the case when I encounter something new I've primarily trying to figure out what sort of uses this technology might have and how those uses would impact how I and others live our lives. IBM has already announced that they'll be working a company called Nuance that specializes in voice recognition and clinical language understanding to develop a "Physician Assistant" over the next five years. If the two companies are successful they could help save a lot of lives. As is the case with any highly complicated job Doctors have a daunting amount of information both new and old to look at. Being able to quickly wade through that body of knowledge and find only the most relevant facts while performing a patient diagnosis would be of great value both in increasing their productivity and improving accuracy. Doctors are known for being conservative in regards to technologies that change the way they do their jobs though so it is by no means certain that this effort will be adopted even if the technology is developed and proven.

I'd really be interested in knowing what the senior people at Google think of this technology. Let's be honest,, as good as Google is it can still take a lot of effort to find what you are looking for. This is especially true if you're interest is particularly esoteric. Even common searches require a certain amount of effort as it is almost always a good idea to check two or three sources to be sure you're getting an accurate answer. Imagine being able to simply type or speak a question and get an answer along with an idea of how probable the answer was to be correct.  Wouldn't that be nice? Several years back there was a short lived search engine called "Ask Jeeves" that promised to do more or less that. Sadly the reality failed to live up to the hype and they essentially disappeared fairly quickly. You can still go to ask.com, but its primary purpose appears to be as a vehicle for delivering ads.

I’d be very surprised if there aren’t already one or more efforts within Google to try to replicate and improve on what Watson is capable of. That will likely be a tough nut to crack though as the real “magic” in Watson is the natural language parsing and I don’t get the impression that Google has a lot of expertise in that area.  I base this assumption primarily on the search results I get back when I type in full sentences. The sentences are generally not as complicated as the ones Watson had to deal with and yet it is obvious that Google makes no use of the context they provide.

Another challenge would be the fact that Watson was using a set of data that was almost certainly of very high quality. While the Internet is a wonderful source of information, there is a lot of noise out there and it is not unheard of for a particular piece of incorrect information to get replicated many times. This could make determining the correct answer to a question more challenging because garbage in almost always equals garbage out in the world of computers. I’d speculate that Watson does some amount of cross checking but again, the more noise the harder it would be to find the right answer.

While Watson is not perfect it does pave the way for other very important evolutionary steps towards a machine that might stand a chance of passing the Turing test. The code that IBM has developed would need additional functionality built on top of it to start doing things like building a body of inferences. It would also need an analog for personal memory and likely other things as well. 

I’m not sure that a true conception of “self” will ever emerge from such efforts but it will be interesting to watch and speculate. I’m much more optimistic that this will happen during my lifetime today than I was a week ago.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles

• John Dvorak's Second Opinion: IBM's Watson is just a super search engine (marketwatch.com)
• Dissecting IBM Watson's Jeopardy! Game - PC Magazine (news.google.com)
• IBM Watson Could Revolutionize Healthcare (medgadget.com)

iPhone Nano (Short Take)

There has been a fair amount of press recently about the possibility of an iPhone nano.  The rumors claim that Apple is working on a smaller version of the iPhone that would be cheaper in order to compete with the less expensive Android based phones.  While Apple could produce a smaller form factor device with the same screen resolution as the 3GS I can see a couple of problems.

First, how well would the on screen keyboard work? Typing on the current iPhone/iPod Touch screen is a little marginal for me, so I can't see how an even smaller display would work with a virtual keyboard.  Of course Apple could include a slide out keyboard instead.  That would address the issue nicely but how much cheaper would a mini iPhone with a slide out keyboard be? Apple hasn't been hot on slide out keyboards in the past, but a different form factor might cause them to change their minds.

The second thing that makes me question these stories is that Apple is all about high margins.  Right now they are making something like 50% of the profits on cell phone sales on 4% of unit sales and there are no signs that this very favorable phenomena is going to change any time soon.  Even the early antenna woes of the iPhone 4 didn't seem to have any impact. Why would Apple want to create a product that would likely have substantially lower margins? I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it seems a bit of a long shot that they would make such a move. It might make sense in emerging markets though. If that is the intended audience then I'm  betting on a slide out keyboard.

Image via CrunchBase

Related Articles

• Rumors suggest three iPhone 5 models, only one is believable (geek.com)
• Here's The Best iPhone Nano Mockup So Far (cultofmac.com)
• Can iPhone nano penetrate Asia? (penn-olson.com)
• iPhone Nano Rumors May Be Nothing New, But This Time They're Probably True [Opinion] (cultofmac.com)

Nokia & Microsoft, The Real Story

The recently announced strategic alliance between Microsoft & Nokia has been getting a lot of press, much of it negative. Some of that negative feedback has come in the form of a drop in their stock price, nearly 14% on Friday. All this negativity has Nokia CEO Stephen Elop on the defensive. I'm going to answer a couple of questions in this entry. The first one is, why did Nokia do this?


There are likely a number of reasons. The following two graphics will shed some light on one of the major ones.  The first one looks relatively good for Nokia.  Their market share has declined slightly over the past four years, but they are still the largest single player.  Notice how tiny Apple's share is even now, though it has been growing steadily.

The next graphic looks at margins (profit) rather than sales volumes. 

Here's where we begin to see the problem.  Notice how Nokia's profits have been shrinking steadily while Apple's have been growing? Basically what this says is that Nokia has been increasingly forced to compete based on price; and competing on price is almost never a good thing.  Particularly if this isn't the way you've been used to operating in the past. 


There are very few companies out there that like to compete on price. It's much more desirable to differentiate yourself in some other way and keep your margins high. Competing on price can lead to a downward death spiral. This is particularly true in situations where you have plenty of competitors who are smaller and more agile than you are. In the best possible outcome you are the last one standing and your margins are razor thin. You might be able to move back up market at that point but you're going to have a very hard slog. In short this isn't a fight that Nokia wants, win or lose.


So, what can they do? They've clearly failed to generate any excitement in the smart phone space where Apple, RIM & various Android based variants currently rule supreme.  They could join the Android bandwagon, but differentiation in that space is going to be very difficult.  There are plenty of companies out there making Android phones already and most of the opportunity for customization & differentiation lies with the carriers. All of which brings us to Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't had much luck selling any of their various smart phone OS's. Windows Phone 7 hasn't changed that picture much if any so far as I can tell. Still, Microsoft is a major player with significant corporate cachet.  It's easy to see why Nokia was willing to make this deal.  


Of course, that isn't the story they are telling. Nokia CEO Elop is blaming Android and claiming that Nokia is doing this to keep the smart phone market place from becoming a two horse race.  The following is quoted from this article

Wary of that development, Nokia instead decided to back Microsoft and its emerging Windows Phone operating system to make the mobile market more of a “three-horse race,” explained Elop. Because of its heft, Nokia’s decision to support Windows Phone “creates a different dynamic,” said Elop — namely, an environment where Windows Phone, which debuted just a few months ago, is a “challenger” to the forces of Google and Apple.


Apparently RIM doesn't even factor into this race according to Elop. I'm only being a bit sarcastic when I say that such an oversight may help explain why Nokia is in this mess in the first place. Their management is either very much out of touch or incapable of telling a credible story when some spin is needed. I suppose both of those statements could be true. Nokia would have no interest in making this a three horse race if they were one of the two (or really three) front runners right now.


The second question is, who has more to lose in this deal? The answer here is clearly Nokia.  Microsoft would love to see Windows phone 7 take off but given how small a part of their revenues the smart phone space is it isn't going to be the end of the world if Nokia falls flat on their faces. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft could benefit significantly given the changes that we're seeing in how people interact with the Internet but at the end of the day Microsoft still makes their money by selling applications and non phone operating systems and they have plenty of other initiatives in motion that are likely to help them maintain market share. This is a gamble that Microsoft would like to win, but it isn't life or death for them.  Nokia has much more to lose.


On the money front, I suspect that the dollars going back and forth are going to be roughly equal. The point of this deal isn't for Microsoft or Nokia to make money off of the other.  The point is to take a bigger slice of the smart phone pie and share in the profits.


Image at top via Wikipedia

Related Articles

• Nokia’s Elop Proclaims 3-way Mobile Race (informationweek.com)
• MWC: Nokia confident it can compete with Apple and Android using Windows Phone 7 (v3.co.uk)
• Nokia Press Briefing at MWC: Elop "will be much happier" with a Nokia Windows Phone in 2011 (liveside.net)
• Apple's 4% mobile market share rakes in over half the industry's profit (AppleInsider)

The Value of Training

It's been a little under three weeks since my previous post here.  Two of those weeks were taken up by a class where I made an acoustic guitar.  That was a blast.  70+ hours per week of very hard work and learning but I ended up with a very nice guitar and far more knowledge and confidence than I was going to gain by myself in the next several years. This experience reminded me of the value of training.

When money gets tight training budgets are often the first thing to get cut.  It's easy to get into the mindset that training is a frivolous luxury but particularly in the technology sector it's also likely a very bad and wrong assessment. 

I've boot strapped myself numerous times on new technologies.  I've always learned enough to get the job done acceptably.  When I compare those experiences to the ones where I had an opportunity to attend some sort of training beforehand the difference is substantial.  Rather than spending a lot of my time learning the basics of the technology as I went along I was able to complete whatever project I was working much more quickly and deliver a better final product as well. 

Good quality training is a great bootstrap.  At the very least, it will save you time and money. In business taking longer to complete a task or project can have an opportunity cost so it’s reasonable to state that it might even make you money.

All of this ignores the fact that employees often view training as a desirable perk.  Taking that perk away is going to hurt morale and might encourage your most valuable people to look elsewhere.  I’ve seen this happen before.

Productive employees are a key asset to any company.  Timely and regular training helps employees maintain their edge. It’s easy to miss the signs that quality is dropping off in this area initially. This may be why companies cut here first. It's a fools savings in my opinion.

Where's The Beef! And Other Slogans/Jingles

You hear a lot about branding when you get an MBA.  It's one of those key concepts that encompasses a lot of ground.  To quote Wikipedia...

Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: Customers, Staff, Partners, Investors etc.

Some people distinguish the psychological aspect, brand associations like thoughts, feelings, perceptions, images, experiences, beliefs, attitudes, and so on that become linked to the brand, of a brand from the experiential aspect.

The experiential aspect consists of the sum of all points of contact with the brand and is known as the brand experience. The psychological aspect, sometimes referred to as the brand image, is a symbolic construct created within the minds of people, consisting of all the information and expectations associated with a product, service or the company(ies) providing them.

That’s kind of wordy, but it describes the gist of the concept nicely.  One of the ways that companies have built awareness and influenced perceptions of brands is through slogans and jingles.

“Plop Plop, Fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is”

“Where’s The Beef!”

“From the land of sky blue waters, comes the beef refreshing”

“The San Francisco Treat”

“Fall into the Gap”

Unless you’re fairly young you’ll recognize at least a couple of those.  I know I’m devoting far too many brain cells to those and similar jingles.

The cool and/or scary thing about branding is that companies sometimes do very non intuitive things.  Anyone who has ever tried to eat rice with chop sticks knows that the fact that it is sticky is a good thing.  Yet Minute Rice which is not sticky ran commercials in the 1970’s showing frustrated house wives who were upset because their rice stuck together.  Enter minute rice with a solution.  Of course most Americans outside of the west coast had never tried to eat with chopsticks at that point.  I don’t watch TV much but I doubt Minute Rice would use a similar approach today.

Here are a couple more…

“Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickles onions on a sesame seed bun”

“Then I told two friends and they told two friends…”

Really good jingles and slogans stay with us for a long time, as do the brand images they help create.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles

• Own Your Brand (lockergnome.com)
• The mythology of your brand (thehumanracehorses.com)

Vacation Time

For twenty two of the next twenty three days I'll be honing my skills as a maker of acoustic guitars.  These skills are fairly meager right now.  I've completed one ukulele and am partially done with two guitars. to be clear, this is a hobby. Some day I'll hopefully be able to retire and I want to have a vocation that will challenge me and keep me busy.  This is the one I've chosen.

In some ways it's a little surprising to me that I've decided to make this investment in myself.  For every one day of enjoyment I've gotten out of this hobby I've had at least two days of frustration and months sometimes pass between sessions out in the garage. When I thought about it though I realized that the long periods of inactivity were always preceded by an especially frustrating experience trying to accomplish some task.  I've written mostly about the good times and occasionally about the bad times on my other BLOG.  To be fair, long periods of low humidity (Which are lousy times to be working wood) and the pursuit of my MBA a few years back played a part as well.

This is a big investment in money and time but it will accelerate my learning greatly. Having a firm foundation to build on is extremely important no matter what you are trying to accomplish.

So here I am, just a day away from two very busy weeks.  The course I'm taking is hands on, I'll end up with both a head full of new knowledge and a guitar at the end.

I've been very active on this BLOG for the past few weeks.  There is a very good possibility I'll be silent here for at least the next few, we'll see.  I'll almost certainly be posting about my adventure on my other BLOG, so please check things out there if you are interested.

Image via Wikipedia

Who Google Should Fear (Short Take)

In my previous posting I did a quick evaluation of how serious a threat Facebook is to Google.  In summary, I don't see a lot over overlap in the value they create.  This could change if Facebook continues to add services such as Email but for now I don't think Google has a lot to worry about.

A much more serious and emerging threat is coming from companies like Groupon and Living Social.  Rumored revenue numbers for Groupon have been all over the place with $500 million to $2 billion being the range late last year.  The number I find most credible is $800 million.  Even the low water number is very impressive for a company that celebrated its second birthday in November of 2010.  Facebook was launched in 2004 and has seen much slower revenue growth.  In light of these numbers I don't think it's surprising that Google tried to buy Groupon and is apparently planning a very similar offering of its own called Google Offers.

The reason Google is worried about Groupon is that both companies provide advertisers with an opportunity to deliver highly targeted offers.  Groupon has the additional advantage of actually getting customers to commit by way of the special offers that they enable companies to deliver.  So in effect, the groupon experience is a much more immersive and valuable one for both customers and businesses.

Facebook may have even more to fear since much of their ad revenue comes from small to medium sized businesses that will likely see much more value from using Groupon or a similar service.

Image via Wikipedia

Related Articles

• 'Google Offers' Launching As Groupon Competitor (blogherald.com)