Fear Marketing: IMlogic's IM Detector Pro
As another go at the fear-of-instant-messaging marketing approach being used by IMlogic, FaceTime, Akonix and others, check out the message in this piece:
While I am certainly not advocating sensitive information being disclosed, I am opposed to scare tactics around the application of instant messaging. The whole INDUCE Act hysteria should not be fanned by software companies trying to make a sale. It will prove too easy for the Luddittes on Capitol Hill to take this sort of verbiage and use it to stamp out the very technologies that IMlogic is trying to protect us from.Matt Hicks[from IMlogic Launches Free IM, P2P Blocker]IMlogic Inc. on Tuesday launched a free tool to let enterprises detect and block the use of instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing networks and voice-over-IP applications within their walls.
Called IM Detector Pro, the software provides a first step for organizations to get a handle on the extent of such traffic flowing on their networks and to decide how to best manage it, said Dave Fowler, IMlogic's vice president of marketing and strategic alliances.
With the use of IM and P2P increasing, corporations can face risks of sensitive information being disclosed, employees illegally sharing copyrighted files, or viruses and worms entering their networks, Fowler said. Meanwhile, they must meet corporate governance requirements to prevent security breaches.
[pointer from Lee Kelsey]
SpeechBot - Indexing Audio Conversations
John Dowdell points to an interesting research project being conducted at HP Labs, the SpeechBot. As the site describes, "SpeechBot is a search engine for audio & video content that is hosted and played from other websites".
Digging a little deeper into the technical documentation for SpeechBot, I came across this summary:
SpeechBot (http://www.compaq.com/speechbot) is the first Internet search site for indexing streaming spoken audio on the web. Unlike previous attempts to index spoken audio on the Web, which have relied on either adjacent text, metadata, or hand supplied transcripts and close captions, SpeechBot uses automatic speech recognition technology to transcribe and index documents that do not have transcripts or other content information. The use of speech recognition permits the efficient and cost-effective indexing of thousands of hours of audio content, which were previously inaccessible. Because of this indexing, SpeechBot allows users to quickly search for relevant content in long audio documents and yields a high precision on first page-retrieved items.
SpeechBot indexes streaming media files based on their content, much as conventional search sites index ordinary Web pages by their text content. Like conventional search sites, SpeechBot does not store or serve the multimedia files themselves, but rather provides users with links. SpeechBot’s current index has over 3200 shows, 3500 hours of audio and 20 million words. The index is continually updated using SpeechBot’s highly scalable architecture.
SpeechBot - Indexing Audio Conversations
John Dowdell points to an interesting research project being conducted at HP Labs, the SpeechBot. As the site describes, "SpeechBot is a search engine for audio & video content that is hosted and played from other websites".
Digging a little deeper into the technical documentation for SpeechBot, I came across this summary:
SpeechBot (http://www.compaq.com/speechbot) is the first Internet search site for indexing streaming spoken audio on the web. Unlike previous attempts to index spoken audio on the Web, which have relied on either adjacent text, metadata, or hand supplied transcripts and close captions, SpeechBot uses automatic speech recognition technology to transcribe and index documents that do not have transcripts or other content information. The use of speech recognition permits the efficient and cost-effective indexing of thousands of hours of audio content, which were previously inaccessible. Because of this indexing, SpeechBot allows users to quickly search for relevant content in long audio documents and yields a high precision on first page-retrieved items.
SpeechBot indexes streaming media files based on their content, much as conventional search sites index ordinary Web pages by their text content. Like conventional search sites, SpeechBot does not store or serve the multimedia files themselves, but rather provides users with links. SpeechBot’s current index has over 3200 shows, 3500 hours of audio and 20 million words. The index is continually updated using SpeechBot’s highly scalable architecture.
HP Researcher Creates Captions From Chat
Margaret Fleck, a researcher at HP, has developed technology that automatically captions photos based on what you and your friends say about them in online chat.
[from NewScientist.com]Digital photography is booming, and people are storing ever greater volumes of photos on the hard drives of their PCs. The trouble is that people rarely label their photos.
This is the weak link for digital photo collections," says Margaret Fleck at HP's lab in Palo Alto. "In 10 years' time, finding something amongst them will be very difficult."
Fleck's answer is to tap into the wealth of information in the conversations we have when we talk about our photos with friends. She says the stories we tell do not merely describe the photo, but also talk about the events that happened before and after the picture was taken.
To harness this information, Fleck has developed software that records these conversations to hard disc, converts the speech to text using a speech-recognition program, and then extracts keywords with which the photos are captioned and indexed.
Immediately you see the possibilities outside of photo captions: any sort of group review would be immensely improved by automatic capture of salient commentary.
I have been on the trail of an 'assistantbot' that I know someone told me about a few years ago. This bot would attend chat meetings and capture action items, and them post an email to the attendees afterward. I want that. Anyone know who built it, or talked about it?
David Weinberger on Skype: IM or Telephone
David writes about Skype, the peer-to-peer internet telephony tool. But David seems to think it works like an IM system:
"Sven just IM'ed me through Skype, the P2P telephony system. Sven seems like a nice enough guy, but I don't know him. He was just looking for someone to talk with. I was busy paying bills through Quicken and probably was brusquer than I intended. But what sort of IM system lets any and all of its 4M users ping you? Or do all IM systems lay you open to spontaneous global chatting? And if they all do, why don't I have more people pinging me? Is it my breath?The issue is one of orientation: Skype is based on a telephony metaphor, so if you're online and in the phonebook, you can be found and contacted. Skype does allow you to block specific users from calling you, so David can shut down Sven if he becomes a stalking troll, but otherwise you're open for calls.
(Yeah yeah, I'm sure there's a way to turn this off in Skype. Can't I just complain about it irrationally?)"
Skype: Peer-to-Peer Audio and Text IM
I received email from a reader today suggesting a take a look at Skype, whose peer-to-peer text and audio IM solution is in beta and can be freely downloaded. The company was founded by Niklaus Zennstom and Janus Friis, two of the founders of KaZaA, and they are continuing their efforts to apply peer-to-peer technology to provide mass market breakthrough technologies.
I fiddled with the client, and was really happy with the speed and performance both in text and voice chat. The voice chat (unlike Yahoo and MSN solutions) did not involve using a wizard to test the various settings of my microphone and so on -- which is a good thing if your microphone and speakers are already configured correctly, but may be bad if they are not. I thought the quality was slightly better that sample audio chats that I had later on with MSN and Yahoo, but still reminded me of talking to someone's cell from your cell -- even with full duplex there seemed to be some cutout. On the other hand, the guy I was chatting with did not have a headset and was simply using his laptop's embedded microphone. Note that this was with full end-to-end encryption of the audio content.
I presume that Skype plans to roll-out video at some time in the future, a capability already supported by MSN and Yahoo. (I intend to test these existing services in the next few weeks when my new laptop arrives.)
In principle, Skype audio can burrow through firewalls, NAT, and routers without configuration changes, unlike some of the stories I have heard about MSN and Yahoo audio. However, the company hedges: "In short, Skype works behind the majority of firewalls and gateways with no special configuration."
Skype does not have a central network like MSN, Yahoo, or AIM, aside from providing a centralized connection to the network for creating initial user information and to connect when coming on-line. A distributed and dynamic mechanism to manage the status and IP address of those participation is maintained in a "Global Decentralized User Directory" that they call Global Index. As they state, "The Global Index technology is a multi-tiered network where supernodes communicate in such a way that every node in the network has full knowledge of all available users and resources with minimal latency."
I guess I would be willing -- as a private individual -- to tap into the Skype network to save money on audio conferencing when compared to telphone. The challenge for Skype is to get those already happy with Yahoo and MSN (and soon, AIM) audio solutions to switch over. And of course, to roll out video. However, corporate users may be less happy about the peer-to-peer approach, even though the traffic is encrypted, since it will tap into computer resources of those PCs on the network.
The success of Skype seems to hinge on the degree to which the other services are blocked by firewalls, NAT, and routers. Over the next few weeks, I will continue to compare the service side by side with contacts working behind firewalls, etc., and see if there is a real competitive advantage there.