Halevy, who heads the "Deep Web" search initiative at Google, described the "Shallow Web" as containing about 5 million web pages while the "Deep Web" is estimated to be 500 times the size. This hidden web is currently being indexed in part by Google's automated systems that submit queries to various databases, retrieving the content found for indexing. In addition to that aspect of the Deep Web - dubbed "vertical searching" - Halevy also referenced two other types of Deep Web Search: semantic search and product search.

Google wants to also be able to retrieve the data found in structured tables on the web, said Halevy, citing a table on a page listing the U.S. presidents as an example. There are 14 billion such tables on the web, and, after filtering, about 154 million of them are interesting enough to be worth indexing.

Can Google Dig into the Deep Web?

The question that remains is whether or not Google's current search engine technology is going to be adept at doing all the different types of Deep Web indexing or if they will need to come up with something new. As of now, Google uses the Big Table database and MapReduce framework for everything search related, notes Alex Esterkin, Chief Architect at Infobright, Inc., a company delivering open source data warehousing solutions. During the talk, Halevy listed a number of analytical database application challenges that Google is currently dealing with: schema auto-complete, synonym discovery, creating entity lists, association between instances and aspects, and data level synonyms discovery. These challenges are addressed by Infobright's technology, said Esterkin, but "Google will have to solve these problems the hard way."

Also mentioned during the speech was how Google plans to organize "aspects" of search queries. The company wants to be able to separate exploratory queries (e.g., "Vietnam travel") from ones where a user is in search of a particular fact ("Vietnam population"). The former query should deliver information about visa requirements, weather and tour packages, etc. In a way, this is like what the search service offered by Kosmix is doing. But Google wants to go further, said Halevy. "Kosmix will give you an 'aspect,' but it's attached to an information source. In our case, all the aspects might be just Web search results, but we'd organize them differently."

Yahoo Working on Similar Structured Data Retrieval

The challenges facing Google today are also being addressed by their nearest competitor in search, Yahoo. In December, Yahoo announced that they were taking their SearchMonkey technology in-house to automate the extraction of structured information from large classes of web sites. The results of that in-house extraction technique will allow Yahoo to augment their Yahoo Search results with key information returned alongside the URLs.

In this aspect of web search, it's clear that no single company has yet to dominate. However, even if a non-Google company surges ahead, it may not be enough to get people to switch engines. Today, "Google" has become synonymous with web search, just like "Kleenex" is a tissue, "Band-Aid" is an adhesive bandage, and "Xerox" is a way to make photocopies. Once that psychological mark has been made into our collective psyches and the habit formed, people tend to stick with what they know, regardless of who does it better. That's something that's a bit troublesome - if better search technology for indexing the Deep Web comes into existence outside of Google, the world may not end up using it until such point Google either duplicates or acquires the invention.

Still, it's far too soon to write Google off yet. They clearly have a lead when it comes to search and that came from hard work, incredibly smart people, and innovative technical achievements. No doubt they can figure out this Deep Web thing, too. (We hope).

Thanks to technology, we never have to forget any experience of our lives. We can snap photos, annotate them, and share them with others instantly. We can archive them to the timeless web for posterity. And maybe one day, our great-great-grandkids can pursue our social network profiles in the cached pages of Internet Archive and learn everything we ever wanted the world to know about us.

And yes, that's great. It's amazing, really. But what about us and the lifetime we spent recording these things? Did we waste our lives documenting them and forget to live?

A great example of people missing the moment

With technology having progressed to the point where it's nearly effortless to use, we've begun to integrate it into our lives in ways that have never been done before. No longer is the computer this appliance that connects you to a web of slow-loading pages. No, today's web - our global brain - is pocket-sized and accessible from anywhere.*

Photos (and now videos) can immediately be published from device to web thanks to ingenious creations like Eye-Fi's wireless SD card, a technology that makes our real life just another feed of content for the ubiquitous pages of the ever-expanding web. A web whose very creation may represent humanity's attempt to understand the concept of our universe. For how will tomorrow's web be described? It's a entity that has no beginning** and no end; it's an ever-expanding repository for all (digital) life.

Forgetting to Live

As we progress through our short span here on this planet, living our lives and documenting them along the way, we may be forgetting...for moments at least...how to actually live. And living, like it or not, means that sometimes we need to disconnect, put the camera down, and enjoy a moment for once.

Jane Maynard of Silicon Valley Moms reminds us that this is now a common issue for everyone, not just technophiles. As she writes about watching her children perform at a concert, she describes the problem: "Cameras. I actually struggle a bit with this issue myself. In an attempt to document the wonderful things happening, sometimes life itself gets missed. You know, like watching your child's piano recital through a video camera viewfinder rather than with your own eyes. It's a tricky balance I'm sure we all think about and deal with, especially in this digital age. I make myself put my camera away sometimes, no matter how badly I want to record something, so I can live in the moment as it happens. I never regret those times...[but] these observations gave me pause. How often am I so focused on the perfect shot with my kids that I miss the moment?"

When Should You Disconnect?

The fine line between what's worth documenting and what's not is a hard one to define. We immediately assume that the most important, the biggest, the most incredible moments are those that should be recorded. But it's these very moments that are best to experience live, with our full focus.

As religious-focused blogger Martin Kelley notes, "there are times where our presence is much more important than any documentation." (He had just surprised himself by reviewing the grainy, blurry photos he felt it necessary to take while watching a bride walk down the aisle. In retrospect, this was exactly the kind of moment that could have gone unrecorded.)

"Stop trying to live your own life vicariously. You're already there. You don't need to prove anything," says Kat Orphanides, while watching people recording a band's show instead of enjoying the music. In reality, it's easier said than done. But if you've ever felt a twinge of tech-induced guilt when you unplug from the web (how can I not Twitter what I just saw? Ooh, I need to take a picture of this!), then you're bordering on having merged completely with the machine. Maybe it's time to remind yourself that it's OK to just live - well, at least sometimes. You may not have proof of everything you experienced in your amazing life, but that life might be a more fulfilling one in the end.

* Obviously, these statements refer to the parts of the world where modern technology like smartphones and broadband are common. The entire world does not have access to these things. I know.

** The very first web page is here, but it's only designated as a "web" page because it is hyperlinked to other pages using HTML markup. So was it really the first? Or did it spring into existence at the same time as the others? Is it really the beginning of the web?

Achuthan and Rabeedin did not have an easy route to success. Initially ridiculed by parents and schoolmates, the two struck out on their own to prove that they could achieve their goals. Unfortunately, the first banking venture from the duo, Mobeo Technologies, was not a success. With that project, the two had developed low-cost banking terminals dubbed "Personal Banking Machines" which used fingerprint readers and mobile PINs. The operation was shut down after a year due to unfavorable market conditions, regulations, and issues with hardware distribution.

Unfettered by the initial failure, the entrepreneurs chalked up Mobeo as a learning experience and moved on. Their new venture, CashNxt Technologies (web site is not fully functional), was launched in partnership with companies that already had similar low-cost banking devices for the poor.

Traditional banks don't set up ATMs in remote villages due to huge operational costs and poor connectivity. Cashnxt works around those obstacles by allowing service providers to use their network on a pay-per-use basis without any capital investment or additional infrastructure. Through a partnership with four banks out of Kannur, Cashnxt was able to deploy ten kiosks in parts of India.

Mobile Phone Transactions

As a customer, if you and a vendor are a member of the Cashnxt network, you can conduct transactions using your mobile phones. The merchant dials CashNxt's IVR number, enters their PIN and transaction amount, and then hears a high pitch sound on their mobile phone. The customer does the same - calls the IVR number, enters their PIN and hears a high pitch sound. The two phones are then brought together, held close enough for CashNxt to encrypt and decrypt the sounds. The transaction is then confirmed via SMS. (You can see how this works in this YouTube video.)

Using Cashnxt ATMs

Customers who want to make a transaction using an ATM encounter similar audio mechanisms as they do when mobile banking. The ATMs are fitted with audio systems that produce the high pitched sounds needed when transactions are made. Customers dial the IVR number, confirm their PIN and then hold their mobile phone up to the ATM. The transaction can then be completed and the customer can withdraw money. This system eliminates the need for debit and credit cards entirely.

Challenges Ahead

Using high pitch sounds to authenticate transactions could lead to high-tech hacks. As the system is relatively new, having just launched in December, it's still unknown how foolproof it may be.

Cashnxt Technologies is a 25-person self-funded venture founded byAnish Achuthan and Rameena Rabeedin. You can reach them via email at achuthan.anish AT cashnxt.net. More info about the company can be found at goergo.in.

A group of Stanford University researchers specializing in artificial intelligence, Saxena and Siddharth Batra, and Assistant Professor Andrew Ng, created this new technology they're calling ZunaVision. The embedding technology is driven by an algorithm that first analyzes the video while paying close attention to the section of the scene where the image or video will be embedded. It then subtly alters the color, texture, and lighting of the embedded object to better fit it in with the surroundings. As other objects pass in front of the embed, it disappears from view and as the camera pans and zooms, the algorithm shape-shifts the object accordingly. The appropriate shadows are also added for a more realistic feel. The end result is an embed that looks as if it was there all along, instead of being some obvious insert or overlay that is clearly not a part of the scene.

This type of technology is nothing new to the big Hollywood studios - they've been using similar methods for years in order to do special effects. Until now, however, there hasn't been a way for people to perform these kinds of advanced video edits without investing serious money into professional video editing software. But with ZunaVision , anyone and everyone can accomplish this same task in minutes, with only a click of the mouse.

Revolutionizing Video Ads?

Videographers are already thinking of creative and imaginative ways to use this technology to liven up their videos and amateur films, but the real financial potential of ZunaVision lies in advertising. With ZunaVision, anyone with a video camera could potentially earn money by agreeing to place corporate logos or ads within their videos before uploading them to the internet. That could be a hugely successful venture if the technology was adopted by Google, for example, to become the "AdSense for Video" and integrated with their video-sharing site YouTube.

At the moment, YouTube is experimenting with different methods of monetization, including overlay ads on embeds, post-roll ads, and allowing publishers to bid for sponsored placement of their videos on the site. These methodologies are still too new to provide any conclusive data as to their success just yet. ZunaVision seems to be just as promising, if not more so, than any of these current experiments.

The ZunaVision site features several example of these in-video embeds, which you can see here - there are well over a hundred examples of both user-gen videos and clips from TV and film that demonstrate the technology's potential.

You can sign up and try ZunaVision for yourself by clicking here.

Do crashing computers and busted Blackberries completely freak you out? Does a cryptic error message on your screen leave you feeling defeated or discouraged? According to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, your age might have something to do with your attitudes and emotions surrounding technology.

Researcher John B. Horrigan points out: electricity was once new too. But now we flip on light switches without a second thought. And when the telephone was taking off in the early 1900's, people were given specific instructions on how to make a phone call - something we now do every day. Over the passage of time, each new generation of users becomes more savvy and more adept at using the new technology until it no longer exists as some odd new-fangled invention, but simply part of the world as we know it.

The same holds true for our computers, our internet connections, our gadgets and our cell phones. When these things fail, it's the younger users that are generally much more optimistic about the situation. Although young adults age 18-29 years old are no more likely to be able fix devices on their own, they were significantly more likely to be confident that they were on the right path to fixing it, and they were significantly less likely than older adults to feel discouraged or confused about fixing devices, says the study.

In fact, 85% of 18-29 year olds reported being confident about solving their device problem, while only about a third of them said they were discouraged or confused. Meanwhile, over half (52%) of adults age 30 and older reported being discouraged, 44% said they were confused, and about two out of three (67%) said they were confident. Adults age 30-49 were somewhat less likely than older adults to be confused, as just 39% said they were.

There was some variation among gender lines, too, with men being more likely than women to be confident about problem solving (76% vs. 68%), but they were just as confused, discouraged or impatient during the course of trying to solve the problem.

What this means is that, given time, our idea of a "mainstream user" will have to change. No longer will they be the slightly fearful, easily frustrated, computer novices. Instead, they will be much more at ease with technology. They may never be as tech-obsessed as we are, but they will have no problem adopting a new technology if it delivers value.

The iLink technology was developed as a part of the SRI-led CALO (Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes) program and was funded and managed under DARPA's PAL (Personalized Assistant that Learns) program. That project was designed to create cognitive software systems that can reason, learn from experience, be told what to do, explain what they are doing, reflect on their experience, and respond robustly to surprise: in other words, A.I.

iLink specifically was the part of the overall CALO project that focused on social search and message routing within social networks. It was also used to develop a system for FAQ generation within a network - they call this technology "FAQtory". With this technology implemented on a social network, FAQs are continuously generated and revised by the community using a Wikipedia-like model, as opposed to being static creations made by the site's authors. But it's not basic as a simple user-generated FAQ system - instead, iLink's FAQtory technology allows for incremental bits of information - even those that don't qualify as answers to the question. As the members contribute these bits of information, the learning system in iLink monitors how users are attempt to resolve queries and is then capable of drafting off of the social network's learning. Essentially, the technology actually enables the social network to discover and amplify its own capabilities

Other aspects of the overall iLink system involve not just incremental learning capabilities, but also the use of prior knowledge to solve problems, message-matching technologies for finding related information, algorithms for gathering data from multiple sources and compiling it together, and the ability to differentiate private information from that which is safe to share.

The Research Behind iLink's Creation

For those that helped create the iLink technology, such as the researchers at SRI's Artificial Intelligence Center, they see social networking as a much more valuable tool than, arguably, even some members of our own tech community do today. In a research paper on iLink (filled with details math nerds will eat up), they state:

"The social web provides much more than an opportunity for people to interact and exchange general information. It is a new medium for powerful models of organizing purposeful social activities. This is compellingly illustrated in the growth of open source efforts (e.g., LAMP,2 Wikipedia), which some authors [8, 14, 20, 27, 29] argue represent an alternate mode of social and economic production."

The authors of the paper state that much of the research in social networks has not formally modeled how these networks accomplish tasks. Most of the current work focuses on other areas like structural representation, analysis, and interpretation of social network data. Their work instead introduces a general approach to modeling how real-time, dynamic social networks communicate and cooperate to solve problems because an understanding of this could enhance the development of potential future applications...applications like expertise identification, FAQ generation, and smart RSS filtering.

iLink Model

iLink in the Military

Today, iLink is being used in the military communities to help recognize "who knows what" within a community, connect members to each other, and point members to valuable content, discussions, and others who share their same interests. Those connections between members and resources are made with iLink's machine-based learning to model the users and the content in order to facilitate the information sharing.

Currently, three military sites are using the technology: Platoon Leader, Company Command, and the Family Readiness Group. In Platoon Leader, current and former U.S. Army Lieutenants worldwide discuss and exchange information with each other. Company Command does the same for Army Captains while also allowing them to pose questions in order to solve problems together (crowdsourcing the military!). The Family Readiness Group helps coordinators nationwide share information and best practices with each other in order to point military families to resources they can use.

Platoon Leader

Where The Military Goes...Civilian Businesses May Follow

It was only a year ago that the military shut down access to several social networking web sites, including MySpace and YouTube, to users of the military networks. However, that shutdown was not so much a criticism of the social networking technology itself - only the public nature of those "civilian" networks. Concerned that users would share secure information like schedules or locations (for example: "Hi Mom! We're sailing into Dubai tomorrow!"), the military opted for a "better safe than sorry" policy. They also cited bandwidth concerns - sharing videos and photos can use a lot of bandwidth and not all areas of the world have much to spare.

Yet, social networking itself can be a valuable tool for businesses, and the military has realized that. In an organization, even one the size of the U.S. armed forces, connecting people to information and resources has been a challenge that I.T. has struggled for some time to achieve, and never mastered quite as well as the social networks do. In the past, businesses used impersonal, intranet-based web sites to provide files and documentation, but they miss out on one of the most critical sources of information - the knowledge that is stored in users' own minds. That knowledge that comes from both experience as well as information surrounding the undocumented processes that exist in any organization.

Now that the military is implementing more social networking technologies into their online networks - in addition to the three communities today, it's being evaluated for inclusion in several others - we'll likely see big business soon following suit. For those enterprise organizations that have been slower to pick up on Web 2.0 trends, seeing how the military uses a particular technology will be a big influence that may change their course of thinking. Social networks may just be fun for us as personal activities, but in workplace, they can be valuable tools for getting the job done...or even helping craft military strategy.

iLink's technology has been made commercially available. More information can be found at SRI International's web site.

military photo by: Randy Son of Robert; building by bourget_82

While Techmeme has it all covered when it comes finance and technology trends, product reviews are a rare treat. Here's where Tech NewsJunk steps in. The purpose of the aggregation site is to allow you to find out about products before they hit the big leagues. According to Winer's official post about the site's launch,

"A couple of notes. I'm not just interested in new products, I'm also interested in how the products evolve. So if Flickr were to (for example) add a bunch of new features tomorrow, we would defintely link to that.

I also want to hear about products from the people who design and implement them. Their point of view is very important to not only understanding their work, but to understanding the market."

Various Fixes For Your Addiction

As a frequent user of tools like FriendFeed and Twitter, it's no surprise that Winer has implemented numerous ways to keep up with Tech NewsJunk. You can:

• subscribe via RSS
• follow along on FriendFeed
• follow along on Twitter
• read mobile updates (iPhone or Blackberry
• refresh the site's page manually

Winer also has future plans to include the latest micro-blogging service darling identi.ca and roll out email updates.

Best Product Coverage

Thus far, Tech NewsJunk has decent product coverage from a host of great sites. The featured content ranges from internet apps to mobile technology. Winer also notes that ReadWriteWeb is one of the best sites to find product coverage and even extends some advice to us (we're listening Dave). As of this post, ReadWriteWeb is listed three times in the counts section, with two of our articles coming in at #2 and #3 respectively. All in all, Tech NewsJunk is a must have in anyone's feed reader.

Bergman begins by notating that Goodwill already has the only non-profit online auction site at ShopGoodwill.com, a site that provides another avenue to sell the organization's donated items, which fund its charitable works. The site, with 35,000 daily visitors, is a popular online destination for bargain hunters who are looking for alternatives to eBay.

Additionally, Goodwill has just launched, MyGoodwill, located at www.goodwill.org/group/my/home. This site is a new collaboration portal offering e-learning and best practices for Goodwill's employees and members of affiliate organizations worldwide. Using concepts and methodologies similar to social networks, Goodwill allows its MyGoodwill members to collaborate with communities of their peers in order gain access to specific knowledge and resources. The portal was created with open source software, a decision that Goodwill made based on the functionality, capability, and maturity of the open source model, but primarily, the cost savings it provided.

MyGoodwill Login Page

The public web site for Goodwill Industries also recently partnered with SpatialPoint to provide geo-spatial mapping capabilities to help visitors locate the nearest store and donation center. Powered by Google Maps, the store locator is available from locator.goodwill.org.

Internally, Goodwill is focused on "going green." They are looking into consolidation and virtualization technologies for their data center, but they are also focused on their new business unit that is dealing primarily with donated computer equipment. Goodwill receives tens of thousands of donated PCs, only some of which are worthy of reselling. For the rest, Goodwill is taking the computers through a de-manufacturing process, working with partners to make sure that the computers are either e-cycled or that they are broken down into components that can then be resold and reused.

With these latest offerings, specifically the online portal, Goodwill shows itself to be yet another example of how web technologies are finding their way into the enterprise. Instead of sneaking in web apps via the backdoor, Goodwill has chosen to control the type of interactions they want their employees to focus on via a portal whose primary focus is knowledge-sharing.

Bergman definitely sees the value in innovation, commenting, "Last year, Goodwill helped a million people find vocational services and get back into the workforce and technology was a major driver for that."

Google's Strategy in the Enterprise

While this approach may work in the enterprise space in the short term, in the long run, they're alienating the very people whose alliances they need in order to become a success. Today, with Google's announcement of Google Sites, the blogosphere is already comparing the product to Sharepoint and trying to drive nails into Microsoft's coffin. I'd argue that it's far too soon to claim that Google is offering anything that really has a shot at making a dent in the enterprise world.

As an online suite of applications, email, calendaring, IM, and even security and compliance with Postini's help, Google Apps is off to a good start as being a suite that really has it together. For the small to medium size business, you could say that Google makes a strong offering as a more affordable alternative to Microsoft Servers and applications. However, it's a big jump from offering tools to a mom-and-pop as compared with a global, Fortune 500 company.

Google is actually going about marketing to the enterprise market in a pretty ingenious way - they're not. Instead, they're bypassing the IT department (who would, in all honesty, probably laugh at the thought) and marketing their suite on the sly directly to the employees themselves: "Are the tools provided by your IT department too unwieldy to use? Is IT to slow to respond to your needs? Then forget IT and use Google Apps instead!" This is definitely a good plan for Google in the short term, but it's not one that is going to be good for them in the long run...especially when IT catches on to what their users are doing.

Take the new Google Sites, for instance. Ben Worthen's commented in today's Wall Street Journal about the product:

"Setting up sites like this has traditionally required help from the information-technology department. Google boasts in its press release that workers can set up a site 'without having to burden IT for support.' We love that phrase: It’s a bit like showing a teenager how to sneak out of the house and calling it a way to go out without burdening parents by letting them know. It also speaks volumes about Google’s strategy for breaking into businesses. The company is intentionally bypassing tech departments, which might object to Google hosting their business’s sensitive information. Instead, the company is appealing directly to the average worker, who doesn’t want to have to wait months for IT to have the time and money for their project. So while it will probably fill IT pros with visions of sensitive corporate data flowing out of their businesses, Google’s business model isn’t dependent on winning techies over."

A previous WSJ article also reported Dave Girouard, who runs Google’s enterprise unit, as saying this about what his company is doing: "We’re wrestling over who should have ultimate authority of the technology people use in the workplace. There’s no right or wrong answer so we have to respect everyone’s view."

Let's read between the lines of that last statement...Google doesn't think IT should have the ultimate authority about the tools people use to do their jobs. There's "power to the people," (tech populism) and then there's a total coup-d'etat. Google's opting for the latter.

Network World agrees: "By killing the admin function, Google is trying to change the culture of software usage - the power structure, if you will. Taken to extremes, such a structure means that no longer will IT be the law enforcement officers of policy."

CIO Fear #1: Functionality

A concern for Google Apps is the integration capabilities it offers. Alastair Mitchell, CEO at online collaboration and project management outfit Huddle.net doesn't feel Google is ready for business yet. "Google Sites may be badged as a business tool, but the fact is that it isn’t properly integrated with any of Google’s other apps. Worryingly, it seems that Google took a good product like JotSpot and stripped out most of powerful functionality. Now it’s just a pretty wiki," claims Mitchell.

A pretty wiki? OUCH! But Mitchell does have a point about integration. Microsoft's solutions are tightly integrated with each other, Google's, as of yet, are not.  Count Joe Graves, CIO of Stratus Technologies, a $200 million-per-year computer maker, among the doubters. Graves, a fan of both his company's Google Enterprise Search appliance and Salesforce.com thinks Google is a "just a sharp company," but he's standardized on Microsoft Office and plans to stay that way. "Google Apps would save us some money, but probably create some headaches that would surpass money savings," said Graves in an interview. "It's not clear with Google Apps that we'd have the same interoperability that we do with Microsoft Office. I took a look at Google Apps and wasn't really impressed with it. It doesn't seem like a comprehensive package."

CIO Fear #2: Security

Enterprise CIOs do have a justifiable reason to fear Google's encroachment on their territory...and it's not just about control. Although users may see IT as gatekeepers preventing them from being able to do their jobs, turning that control over to Google instead may not be a better solution.

An article in SearchCIO-Midmarket quotes Chenxi Wang, a principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc, as saying this about Google Apps "[Users] don't want to go through the IT department to get approval, because it's burdensome. On the flip side, the minus side is from a corporate standpoint, you have less control. I think this has its place for collaboration scenarios whereby the content that is being collaborated is not that sensitive or the organization is not a highly regulated industry, for example. Employees storing and sharing documents, spreadsheets and the like will be doing that on Google's servers, which could present a compliance problem in some industries. IM is included, which still makes some executives wary. And sensitive business information could be shared with the wrong people inside the business."

Wary indeed:

"It's not for us," said David Driggers, IT asset manager and deployment desktop systems team leader at Alabama Gas Corp. in Birmingham, Ala. Driggers said he worries about how Google's Web-based applications would square in terms of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations. "Do you have real control over [email]?" he asked. "Where is the mail hosted? We have ours here and we control it."

Even Mark Harrison, of Abraham Harrison LLC, a test case for the Google Apps product has concerns. "It would be comforting to have an SLA that covered the entire suite," he says. (The Google Apps Premier Edition suite contains an availability guarantee only for its Gmail portion - 99.9 percent uptime -and offers no commitment for the other components.) In the year that he has used it, downtime has been rare. "We've never been crippled by an outage," Harrison says. Should one occur, the company would feel the impact, as they are now entirely dependent on the suite.

CIO Fear #3: The Google TOS

Another big fear is the scary Google TOS. Joshua Greenbaum writes on ZDNet about how Google defines content and what they say they do with it.

"First, let’s clarify what content is. Here’s the wording from the Google Terms of Service page: 'data files, written text, computer software, music, audio files or other sounds, photographs, videos or other images).'

Then, let’s clarify what Google says you have given it the right to do with your content, even though it generously lets you keep your copyright: (the typos are courtesy Google’s legal department, which forgot to use a word processor with a spell-checker.)

11.1 ….. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Did you catch that last line? The one about displaying your content in order to promote Google’s Services? Which of your business’s content would you want used in this way?

Then there’s the part about how Google can make your content available for syndicated services — i.e. spam and other forms of advertising. Again, what content do you think you’d like shared in this way?

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

Don’t forget the cute little provision about termination of services, which goes like this:

4.3 …. As part of this continuing innovation, you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Google’s sole discretion, without prior notice to you.

And here’s the clincher: Google can also nuke your data when it wants to, with no recourse to the user:

4.4 You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account.

CIO Fear #4: True ROI

When you're looking at the enterprise marketplace, you can't really take the cost savings into the picture. The cost savings of moving to Google Docs just isn't as substantial as it is for a small company. Although the the $50/year price of Premier Edition is more affordable, enterprises with more than a few thousand employees are already buying Microsoft licensing in bulk for as little as $100 per license. Moving to Google Apps is a dramatic decrease in functionality for them, and one that isn't worth the cost.

Even with the addition of Google Sites, Google isn't offering Sharepoint-like functionality. For those that don't know, "Sharepoint" isn't just online collaboration and document sharing. It's a suite of products and technologies that offer functionality and access to all data across all applications, even line-of-business applications.

An IT admin commenter on ZDNet posts: "From within Outlook you can instantly pull up a customer, get a dozen looks on their activity or prior orders, find direct links to people closer to the products with email, phone or IM access immediately from tags in the documents and answer any question the customer has, period. Can you do that with Google apps? I don't believe so, but you can collaborate. big whoop. You can setup a network share and collaborate just as easily with what you already have and not investing in Google apps for that matter, if you want very limited functionality. MOSS blows Google apps away and does NOT cost more over the long run and provides much richer environment, many more tools to collaborate with, easily interface our BI data to all users with complete and great administrative controls, which Google lacks even for simply document sharing(wheee), a managed code runtime and services that allow your end users to all have an Office GUI, not just an office tool, to look at any data on the network, at any time, in any way they need to...I repeat, smart companies are looking beyond initial cost to cost and ROI over minimum 5 years. That is where Google starts to cost A LOT more..."

Google Shrugs Shoulders

So what?, they say.  We "give administrators the control to do that if that's what they decide," says Google Senior Product Marketing Manager Jeremy Milo said. "The easiest way to do it would be to disable all the applications."

He's referring to the administrative functions of the suite that allow CIOs to control which employees can use which applications in the suite. In order for a CIO or IT director to gain control of the suite, they must first sign up for Team Edition. Once inside, there is an administrative login that connects the CIO with Google. With that, the CIO is given an option to either create a CNAME record or upload an HTML file provided by Google to the company's domain. Both options prove that the CIO has control over the domain. A third option is to update the domain's MX record. Exercising any of those options essentially disables Team Edition for the domain and shifts everything to Google Apps Standard Edition, Google's free version of its Web-based application suite for businesses. Once that happens, companies can use Gmail as an email client and CIOs can take control of the applications. (source: SearchCIO-midmarket) 

So they only way to control employee access is to sign up for the program? If that wasn't such genius, I might actually call it...well, evil.

So Who's Using Google Apps in the Enterprise?

Google is proud to be offering their suite to "several" enterprise customers including GE, Procter & Gamble, Loreal, and Prudential. Touts Google Apps product manager Matt Glotzbach, the company has picked up 500,000 customers for Apps since it launched in February 2007 and is adding 20,000 users every day. We've passed 500,000 organizations using Google Apps, and we're adding 2,000 to 3,000 more a day," says Glotzbach. "The vast majority have been small- and medium-sized companies, plus educational institutions, but the pace and interest from big companies is picking up."

But even those figures barely register a dent in Microsoft's Office armor. Microsoft says they have more than 500 million Office users. Some 62% of U.S. businesses use Microsoft's Outlook e-mail software, compared with less than 1% for corporate webmail like Google's, says Tom Austin, an analyst at researcher Gartner.

And those big enterprises they have on board? Even on Google's very own Google Apps web site, the truth is told, if anyone can take a minute from doing the happy Google dance to notice. They currently list 12 companies using Google Apps, one of which is Google itself. Reading through the quotes I see this:

"GE is interested in evaluating Google Apps for the easy access it provides to a suite of web applications, and the way these applications can help people work together."

"L'Oreal R & D has decided to test Google Apps in order to optimize collaboration between its researchers."

"Interested," "evaluating," and "testing" are not words that equal an enterprise partnership.

Oh and Capgemini, the IT services and business consultancy, listed there? They deploy Google Apps to enterprises as one of their services. Their first deployment went successfully in November of 2007. It was to themselves.

The IT Backlash Is Yet To Come

Even though IT is warming up to more consumer-friendly applications, Google's methodology for getting into the enterprise has a good chance to completely backfire on them.

According to Google Apps senior product manager Rajen Sheth, "Google Apps has been, by definition, an IT project, and now we want to let people use it without IT involvement."  He goes on to suggest that there shouldn't be any concern about finding uplanned and unapproved implementations of Google Apps on corporate networks because " the IT department always has the option to sign up for the Standard Edition for free if they want to provide control over this. This is a solid, happy medium."

But Joel Hruska of Ars Technica writes on his personal blog:

"[there's] one problem with that: IT administrators tend to fervently dislike the sudden appearance of unapproved applications, even if said software package promises world peace, actually delivers all those free iPods, and periodically spits gold doubloons out of the CD-ROM drive. Google’s approach seems predicated on the old adage that it’s always easier to get forgiveness than permission. One the one hand, Google Apps Team Edition could help facilitate group-level communication on projects, but the program could also engender a significant backlash from IT managers who aren’t at all thrilled at its sudden appearance. This is particularly true of companies with strict(er) IT policies, or companies already in the middle of deploying an alternative work collaboration system.

Google claims that the purpose of Team Edition is to allow users to “share documents and calendars securely without burdening IT for support,” are more likely to be greeted by raised eyebrows from the IT department. In the right (or wrong) circumstances, the unapproved presence and use of Google Apps Team Edition could, in fact, increase the burden on IT support staff. Google seems to be betting that if it can build enough grassroots support for Google Apps, IT departments and corporations will have no choice but to embrace it as a provider. Such an approach may work beautifully in the consumer market, but there’s no guarantee corporations will be as flexible."

If anything, this strategy will drive enterprise IT even further from Google Apps, keeping the Apps program the sole province of the SOHO and small-medium business market.

Author Disclosure: I'm currently a writer for five different blogs, one of which is Microsoft property, Channel 10, but I am not a Microsoft employee. These remarks are solely my opinion alone, but it's likely they're influenced by my previous experience as a MCSE-certified systems administrator!

What's WorkLight?

The WorkLight software is a secure, scalable, server-based application that is what allows workers to view their enterprise data in any of a number of web applications and forms, both inside and outside the firewall.

The WorkLight server, which would run in the customer's own data center, previously only worked on Linux platforms, but a Windows version is now available. (Note: their web site has not yet been updated with this information.) The architecture used to build WorkLight is standard Java and a J2EE framework, so it can be deployed on any J2EE-compliant platform.

How It Works

To extract the data from the enterprise applications and/or other internal data sources, WorkLight uses application "adapters." These adapters can be for common interfaces, like SQL or web services, or can be designed for specific applications. The software comes with many standard application adapters "out of the box," but an included API allows for custom-built adapter creation. Once the adapters are connected to the data sources, configuration is done, programming-free, via XML documents.

The company's employees can then display the data through tools like RSS, web-based homepages, desktop gadgets, social bookmarks, application mashups, and more. In total, WorkLight works with fourteen consumer technologies: MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle, Netvibes, Microsoft Live, Yahoo widgets, Apple Dashboard, Google Desktop, Windows Vista Sidebar, del.icio.us, RSS, Google Gears, and Adobe AIR.

WorkLight Gadget Accessing SAP Data

Solutions

The company, WorkLight, Inc., has developed four specific solutions using their WorkLight software:

• WorkLight for the Enterprise: This product is a scalable server-based application that can be customized for the business to deliver the enterprise data via tools like RSS, widgets, gadgets, personalized homepages, social bookmarking, and more.
• WorkLight for Retail Banks: Designed to allow retail banks to deliver personalized data to their customers, this product uses tools like RSS, widgets/gadgets, personalized homepages, and IM to communicate information like account balances and transactions to the bank's customers.
• WorkLight for SAP: Similar to WorkLight for the Enterprise, WorkLight for SAP lets employees perform SAP-related business tasks using the same types of tools as WorkLight Enterprise.
• WorkBook: This ingenious solution is a secure enterprise overlay for Facebook. This product combines Facebook's capabilities with the controls that need to be in place in a corporate environment. Employees can use WorkBook to find and stay in touch with corporate colleagues, publish company-related news, create bookmarks to enterprise application data and securely share them with authorized colleagues, get updates on status changes, and get general company news. With the WorkBook overlay, there's no danger of information leaking outside the organization or access being granted to unauthorized personnel.

WorkLight's WorkBook application

So, It's Secure?

The WorkLight solution provides security functionality so the enterprise data stays safe. WorkLight securely integrates the data with web-based aggregators, so no data is being stored on 3rd party servers. SSL encryption is used while the data is in transit and several different authentication methods are supported, including HTTP basic, form-based, multi-factor, or the company's existing authentication schemes can be used, like single sign-on. The cached data on the WorkLight servers can be encrypted, if desired, and user requests for information are logged with time stamps, user info, and identifiers of the data accessed.

Conclusion

With WorkLight's customized tools, businesses could increase employee productivity since the staff would either already know how to use the social applications and tools or would be able to learn them quicker than the traditional enterprise applications. Companies that choose to embrace this growing trend will ultimately be one step ahead of their competitors. Says Chris Shipley, executive producer of DEMO, where WorkLight was on display in December of '07, "We are breaking away from putting technology at the center and we are putting people at the center who have the authority to influence technology." WorkLight is certainly proof of this new shift.

According to a new report by Forrester Research, Inc., Technology Populism is defined as "an adoption trend led by a technology-native workforce that self provisions collaborative tools, information sources, and human networks — requiring minimal or no ongoing support from a central IT organization."

For the layperson, this definition can be boiled down to this: more and more people are functioning as their own IT department at work.

History of IT Trends in Business

In the 1980's and 1990's, companies began bringing in minicomputers to replace the expensive and hard-to-maintain mainframe systems of the past, which in turn gave way to the rise of PC networks, LANs, and client/server based computing. The ease-of-use and cost of these new systems was a driving force powering the switchover that took place. Since the new web applications are also cheaper and easier than the current IT infrastructure in most traditional businesses, doesn't it make sense that the next movement in IT would be to transition to web-based computing?

Not so fast! Before everyone fully embraces the web app/cloud computing initiatives, there are some things to consider. Although the users are happy with their new tools they provided to themselves, how is this impacting the business?

Real vs Perceived IT Needs

A company's IT department generally provides a new user with computing equipment when they come onboard. More often than not, the equipment provided is a laptop computer and a web-enabled/email-enabled mobile phone device. The necessary tools and software programs the user needs to do their job are provided as well. Often, these include an Office suite of some sort, email, web access to email either via an VPN or secure web site, and remote access to their company's resources. Additional security programs like anti-virus and/or anti-spyware are provided as well, but it's unlikely the user will ever notice them, much less interact with them. In the background, IT stays busy making sure the computers and servers are protected and updated with the latest security patches, and the network itself remains uncompromised from outside intrusions.

However, today's employee is no longer satisfied with these basics. In their personal life, they've embraced the world of always on connectivity, access anywhere, social networking, collaboration, and cloud computing. More of today's companies are run by Gen Xers, and the growing population of Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000) in the professional workforce often dismisses conventional productivity tools — like email — in favor of text messaging, instant messaging, mobile devices, and social computing tools. These Millenials embody the Technology Populism movement — bringing the tools they use at home — like instant messaging, Facebook, Wikipedia,iPhones, BlackBerry devices, and even PlayStations — to work with them. For example, Adobe told Forrester that one of its European CIO customers required PlayStation support because the firm had a handful of Millennials who used PlayStations instead of PCs. (And somewhere, an IT manager is turning over in his grave.)

It might be that not only are the users more comfortable with the web apps they "grew up with," it's also possible that, despite their supposed tech-savviness, they don't actually know how to use traditional enterprise software. Could it be that what the users actually "need" is training? Could they be turning to lightweight applications because they don't truly grasp the complexities of or know how to use the software IT has provided? I would say that it's more than possible.

A Microsoft executive recently told Forrester that 90% of the feature requests he gets for Microsoft Office productivity tools are already in the products. Since many users don't even know the features of the software provided to them, they don't see it as a loss to turn to a scaled-down online version. If anything, they think they've gained features since web-enabled apps offer different types of features than their desktop-based cousins. So if businesses are going to continue to insist that the users only utilize the software applications IT supports, then the business has a responsibility to make sure the users know how to use them. (I know plenty of people with a MySpace profile decked out with the latest flash widgets, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a knowledge of how to perform calculations in an Excel worksheet!)

However, for some companies, the use of social computing technologies is fine, and their IT departments have even embraced their adoption in the enterprise. Forrester found that between a quarter and a third of employees at enterprises that have invested in social computing technologies — corporate podcasting, blogs, social networking, RSS, and wikis — are using those technologies for business purposes. Perhaps more significantly, decision makers at companies with no plans to make investments in web 2.0 technologies reported that, in the absence of a sanctioned corporate initiative, at least 3% of their colleagues are using them on their own. So, while web technologies are fine for some companies, it should not be up to the users to make that call - just because users want to use web technologies, doesn't mean they should.

Companies dealing with non-public customer data, for example, have to meet certain compliance guidelines to ensure that sensitive data isn't accessed anywhere outside of a secure connection. So what's to happen when a rogue employee throws a spreadsheet of private data into Google Docs because it's an easier way to share that large file with others than trying to compress it down to meet the size requirements of traditional email? Do you really trust Google enough to maintain the security of that file? What about the user whose Google password also happens to be "fido?" Their perception that the ease-of-use of Google Docs outweighed the security need to have their exchange of data processed over a secure connection and logged by their internal servers. Is this acceptable? Most IT managers would say, "heck NO!"

Tech Populism Concerns

Some IT managers have concerns about the introduction of more web technologies in the workplace. For example, what is to be done when a web app goes down? (It happens). Does business stop as well?

There is also a concern about what Forrester calls an "information silo." New tools like wikis and blogs could create "micro-silos" where locating the information or people you need becomes near impossible. Already, companies with in-house databases and extensive Sharepoint web sites are dealing with requests from staff looking for information, and the information they need is all in one place. I can't even begin to count the number of times I had to answer the question "where is that file on Sharepoint?" It's on Sharepoint! Argh! Now imagine that in addition to the company intranet, data is spread out across the web living on blogs, wikis, podcasts, videocasts, and social networks. How will you find it then? And will multiple versions of the same file reside out there as well?

And what about the burden on IT support? IT departments are trained to thoroughly understand, control, and support the hardware and software they provide to their staff. Adding more and more niche applications to their support workload isn't necessarily wise.

In speaking with an IT Network Manager in the finance industry, he explains, "the IT department in each company is already the most complex support environment in the history of business. We can easily have 100 different applications to support with just the basics of Windows, Office, and business applications. We need to maintain a minimal and consistent software installation, containing programs which are commonly used throughout the business world. We do not have the time or resources to train and hand-hold new users to our company because they want to use Firefox, Google Docs, or whatever the next 'Super Web 2.0 Ajax' program is. In other words, just because the perception of IT staff is that we have a 'Neo in the Matrix'-like understanding of technology, we can't possibly know and support every online application."

But Is IT Support a Necessary Component to the Equation?

The traditional provisioning model has business needs translated into a set of software categories and requirements that lead to lengthy evaluation processes, implementation, deployment, training, and — hopefully — use. IT plans for days, weeks, and even months in some cases to deploy the new technologies. And then there is the user training. An architecture firm’s IT director recently explained, "Our users would rather have teeth pulled than sit through software training; they just don’t show up."

Although traditional technologies like Exchange-based email and calendaring, Microsoft Office, industry-specific enterprise applications, or Sharepoint services for online collaboration and document sharing may require user training before mastery, a typical user can master a web app in minutes, without extensive training or with just a little help from colleagues and friends, not IT.

So What's an IT Manager to Do?

More than anything, IT Managers need to realize that the power of individuals to provision their own applications, information, and social networks is a trend that’s unlikely to stop. They can block sites on their firewall, but as users venture out on laptop computers beyond the company's walls, those sites become accessible again. Some employees who work mostly in house have taken to utilizing the company-provided aircard to circumvent the restrictions of the LAN. Then there are the web services themselves -they are aware that businesses are blocking them internally, so they're offering other ways to get access. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo, for example, are all offering mobile versions of their web services.

For an IT manager to successfully balance the risks and rewards of technology populism, they must first embrace the trend to move forward, then they must address their particular company's exposure levels. They need to determine who is using social tools and why. It may be that they need to focus on simplicity, usability, training, or speed of their current set of applications, and perhaps even address the needs of some individuals or groups to fill in the gaps that the online tools are addressing. Is the Marketing Department using an online wiki? Then perhaps it's time to train them on how to use Sharepoint Services' wikis instead.

The IT manager needs to stay current with what's happening in the business IT world, yes, but also in the consumer web application space as well. Company policies need to be written up to address the use of social tools and guidelines need to be put in place about the sources of trusted information.

It may also be time for IT Managers to give some web apps a try. Web apps like Spiceworks offer an in-house installation of a web-based inventory analysis program, and could be a good alternative to the static, manual databases used in the past. IT Managers will need to determined which tools they sanction and which tools need to be avoided, while ultimately keeping not just their department's needs in mind, but the needs of the business as a whole.

In the end, it's the IT Manager who will determine where the company stands in regard to Technology Populism, and that may be one of the more critical decisions a business will make in the coming days and months as Tech Populism becomes the new reality.

Among the 5 finalists, there is 1 Semantic App, 2 Visual Search Engines, a 3D mapping service, and an Internet video streaming product. Tell us who you think should be the winner in the comments.

Twine is a new Wikipedia-like knowledge management app from Radar Networks. It's currently in a private beta (RWW authors are expecting their invites next week). In our review of a Twine demo from October last year, we noted that it has aspects of social networking, wikis, blogging, knowledge management systems - but its defining feature is that it's built with Semantic Web technologies. Founder Nova Spivack told us that Twine aims to bring a usable and scalable interface to the long-promised dream of the Semantic Web.

Alex Iskold made mention of Twine in his post Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App? this week. He noted that "personal knowledge management is an important problem". However he warned that even though knowing the semantics of knowledge is an important differentiator for Twine, it will need to prove itself: "at the very least Twine has to beat del.icio.us bookmarks and ideally needs to do for personal knowledge management what Highrise is doing for CRM."

Like

Like is a visual shopping search engine that was named on AltSearchEngine's Top 100 Alternative Search Engines of the Year. Like is an offshoot of Riya, the visual search engine. As we noted at the end of 2006, Riya was the first to introduce advanced face recognition technologies in image search and Like is an attempt to commercialize that. Like is similar to Pixsta, which we profiled last year.

According to their About page, Like.com utilizes their "Likeness Technology" to create a digital signature that describes the content of a photo, which they say "enables a more accurate search for similar looking items and products." Currently the following products are featured on the site: clothing, handbags, jewelry, shoes, and watches. Users can purchase items they find via Like, through merchants such as Nordstrom and Amazon.

Viewdle

Viewdle is another visual search engine, but in this case for video. It presented at the Techcrunch40 event in September last year, at which time Emre Sokullu wrote that Viewdle uses a facial recognition algorithm to search for people within videos. The main problem, noted Emre, is that people need to be in their database to be covered, and so far they only index celebrities. Viewdle has deals with Reuters and others. One question at the TC40 event was how Viewdle plans to scale when their database enlarges to many people - the company's answer was "contextual analysis," which will allow them to recognize faces in their environment.

Earthmine

Earthmine launched at DEMOfall 07. In our coverage, Josh Catone explained that Earthmine is creating a competitor to Google's Street View maps. Rather than using video, Earthmine will use "laser range-finding and still photography", which will result in perspective-correct photos that are more detailed and complete. Earthmine claims they can capture entire towns in just weeks using their camera set up, and they plan to extrapolate 3D data from the photos. It also looks like they plan to tag real-world objects within 3D panoramas to give their "geospatial inventories" context.

Marshall Kirkpatrick commented at the time that it's "nothing but 'wow' - not truly useful."

Move Networks

Move Networks is a publishing system that includes end-to-end services for encoding, streaming, editing, and monetizing your video broadcast. As last100 noted recently, 3 major US TV networks use Move Networks to power their Internet streaming services: ABC, FOX, and The CW. As last100 editor Steve O'Hear commented: "[The Move Networks player] is not based on Flash, it’s a proprietary format that uses a QVT file to send little packets across the web, to provide a non-buffering experience for end users that scales based on their connection speed."

Which of the above 5 do you think is most worthy of the title 'Best Technology Innovation / Achievement'? Voting has now closed, but at the end of next week we'll find out which startup won.