Calit2 Partner News and Knowledge A.K.A Will Blog for Data

Jerry Sheehan

UCSD Calit2 Government Program Manager

August 17, 2005

Research Intelligence on Calit2 Industrial Partners

• Issue and Questions: – A. Calit2 has a large number of industrial partners (132 currently), some are

quiet large (Fortune 500) and some are small (start-ups). – B. How do we stay on top of what partners are doing?– C. Can we find information that can be used to our strategic advantage?

• Partner News and Knowledge Project– Using Web 2.0 technologies to develop a system for aggregation and

dissemination of information on partners to Calit2 interested staff.– Guiding principles:

– Quick development timeline, i.e. practical is better then perfect.– All information available is not a solution because it creates too much “noise.” Need to

look for the signal and get that in front of the right “eyes.”– Make data driven decisions in development and execution.

– Project staffing:– 25% time of a project manager.– 100% student FTE for Summer.

What to Aggregate and Why?The Signal to Noise Ratio

• The first challenge was identifying how to aggregate information in a sustainable way that required no technology development.– Blogs and Real Simple Syndication (RSS)

were the answer.

• The second challenge was to identify what information sources to aggregate?– Developed a signal/noise ratio which we

gathered data on for a ten day time frame.– Gathered data on two types of RSS feeds.

– Sites that aggregated commercial news.– Independent sites that gathered their own

news (table in slide).

• Quickly came to the conclusion that human intervention was necessary for information aggregation.– Too much “noise” w.o someone looking at

each feed and making decision about what would be of interest to Calit2.

Feed NameNumber of total storiesNumber of useful storiesRatio/Signal

Ars Technica 16 6 0.38BBC News 135 1 0.01

BusinessWeek Online 24 2 0.08CNET News 72 20 0.28CNET Reviews 0 0 0.00CNN 65 0 0.00CNN- Tech 20 2 0.10CNN- U.S. 39 0 0.00CNN/Money 70 7 0.10CNN/Money- Markets 39 1 0.03CNN/Money- Tech 24 6 0.25CNN/Money- Recent 140 9 0.06Engadget 124 15 0.12Extremetech 14 2 0.14Fortune 35 2 0.06InfoWorld 77 28 0.36PC Magazine 24 4 0.17PC World's Techlog 9 2 0.22PC World 25 7 0.28Phone Scoop 12 2 0.17Slashdot 60 8 0.13Wired- Top Stories 24 1 0.04WSJ 42 14 0.33IBM Global Services 0 0 0.00Intel Press Room 1 1 1.00

Signal to Noise Ratio for Independent Sites

Information Sources for Partner News and Knowledge (PNK)1.0

• Identified three different types of feeds to provide various “vantage points” on news involving industrial partners.– Commercial News (information with

some type of corporate affiliation).– Web Content (information found

generally on the Web using a search engine).

– Blog Content (information found on the Web in a user blog).

• Created a “color key” to identify with each post where the information originally was posted.

• Current breakdown of posts (771) as of 8/17/2005 by source:– 87% are Commercial.– 8% are from Blogs.– 5% are from the Web.

Total PNK Posts by Source

8%

87%5%

Blog

Commerical

Web

PNK Version 1.0 Information Gathering and Aggregation Work Flow

Information Sources

Aggregator’s Desktop Server Side Software

NetNews Wire

Attensa and MS Outlook

http://research.calit2.net/industry

62 Feeds

15 Feeds

120 Feeds197 Feeds Reviewed

Once a day/5*Week

771 Posts as of 8/16/2005

ecto

RSS Screen Saver

User’s Desktop Browser Based

User’s Desktop

Non-Browser Based

Calit2 Partner News and Knowledge Web Site Version 1.0

• PNK 1.0 Web Site Features– About page explains purpose of

the site and features disclaimer regarding individual posts.

– Human aggregated information on a daily basis on Calit2 Industrial Partners.

– Full text searching of the PNK blog.

– Category meta-data allows you to easily find information on a particular industrial partner.

– Chronologically reverse indexed page puts most recent daily news at the top of the partner site.

– Top breaking financial news from Yahoo is featured.

– Individuals may comments on any stories/etc via the Web interface to the site.

– Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed available for the PNK site.

http://research.calit2.net/industry

PNK 1.0 Integrating Knowledge Into the Wintel Desktop via Outlook

• A key challenge is integrating information into the daily work flow.– Users don’t want to open a web

browser and surf to a page on a daily basis.

– No desire to learn a new “tool.”

• Email is the “killer app” for all desktop users.– Foundation for all electronic

communication.– Every knowledge worker looks at email

at least once a day. – Outlook is de facto desktop client for

Wintel users by market share.

• Our project identified a product that allows the Calit2 PNK Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feed for the PNK site to be delivered daily as email.– Software is commercial but currently

freely available.– User configurable options

– Auto-delete after X number of days.– Turn on/off pop up alerts.

PNK1.0 RSS FeedIntegrated into Outlook using Attensa

Attensa RSS Plug-In for Outlook

PNK 1.0 On the Desktop as A Screen Saver

• RSS subscription from PNK1.0 allows the “feed” to be integrated into user desktops.

• RSS Screen savers exist both on the Apple and the Wintel platform.

• Apple Platform– Built into the operating system as of

OS X.4– RSS Visualizer displays headlines and

story summaries.– Apple developer toolkit allows

customization of color, display information, etc.

• Wintel Platform– Microsoft has made available via their

MSN screen saver (currently beta) same functionality as Apple.

– Customization of background image and headlines, etc.

PNK 1.0 Posts by Source Data: Information Aggregation Trends

• One of the on-going goals of the project is to develop better quantitative data on what information can be aggregated and which is most valuable to Calit2.

• Lessons learned to date (8/17/2005) on sources:– General Web information is too

noisy to be useful.– RSS meta-data is not always the

most useful– No “posted date” in standard feeds.

– Blog information may be “noisy” but seems to offer different perspectives on issues.

– Additional RSS feeds are coming on-line at a rapid pace.

PNK Posts by Source

0

5

10

15

20

25

7/27/057/28/057/29/057/30/057/31/058/1/058/2/058/3/058/4/058/5/058/6/058/7/058/8/058/9/058/10/058/11/058/12/058/13/058/14/058/15/058/16/05

Blog

Commercial

Web

Average of 19 Posts Per Day Over Two-Week Period

PNK 2.0 Enhancements Adding and Re-Thinking Information Sources

• Add Information Feeds to the PNK Site Using Signal/Noise Ratio metric.– Google News now available as RSS

feed.– Feedster for examining additional

blog information sources.– Individual commercial Web sites

(company specific and aggregators).

• Is Information Source Legend in 1.0 Useful?– Most information is from the Web in

one way or another.– Is blog data less useful then

commercial news?– Wouldn’t knowing the aggregator

provide the same information but in a more granular way?

PNK 2.0 EnhancementsGeo-Location of Partner Sites

• GIS use in 1.0 is elementary– Static snapshot of partner location.– No links to meta-data.

• Experiment with interactive Map Web Services for display of information.– Dynamic partner locations on map,

perhaps driving directions?– Additional meta-data on each partner,

perhaps key contacts, links to projects?

– Potential alternative method for accessing partner specific news on PNK site.

– Additional strategic data, i.e. number of partners who are members of San Diego Telecom Council and not Calit2 industrial partners.