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September 29, 2006

Intelligent Metadata

What the most annoying think about online forms? It is the silly use of dropdowns for state and country codes. From the programmer perspective, this is a great idea since we are limiting the domain of choices for the end user and ensuring data quality. Well, we keep telling ourselves that anyway. Dropdown are great for those that live in Alabama and Alaska but not for Utah and Vermont. Yes, you can type the first letter and jump to the first state which is great for Georgia but crappy for Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, and North Dakota.

It get worse for country domains; Albania and Aruba are the fortunate ones. United State is near the bottom, right next to the United Kingdom and United Emirates. Don’t get into a hurry or your package will be sent to Victoria Station in London.

Why can’t we have open text fields that have some intelligence in them? If I order a product to be sent to Atlanta, HI with zipcode 30308 then clearly I mistyped the state code. That could be automatically corrected and presented to the user for confirmation. Computers are getting fast enough to be able to handle this type of transaction, it is we the designers that are the problem.

Posted by Todd at 1:49 PM

September 28, 2006

Key Components of Metadata

We have many information and knowledge stores around the organization. I ran across this last night in regards to the criticality of the information collection and metadata.

You HAVE the Information
You must actually collect the information and store that information within the some technology or knowledge store. Ensure that you have solid RIM standards and processes to ensure quality.

Metrics: Content, Inventory Turnover

You KNOW that you have the Information
Having collected the information, you must know that you have collected it or someone else has collected it. Storing information that no one has knowledge creates an environment that produces limited reuse. Key to this is integration into the current information architecture, search utilities and marketing the store itself.

Metrics: Brand Visibility, Marketing

Understand How to ACCESS the Information
You must make the information understandable and easy to use. Information must be placed into context in order to create knowledge. All information stores should be based on usability principles in order to ensure that everyone can get some degree of value.

Metrics: Usability Studies,

USE the Information in Value-Add Processes
Information must be used in order to create value. The usage can be an information exchange or full scale reuse. While information associated with risk control may not be used, over the long haul exchange and reuse rule.

Metrics: Usage Metrics like Information Exchange, Reuse and Risk Assessment

You must TRUST the Information
Information must be as accurate as possible. Trust takes time to build but only a few laps to destroy.

Metrics: Data Quality, Trust Survey

What about the Value of Information. Perhaps a topic of another entry.

Posted by Todd at 1:12 PM

September 25, 2006

Real Estate Sites

Over the past couple of years I have been looking at buying some land. Actually, the idea is more of a dream than a reality but without dreams who are we? The point is that I am utterly amazed at how poor the metadata and search utility is out there for real estate.

For example, lets suppose I wanted to buy 20-50 acres of land within 2-3 hours of my current residence and a specific price range. Sounds simple, right? The largest real estate site Realtor.com forces you to enter a city with no indication of distance. They don’t allow you to enter key elements of such as acres, lakes, or terrain. They force you to locate 10-20 major zip codes or cities, and do the scroll battle. Scrolling though hundreds of results is a major pain in the meta-butt.

Land specific sites are not much better. Although the functionality varies by site, the majority fail to offer a solid search utility. Have we drifted to the other end of the spectrum by controlling the end user experience so much that we alienate many?

Posted by Todd at 1:50 PM

September 19, 2006

Bad for Business

Recently, it was pointed out that our organization does not always win the repository battle. Metadata can be something very personal that people are not willing to turnover to another group. We see this many projects that do not want to utilize enterprise services. Instead, they would prefer to purchase or build their own software specifically tailored to their program. In their shoes, I would want the same thing since the success of the metadata can improve the success of the entire program. This particular person seemed to suggest that this was a blow to our organization and a negative indication. As in most cases, I try to take the high road and accept their opinion in hopes to learn and grow from it. So, is this a negative for our group? Of course not; the success of metadata, as an architecture, can come from centralized control or a decentralized autonomy. The principles, frameworks, and patterns are shared and supported by our group. I try not to look at metadata management as a fixed pie where there are winners and losers. Rather, the entire organization wins when we manage the metadata and utilize it for the enrichment of the business.

Posted by Todd at 1:03 PM

September 11, 2006

Singularity

The Singularity is a term used to describe an evolution of technology, biology, and our own capacity of understanding. On several occasions I have discussed the cycle of change in the world of technology. Specifically, how technology changes are coming faster and faster. At some point in time, we will be able to create change at the molecular level and basically do away with the physical creation of everything. The reality is that once you get to the molecular level, physical existence is simply a recipe; much in the same way our DNA is an instruction set for the creation of you. Convergence is inevitable and we already witnessed metadata moving away from the traditional database function to the content based value add. Specifically, organizations are beginning to utilize metadata for describing the full spectrum of assets within the organizations. New standards like ITIL are emerging to solidify the importance of tracking every asset; Asset Lifecycle Management. This convergence is only the second chapter of the entire novel of metadata.

Posted by Todd at 7:33 PM

New Customer or New Products

For any organization that reaches out to the global economy, you spend an enormous amount of time pondering how you can get more customers. We have this great metadata application and how can we get more people involved in the production and consumption of the metadata. The biggest issue is that you don’t know your current or potential customer base. What would happen if you turned this around? Within a corporation, we can do just that by asking what products can we deploy for the customers. This is more than a semantic twist; this is a strategic question.

Posted by Todd at 3:30 PM