Industry Standard Unique Content

Early iPad reaction: "It's just a giant iPod touch"

Ian Lamont — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:41:42 -0500

After hitting a grand slam with the iPhone, Apple can't be too happy with some of the early reaction to the iPad. On message boards, Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, a recurring theme has been to compare the device to a "giant iPod touch."

Considering none of the naysayers have ever handled an iPad, the comparison may seem harsh. But viewing the demo, it's not hard to see how people came to this conclusion. After all, the thing looks like a giant iPod touch (see video below), from the black-and-chrome exterior to the recessed start button. And, while Apple has introduced some new UI elements, such as drop-down menus, other basic features are based on the iPhone/iPod touch model, including the accelerometer, app store, some of the icons used for playing media, and, of course, the touch screen.

There are other criticisms as well. During the event, a comment left on the Industry Standard by reader David Kuan read:

"1 hr into the event ... and I am heading towards snoozeville. Here are my iPad not-so-good impressions thus far ....

Bezel is too large
1/2 in is TOO THICK Even Kindle DX is thinner at 1/3 in
Full size QWERTY is nice but bad ergonomics when typing iPad on a flat surface
No SD slot for storage portability (A BIG MISS HERE!)
Phenomenal email? I must have dozed off during the "phenomenal" part
No camera? Sigh!
No FLASH support (MAJOR OUCH!)
IPS display means more power consumption and requiring backlight. Difficulty to read outdoors due to glare. OLED would be a much better choice but at this size it is yet to be economical for mass consumer target."

However, other people are very excited about the prospect of owning an iPad. There have been a huge number of iPad-related tweets saying "I want one," particularly after the pricing was announced -- the base $499 Wifi model seems to be within many people's budgets.

But the true gauge of the iPad will come when the devices ship in 60 days, and Apple releases sales figures later in the year. Wall Street thus far seems undecided, if Apple's stock price is anything to go by. It dipped to a low of about $200 during the beginning of Wednesday's demonstration, but the price had recovered to around $208 90 minutes later.

Sources and research: Engadget.com, news.ycombinator.com, Twitter, Google Finance, VentureBeat.com.

Image: VentureBeat.com

Video: Steve Job's iPad launch and demo

Ian Lamont is the author of The Social Enterprise blog on TheStandard.com. Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. He has written about the iPad on his personal blog, as well. See "iPod vs. iPad? The choice is obvious."

On24 touts virtual events as an alternative to the real thing

Ian Lamont — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:24:43 -0500

If you asked 100 random people what they dislike most about attending conferences, it's safe to say "travel," "scheduling," and "cost" would be at the top of the list for most of them. Finding the time to attend conferences and dealing with the hassles and costs associated with getting there can take away from benefits such as hearing experts talk and networking with industry colleagues.

Is there a better way? On24 thinks there is, with its virtual events platform. The product lets organizers create a virtual conference that participants can access via a Web browser. Through the Web interface, participants can watch pre-recorded presentations, visit virtual booths operated by vendors, and chat with vendor reps or other attendees, without having to leave the office. There are even areas to network with other attendees.

That's the idea, anyway. The Standard gave On24 a spin using an archived event by ION Geophysical. We were impressed with certain aspects of the service. It's not a 3D space like Second Life that you can navigate with an avatar, but it's not a typical browser-based Web conference, either. The interface is static, but is made to look like an exhibition hall, with virtual booths that attendees can visit at will. The photographic representation of an event space is a good way to connect with people who have attended real conferences or trade fairs but may not be familiar with online meetings.

Inside the virtual spaces, attendees can download product sheets, presentations, and videos, and attend live webcasts. The booths are staffed by vendor reps during live events, who can be reached via a simple text chat application. A chat app can also be used in the networking area, which also lets participants access message boards and take part in scheduled chats.

Despite the company's claim that no downloads or plugins are required to use the service, we hit a roadblock when attempting to view some of the videos, and were presented with a Windows Genuine Advantage configuration wizard associated with Windows Media Player. On24 says it also supports Real Media, Flash, and Silverlight for presentations, but these may also require software updates if you don't have the necessary components installed.

A bigger concern for any company that uses a virtual event service to attract or engage with people is whether they will get the same results as with face-to-face events. On24 claims that virtual events bring "all of the benefits and excitement of a physical event." The slogan for a competing product by Expos2 is "Real is so yesterday." However, a survey sponsored by the U.S. Travel Association last year found that most corporate executives are not convinced that Web meetings and teleconferences were as effective as in-person meetings.

On the other hand, cost and convenience may favor virtual solutions. Mark Szelenyi, On24's director of product marketing, says that its customers' shows can cost from $40,000 to more than $100,000, depending on the type of event and the number of live and on-demand webcasts. Real-world conferences may cost far more, particularly if speakers, staff, and attendees are flying in and using lots of conference center resources.

Sources and research: On24.com, On24's PR agency, emails with On24's Mark Szelenyi, Expos2.com, archived virtual event by ION Geophysical, ION Geophysical blog post, TheStandard.com

Image: A virtual booth operated by ION Geophysical in On24's virtual space

The Industry Standard's 2nd anniversary prediction market promotion: We need your suggestions!

Ian Lamont — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:47:31 -0500

On February 4, 2010, The Industry Standard's prediction market will mark its second anniversary. It's been a fun ride over the past two years, with hundreds of predictions and lots of interesting trends and feedback.

But to keep the prediction market rolling, we need your input. Specifically, we want usable suggestions based on current products, technology trends, or publicly reported data that can be turned into active predictions. And, we're willing to pay for it -- in Standard dollars, of course.

Readers have submitted a number of great suggestions in recent months, including "TechCrunch or Gawker Media acquisition announcement by the end of June?" and "iPhone App Store reaches 300,000 available apps by end of November 2010?". Considering all of the developments in the worlds of technology and business, and the obvious expertise of our readers, we think there are a lot more out there that would help boost the market.

To encourage participation, The Standard will grant S$25,000 (twenty-five thousand Standard dollars) to any registered user who submits a suggestion to the prediction market that gets approved as a prediction between now and February 5, 2010. For new users, that's a 25% premium on the default account value, and can be used to build your virtual wealth. Registration is a breeze.

The requirements for a successful prediction are simple: Think of something you think will happen (or not happen) in 2010 that relates to a technology product or trend. Check to see if it hasn't already been done or proposed. Then, write a brief description, method of judgment, and deadline for judgment, and submit it in our suggestion area. Our regular terms apply. Gadgets, IPOs, M&As, and numbers relating to social networks and software platforms have been popular areas in the past. You can also check out some other sites' 2010 predictions to get some ideas (see TechCrunch's "Top Ten Digital M&A Deals For 2010" and eWeek's "Apple Predictions for 2010: iPhone on Multiple Carriers, iSlate, Beatles").

Try to avoid off-topic predictions ("Ford sells N cars by March 31, 2010"), predictions that can't be decisively judged ("Company X's reputation declines in 2010"), or predictions that can't be judged this year -- those will be rejected. Don't worry about grammar or background information -- we'll clean that up -- but do try to include some reasoning that can help other participants bet on your prediction.

To get an idea of the types of predictions we're looking for, and the language that we use to describe the criteria for judgment, please view our current crop of approved predictions. If you have any questions about the prediction market or this promotion, feel free to contact me at ian@thestandard.com or leave a comment in the field below.

Ian Lamont
Managing Editor
The Industry Standard

Google Goggles: Businesses need to evaluate this disruptive technology now

Ian Lamont — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 11:26:46 -0500

Amidst the slew of Google announcements this week, one that really made me sit up in my chair concerned a new mobile service called Google Goggles. Now, I don't have an Android phone and therefore have no easy way to try out this "visual search" technology, but I know some people who have, and they have confirmed it works -- at least some of the time. While Google Goggles promises to bring convenience and coolness to owners of Android phones, I am convinced there will be a disruptive impact on certain types of businesses and organizations, especially as Google improves the recognition algorithms and ports the technology to other mobile platforms. This futuristic technology has really arrived, and IT and business managers will need to evaluate it as their customers, employees and competitors start to use it.

First, a quick explanation of what Google Goggles does. The visual search concept (which Google also calls "computer vision" and "search by sight") is simple: Use a mobile phone with a camera to identify objects and match them to search results or online databases, such as maps or e-commerce sites.

Practically speaking, this means you can take a picture of a book or a barcode, and be immediately taken to a list of search results, including its Amazon product page. Or, if you're visiting another city, viewing a distinctive landmark through your phone's screen can not only reveal its name but also its history, via links to Wikipedia or a local tourism website. The videos below demonstrate a few other examples, as well as other types of apps built on visual search -- including an augmented reality view of a local street and its merchants. In the not-so-distant future, I would expect to see special offers, guided tours, or virtual billboards triggered by bar codes or other objects in front of the lens.

Visual search dramatically lowers the bar to getting useful information quickly, using devices that many people already carry in their pockets and purses. It's not hard to imagine the impact on certain industries. Retailers, watch out -- comparison shopping just got a whole lot easier, at least for those items that Goggles can recognize (Google says Goggles is not so good with cars, clothing or food -- at least not yet). Visual search will also change tourism and business travel, as people use their phones to understand their environments and find places to eat and be entertained. People who use visual search won't need to rely on traditional sources of information, such as guide books and tour guides. Stores, products and restaurants with bad online reviews can be easily avoided, simply by looking through a mobile phone's camera.

How might visual search applications affect enterprise IT? The potential to let employees or partners navigate unfamiliar corporate campuses, customer sites, or training sessions with snapshots or barcodes are some obvious scenarios. Database applications based on SKUs or RFID may become less important in some shops, as it will be possible for a worker in a warehouse or factory floor to identify a part or product just by taking a picture of it. Visual search may lead to increased productivity, but it may also cause problems, if visual search results bring up negative or incorrect information.

The introduction of Google Goggles should serve as a wake-up call to many types of businesses. The augmented reality vision that Ray Kurzweil and other futurists have been talking about for years is really here. The technology is not widely used yet, but it will be. Now is the time to try out visual search, and evaluate some of the ways in which it might impact your own operations down the road.

Video: Google Goggles

Video: Google Goggles Demo Up Close

Sources and research: Computerworld.com, TechCrunch.com, PaidContent.org, Google videos and blog post.

Ian Lamont is the author of The Social Enterprise blog on TheStandard.com. Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Gartner points to "untapped" value in workplace-based social networks

Ian Lamont — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:01:36 -0500

Gartner Vice President Carol Rozwell first caught The Standard's attention in October, after her widely retweeted criticisms of those corporate IT and HR departments that follow a lockdown mantra toward social media (be sure to read her follow-up blog post, too). Rozwell's theory of enterprise social networking may not get the same amount of attention, but we think that it's just as important.

The press release for Rozwell's report is a bit jargony, but the basic premise makes sense: The network of connections that exist in any workplace -- the communications and information flows between employees, partners, and customers -- represent an "untapped information asset" that can be quantified and analyzed for patterns of influence, relative importance in the organization, and even economic value. Management can use this data to identify key influencers or the teams that create bottlenecks, and make changes in order to make operations more efficient, move forward on promising new projects, or head off potential disruptions.

Of course, anyone who works in an organization probably knows who the key influencers are, and can readily point to the bottlenecks as well. However, the idea that these relationships can be quantified brings a framework for measuring their relative importance, and gives rise to the possibility of identifying people or issues which may not have a high profile, but are nevertheless vitally important to the network.

Rozwell's full report, "Using Social Network Analysis to Inform a Pattern-Based Strategy," is available to Gartner clients.

Sources and research: TheStandard.com, blogs.gartner.com, Gartner press release

Image: ilamont/Creative Commons attribution 2.0 generic

Ian Lamont is the author of The Social Enterprise blog on TheStandard.com. Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Wikipedia loses editors: A crowdsourcing reality check, or a failure of a different kind?

Ian Lamont — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:27:20 -0500

Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia built on the backs of a seemingly never-ending supply of free labor, is in a bit of a bind: Many contributors are throwing in the towel. As reported in a page one story in Monday's Wall Street Journal, "unprecedented numbers of the millions of online volunteers who write, edit and police it are quitting." And, the article adds, not enough new blood is coming online to replace the quitters.

While it may be tempting to view this as a failure of the "crowdsourcing" model, the article hints at another issue that has bedeviled software for decades: Barriers to entry increasing to the point where users no longer want to use it. Wikipedia's obscure markup language has always been a turnoff for new contributors, but the introduction of various rules over the years to counteract spam, vandalism, conflicts of interest and other problems has made contributing even minor updates an exercise in frustration. Try linking to a blog containing more information on the subject at hand, or creating an entry for a topic or person that is not yet included in Wikipedia. If the contribution isn't blocked or changed, there's a good chance it will be deleted by overzealous editors who think it's not worthy of inclusion (see "Deletionpedia: Where Wikipedia entries go to die"). The Wall Street Journal notes that dealing with the angry debates over certain articles can wear down even experienced editors. It's not at all surprising that many people simply say, why bother?

But is this situation really much different than the frustrations people encounter with other kinds of software that are difficult to understand or operate, or present other barriers to entry? Marc Benioff's book Behind The Cloud cites an old Gartner research stat that claimed 65% of Siebel licenses were never used. The implication: The Siebel CRM applications were too hard to install and too hard to use, so many people didn't even try.

One doesn't have to look far for other examples. Who in your office has actually figured out how to use the advanced features of Lotus Notes or Microsoft Word? How many people in your circle of friends have given up trying to update their antivirus software or device drivers because the stupid installation disc is nowhere to be found?

The moral of the story: If a product is too hard or frustrating to use, or there are too many barriers to entry, people will turn away -- or turn to something else. Apple's successes with iTunes, the iPod, and now the iPhone are proof that easy-to-use software and hardware not only can attract new users, but also can leave established competitors in the dust. Wikipedia is fortunate in that there isn't any other broadly focused online encyclopedia that offers a better experience for contributions. But if Google figures out a way to supercharge its languishing Knol service -- or Wikipedia's PageRank value declines in Google searches -- there might be an opening for an alternative service to flourish.

Sources and research: Wall Street Journal, Behind The Cloud, TheStandard.com

Ian Lamont is the author of The Social Enterprise blog on TheStandard.com. Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Linden Lab swats down BBC report on Second Life, says consumer market is "primary focus"

Ian Lamont — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:42:41 -0500

When it comes to Second Life, some people just can't forget the bursting of the hype bubble following the first early wave of excitement. I harped on the reality check for in-world corporate activities too, but that was years ago. For some strange reason, the BBC still thinks it's news, judging by Lauren Hansen's "What happened to Second Life?" article posted last week on the BBC News Magazine.

Second Life's parent company, Linden Lab, clearly felt misled. An official Second Life blog post republished the BBC's original pitch ("[Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon] was recently interviewed via email by a reporter for the BBC who was working on a story that would be "a look at Second Life today - what's it up to, where's it going, why so quiet in the media after such great press a few years ago, etc.") and implied that the reporter hadn't really experienced Second Life ("we'd love to bring her inworld so she can see firsthand that there's much more to the virtual world").

But I was more interested in some of the other issues that came up in the email interview. The Second Life blog post published what looks to be a complete transcript, including this exchange relating to Linden Lab's recently announced business services:

BBC question: With Enterprise is Second Life gearing its direction more toward a business client? Considering there are other business-focused platforms out there, is this more the way of SL's future?

M Linden (Mark Kingdon) answer: No. Enterprise and education are important markets for us; the launch of the beta for Second Life Enterprise is a key step forward in serving those markets, and more is planned for the future, including a new entry path tailored for enterprise users of Second Life that we plan to roll out early in 2010. However, the great majority of our business is still the individual consumer, and that is our primary focus. This works because we are a platform that can accommodate almost any use-case a user can imagine.

This is important. Some individual consumers who regularly use the virtual world are concerned that their needs are being put on the back burner in favor of pleasing Linden Lab's corporate customers. Kingdon's words may be reassuring on this point, but Second Life Enterprise's hidden, behind-the-firewall virtual spaces will go a long way toward reducing such sentiment, as most consumer users -- who far outnumber corporate users -- won't be exposed to what's going on in the enterprise environments.

Whether the mainstream press will move past the "businesses are abandoning Second Life" meme is less certain, however. To observers who visit Second Life infrequently, it may appear that corporations and large organizations are no longer using the world, when in fact they are simply using it in less-visible ways.

Sources and research: Computerworld.com, official Second Life blog, BBC.co.uk, virtualworldsnews.com, Cnet, Massively.com

Image: Second Life screenshot

Ian Lamont is the author of The Social Enterprise blog on TheStandard.com. Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Salesforce's Chatter: Is it a collaboration tool or enterprise social network?

Ian Lamont — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:02 -0500

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck. That is, unless you're Salesforce.com, and you're talking about its new Chatter application. While observers have looked at features like profiles, status updates, Twitter and Facebook integration as proof that Chatter is an enterprise-grade social network, the company and its executives are taking pains to call it something else -- a "social platform," or, as carefully noted by Salesforce CEO and co-founder Marc Benioff, a collaboration tool:

Salesforce was careful to position Chatter as a collaboration tool, not a "social this or social that" because there's such a glut of social networking tools, [Benioff] said, and customers are more willing to pay for collaboration software.

"We really want to talk about collaboration, because that really is a budget item for our customers," Benioff said.

The verbal massaging extends to some of the feature descriptions. On the product website, "social content" doesn't mean updates or links, but rather documents, spreadsheets and presentations that workers can share with one another. The demo video (below) refers to "social computing," meaning social networks like Facebook.

Another Salesforce co-founder, Executive Vice President of Technology Parker Harris, also stayed on message with the collaboration concept in a talk with ZDNet editors (see video below). "I think about our platform as a collaboration platform," Harris said. "You're building applications to collaborate around data in the enterprise on a trusted system."

So, are Benioff and Parker right to call Chatter a collaboration engine, or is it really just a social networking tool, dressed up with document sharing and some enterprise-grade hooks into Salesforce.com's other apps? Until Chatter rolls out next year, you'll have to make your own judgments. The videos below are a good place to start.

Video: "Parker Harris chatters about Chatter"

Video: Salesforce Chatter Demo

Sources and research: BusinessWeek, altimetergroup.com, blogs.ZDNet.com, TheStandard.com, VentureBeat.com, Salesforce.com

Image: Demo video screenshot

Ian Lamont is the author of The Social Enterprise blog on TheStandard.com. Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Ray Ozzie: IE will be the "best browser"

Ian Lamont — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:51:57 -0500

"We'll work to ensure that Internet Explorer is the best browser for Windows without compromise. A standards-based, modern browser to its core." That's Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie's pledge during his PDC keynote earlier this week (see video below at 6:30). Whether the company can keep it is another story. Skeptics will point to IE's tortured history with Web standards and delayed implementation of popular features such as tabbed browsing. Others will note that Mozilla and Google are constantly innovating with their own browsers, and IE will have a hard time keeping up. And don't even get people started on browser speed tests.

But when it comes to Microsoft's cloud vision, IE developers will at least have a leg up on how the browser and other Microsoft software components will hook into Azure. And it is Azure that is the main focus of Ozzie's keynote. If you have a few hours to spare, watch what he and other Microsoft engineers have to say about how the various pieces will fit together:

Video: PDC 09 Day One Keynote

Image: Ray Ozzie, Professional Developers Conference video screenshot

Sources and research: Cnet, Wired, TheStandard.com, Microsoft press website, email and phone call with Waggener Edstrom (Microsoft PR).

Good vibes for Microsoft's "point-and-click cloud computing for the masses"

Ian Lamont — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:02:27 -0500

People who write code for a living have a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. Over the years the press has played up the hate (and the hype), but today I thought I would turn to one Microsoft software project which is generating genuine interest and kudos from some developers.

The product is Microsoft's free Web Platform Installer, now on version 2.0, which lets developers quickly install Microsoft's Internet Information Services and a boatload of free Web applications on top of IIS, including WordPress, Moodle, SugarCRM, and Acquia for Drupal. The fact that this Microsoft product is playing nice with open source software is remarkable in itself, but what has gotten developers particularly interested is the cloud potential. Blogger and developer Jorge Escobar yesterday said:

"I was blown away with the concept behind this application. Basically Windows has introduced point-and-click cloud computing for the masses and it's doing it in a way that resembles the iPhone application directory but for web applications.

I hate to say it but it's brilliant."

Not everyone who has seen the Web Platform Installer is so impressed, however. Last week, developer, author and podcaster Kevin Yank acknowledged that Web PI makes it "easy to set up IIS as a development environment for PHP which has been really painful in the past," but said he believed it is not getting much traction in the marketplace, where WAMP or LAMP installations are often preferred. He also said open-source developers are suspicious of anything Microsoft does, which would slow adoption.

But it's the cloud connection and the potential hooks to Azure -- Microsoft's soon-to-be-launched cloud computing platform -- that also come into play. More than a few developers commenting on a Hacker News thread that they were looking forward to Web PI applications being tied into Azure instances, even though someone identifying himself as working on the Azure platform made pains to note that the two products are "really quite distinct".

Nevertheless, the idea that Microsoft is simplifying and opening up its cloud-related offerings, and removing development obstacles and other potential barriers to entry (such as billing-related headaches) is enough to draw a lot of interest and maybe even turn the page on some of the bad feelings resulting from its bruising battles with the open-source community. In the months to come, the big question on many people's minds will be how Azure measures up in production environments, and how it works with both Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications.

Sources and research: news.ycombinator.com, SitePoint podcast #36, Microsoft.com, jungleg.com, sriramkrishnan.com, hanselman.com, kevinyank.com

Image: akakumo/flickr (creative commons/commercial use license)

Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

The write-once, run-anywhere dream fades as languages and platforms proliferate

Ian Lamont — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:23:44 -0500

Remember when Java was going to take over the world? The idea of writing an application once and then having it run on a multitude of different platforms was a compelling vision that would have a major impact on enterprise development and CS education.

Of course, that was before a host of new Web frameworks and mobile platforms appeared on the scene. Few hold out hope for the "write once, run anywhere" dream these days, and in fact, Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk thinks the Tower of Babel situation is going to become even more pronounced in the coming year:

"Between cloud fabrics, programming language proliferation, mobile application development and the spike in development framework popularity, development targets have been fragmenting for several years now. We are more or less in full retreat from the one time promise of write once, run anywhere as an industry. I see nothing on the horizon that will throttle or even slow this trend; if anything, the increasing volume of cloud platforms and the surge in interest in mobile development will accelerate this trend.

This has significant implications for purveyors of middleware, application development tools and cloud platforms, but also for those charged with setting enterprise technology standards. The CIO's job is going to get harder in 2010, because picking a winner from the myriad language, framework and platform options will be much more difficult than picking a safe option."

It's not hard to imagine what can go wrong for CIOs who back the wrong horse. Platforms and standards that fail to take hold eventually translate to additional development work, hiring and training headaches, software costs, and friction with customers and partners. Take the mobile apps space. Shops that made big bets on Windows Mobile and J2ME a few years ago have watched as a new generation of smartphones and mobile platforms have come onto the scene and upended the marketplace.

Unfortunately, there's no crystal ball which will predict the long-term winners and losers. So, for the time being, navigating the proliferation of platforms is will require tried-and-true evaluation skills, as well as a healthy dose of common sense. It means keeping a close eye on the evolving marketplace, carefully listening to peers and trusted advisors, and treading warily when it comes to vendor hype and FUD.

Image: Brughel's Tower of Babel, fimoculous/flickr (creative commons/commercial use license)

Sources and research: RedMonk.com, News.Ycombinator.com

Second Life Enterprise to bring security, enterprise apps to virtual meetings

Ian Lamont — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:55:57 -0500

Big news from Linden Lab: The company has officially launched an open beta for Second Life Enterprise, and says it is planning a marketplace for enterprise applications and virtual goods such as collaboration tools and business environments.

Linden Lab says the services can be used for events, product prototyping, and simulations. But one of the most interesting aspect of the announcement relates to security. Second Life Enterprise lets companies run the virtual world on their own network, much like a corporate intranet. Companies which had previously shied away from the virtual world because of concerns about proprietary data or 3D models living on Second Life's public-facing servers can now host the world within their own security perimeter, and according to their own technical and work policies -- for instance, the service offers LDAP integration and administrators can have employees use their real names for avatars.

Justin Bovington, the CEO of Rivers Run Red, was positive about the open beta. His company operates Immersive Workspaces, a turnkey corporate meeting and training service that has been part of the Second Life Enterprise private beta. In an email to the Standard, Bovington said:

We see the behind-the-firewall solution as a very important next step. It's giving the market what they've wanted: security, privacy and the ability, working with people like Rivers Run Red, to develop bespoke applications. This was the main point picked up and highlighted by LL's competitors. We're going to see a greater adoption level now, as it was one of the main things that would derail the corporate buy-in. We also think that Corporates will create a mixture of hybrid behind-the-firewall closed-off spaces on their Intranets and a private, gated Internet-accessible space for their partners and collaborators.

However, Bovington sounded a note of caution on the Second Life Work Marketplace. "It has be less Xstreet, more Wall Street. It has to reflect relevance, rather than drowning us all in deluge of content: clothing, furniture and avatars," he wrote, adding "if [Linden Lab] attracts the right people to develop these apps, this could be the tipping point."

Linden Lab says pricing for Second Life Enterprise starts at $55,000. The beta will run through Q4 of 2009, with general availability expected during the first half of 2010. The company said the Second Life Work Marketplace has a closed alpha planned for the end of Q1 2010, and the product launch expected in the first half of 2010.

Image: Linden Lab

Sources and research: Metanomics.net, Second Life Enterprise website, Linden Lab/Second Life press release, email interview with Rivers Run Red.

Tweeting at the office: Have you checked your work contract lately?

Ian Lamont — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:07:45 -0400

Hey you -- the developer sitting in that suburban cube farm, happily twittering away about going to lunch, the bug report you're filing, and that startup idea that's been bouncing around your head lately. We hate to break it to you, but the work contract that you signed gives your company ownership of those tweets ... not to mention any Facebook posts, LinkedIn profile updates, and YouTube videos that you may have worked on or uploaded from a work machine or over your company's network.

Don't believe us, or think that those clauses are like EULAs and website terms of service that no one pays attention to? Well, we'd like to think so too, but this post by analyst Jeremiah Owyang outlines the issues. The part that really made us pay attention was a comment that Owyang cited from Attorney Lisa Borodkin relating to the role email already plays in trials and lawsuits:

"By now I hope everyone realizes that thousands of lawyers every day are fully employed in reviewing millions of company emails that have been subpoenaed in lawsuits all over the world. As long as a company reminds everyone that they have no right of privacy in anything that goes through the company's computer systems, and that this extends beyond email to social networks, then employers and employees can undertake these activities mutually aware of the risks and rewards. The hope is that both will find shared value in mixing social media with work and allocate the potential economic rewards in an equitable manner."

Click through to Owyang's post to see a list of recommendations for employees and employers. Some of them may be hard to follow through, but in light of the increasingly large role of social media and user-generated content networks and the continuing blurring of work and personal time, they are well worth considering.

Sources and research: www.web-strategist.com, lisaborodkin.com, www.callahan-law.com

Image: Moresheth/flickr (creative commons license, commercial use)

Net Views: Collaboration around files vs. collaboration with people

Net Views — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 06:03:56 -0400

"Users who have spent years primarily working with PC-based office automation suites such as Microsoft Office, tend to favour the file orientation and can find it unnerving to work in a Web 2.0 environment where people can be editing the same page at the same time. ... Similarly, users accustomed to free-flowing wikis and blogs can stumble over the process and the more-structured requirements when using document repositories. It is this mismatch between expectations and working styles that lies at the heart of many projects facing issues with user adoption."

– Jeff Mann, Gartner, "Gartner Says 80 Per Cent of Enterprise Collaboration Platforms Will Primarily Be Based on Web 2.0 Techniques by 2013"

Video: Google stresses "transparency," public content in Social Search results

Ian Lamont — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:24:36 -0400

Google has rolled out its new Social Search experiment with an eye toward mitigating the type of criticism that envelops Facebook whenever it updates its news feed or other basic services. In the two-minute, 51-second video below, Google engineer Maureen Heymans patiently explains how Social Search works, and is careful to stress the service's "transparency" (cited four times) and user control/choice (also mentioned four times). The second video, featuring Matt Cutts, also emphasizes that the results are from peoples' public social media content, such as Twitter and blogs, as opposed to private content, such as instant messages.

Note, however, that you may not even notice Social Search; you need to be registered for Google services such as Gmail or Google Docs and signed in to see the results, and it's still being rolled out (we had to manually activate it from the link on the official blog post about the launch). In addition, the results appear at the bottom of the page, meaning those people who don't scroll down the first page of search results will not be aware of Social Search.

Video: Social Search demonstration

Video: How Google Social Search works

Image: Matt Cutts, YouTube screen capture

Sources and research: Explanatory video by Google's Maureen Heymans, Official Google Blog, Google, VentureBeat

Amazon Relational Database Service hits the cloud, but users wonder what will happen to SimpleDB

Ian Lamont — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:09:11 -0400

(Updated with comments from Amazon) Users of Amazon's cloud computing services are buzzing about yesterday's announcement of Amazon's Relational Database Service. Through the official press release and an Amazon Web Services blog post by Jeff Barr, the company described the service as a "fully featured" MySQL 5.1 database, with 20 databases per AWS account, 1 TB of storage per database, and metrics (CPU utilization, free space, etc.) provided by Amazon's CloudWatch. Rates are charged by the DB instance hour, plus additional costs for data transfers, provisioned storage, and I/O requests. According to Amazon Web Services Vice President Adam Selipsky, the launch of RDS provides customers with another database option, besides the existing SimpleDB product and enterprise-grade database engines running on Amazon's EC2 service.

Clearly, the Amazon RDS announcement is a big deal for developers and DBAs familiar with relational databases and MySQL-based applications, as well as those who were critical of SimpleDB's limitations. But some SimpleDB supporters are wondering how the service will be affected by the introduction of Amazon RDS. The press release makes an effort to portray SimpleDB as a popular offering, and Barr's blog post describes the two services as complimentary, but users on the AWS forum have begun to question the long-term outlook for SimpleDB. "One has to wonder if it was worth the investment to learn how to build applications totally in the cloud with SimpleDB," said a user identified as Roger Moffat. "Will SimpleDB still be around in two years time?" Developer Mitch Garnaat, responding on the thread and his own blog, said Amazon Web Services treated SimpleDB as "a bit of a red-headed stepchild" without a clear or consistent strategy. However, Garnaat, who has been using SimpleDB and Amazon RDS since both products were in private beta, also believes that the two services are complimentary. "There are a lot of applications out there that can benefit from the lightweight, super-scalable, and easy to use qualities of SimpleDB," he said on his blog post. "MySQL simply can't compete on those dimensions."

In a follow-up phone call, Garnaat told the Standard that "there's been some tension within SimpleDB to make it more SQL-like," but he added that the introduction of RDS gives Amazon an opportunity to differentiate between the two offerings. Garnaat also said he believes there is a bigger potential market for RDS than SimpleDB, because so many applications are already built on top of MySQL and less coding is required to bring them into Amazon's cloud using RDS.

When asked by The Standard whether Amazon planned to change the SimpleDB service, Selipsky said no. He also stated that Amazon intended to "keep on investing" in SimpleDB.

Sources and research: Amazon Web Services forums, Amazon Web Services blog and press release, HighScalability.com, Elastician.com, phone call and emails with Mitch Garnaat, blog.rightscale.com, phone call with Adam Selipsky and Kay Kinton of Amazon.

If your company uses social media, videoconferencing, collaboration software or other tools to better connect with employees, partners, or customers, The Industry Standard wants to hear about it! Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com if you are interested in being featured on The Standard.

Ian's bio and disclosures are located here. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Industry Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters. You can also join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

Facebook users react to the updated news feed: Change it back!

Ian Lamont — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:22:00 -0400

Approximately 14,000 people per hour. That's the rate of new registrations for the Facebook group "Change Facebook back to normal!" As of noon on Monday, the group had 1,019,216 members, many of opposed to the design and functionality changes introduced on Friday. The main sticking point, besides the fact that it's different than what people were used to, is the way the default News Feed of friends' updates gives more prominence to items that have been liked or commented. There is a link right at the top of the screen that lets people switch to the "Live Feed" of all updates, but that's enough for many users. "Do not like the live feed news feed at all!" was one typical comment spotted on the protest group's wall. "I don't have time to go back and forth plus I might miss something!" However, others noted that it's possible to switch back to the old feed setup by clicking on "More" in Facebook's left navigation and dragging "Status Updates" to the top of the list, over "News Feed" and everything else.

Despite the size of the protest, The Standard doesn't think Zuckerberg et al will actually revert the default feed appearance to what it looked like before last Friday's update. Unlike anger over terms of service or privacy-related issues, protests over minor design changes don't seem to sway the company, as previous protest efforts have shown.

Sources and research: Facebook, TheStandard.com

ProtonMedia CEO touts Windows 7, SharePoint integration for ProtoSphere virtual meetings

Ian Lamont — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:35:03 -0400

This month's Windows 7 launch is seen as an opportunity by thousands of enterprise software vendors to update their own offerings and gain an edge on the competition. Among the growing number of virtual meetings platforms, ProtonMedia is touting the integration of its ProtoSphere virtual meetings and training service (see video, below) with the larger Microsoft applications ecosystem, including SharePoint, the collaboration platform which Microsoft claims may have as many as 130 million users. The Standard asked ProtonMedia CEO Ron Burns about how his company sees the virtual meetings landscape changing as Windows 7 and other software tools gain a larger enterprise profile.

The Industry Standard: How does the current version of ProtoSphere integrate with SharePoint and other enterprise collaboration tools?

Ron Burns: Among the several collaboration tools available in ProtoSphere, SharePoint is our newest, and it may at this point be the most pervasive tool already available in enterprise infrastructure worldwide. Teams can securely bring content from their company's SharePoint infrastructure into ProtoSphere's 3-D world through the use of our Media Carousel functionality. Once there, the virtual teams can share the documents with each other, edit, modify, change, and write the content back to their SharePoint infrastructure. The Media Carousels support any file type that can be added to a SharePoint site such as MS Office document and media files such as audio and video. All uploads from the users to ProtoSphere are fully encrypted, and those assets are then passed to SharePoint through the use of single sign-on. Any document changes/additions that are performed solely through SharePoint are automatically updated for those users who are in the environment.

As far as other collaboration tools, ProtoSphere integrates various social networking and knowledge sharing tools that most employees have become used to over the last couple years. Blogs, wikis and other tools allow users to engage information and each other at a higher level in engaging virtual environments.

TIS: How will new features in Windows 7 or its SharePoint connections change enterprise collaboration, and what opportunities do you see for virtual environments like yours?

Burns: Enterprise adoption of Windows 7 is as important a measure of success as any other. Windows 7 essentially is meeting a pent-up demand among enterprises. For several years now, ProtonMedia has been selling ProtoSphere into a large enterprise customer base. We have often seen a desire of the CIO or CTO level buyer for our product, but large legacy installation of operating systems as old as Windows 2000 have slowed adoption. ProtoSphere runs wonderfully well on Windows 7, and we see the enterprise adoption of Windows 7 to be a real opportunity for us to increase the use of enterprise virtual environments.

TIS: What other text or Web-based collaboration tools do you think have potential to improve the virtual meeting experience, either through direct integration or by being used in concert?

Burns: We've always seen the addition of blogs, wikis, and other social applications as being a valuable asset to people working within virtual environments. That's why we added those kinds of tools to ProtoSphere from the very beginning. The feedback we've received from customers is that social networking tools such as these enhance the user experience and level of engagement inside a virtual environment like ProtoSphere. They allow for a level of persistence and continuous exchange of knowledge within the space .... For example, if a series of events held in the environment are centered around a particular topic, users are able to share their own relevant knowledge with each other in a persistent way, that goes beyond those time bound events. ProtoSphere is becoming a convergent space, that securely links both behind the firewall enterprise applications, and internet applications that offer the enterprise user additional functionality.

Video: Basic navigation in ProtoSphere

Sources and research: Emails with Ron Burns and PR, ProtonMedia/ProtoSphere case study, ProtonMedia.com, YouTube. Attempted ProtoSphere trial but was unable to log on.

Image: ProtoSphere screenshot (ProtonMedia)

Collaboration suite from IBM, Canonical targets potential Windows 7 customers

Ian Lamont — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:48:19 -0400

Apple isn't the only company hijacking Microsoft's Windows 7 launch. IBM and Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, also announced this week a cloud- and Linux-based collaboration package that they say is cheaper than Microsoft-based alternatives.

The IBM Client for Smart Work is available for Ubuntu and Red Hat for government. It includes Lotus Notes and other Lotus applications such as Symphony and LotusLive.com, an online collaboration suite which lets distributed groups manage activities and tasks, share documents, network, and hold Web meetings with up to 1,000 participants. The companies say that since the package is based on Eclipse, Linux and Web standards, it can integrate with "any" third-party software.

The press release claims that Microsoft shops considering a Windows 7 migration face costs of up to $2,000 for many users, owing in part to added hardware requirements for Microsoft's new operating system. By contrast, IBM and Canonical state that their package can run on companies' existing PCs, as well as low-cost client machines and even netbooks. The companies claim that the IBM Client for Smart Work package can reduce total costs of ownership by 50%. However, specific pricing options (see below) as well as additional professional services muddy the TCO waters. The Standard also asked IBM how the companies calculated TCO, and whether they took into account specific features found in Microsoft's Office or SharePoint collaboration suites, but did not receive a reply.

Interestingly, the IBM Client for Smart Work package was designed for customers in West and South Africa. But IBM told the Standard it is also being sold in the United States after "media, analysts, customers and partners around the world" pressured the company to sell it outside of emerging markets.

When asked about pricing, IBM sent this response:

Option A: A Starting Point
$3 LotusLive iNotes/user/month
(email, calendaring)
$0 Symphony web download
$0 Canonical Ubuntu web download
TOTAL: $ 36 per user per year

Option B: Add Social software capabilities to Option A
$9.75 LotusLive Connections /user/month
(dashboard, file sharing, personal profile
networking, contact management, groups,
project management, instant messaging)
TOTAL: $ 153/user/year

Option C: Typical Solution
$74.5 Lotus Notes/iNotes (email, calendar, todo, contacts), Lotus Sametime entry (Instant messaging, chat, presence awareness), Lotus Quickr entry (file sharing) / user first year, $25.75 maintenance subsequent years
$0 Lotus Symphony
TOTAL: $74.50 per user first year
.....$25.75 per user each additional year for the IBM Lotus software

Option D: Add virtual desktop capabilities
(supports windows and linux guests) @ $49 per user first year. $10/user/year for subsequent years.

Option E: Add Canonical support costs

In addition, IBM is offering professional services from IBM Global Technology Services and IBM Business Partners to aid with installation and other integration tasks.

Sources and research: LotusLive.com, IBM.com, IBM/Canonical press release, Canonical.com, email with IBM Communications.

Image: LotusLive.com

Comment below, or email Ian at ian@thestandard.com. Follow Ian on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ilamont. Standard updates and asides are available at twitter.com/the_standard and in our newsletters, and you can join our Industry Standard Facebook page and LinkedIn group.

#w2s: We follow Twitter on the final day of the Web 2.0 Summit, so you don't have to

Ian Lamont — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:05:35 -0400

We have to hand it to John Battelle, Tim O'Reilly and the other folks behind the Web 2.0 Summit: They really know how to put on a show. The presentations, names and news breaking from the floor of the Westin San Francisco this week were enough to give attendees serious whiplash, and the tech press and analysts will be digesting the developments revealed at the summit for months.

The Standard couldn't make it, but we wanted to share some of the highlights from the final day of the summit, including reports, analysis and interpretations of the talks by Paul Ottelini, Tim Armstrong, Sergey Brin, and Adobe's Shantanu Narayen. We can't confirm the accuracy of any tweeted quotes, but be sure to check out some of the videos from all three days of the show which contain many of the talks in their entirety. To understand what the summit is about, see Battelle's and O'Reilly's opening remarks at the bottom of this post.

Here are the #w2s tweets that stood out, presented in no particular order:

@RodCrawford: Bing party seems to have wiped out a lot of the attendees this morning (where are they all?) #w2s

@moyalynne: I may just make it through the morning @web2summit. Though it's be hard to top yesterday at #w2s. http://pic.gd/c8674

@BarbaraKrasnoff: RT @sgaudin: Otellini at #w2s: Netbooks will look more like smartphones, getting smaller, adding GPS. Me: Then they won't be netbooks.

@jobsworth: Otellini: We have prototype devices going four years out that are not silicon based. And no, we won't tell you what they're based on. #w2s

@moyalynne: Paul Otellini / Intel cites lack of US government incentives as reason it costs 4x as much to build a factory here. #w2s

@ckawa: Um, safe but boring Otellini interview. Liked last year's energy and peek into the future better. #w2s

@mensogi: Has #w2s always been so product centric? More insights and inspirational concepts and less product announcements please.

@kitson: Ow. RT @jobsworth Otellini: Speech recognition has been 5yrs away for the last 30yrs. Still 5yrs away. #w2s #speech #speechrec

@RodCrawford: I wonder if Paul Otellini has ever been to Japan where most people browse the net using smartphones not PC's today? #w2s #web2

@juliocd: Battelle: "you refused my invitations to previous editions", Sergey Brin "no, I just didn't answered your emails" #w2s

@dberlind: Google founder sergey Brin @ #w2s: "Yahoo had a number of interesting innovations and I wish they'd continue to innovate in search"

@ginablaber: S Brin: I dispute the claim that Google dominates the economy of attention. People don't spend all their time in the Search box. #w2s

@stacyo: Google founder Sergey Brin on stage at #w2s "I use all search engines out there." http://twitpic.com/mimjw

@jimroth: no comment from sergey on whether google will come out with their own hardware device @ #w2s

@UberShoeDiva: @johnbattelle "Man you should go to Washington" after several non-answer answers Brin's given so far ;) #w2s

@glubbert: Sergey: I am using Chrome for Mac. The release is one of the disappointments of the Chrome project. #w2s

@Bianca_IABmx: Tom Hale from Lindenlab tells how 2nd Life survived the hype curve at #w2s. And yes, curiously they are still around http://pic.gd/843ad6

@dberlind: AOL CEO Tim Armstrong @ #w2s: "profitability and revenue growth [for AOL] is the tricky part.... AOL is actually very profitable"

@soolara: Fantastic, AOL is looking at taking a content management system seriously in new platform to support 5k journalists, etc. #w2s

@dberlind: AOL CEO Tim Armstrong @ #w2s: When invited to join AOL, realized there were a lot of assets that AOL had that he didn't realize it had.

@ginablaber: John Hegel/Deloitte: trend is long-term erosion of corporate profitability. Web2.0 tools reduce transactn time, improve data sourcing #w2s

@Ilana221: CEO of Adobe #w2s "print isn't dead by any stretch of the imagination" but it has to be relevant and personalized

@mchui: Shantanu Narayen: "In emerging markets, Adobe's market share is great but revenues suck (because of piracy)" #w2s

@moyalynne: Another window into why Omniture: "Print business models moving online; question is how do we transform to targeting relevant info." #w2s

@jobsworth: battelle: [to narayen] Why did you quietly bring in VoIP into the Flash stack? #w2s

@corinneurotic: adobe wants to offer flash in the iphone browser, defers to steve jobs. #w2s #apple #adobe

@web2summit: Narayen: 19 of the top 20 mobile platform companies working with Adobe to ship with flash. The company he didn't mention? Apple. #w2s

@JustinMclean: Adobe has no deal or announcment to do with Twitter unlike anyone else here :-) #w2s

@moyalynne: Narayen - "Approx 90% of Web moves over within a year to use each new version of Flash" - that's hundreds of millions of people ... #w2s

@jimroth: wordnik is pretty cool - an online dictionary with APIs #w2s not sure there is a business model here - like the font on the website

@moyalynne: Erin McKean ROCKS her tetris dress -- AND wordnik at @web2summit #w2s http://pic.gd/a35152

@AdoMatic: Bre Pettis who just presented "I make things" is bringing his robot (3D Printer) up to the MS Lounge to make stuff! Roxors! #w2s

@lwaldal: Please don't show the makerbot to my kid. She'd beg beg beg for one :) #w2s

@kraneland: The "fail whale" logo was created by a woman - Yiying Lu - not a man, as previously mentioned on stage: http://bit.ly/164fWj #w2s

@ckawa: Digital Globe's Walter Scott: Collects nearly 5x more raw data collected per day vs. Facebook for satellite imagery #w2

@jcb123: Learning a LOT about algae for energy. Still a ways off, but definitely seems practical. I guess the question is whether we can wait. #w2s

@muldrow: I'm going to go grow some algae in my hotel room. #w2s

@moyalynne: When Pichai talks about Chrome OS it sounds synonymous with the cloud: "Every app is a web app. You don't install/maintain software." #w2s

@Rathbone: 30 Million use Chrome as their primary browser #W2S

@harrymccracken: I was hoping we'd actually see Chrome OS during Google session this morning at #w2s. No such luck.

@lwaldal: Pichai "browsers are hot again" <-- like they weren't hot a decade ago? yet another browser can be a web dev compatibility headache #w2s

@muldrow: Remember when Microsoft got slammed for tightly integrating browser with operating system? #w2s

@jhagel: Sign of the maturing of the IT industry? @timoreilly wore suit 2 days in a row #w2s - bad sign

@ginablaber: Tim: Are we, as a society,mathematically savvy enough to understand today's economics? A Goolsbee: No. Need to change that in schools. #w2s

@optian: RT @rwang0: finding #w2s heavy on news releases. cntnt still good but not as cutting edge as year's past. | attendace lighter too I hear ...

@marissac: Using cell phones for microscopy and health diagnosis? It's coming accoring to lab at UC Berkeley #w2s

@jimroth: #w2s berkely guy is a great presenter. reminds me of larry lessig - cellscope on your cell phone - crazy!

@peteryugray: Funny that the webstream for #w2s keeps going back to the "what's the revenue model?" question for Twitter

@MasonJaclyn: #w2s - tough choices re Ignite winner but Cellscope could absolutely make a difference in developing markets

@UberShoeDiva: Military using Second Life world as a way for returning soldiers to get the emotional & mental help they need to reintegrate. #w2s

@lwaldal: if so then maybe the way to keep capitalism alive is to buy matching shoes at zappos before sitting together on a panel #w2s

@kcpike: For the Tim Armstrong interview, I want to know if AOL has a vault full of the unsent promotional CDs they used to constantly mail #w2s

@moyalynne: "Return on assets 3x more in 1965 than it is now - longterm sustained significant erosion of profitability" John Hagel/Deloitte&Touche #w2s

@qhardy: Jon Miller: "We will have an Internet that does fundamentally respect copyright." Not sure you can RT that. #w2s

@sonicric: why does john battelle have to be smug? he's engaging, smart, well informed. but he can be witty without the distasteful smugness #w2s

@mchui: Jon Miller (News Corp): There will be a CPM premium ad propoerties. There will be a vast swath of bulk ads. Middle will be squeezed. #w2s

@ubergizmo: #w2s J. Miller former AOL CEO said MySpace is more like Twitter than Facebook is... is this a joke? #myspace

@sazzollini: Mike Arrington just asked Jonathan Miller if NewsCorp is selling Photobucket today at #w2s

@mchui: Jonathan Miller (News Corp): "You'll see MySpace leapfrog ahead in terms of being an open platform." #w2s

@mchui: Jonathan Miller (Newscorp): "I'm obsessed with realtime online. It's not just Twitter, but architecture, philosophy, etc." #w2s

@sazzollini: I might check out MySpace based on their #w2s sessions. Never thought about it as a place to meet new people around common interests.

@doucet: "If you are going to be in the paid content business you need to raise the bar and provide real additional value" John Miller News Corp #w2s

@julesmaltz: At #w2s Surprised nobody talks about engineers driving innovation. Good products will follow good engineers. This is why Myspace loses.

@danfinnigan: Austan Goolsbee of President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board at Web 2.0 saying US needs growth in manufacturing exports? #w2s

@ginablaber: Economist Austan Goolsbee: we just had a financial crisis bigger than 1929. If we'd screwed it up, we'd be in another Great Depression. #w2s

@sradick: Thinking I maybe should have stayed home and went to #twtrcon instead of coming to SF for #w2s - buyers remorse?

Video: Web 2.0 Summit 09: Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle, Opening Remarks

Sources and research: YouTube, Twitter, InformationWeek.com, web2summit.com

Image: John Battelle giving opening remarks on day 1 of the Web 2.0 Summit (YouTube screen capture)

Real-time search and Twitter: What's in it for corporate America?

Ian Lamont — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:31:23 -0400

Judging by some of this week's headlines relating to Twitter and the search partnerships with Microsoft and Google, you'd think Elvis had suddenly reappeared and announced he was going to go back on tour. And while we agree that real-time search has a lot of potential, we're skeptical that by itself real-time search results on Bing will make a big dent in the way people and companies go about their daily business. What's missing from the party are the tools to effectively utilize this information.

Some companies may think that alerts are what's needed, just like the way that Google Alerts works now. Input a couple search terms (for instance, the name of your company and a new product, or that of a competitor), set up to receive them on a regular schedule or as they first appear in search results, and voila! When people start talking about these things on Twitter, some PR or marketing person will know about it, and can respond.

But the problem with this approach (besides the fact that Bing's rudimentary Twitter search service apparently doesn't offer alerts yet) is volume. Google Alerts is suitable for a Web-based world, in which a relatively small population of traditional publishers, bloggers, and specialist forums need to be monitored. But in the Twitterverse, we're talking about millions of individual publishers (i.e., customers) following all kinds of memes and talking about what they are seeing and doing. Take a company like Salesforce, and consider how many customers, partners, and developers are working with its software. If there's a software glitch or cloud hiccup, or even a new Salesforce.com advertisement, thousands of tweets might suddenly appear. Would you want your email inbox to be on the receiving end of that firehose, or sort through all of the alerts?

Fortunately, there are many companies out there that are approaching Twitter search not just as a notification issue, but as a much larger data-mining problem. Further, they are viewing it in the context of other media and social media discussions. There are already enterprise-grade products on the market by Jive and Nielsen that help companies monitor discussions, and even respond to PR crises (such as Nielsen's ThreatTracker). There are also simple, Twitter-specific sentiment engines, such as twitrratr.com (see its results for "Windows 7") and FlixPulse, which drills down on the Twitter conversations around movies. The question for these services, and the tools in the product pipeline from Microsoft and Google, are how well they can incorporate real-time results into the mix and help companies zoom into the issues and discussions that matter most. Because real-time Twitter search engine and simple alerts by themselves just won't cut it.

Sources and research: AllThingsD.com, Bing.com, TechCrunch.com, twitrratr.com, Jive.com, collectiveintellect.com, flixpulse.com/, Nielsen.com

Image: twitrratr.com

Outside the U.S., alternate social networks grow under Facebook's shadow

Ian Lamont — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:03:21 -0400

When it comes to social networks, Facebook and MySpace dominate in the United States. But if your business takes you to other parts of the world, or you have to connect with colleagues and customers in other markets, it's important to remember that a multititude of smaller social networks have not only been established, they've attracted huge numbers of users.

You may have heard of Bebo (popular in the U.K. and acquired by AOL last year for $850 million) or Friendster (an early MySpace competitor in the U.S., now retrenched in Southeast Asia) but there are many more. In Latin America, Hi5 has established a strong presence. Eastern Europe has a fragmented landscape, with Poland dominated by a local player while other countries are the battleground for international networks such as Facebook and Hi5. In China, there are a patchwork of social networks, ranging from 51.com to the portal tencent.

The implications of the global social networking landscape can be felt by companies on several levels. International marketing efforts have to consider not only what networks are popular in each of the target markets, but also what demographic groups use them and what features are available in terms of advertising capabilities and fan pages. Companies with global workforces may also see unusual patterns as coworkers in different countries seek to make connections and join networks that they otherwise might not use. If there is resistance -- or restrictions -- to certain social networks, there may be a corresponding drop in the ability for distributed workforces to bond.

Even though some of the smaller networks are thriving, Facebook's dominant global position cannot be ignored. Facebook traffic and signups continue to grow at a blinding pace all over the world, and it is a force that many smaller networks will have to contend with. Orkut, a social network operated by Google, has reportedly been losing ground in India to Facebook. Other markets may also succumb, thanks to existing (and growing) Facebook beachheads, international networks created by students and expatriates, Facebook's crowdsourced localization efforts, and, importantly, Facebook Lite, which can give a social networking experience even on limited bandwidth networks.

Sources and research: Nytimes.com, Hi5.com, nasza-klasa.pl, bebo.com, Friendster.com, Businessweek.com, Watblog.com, TechCrunch.com, tencent.com, 51.com, Venturebeat.com, Facebook.com, TheStandard.com

Image: NASA

Abandoned sims in Second Life: Don't forget to turn out the lights

Ian Lamont — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:31:07 -0400

When will they ever learn? Time and time again over the last few years we've seen corporate marketing efforts built around elaborate sims in Second Life, and later abandoned as the campaigns end or new efforts take priority. Ending a marketing campaign is not bad in itself -- no one (with the possible exception of McDonald's) wants their marketing campaign to last forever. But in Second Life, the problem is the sims live on, and sometimes attract the hapless wanderer ... or potential customer. The ghost towns are not only creepy, they can be frustrating, especially to those interested in learning more about the company or its products, or seeking to engage in some way.

Case in point: Cisco's Virtual Palomar West, a sim that was part of a 2008 campaign promoting "The Hospital of the Future." Besides being able to tour the facility (which mirrors a real-world hospital scheduled to be completed in California in 2011) there are a bunch of technology attractions, as depicted in the video below. Cisco used the sim to showcase its "Medical-Grade Network" and networked automation systems.

But that was last year. Visit Virtual Palomar West now, and you're greeted by a very attractive sim that's totally deserted and mostly broken. The front door is open, and visitors are issued an ID bracelet to their inventory, but elevators and access to "patient rooms" are disabled. It's also easy to get trapped in spaces off of the main lobby (we had to teleport out twice).

Cisco is not the only offender. We recently visited the long-abandoned and utterly useless Reuters sim, and teleporting to Microsoft's .NET Developers and TechNet Simulator dropped us in the ocean off of the barren "Silverlight Island" -- which of course was deserted, except for a few half-finished projects.

Clearly, derelict sims are a liability. Things don't always work, no one is around to help explain or guide visitors, and the marketing message or purported function gets lost in the frustration. Following the completion of a campaign, buildings or sims should have their interior spaces closed off and/or explanatory signage or teleport points should be left for visitors to explain what they are looking at or where they should go for more information. Or, companies can do what Intel has done with at least one of its old Second Life developer sims -- erase it from the virtual world.

Video: Cisco Hospital of the Future - Palomar West

Sources and research: software.intel.com, Palomar Pomerado Health Foundation website, Virtual Worlds News, YouTube, Second Life.

Image: Screenshot of Virtual Palomar West exterior

Independent Twitter data shows exponential tweet growth

Ian Lamont — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:59:04 -0400

We don't want to beat a dead horse regarding how hot Twitter is, but the data from an independent tweet-counting service is so compelling we just had to share. According to GigaTweet, the number of tweets passed the five billion mark earlier this week. We're not sure how long the service has been going or how its dynamic counter measures tweets, but Mashable's Barb Dybwad notes that the counter stood at nearly 1.6 billion tweets on April 23, meaning in six months Twitter has apparently experienced more than 200% growth in the number of tweets.

Of course, when it comes to hot Internet services with a social twist, exponential growth has a way of leveling out as the population of potential users is tapped out or people move on to new and cooler things -- just ask the founders of MySpace. Another question: How many users does Twitter have? This guest post on TechCrunch by the CEO of RJMetrics applied some statistical analysis to the question, and concluded that Twitter had just over 50 million "live Twitter accounts" on September 1, and was gaining 8 million new users per month -- but it's a level that RJMetrics said was "no longer accelerating."

Lastly, we're still waiting to hear how @Biz, @Ev, @Jack and the rest of the Twitter gang hope to make money from Twitter. "Free" is great, but it doesn't pay for a batch of new servers that are required to scale Twitter and serve the next 5 billion tweets.

Sources and research: GigaTweet, Mashable, TechCrunch

Image: GigaTweet screenshot

#Gartnersym: We follow Twitter so you don't have to

Ian Lamont — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:01:22 -0400

Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009 is not your grandfather's tech conference. Well, at least not judging by the many thoughtful tweets coming out of the Disney resort complex in Orlando, around all manner of emerging social, cloud, and collaboration technologies. What first caught The Standard's attention was the flurry of retweets surrounding Vice President Carol Rozwell's talk, in which she smartly called out the IT shops and corporate HR departments who continue to follow 20th century-style communications lockdowns: "Banning access to social media from the corporate network is futile," runs one oft-quoted line from her presentation. "The world we live in is digitally enabled and socially connected."

There were other highlights, too, as well as the usual gripes about spotty wi-fi access and oversold sessions. The Standard combed through more than 50 pages of #gartnersym tweets from the first full day of sessions on Monday, and is presenting below the ones that we feel best capture the mood of the crowd and the ideas gaining the most purchase. Here they are, in no particular order:

@signalvsnoise: 62% of new Twitter users between 39 and 51 in 2008 says Gartner. Pay attention, embrace it, it is cultural shift. Get Ready Now.#gartnersym

@santaferraro: #gartnersym Carol Roswell talked about "the collective," social media, and the need to pay attention, how many were twittering in the crowd?

@djfeller: #gartnersym talking about the social collective < sounds like borg resistence is futile

@CornerAlliance: #gartnersym wants orgs to jump headfirst into social media, but I think they need to remember what Gutenberg caused: http://bit.ly/XLD0

@MiamiCIO: Change to make: revise business plan template to cover lifetime costs, not just project costs. #gartnersym

@Galvar60: #Gartnersym - Attendance at Symposium is great 1600 CIO's is unbelievable

@desifinado: Wifi quality at #gartnersym sucks severely. Not at all in line with a premier industry expo. 3G is pretty spotty too. Seriously lowtech :/

@sonny_h: #gartnersym Seems big disconnect between definition of cloud. Most discussion points 2 IaaS (provisioning, virtualization), salesforce

@ranjithkumaran: At Gartner event in Orlando. Google Enterprise Cloud session overbooked, turning attendees away. #gartnersym

@casmrv: #gartnersym Google Apps - 3000 businesses a day sign up. 15M users in GApps today. 2 years and 3M business to get out of beta

@athenshoopsguy: Gartner calls the "elephant in the room" our bloated application portfolio. Application promiscuity is a problem. #gartnersym

@tombitt: So far, my one-on-ones are all about private cloud computing - even the ones that started on virtualization ended there #gartnersym

@casmrv: #gartnersym Motorola move to GMail on cloud - reduction of emails received by 47% - "now I manage email as opposed to the contrary"

@CMatignon: #gartnersym Google - access to the internet has to be more powerful and less expensive - browser and mobile

@patmcanally: #gartnersym Nobody is making money yet with cloud BPM but vendors can't ignore it

@casmrv: #gartnersym Android starting to appear more prominently in the Google Enteprise Vision - access through Chrome & Android

@CMatignon: #gartnersym Google - users want simplicity, when they add complexity to search interface, usage plummets

@Sandalbar: Why isn't "SideKick" being mentioned in the cloud computing tweets from #gartnersym?

@kdemacop: Gartner says best candidates for cloud: web-centric apps with solid management and security practices #gartnersym

@appirio_ryan: Ridiculous FUD to call out Gmail outage for enterprise IT risk. Show of hands: has your Exchange ever been down for 2 hours? #gartnersym

@sonny_h: #gartnersym - Social Networking is what the web was in 2000 - Everyone wants to be on but not many know why. Maturity and value with time.

@lgreski: #gartnersym keynote: 75% of leaders surveyed say bad data constrains business. Too much info managed in spreadsheets.

@CornerAlliance: #gartnersym believes 65 million users of Facebook log on remotely, so don't bother blocking it from the firewall, it is already there

@patmcanally: #gartnersym you must decide on cloud computing before you spend a dime on application modernization

@casmrv: #gartnersym Cloud Computing - possible that compliance issues force data to remain out of cloud - careful with data move costs

@athenshoopsguy: #gartnersym Many sessions advise to inventory what's in the org such as web 2.0 tools etc. Seems logical but contradictory to other themes.

@casmrv: #gartnersym Key Cloud Computer dangers - lock into platform, and viability of current pricing models and consequences when changes

@MarijkeS: in companies of >10K employees, 15% of employees are purchasing their own notebook computer #gartnersym

@blavender: "the cloud excels for temporary experiments" #gartnersym

@MarijkeS: Consumerization of IT: "maximum innovation occurs at the edges" "attention follows budget" #gartnersym

@florianbecker: #gartnersym: G believes that cloud comp. is on the top of the hype-curve with serious adaption 2-5 yrs out. I agree-app integration is key

@djducat: Wondering if 42 is too old to get a MBA. This conference is very thought-provoking. #GartnerSym

Sources and research: CNet.com, Gartner.com, Twitter.com

Image: Screen capture, Monday Morning Update video