Every morning, at 11am, a handful of FT journalists get together and run a simple web-based chat session for about 30 minutes. It's a talk between smart colleagues; insidery, stuffed with early-stage ideas, company news and theories being bounced around.
What if this model was replicated inside a Company?
Read more – ‘Pinching an idea from the Financial Times’.
It's helpful to frame the Wiki vs. SharePoint question by looking at how they support ideas emerging from informal ad-hoc collaboration into formal 'published information and 'micro-processes'...
Read more – ‘Wikis vs. SharePoint?’.
The creator of PowerPoint reminds us that a PowerPoint presentation was never supposed to be the entire proposal, just a quick summary of something longer and better thought out...so why do we use it to distribute ideas? Read more – ‘PowerPointless?’.
Notes from a response I'd given to a consulting company about their approach to supporting/using wikis within schools. Pretty much all of it was directly analogous to using wikis in organisations (at least those companies where employees are primarily knowledge-workers). Read more – ‘Objections to wikis in companies’.
I was asked what I thought about Twitter and it's potential, or rather the concept of Twitter, for business use (I should have restricted my reply to 140 characters)... Read more – ‘Thoughts on Twitter’.
The Media Equation – Will Someone Please Invent iTunes for News? – NYTimes.com “Those of us who are in the newspaper business could not be blamed for hoping that someone like (Steve Jobs) comes along and ruins our business as well by pulling the same trick: convincing the millions of interested readers who get their [...] Read more – ‘Will Someone Please Invent iTunes for News?’.
A fairly anodyne interview with the guy responsible for Kindle. Didn’t learn anything new, but if completely avoiding answering a question shows a discomfort about a topic, then e-reader apps on the iphone are either a cause for concern, or an acquisition target: “Q: I read that Stanza, an electronic book reading application for the [...] Read more – ‘Q&A: Ian Freed of Amazon Kindle’.
Google finally settled their (US) wrangle with book publishers, which means Google will unlock their display of book content, with reciprocal ad revenue share to publishers. Google published an exceptionally clear explanation of how this changes the Google Book service . Anything that enhances access to books (particularly textbooks) and out of print books without [...] Read more – ‘Google extends Book Search’.
See that drop on the left? That’s the 75% dip in United Airlines stock price last week, caused by a six year old story about UA’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy application appearing in various aggregated newsfeeds, and taken as a current story. It’s an interesting example of the speed and interconnectedness of information flow on the web, [...] Read more – ‘Trusting the web; what companies have to learn’.
This is a a sad story about the death of local media here in Manchester, UK… Revolution FM is an Oldham based station radio, with (I think) some financial backing from Steve Coogan and DJs from the Mancunian/NW music scene. I used to love listening to them – a great alternative Radio station; felt quintessentially [...] Read more – ‘The end of a Revolution’.
From the about bloody time department: Open Source Textbooks Challenge a Paradigm | Epicenter from Wired.com Spent some time reading about their model. Good stuff – focus on the lecturers creating a customised book, and creating demand (sofar, so traditional) and let the book act as the centre of a hub of pedagogical tools. Neat [...] Read more – ‘Open Source Textbooks’.
Interesting review of Google’s slow inroad into mainstream IT. Key points: * Gen Y isn’t yet in charge of corporate IT decisions. Change is slooow. * Google Apps is still a ‘consumer’ set of apps (e.g. lack of records management) * Apps is basically a ‘online’ version of Office – not much differention (e.g. document [...] Read more – ‘Google Apps and the Enterprise’.
Just had an idea, which I’ve mailed to the Geekup mailing list, and thought I’d post here. I’ve been really impressed with recently released Silverback App – a Mac app, that utilises screen recording and the webcam on (recent) macs, to create a combined screen cam of people using an application. It’s a brilliant way [...] Read more – ‘Distributed usability testing with Silverback App?’.
Its that time of year again – a big, scheduled Apple keynote. I always get it wrong, so here’s my completely uneducated guesses on what will and won’t be announced: I think they’ll kill off ipod classic, we’ll see the framing of the ‘touch platform’ – I reckon Jobs will literally delineate the touch and [...] Read more – ‘Apple (mis) predictions’.
TechCrunch covers the new release of Google’s Gmail Labs here and here: “Gmail Labs is essentially a stage for Google employees to develop new features for Gmail under the public eye. Starting at 6pm PT tonight, all Gmail users in the US and UK will see a new tab in the settings area called “Labs”. [...] Read more – ‘GMail Labs’.
Fascinating, if a bit light on detail, NYTimes article on Google’s “Revenue Force”. Interesting to see them take the long view on ad revenue, where the goal is retain a user’s value from ads, not just goose short term revenue: “These factors contribute to an ad’s ‘quality score.’ The higher that score, the less the [...] Read more – ‘The Human Hands Behind the Google Money Machine’.
BBC NEWS | Business | Toyota acts on overwork culture “The decision follows a court ruling in Nagoya in November that a 30-year-old Toyota worker who collapsed at one of its plants had died of overwork.” So, an enlightened decision then? :-S I love Toyota as a brand (my Prius has been impecceble), but having [...] Read more – ‘Toyota acts on overwork culture’.
Daring Fireball’s BlackBerry vs. iPhone is a brilliant write-up of the way in which the iPhone’s upcoming ’2.0′ software release _nails_ the BlackBerry device on all counts. Read it, if you care about portable computing devices and the near future of computing in general. So, yes, the iPhone (with 2.0 software) will create great demand [...] Read more – ‘Daring Fireball: BlackBerry vs. iPhone. Great, but what about the IT dept?’.
I’ve just got round to reading ReadWriteWebs’s story on Amazon’s Shipping Centre APIs. Pretty incredible – I could basically build a physical goods company, with all inventory storage, shipping and returns handled without any upfront investment in infrastructure. I think this is an incredibly bold, innovative move by Amazon – makes my head spin with [...] Read more – ‘Amazon’s physical goods APIs released’.
So, the -fairly useless- benign LinkedIn actually got really interesting, by adding a groups feature (by groups, of course, I mean companies). Now they have a decent core of data to mine, they’re able to show interesting aggregate data about employee flow, and hiring trends amongst other insights into companies. I think Ross Mayfield’s analysis [...] Read more – ‘LinkedIn groups’.
Charting The Banking Crisis – A Boomerang Demo is a Gapminder-like animated bubble chart of banking exposure to mortgage debt over the last year. I’m not sure it actually provides the same level of comparative insight as Gapminder – more a flow of a few variables that I already associate (size and frequency), than the [...] Read more – ‘Charting The Banking Crisis’.
Today, BBC News linked to a Nov 2007 explanation of the sub-prime fallout. Apart from being prescient, it’s one of the best ‘why it happened’ explanations I’ve seen, using a very simple method of a checkbox to overlay an explanation. Maybe this is too simplistic a thought, but putting aside capitalistic greed, corporate incompetence, short-termism [...] Read more – ‘Failure of Simplicity?’.
Dennis Howlett nails what I thought as soon as I heard WordPress were doing a lightweight Twitter called Prologue (actually it’s more microblogging, as no sms/email love) inside WordPress. The more widespread I see ‘consumery’ tech like this take off inside companies, the more obvious it becomes – companies are just _groups of people_ – [...] Read more – ‘Twitter for business?’.
The invisible computer revolution is a short, but compelling call to arms to build software services for the fast growing cellphone market in non-Western countries; sms updates for health-care workers as continuing education, for example. I often come across anecdotal references to farmers getting sms‘ (smsii?) on crop prices in adjoining towns and moving to [...] Read more – ‘The invisible computer revolution’.
bq. “We wanted to reassure you that your order ********* has been upgraded and dispatched Saturday December 22 via Royal Special Delivery for a delivery Monday December 24. We know that holidays can be stressful and wanted to relieve a portion of that stress by reassuring you that your package is expected to arrive in [...] Read more – ‘Amazon doing customer service right’.
Techcrunch is running a story from Google’s press release on ‘Knols’ (Techmeme discussion links here), user created chunks of info that will be the ‘first information people will want to see on a topic’. It’s another adwords trade-off; we as consumers get free content, Google gets ad-revenue (split with the expert author). As Wikipedia seems [...] Read more – ‘Google’s goldmine – your knowledge’.
Bloody hell, Google just announced they’re becoming an energy company! More (but light) info here. Makes a lot of sense – renewable energy is a primarily a clean technology problem (vs. mucky industrial activity like digging for coal or drilling oil), maybe it makes sense that the emergent renewable energy company for the 21st century [...] Read more – ‘Googlewatt’.
Oh, it’s much more than a phone – it’s Google becoming the Operating System -vendor- benevolent dictator for the emerging dominant platform of this century – connected, portable devices. It was clear Google was on the verge of announcing something, framing the conversation – but in retrospect, the framing was all around ‘platform’ of handsets. [...] Read more – ‘Google mobile platform’.
Joi Ito has a fascinating writeup onOtetsudai Networks: > “With Otetsudai Networks, if you are willing to work, you sign up for the service with your skills and focus, take a GPS reading on your phone and then just hang out. If you are looking for someone for say… 3 hours to man a cash [...] Read more – ‘Joi Ito’s: Otetsudai Networks’.
You know Google is really close to announcing the Google Phone, when they make no official comment, but they run a puff piece on the ‘Head of Mobile Platforms’ talking about how cool he is, but with ‘no comment whatsoever’. It’s a gigantic framing exercise. Here’s two elements from the technique that are clearly being [...] Read more – ‘Google working the NY Times’.
This just came through from a newsletteradaptive path » making the most of a design engagement bq. “Here are Adaptive Path’s tips for our clients — or yours.” Great list… Read more – ‘making the most of a design engagement’.
3, here in the UK, is constantly pushing the boundaries of the market. A lot of their disruption is around pushing new revenue models (or dropping prices), but they also push new services into the market at a fair clip. As an aside, they’re able and willing to push prices and services in this way, [...] Read more – ‘3 pushes out again’.
Brilliant: bq. “Tesco will use the Manchester Ship Canal to move crates of wine from South America from the Port of Liverpool and a container terminal at Irlam…The retailer says the move will mean hundreds of lorries can be taken off the roads, reducing congestion and cutting carbon emissions.” Read more – ‘Tesco to use canal to ship goods…’.
Apple – Mac OS X Server – Features – Wiki Server Friend pointed this out- a lovely looking wiki server in the new OS X server. Can’t figure out what the underlying technology running it is, presume it’s custom code…aforementioned friend is grabbing the developer beta now and will investigate… Along with the fab looking [...] Read more – ‘Apple – Wiki Server’.
The Register: bq. “French law prevents carriers from tying handsets exclusively to their networks – consumers have to be able to move to a different network provider and take their phones with them. The upshot is that Orange will sell a locked iPhone for €399 alongside an unlocked model for a price that’s yet to [...] Read more – ‘Sacre Bleu! Legit unlocked iphones for France’.
Following on from yesterday’s post about the lack of Mac/Lunix iPlayer, comes this news from PC Pro: bq. “The BBC asked the Trust if the Flash streaming service would fulfil its commitment to “platform neutrality”, but was told that a multi-platform service across downloads, streaming and cable was needed.” The interesting question is will the [...] Read more – ‘Beeb told iPlayer *must* be cross platform’.
I’m late to the dopplr party, but I’m liking the site a lot. It’s got the most most wonderful example of a written interface and spartan design that works well, loads fast (I presume) over a saturated Airport wifi (or Blackberry browser), and like all good software, is built on an interesting philosophy. I thought [...] Read more – ‘Dopplr…’.
There’s a lot of talk via TechMeme about the Guardian’s story ‘O2 wins Apple iPhone deal’. Everyone’s focusing on whether it will only come with EDGE, instead of 3G and that as well as 40% of call/data revenue (!) going back to Apple, Carphone Warehouse will be selling the devices. But that’s all traditional UK [...] Read more – ‘why is no one asking about *how* the iphone will be sold in the EU?’.
My pal Paul Farnell has written a great article on pricing web application. Very proud of him (and Dave and Matt) for getting Litmus, their web and email testing app out the door and making money – good stuff. Read more – ‘Pricing web apps…’.
And Microsoft hits back with a ‘top ten’ of why Google Apps is such a bad idea for enterprise… Couple of the points stood out amongst the (fairly poor) FUD: bq. “4. Google’s primary focus is on ad funded search. Their enterprise focus and now apps exist on the very fringe and in combination with [...] Read more – ‘Microsoft’s retort to Google Apps…’.
The Guardian has the rejigged press release: bq. “Google has linked up with IT consultancy and outsourcing specialist CapGemini to target corporate customers with its range of desktop (er, web) applications, in the search engine’s most direct move against the dominance of Microsoft.” _UPDATE:_ there’s a great summary by Dan Farber, touching on issues of [...] Read more – ‘Google partners with Cap Gemini in corporate desktop push’.
Of all the commentary on the recent financial crisis, I’m finding the BBC’s Robert Peston’s analysis the clearest, least histrionic and well written. Stuff like this: “And here’s what should really turn the ECB red with shame. Just possibly it has needlessly bailed out the global hedge-fund industry.” “What worries me is that ECB and [...] Read more – ‘Great financial journalism’.
The Register has an interesting, but apparently incorrect, autopsy over the failure of iMode in Europe. It’s interesting, because the article states that the biggest reason for failure is cultural. Make sure you click the comments, because there is a really decent collection of comments that expands on the original articles premise. Like this one: [...] Read more – ‘i-Mode’s failure outside of Japan’.
Psion: the last computer | The Register I’ve got a Psion 5 somewhere – and I remember my Dad with an early Psion and it’s dual line display, popping this hunk of metal and buttson out off it’s holder…I was pretty underwhelmed, as I recall (my geek tendencies developed later) But this is a fascinating [...] Read more – ‘The story of PsionPsion: the last computer | The Register’.
I’ve been spending quite a bit of ‘blog time’ (that bit of the day when I kick back a bit and ought to go for a walk etc) reading Marc Andreesen’s blog. It’s an excellent, detailed and slightly sniffy look at financing, private equity, starting a business and anything thing else that catches the eye [...] Read more – ‘world views’.
Great interview (direct link to popup RealPlayer stream) with Damien Hirst about his latest speculative business/art venture. He seems to have turned into quite the Warhol, artist-as-entrepeneur (100 person team, etc. etc.) I never really got Warhol’s work, until I saw a series of electric chair photos silkscreened onto purples canvasses, likewise with Hirst. I [...] Read more – ‘For the love of God’.
BBC NEWS | Programmes | File on 4 | Carbon trade scheme ‘is failing’ Why doesn’t this surprise me: bq. “The EU’s Emission Trading Scheme – a key part of the UK Government’s drive to combat climate change – began in 2005 and created a trade in carbon allowances. It is essentially a permit to [...] Read more – ‘Carbon trade scheme ‘is failing’’.
The Profit Calculator — New York Magazine – ace set of short articles outlining the business fundamentals of businesses ranging from yoga studios to investment banks. Most profitable business by percentage margins? Drug dealing. Mind you the guy ended up in jail. (Via Kottke.) Read more – ‘The business of New York’.
BBC NEWS | Business | Flybe to reveal damage of flights: – Be Airways is going to label details of the co2 footprints of their flights, and offset the emissions through a ‘carbon neutral’ charity. As Peter sad when I mentioned carbon neutralising flights “it’s like digging a hole and filing i back up again” [...] Read more – ‘labelling flight emissions…’.
A good article (and, usefully, a re’print’ from the less accessible media section) about the Beeb and it’s inordinate delays and balls-ups with the iPlayer, which underlines an increasing lack of leadership in the digital space. God, I hope this doesn’t pan out – the beeb’s technology depts. used to have some very cool people [...] Read more – ‘Is the BBC screwing up it’s technology leadership?’.
Google Analytics, rev 2, the bastard child of MeasureMap and Urchin. I was really impressed with MeasureMap back in late 2005, and I recently dusted off my account to track traffic for ThinkFold, but it had clearly been neglected (although it still worked. I also run Google Analytics (a dusted off Urchin), for my sites, [...] Read more – ‘Google analytics rev 2’.
Take Your PowerPoint And… is a brief writeup of the unconference (wikipedia link), an idea that’s based in a collective allergic reaction to the pricy, structured, advertorial conference. My first introduction to the concept of ‘unconference’ was via Dave Winer’s blog. In short, it’s about participation – having just come back from Mix07, where, for [...] Read more – ‘Take Your PowerPoint And shove it…’.
Clear’s Privacy Policy is superb – they’ve got wiki-like markup showing the changes they’ve made. Great example of information transparency. By the way, my new venture, WordPress.com shared their own Privacy Policy under a Creative Commons licence. I’ve done the same with a ‘UKised’ derived policy for a new venture, a collaborative outliner, ThinkFold (I’ll [...] Read more – ‘Great Privacy Policy..’.
-Er, I’ve lost my phone…mail me (I’m checking it a lot) and I’ll call you back from my top secret (i.e. I don’t know what it is) telephone I have here…- Update: Phone replaced, and by the power of isync, back on track… Of course, I found my old phone as soon as I got [...] Read more – ‘Back from France (but still) without a mobile…’.
fascinating text analysis comparing keynotes… Simplicity and on-message – basic stuff, but so hard to get right. A nice addendum to that would be to compare blog mentions/column inches referring to the respective keynotes. Read more – ‘Bill Gates and Steve Jobs: Keynote text analysis’.
Andrew McAfee’s article on the barriers to adoption of new technologies/tools is superb, and jarringly prescient: “The 9X problem goes a long way to explaining the tech industry folk wisdom that to spread like wildfire a new product has to offer a tenfold improvement over what’s currently out there.” Basically, the newnew thing has to [...] Read more – ‘the 9x as good problem..’.
Prediction Markets at confab.yahoo Good, high-level (exec summary?) write-up of a set of talks about Prediction Markets. I like the low-complexity example of using a prediction market to suss out a release date: “Todd Proebsting of Microsoft, in his case study, described a market he created to predict the validity of the testing schedule for [...] Read more – ‘Prediction Markets at confab.yahoo’.
Craigslist Meets the Capitalistshas done the rounds, but it’s a nice heart warming antidote this Christmas, about a company that exists, well, for the sake of existing and spurns the usual profit maximising route…. So, as the not-really-for-profit craigslist chief explains why they do what they do, to confused Wall Street types… “…the $10 fee [...] Read more – ‘Craigslist Meets the Capitalists’.
fantastic write up of Apple’s failure to manage the Newton successfully. I remember lusting after an Apple Newton. And finally, a few years ago, I got one (my mate Phil gave me one of his 8 or so newtons :-) They were years ahead of their time, but Apple managed to balls up the product: [...] Read more – ‘lessons learned from Apple’s Newton mistakes’.
I think 3′s x-series price plans were anounced today. I’ve been really interested to see where 3 priced their ‘unlimited’ consumer internet access package, which bundled Skype (only to other Skype users), Orb (for PC media file access), Sling (for live TV streaming) and the less revolutionary Messenger and eBay, as well as unwalled, real [...] Read more – ‘3′s x-series UK prices announced…’.
I love the One Laptop Per Child project, it’s a brilliant initiative. I’ve banged on about it before, but was just reading this NYTimes article that made me splutter tea over my keyboard… Of course, the project is laudable, but there are so many lessons from this project for driving and shaping the _mentality_ of [...] Read more – ‘the ($150) laptop’.
The Windows Shutdown crapfest outlines, in some detail, the ridiculous bureaucracy involved in building Vista, and in particular, the teams that intersected to build the power off feature I mentioned last week. Amongst other nuggets, was this quote that kind of sums up the antithesis to keeping things simple: bq. “The end result of all [...] Read more – ‘24 people to build the new Vista shutdown feature…’.
Another classic (and short!)Joel on Software essay: “Listen. Let me tell you a secret about management consulting companies and software organizations.” Oh, so, so true…apply his story against pretty much any business optimisation area of the standard body shop bollocks consultancies, and this rings so, so true. Read more – ‘the secrets of successful consultants…’.
Just found this link ( IDEO’s Urban Pre-Planning | Metropolis Magazine) in my ‘todo’ blog list – it’s an interesting article about IDEO and their ‘value-add’, angle-free consulting approach: “Williams puts it another way: “They don’t have a dog in the fight.” Unlike most urban planners (a term IDEO resists), not only does IDEO avoid [...] Read more – ‘another example of non-partisan consultancy…IDEO%u2019s Urban Pre-Planning | Metropolis Magazine’.
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Welcome back to frugal computing is a fascinating article on the paradox of computing abundance…it squares nicely with this article profiling Jeff Bezos’s conversation with Tim O’Reilly: “Bezos explained that the biggest cost for Amazon is not power, servers or people maintaining data centers, but utilization. “Because we are high [...] Read more – ‘‘frugal’ computing’.
RED HERRING article on Lotus Notes doing the RSS shuffle: “…Technologies such as blogs, RSS feeds, and portable storage devices are changing the way businesses collaborate, said IBM Lotus general manager Michael Rhodin in a statement. We are helping organizations take advantage of new industry trends to share ideas and reach new markets…” Yup, you [...] Read more – ‘RED HERRING | Lotus Notes Goes Web 2.0’.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Mobile web shake-up gets started. I just don’t see the benefit of a .mobi extension. Surely this is utterly pointless – just detect the user string of the client browser and serve the appropriate page…. Mobile versions yes, but not hanging of another domain…it’s not even a decent 4 letter [...] Read more – ‘.mobi launched…yaaawn’.
Attensa is free. Fantastic. Attensa’s a pretty robust Outlook plugin to read RSS. I’ve been installing the trail on some client desktops (it’s been installing where Newsgator hasn’t). But now it’s free, the RSS flow from the wiki/blog ecosystem I’ve built can be plugged in by all their project teams with no worry about cost. [...] Read more – ‘Enterprise RSS Feed Servers and RSS Readers – Attensa – Download’.
It’s one of those press releaes from CLO, but it’s a interesting, completely solvable problem – why don’t organisations ask their staff advice? Here’s some facts from the release: The less education an employee has, the less likely he or she will be asked to contribute an idea. Forty percent of those with just high [...] Read more – ‘1/3rd of employees never asked their advice’.
This is a great reminder of why I’m modelling Participo’s business approach and client ‘solutions’ on the advertising/marketing business – the following paragraph of the Wall Street Journal article: “…Naked’s premise is simple: If you go to a coal company looking for an energy supply, you’ll get coal as the recommended solution. It’s the same [...] Read more – ‘Ask a coal company for energy ideas…’.
Fulfillment by Amazon has finally arrived – where Amazon do the whole warehousing, fulfillment, customer service/returns and sales bit for your product(s)… They’d been doing this for some large-scale ‘partner’ companies (Toys ‘r’ us, not sure who else), but now they’ve rolled it out to well, pretty much anyone. So, prototype ideas in CAD, get [...] Read more – ‘Amazon takes the final step’.
BBC news mentions that Sainsbury’s is (finally) going to use ‘compostible’ packaging for some of it’s products…why not all of them? Still, it’s a good move – the sheer amount of packaging I accumulate in a week or so is ridiculous, particularly for fruit and vegetables which I immediately discard the packaging. Looks like Ross [...] Read more – ‘Sainsbury’s packages in green…’.
2006LMS results shows well, LMS survey results from Learning circuits. Just seen this, so not had time to fully digest – but looks like satisfaction with LMS’s is seriously declining, and orgs are still using them as a command and control model of ‘learning’… Read more – ‘LMS survey results…’.
Sharesleuth is a genius idea from Mark Cuban (he talks about it in detail here). Basically, Cuban has employed a couple of biz journalists to investigate, in depth, some spurious company. Cuban then decides whether to short the stock, and then publishes the whole story on Sharesleuth, all the while pointing out his short position. [...] Read more – ‘fascinating stock shorting idea…’.
ok, not really (not yet, anyhow :-) But my dream of buggering off to Tuscany and working via broadband gets a little bit closer. iChat’s new video presentation facility looks amazing…so, buy client’s a mac mini…set it up and see them physically in six months, while all the while working with them remotely through ichat.. [...] Read more – ‘that’s it – I’m moving to Tuscany…’.
NOSE is trailing (as is Downes) the BlackBoard LMS patent malarky., in some depth. They’re obviously heavily biased (quite rightly) against BlackBoard. The proff in their pudding is if BlackBoard start going after ‘infringers’ Read more – ‘tracking BlackBoard’s LMS ‘patent’’.
e-Literate: Blackboard Patents the LMS: “… As I read it, Blackboard basically owns the patent on any sort of groupware at all that is used for teaching purposes. This could have very serious consequences for both proprietary and Open Source competitors…” Er, I’m no lawyer…if this is as bad as it seems, what on earth [...] Read more – ‘Appartantly Blackboard patented the LMS concept…?’.
MSFT Financial Analyst Meeting: Ray Ozzie: “The world is evolving into a highly networked form in which the barriers to participation in almost everything we do are crumbling down%u2014the barriers to sharing, the barriers to contributing and learning, the barriers to working together. As more participants come online, platforms and marketplaces will serve to make [...] Read more – ‘Ray Ozzie outlines MS’s services strategy…’.
Why (Most) Training is Useless is a great article on the failure of (most) training (hint: it’s done at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons :-) by way of Jay Cross _(UPDATE):_ I just thought it would be worth re-reading Sam Adkins ‘we’re selling snake oil’ article as an addendum :-) Read more – ‘David Maister > Articles > Why (Most) Training is Useless’.
I’ve watched, with increasing interest, the effect of the ‘SOX’ regulations on a particular software team at a client. They’ve built in information capture and re-routing in every employee ‘transaction’ within their software system. I’m pretty sure all communications has to be archived for SOX compliance (I’m on a train, so can’t check this out). [...] Read more – ‘Sarbannes Oxley and the potential for organisational memory?’.
A Search Engine That’s Becoming an Inventor – New York Times: Great article about Google building their tech infrastructure: “Mr. Page designed the initial Google servers, with the assumption that parts would fail on a regular basis. At first he tried to simplify assembly — and reduce the presumed repair time — by not fastening [...] Read more – ‘Google…powered by Velcro’.
Interesting (year old) interview with Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie about how to ‘escape email hell’ I’m clearing through my drafts folder in MarsEdit and publishing the half finished articles if they’re still interesting… I think this one is. Email’s becoming a real bugbear in organisations – so many people are spending hours a day [...] Read more – ‘Gates and Ozzie: How to Escape E-Mail Hell’.
A list of the top 13 (why not a classic top 10?) outsource training providers… I just don’t see anything exciting here here, just big companies who’ve grown their ‘innovation capability’ by acquisition. This industry is ripe for disruptive players. How will SumTotal react to their own customer installing a wiki and seeing their customers [...] Read more – ‘State of the training industry?’.
I’ve just taken a quick look at some Windows Vista screencasts. One thing that really caught my eye was the ‘Guided Help’ – an automated (or prompted) macro-type function that shows you how to perform certain tasks and configurations. It basically takes over the mouse cursor, highlighting the button presses etc. Of course, this stuff [...] Read more – ‘Windows Vista – Guided Help’.
A pal invited me to his Skypecast – a CB Radio style free for all, with some fascinating potential. Basically, it’s a audio chat room/teleconference, initiated by one person (who has some rudimentary controls) and open to all. A quick run-through show the usual geek tests, but also coaching, education and other social, business and [...] Read more – ‘Skypecasts’.
The 1 Second Film is a great concept…basically they flog $1 (or more) producer credits (on imdb, no less) and create a 1 second movie, with 90 minutes of credits, accompanied by a documentary. It’s an absurd, brilliant idea…with buttonholed celebrities donating…it’s great to see a really original concept do well…reminiscent, I suppose of milliondollarhomepage [...] Read more – ‘The 1 Second Film’.
Free calls to all landlines and mobile phones within the US and Canada – Skype Blogs Blimey – now if they could just do that in the UK/Europe, I’d be even happier :-) This must kill the VoIP players like Vonage and scare the regular telcos over there…landlines not such a big deal, but free [...] Read more – ‘Skype adds another cat to the pigeons’.
Unstoppable Force or Unnecessary Click Factory? is an excellent look into the inefficient page design of MySpace and the pageviews the inefficiency creates. Apart from the odd metrics, there’s the interesting dilemma of whether to actually fix the problem and reduce the required pageviews to actually do stuff. It’s also interesting, because the guy who [...] Read more – ‘MySpace: Unstoppable Force or Unnecessary Click Factory?’.
Public Knowledge – Net Neutrality Video is a two minute (extremely) high-level overview of the US-centric potential for telcos to dominate the internet landscape by favouring access to particular providers, or particular filetypes (e.g. video from apple). It’s all about mucky lobbying from telcos in Washington. I love the US centricity of this – surely [...] Read more – ‘watch as US telcos lobby the US into increasing irrelevance…’.
BBC news article on the fiasco (and 1 _billion_! windfall from carbon emission trading: “Part of the problem, he said, is that firms have been given, free-of-charge, the carbon emissions permits on which the scheme is based. This, he explained, is like the government giving energy firms free money.” I’m really interested in the potential [...] Read more – ‘EU messes up carbon trading markets’.
Web 2.0 meets the enterprise | CNET News.com It’s a puffy, high-level piece, but this article pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling for the last, oh, 3 years :-) It makes some important points – consumers (at home) come into work, use the same technologies and then think “hang on, why can’t my [...] Read more – ‘Web 2.0 meets the enterprise – CNET’.
Two interesting takes on Microsoft, Windows and Apple’s OSX. The first from the New York Times is more interesting, as it looks at the costs of inherited complexity, and critically, maintaining support for legacy applications. Cringely’s take on Apple’s Boot Camp (which loads Windows onto a new Intel-based Mac) is a lighter punch at Apple’s [...] Read more – ‘Windows, Windows, Windows…’.
I’ve just spent a brilliant weekend with three really smart guys thinking, designing and building Participo’s next two ideas. We spent a lot of time stepping back and thinking about what sort of problems we’re trying to solve and whether anyone would actually use the bloody things…we think yes. Anyway, I’m writing this because I [...] Read more – ‘fantastic ‘reality list’’.
Interesting, 2 minute read in Wired about game designers intentionally creating scarcity: “…But in a game world, there’s no inherent reason for scarcity. Game designers have given us plenty of utopias where we can have all the mithril we want, to buy whatever we want whenever we want it. Problem is, those worlds turn out [...] Read more – ‘People need Scarcity?’.
Excellent summary of the benefits of KM from blogs – Joho the Blog: Blogging in Germany: “I continue to believe that for many companies the best path to blogging is by using them internally as a knowledge management tool. The dream of KM has been that people will write down what they know. KM regimes, [...] Read more – ‘Blogs as KM’.
The other day I was listening to James Surowiecki on an SXSW podcast talking about his book Wisdom of Crowds. I’d heard another of his talks about a year ago, but almost crashed the car this time around as I frantically tried to make notes (mental note to self…audio annotation on an ipod would be [...] Read more – ‘The Wisdom of Crowds…’.
Great Doc Searls essay in the Linux Journal. Too busy right now to think of eloquent critique, but here’s a gem quote: “Hence my idea: The Intention Economy. The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You [...] Read more – ‘Doc Searls riffs on intention vs. attention…’.
Is it just me, or does Microsoft’s Origami product look seem just like Apple’s Newton from the 1990′s? Right down to the attached keyboard… Read more – ‘Origami = Newton?’.
Last month’s Wired had an excellent article on – guys who are tweaking and customising advertising and marketing campaigns in real-time, based on the response to the messages… “”By changing the creation equation, Visible World’s adaptive ads adopt the “permanent beta” ethic of online marketing – advertisers can continually refine their message, swapping out offers [...] Read more – ‘Adaptive learning?’.
Sun Fire T2000 Server Try Before You Buy What a great idea – fill out the form and you get one of Sun’s ‘eco friendly’ servers to play with for a couple of months. Good write up on the strategy from Jonathan Schwartzhere. Bloody hell, write a decent review and you might get to keep [...] Read more – ‘Sun Fire T2000 Server Try Before You Buy’.
Interesting article on the financial and social impact on businesses in the event of an hn51 human crossover outbreak. I’ve talked about this several times with clients – not because I’m a pandemic specialist, but because we were moaning about how companies still mistrust home working and/or the culture of offices requires physical congregation. So [...] Read more – ‘Impact of Avian Flu on collaboration and home working? Knowledge@Wharton’.
It just doesn’t matter is a great treatise by Jason Fried of 37signals of why they’ve left out certain stuff from their latest product. From the man himself: “…if it doesn’t change your behavior then it just doesn’t matter…Would these things be nice to have? Sure. Would they be great to have? Sure. Would they [...] Read more – ‘It just doesn’t matter – choosing what not to build…’.
Ricky Gervais podcast goes paid for I’ve loved listening to the Ricky Gervais podcast, a good continuation of his genius xfm shows from a few years ago (the xfm radio station is where Gervais and Merchant met Karl Pilkington, the emergent star of the podcast and radio show. It was fantastic to see them, embrace [...] Read more – ‘Audible nabs popular podcast…’.
I gave a guest lecture today at Manchester Met Business School, and mentioned a few software tools and inspirations…here’s the list, guys :-) _Inspiration/Philosophy:_ Well, I guess the main one I mentioned is 37Signals – click here and look at the sidepanel under ‘writings’, there’s a bunch of essays on the ideas I was alluding [...] Read more – ‘notes from the MMU talk, 1st Feb, 2006’.
IBM has taken to blogs and podcasts in a big way according to a pair of articles in the Journal News, a paper serving Westchester County, NY, the site of IBM’s corporate headquarters. The first article, by reporter Julie Moran Alterio, describes IBM’s enthusiastic and well thought-out approach to blogging. After discussions with bloggers inside [...] Read more – ‘IBM embraces blogs and podcasts’.
As well as After action Reviews, I’ve been reading aboutaccountable autonomy. This idea of ‘accountable autonomy’ is a pretty powerful one, it’s exactly the sort of empowerment, with responsibility, that I’ve been banging on about in education; employees are rarely given the accountability to take control of their own learning paths – they’re subjected to [...] Read more – ‘Flattening Hierarchies in Business…using blogs (2 of 2)’.
WorldChanging talks about flattening hierarchies in business, interestingly, they pick up on After Action Reviews as a key agent of change: “…often recommend institutionalizing After-Action Reviews in companies. After-Action Reviews were first used by the US Army in the 1970′s and spread to the business world in the 1990′s; they encourage feedback up and down [...] Read more – ‘Flattening Hierarchies in Business…using blogs (1 of 2)’.
God, what a difference six months makes. I kind of forgot about last.fm and their fab audio plugin for itunes. It’s a site that is, basically a personalised, yet communal, and very public radio station, that listens to you – to throw out recommendations, tags, and personalised streaming radio stations. Late 2004, and early this [...] Read more – ‘Last.fm – musical objects’.
Using some excellent miniature photography, humor and a playful sensibility, Ping Mag takes you through an initial presentation to a client — y’know, the one where they ask, “Can we get this done by next Friday?” They go through what they call the work-feedback-rework process in 15 steps. (Strangely, “work-feedback-rework” — which is an excellent [...] Read more – ‘The Website Development Process’.
OPML Workstation Home looks interesting – a way to convert PowerPoint to OPML. Interesting, because most of the thinking and intellectual output in companies I’ve dealt with is exclusively locked in PowerPoint. People think, create and share ideas in this hideous program, but sharing is via email. And people in orgs are collaborating, they’re sending [...] Read more – ‘PowerPoint -> opml convertor’.
del.icio.us bought by yahoo Well, the web’s awash with the inevitable news, and it makes me think the bubble is simply an exciting R&D lab based mainly in SF. The main action seems to be in ‘build to flip’ business models, which is fine, when you think about it, as the big boys are simply [...] Read more – ‘del.icio.us -> Yahoo = Darwinian R&D’.
IBM to support OpenDocument early next year | Tech News on ZDNet: “‘The governments of India, China and other emerging markets are very interested in this,’ Fontaine said. ‘They don’t have the legacy of having everything saved in Microsoft Office to transition from…This is an opportunity to start out right.’” This is fascinating – hot [...] Read more – ‘IBM to support OpenDocument early next year’.
Can Google Go Glossy? Interesting insight into Google’s experiments with running prints ads, by divvying them up to adwords customers. And poor results: “The whole power of the Web is to bring targeted visitors to your site,” says Jennifer Blackhurst, co-founder of TrimYourDebt. “The print ad hasn’t done this, so it didn’t justify the cost.” [...] Read more – ‘Can Google Go Glossy?’.
BT dials up free mobile phone calls service “BT is to take on leading mobile phone operators such as Vodafone and O2 by enabling customers to make free calls on their mobiles. The service has been under development at BT for the past 18 months. It will be available to customers owning smartphones, the latest [...] Read more – ‘This is (almost) massive…’.
The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Harvard Offers Course Via iPod Fantastic. Apparently, only a few CompSci intro courses, but still… It’s interesting that it’s got to take a ‘cool tool’ such as the iPod Video as the platform – iTunes on a PC is a fantastic video playback environment – and sucks in video [...] Read more – ‘Harvard podcasts lecture video…’.
So, maybe I was a little hasty thinking (just a little bit) that the measuremap beta was more marketing than pragmatic demand throttling. This from Adaptive Path’s Jeffrey Veen: ??”When we started planning for the launch of Measure Map, we spent a lot of time trying to estimate how it would scale. As a hosted [...] Read more – ‘The perpetual beta and buzz building…’.
Doug Kaye’s new ad-venture… “We will cover not just IT or even technology, but literally every topic about which someone speaks and another person finds it valuable enough to capture.” (Via Doc Searls.) Read more – ‘Fantastic’.
Fascinating note on the Register about complaint’s from players of Sony’s Everquest role playing game. Sony’s going to arbitrate the sales of character powerups etc. – it’s a booming trade. But swarming, monopolistic capitalistic tendencies are diminishing the actual playability of the game: “Most Far Eastern sites are thought to employ cheap labor working in [...] Read more – ‘Gaming devalued by economics?’.
Adobe announced today that they will be buying Macromedia for US$3.4 billion. these two former adversaries (in the legal space, too) will become one company in the autumn. At first glance it seems to be a combination fraught with overlapping market areas, but maybe not… There are a few software products which are sure to [...] Read more – ‘Adobe to buy Macromedia’.
It’s starting to happen – I’m actually enjoying running a business. After 3 and a bit years working for RWD, I was nervous (to say the least) about setting up some businesses and striking out. And the crap of invoicing, financial management and so on is as dreary as I anticipated. But today, after working [...] Read more – ‘Cool Tools for start-ups…’.
Who Knows? Jay Cross’s CLO magazine article Punchy write up of sharing knowledge in orgs. Interesting emergent themes he covers, that I’ve been thinking about a lot – knowledge workers waste *lots* of time finding stuff, and people who’ve been around the org for a while, regardless of rank, are a goldmine of info. I [...] Read more – ‘Jay Cross on group knowledge’.
Autodemo “…In as little as three weeks, our talented writers, producers, and developers can create an engaging demo that clearly and concisely communicates the features and benefits of your product to prospects and customers…” Hmm, I could do that with Snapz Pro, Quicktime and a microphone… Read more – ‘Narrate demos for websites…’.
George F. Colony, the Chairman & CEO of Forrester Research writes his monthly column this time about “Naked Technology“. His quick take: “Injecting technology into a company without process and organizational change creates waste and chaos.” The key word here is “injecting.” How many times have you turned on your computer to find you’ve gotten [...] Read more – ‘Injections versus seepage’.
FT.com / Lex WorldCom’s accounting fraud was revealed when the company, owing to a combination of collapsing revenues and excessive debt, was already heading towards bankruptcy and was already a penny stock. WorldCom takes over the mantle of largest US bankruptcy from Enron which, in contrast, was brought down by the revelation of its trickery. [...] Read more – ‘WorldCom~Telecom meltdown’.
eLearning Forum Last one blew up because of Centra problems, but this ones promises to be good – and free to attend by phoen and Centra: Distance Collaboration and Learning Communities Sally Crawford, CEO of Crawford & Associates International, will moderate a panel of real-world practitioners: Distance Collaboration: Why Collaborate, and Adoption Case Study and [...] Read more – ‘e-learning forum – interesting virtual meetings’.
