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Microsoft Bribing Nokia to use its phone?

2012-01-26T05:49:00.000-08:00

"In its statement, Nokia also revealed the amount that it receives from Microsoft for its utilisation of the Windows Phone platform, acknowledging that the Redmond-based company paid it $250 million in “support payments” over the last quarter:"

Microsoft Paid Nokia $250m for Windows Phone Use

It looks like Microsoft had to bribe Nokia to use its platform for Smartphones. There is no question now that if Nokia had started producing Android phones a couple years ago rather than trying to promote its own Linux based MeeGoo project, sales would be very different right now. That is not to say we don't like MeeGoo, but with a competitive market for ecosystems MeeGoo, along with WebOS was just to much to ask of developers who are struggling to build apps for the iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian ecosystems as it is.

Now just because Microsoft is bribing Nokia to use its OS does not make the OS bad, Microsoft is a master of combing unfair business practices with just the right quality of product to win market share, that is until the Web went mobile.

We have been testing the Lumia a great deal lately and we like it, we like it a lot. The OS is great too look at and easy to use, and it shows JQuery mobile pages as well as iPhone or Android devices. Nokia knows how to make a camera that feels right in your hand and the excellent Lumia should be attractive to many.

But good is not demanded and one of the strange states of the market is how excellent machines again and again don't catch on. Four years ago we were excited about the netbook running a Linux like Puppy, this seemed like the obvious course of the future of computing. But it seemed people were more interested in toys like iPhones and iPads than powerful small computers with solid OSs. The quality of a product will not predict its sales, and the Windows Phone still has not proved itself in the market, and it is trying to launch in to a major economic downturn where people might decide to hold on to their iPhones, Androids and Blackberries for a few more months.

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CES - Samsung's Smart Window

2012-01-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

Is Microsoft Releasing the Next Version of SharePoint in 2012?

2012-01-10T09:31:00.000-08:00

: "As rumor has it, a new version of SharePoint will come out this year -- why else would Microsoft plan back to back SharePoint conferences? But while some are pondering what the next version

may bring, most are still working on how to best leverage the current SharePoint release.

01-10-2012 - Is Microsoft Releasing the Next Version of SharePoint in 2012?

"

'via Blog this'

Microsoft 8 its do or die

2012-01-09T01:39:00.000-08:00

The latest version of Microsoft's operating system for smartphones is a revolutionary product for its parent company because it is considered to have both taste and culture. Windows Phone uses the company's Metro interface, whose graphics are so cutting-edge they can make the iPhone seem out of date. Its creators, Microsoft's in-house design team, claim it is changing not only how their products appear, but the company's philosophy.
Windows 8, the latest version of Microsoft's world-dominating PCsoftware, will be released later this year and has been given a Metro makeover. The worry is that Microsoft has discovered the power of good taste a little too late.
Windows software is installed on 95% of the world's estimated 1.5bn home and business PCs, but in the western world sales of laptop and particularly desktop computers have reached a plateau. When Windows 8 is released later this year, millions of Microsoft customers will ask themselves whether they should spend money upgrading an old computer, or treat themselves to new one. For many, that new machine is likely to be not a PC but a tablet, and until now Apple has been the only company capable of selling tablets in large numbers.
"The ground is shifting under Microsoft," says Jean-Louis Gassée, former head of Apple Macintosh development and contender for the chief executive role in the late 1980s. "The world will no longer be PC-centric. We will see growing numbers of smartphones and tablets and we as users will spend more time on these devices. PCs will be reserved for the tasks of content creation."

Microsoft sees a future through cleaner Windows | Technology | The Observer

One thing Yahoo! can teach us all, that it takes a long time for the new giants of IT to die. In the case of firms like IBM the dying process is so slow that the company has the ability to rebuilt itself before it dies. That is once a company like Oracle, IBM, Yahoo!, HP, or Dell reach such a size the vibrant growing nature of the IT market and the massive barriers to entry prevent normal market forces from working. There is simply too much increase in demand ever year, and too few new big players to cull the failures.

In the case of IBM this allowed a great firm to survive to become a great firm again, just a different kind of great firm. In the case of Yahoo! it just is a slow pathetic death.

What is going to happen to Microsoft is not entirely clear. Its now certain that everyone who works with Microsoft gets that Windows and Office will not take them in to the future for much longer. Microsoft is facing a world of more mobile devices and the Cloud. So far they have done a very good job of the Cloud. I am confident that Enterprise Cloud will be dominated by Microsoft back ends for some time to come.

The problem has not been the large solutions that run in Cloud farms, but getting Microsoft in to a small device. This is kind of pathetic because their name in MICROsoft. The company was born in the race for the micro computer leaving older mainframe computers in the dust to provide the OS, programming languages and productivity tools for the desktop computing and then laptop computing. Its just that Microsoft has utterly messed up going PALM top.

But this is much more than just a change is overall size of devices, its also a failure to keep up with the change in the social role of computers made possible by this change in size. Microsoft is still stuck in a world of Offices and Windows, a world where computers were grey and used mostly for creating presentations for customer days. Since this time firms like Apple, Google and Blackberry have managed to make computers cool.

Microsoft not only needs to establish itself in the world of small devices running ARM based technology rather than just INTEL chips, which they can do technically without a doubt, but they also need to establish products that can grap the new consumers imagination in the way Android, iOS and Blackberry have, and become as cool as twitter and facebook. This is something they have NEVER done, and probably this element of style and 'class' is where Microsoft looks most like the next IBM or Digital. Computers are never going to be grey again. Can Microsoft live in a world of color?

Time to Close the Book on Windows Tablet

2011-11-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

Consumers’ interest in buying a Windows tablet has plummeted in the past six months, according to a new Forrester Research report on November 29.

Consumers' interest in Windows tablets plummets, study claims | ZDNet

Again more very bad news for Microsoft's effort to be part of the new wave of mobile devices. I have been saying for two years that this new device space is war for how new tablet or slate space is imagined: are slates big phones or small computers.

As the Forrester survey above indicates consumer initially saw these devices as small PC but more and more they are starting to image them as extensions of the phone. This is critical for Microsoft to re-establish the tablet as a place for Windows before Android and iPhone change how people think about computing.

Can Microsoft do it? Over the past year in the mobile space Microsoft has gone from failure to failure. But with the legacy of Office documents and SharePoint I suspect that the Office tablet will likely be a Windows tablet.

But time is running out.

Intro to SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions

2011-11-02T14:53:00.001-07:00

Intro to SharePoint Sandboxed Solutions

View more presentations from Toni Frankola

Opps Duqu infection linked to Microsoft Word exploit

2011-11-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

"The Duqu computer infection was spread with the help of an infected Microsoft Word document, according to a report.

The research says the Trojan exploited a previously unknown vulnerability embedded in Word files, allowing Duqu to modify computers' security protection."

BBC News - Duqu infection linked to Microsoft Word exploit

Yelp and how dumb is social media

2011-11-02T05:00:00.000-07:00

Yelp sent me the following email. Now what is interesting is the idea that Yelp might have a hunch, which imp lies some kind of AI. And the hunch seems to be about me.

Well actually I have not had brunch in a restraunt ever in my life. I might actually love brunch because I have never ever gone out to have it. It has never crossed my mind to have brunch.

Its not that I am ignorant of brunch, for a year I worked as a waiter at a place that did one of the biggest brunch trades in the Chicago area. I have very familiar with the practice of brush, of what is eaten in brunch and of when it is eaten.

The thing that strikes me in this email, as in so many other social media effort to understand me is how not only is it wrong, but like Facebook and Twitter recommends it actually contradicts my own clearly expressed interests.

Anyone who knew me well enough to have a hunch on me, even if it was an AI tracking me on social networks, would clearly know that I have a tendency to hiking on Saturdays. Rather than having a tongue feeling like wall paper and a empty pantry I am far more likely to be out on trail in the green belt around London. Anyone who followed my fairly regular posting to Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and blogger would notice this pattern. Saturdays I generally stop posting, because I am out of mobile service reach, if I post post photos of nature or photos from various locations within and around London when I can't walk in the woods because of rain.

So its pretty clear that Yelp has no hunch at all about me. Okay its a marketing email. No sin there.

But the problem is that this email illustrates the key problem about social network services. Social network services from Facebook to SharePoint talk a big talk about understanding social networks they manage, but do nothing about it. Their data is held in extremely dumb networks and their conclusions about users are at best shallow and often stupid.

Now for civil libertarians such as myself this is not a bad thing at all. Its probably a good thing that computers really can't understand our motives given all the facts about us that are being gathered. If software could understand us, well the prospects for democracy go pretty dim pretty quick. I believe that smart computers that understand social networks can be a danger to our democracy, and may need to be regulated if they ever emerge.

But why does social networks feel the need to lie about understanding me. Why not just be honest and say we offer you a communication channel that you can use as you want and nothing more? Why imply you have some social intelligence you don't have?

My observations from watching online dating market is that this is precisely the question more and more social network users are asking. Online dating services used to advertise that they somehow would help you find the right person. This false promise only lead to high levels of disappointment by users. Now more and more online dating is selling itself on availability and access not intelligence.

My vision of social computing is pretty simple, computer can not understand people in a reliable way that will mean much to any given user. But computers can make resources of communication and search available to users who can then use the tools to make the social patterns they need. The human genius has to be enabled, not replaced.

Occupty Wall Street is the hot ticket in New York

2011-10-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

#OCCUPYWALLSTREET

Foursquare for OccupyWallStreet

currently checked in: 21

This tops Brooklyn Bridge with 11 and all other trending sites in New York, making the Occupy Wall Street the largest ongoing even in New York right now.

'via Blog this'

RIM and Microsoft Office 365

2011-10-27T01:35:00.000-07:00

RIM is rolling out a new cloud-based service for Microsoft Office 365.

(Credit: RIM)

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has launched a new service that not only extends access to Microsoft Office 365 but lets businesses better manage their BlackBerry devices.
Currently available as a beta for Microsoft Office 365 customers, BlackBerry's Business Cloud Services offers four key benefits to potential customers, according to RIM:
Access to Microsoft Exchange online email, calendar, and organizer data from BlackBerry smartphones.
BlackBerry Balance technology, which lets users see both personal and work-related content on their phones but keeps the two separate from each other.
Online access to smartphone security features where users can remotely lock or wipe their smartphones or reset their passwords.
An online console where IT admins can manage and secure the BlackBerry smartphones used by company employees.

"BlackBerry Business Cloud Services is an easy and cost-effective way for businesses and government agencies to extend Microsoft Office 365 to BlackBerry smartphones and manage the deployment in the cloud," RIM Vice President Alan Panezic said in a statement. "We have been working together with Microsoft and select customers through an early access program and we are pleased to now launch an open beta for the service."

RIM unveils cloud service for Microsoft Office 365 users | Webware - CNET:

Frankly we at the Web 3.0 Lab have never fully understood Microsoft mobile strategy. They seem to be perfectly happy with the iPhone being out there, they complain about Android though they collect license agreements on most Androids sold, they have a strategic relationship with one of the top business phone vendors and they push their own phone.

For Microsoft the future is the cloud. Even if the make a OS for small devices this OS may gain them little more than Internet Explorer, a long term headache. Frankly the web industry would be delighted to see IE in all its version vanish.

Mobile devices are becoming nothing more than windows to the Cloud, and Microsoft's Cloud is a business cloud. RIM has a well established proven technology that could easily catch up, and the Blackberry remains popular in the Enterprise. Microsoft should abandon the sinking ship of Windows Mobile and purchase RIM and turn that in to their platform.

But there may be method to the madness, unlike Apple Microsoft and Google make software, and being trapped in a single hardware platform is not where Microsoft wants to be. But also being forked between two main platforms, where one is highly established does not really make sense either.

See also Microsoft and RIM make partnership
What is Office 365
All my posts on Office 356

Restore a site collection SharePoint Server 2010 using PowerShell

2011-10-18T04:05:00.000-07:00

I have just done some migrations from SharePoint 2010 test to production environments using PowerShell.

Some information on how easy this is can be found here.

Restore a site collection (SharePoint Server 2010)

Should you use PowerShell over stsadm.exe?

If you are anything like me you have already done hundreds of such jobs with stsadm.exe. Stsadm.exe is still supported in SharePoint 2010 so why should you take the time to learn a new scripting language?

Well the answer is simple, PowerShell is just so much better than stsadm.exe. PowerShell should be used for the following reasons:

It is now Microsoft Recommendation, don't want to go against that.
The language is much more elegant, easier to read and write once you get a hang of it.
The language now supports functions and variables, it is now more of a programming language.
Its more powerful, allowing you do things like putting site collections in new databases.

So is PowerShell just the new version of stsadm.exe?

No.

PowerShell provides a scripting language very much like PHP. In fact it is so like PHP that anyone who has done any PHP code will have no problem picking it up. Even if you don't know PHP anyone with basic programming skills will be able to pick PowerShell up easily. For example the following 'Hello world' command will look familiar to any programmer.

function HelloWorld()
{ 
    $say = "Hello world"


    echo $say
}

This ability to use functions and variables allows you to write, and pre-test powerful PowerShell solutions. For example imagine trying to script something like this in stsadm.exe

function WaitForJobToFinish([string]$SolutionFileName)
{ 
    $JobName = "*solution-deployment*$SolutionFileName*"
    $job = Get-SPTimerJob | ?{ $_.Name -like $JobName }
    if ($job -eq $null) 
    {
        Write-Host 'Timer job not found'
    }
    else
    {
        $JobFullName = $job.Name
        Write-Host -NoNewLine "Waiting to finish job $JobFullName"
        
        while ((Get-SPTimerJob $JobFullName) -ne $null) 
        {
            Write-Host -NoNewLine .
            Start-Sleep -Seconds 2
        }
        Write-Host  "Finished waiting for job.."
    }
}

Add-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell
 
$CurrentDir=$args[0]
$solutionName="Limeco.UI.WebParts.wsp"
$SolutionPath=$CurrentDir + "\"+$solutionName 
 
Write-Host 'Going to disable feature'
disable-spfeature -identity Limeco.UI.WebParts_LimecoWebPartFeature -confirm:$false -url http://localhost
 
Write-Host 'Going to uninstall feature'
uninstall-spfeature -identity Limeco.UI.WebParts_LimecoWebPartFeature -confirm:$false -force
 
Write-Host 'Going to uninstall solution'
Uninstall-SPSolution -identity $solutionName  -allwebapplications -confirm:$false

Write-Host 'Waiting for job to finish'
WaitForJobToFinish 

Write-Host 'Going to remove solution'
Remove-SPSolution –entity $solutionName -confirm:$false
 
Write-Host 'Going to add solution'
Add-SPSolution $SolutionPath
 
Write-Host 'Going to install solution to all web applications'
Install-SPSolution –entity $solutionName –llwebapplications –ACDeployment

Write-Host 'Waiting for job to finish' 
WaitForJobToFinish 

Write-Host 'Going to enable Feature' 
Enable-spfeature -identity Limeco.UI.WebParts_LimecoWebPartFeature -confirm:$false -url http://localhost 

Remove-PsSnapin Microsoft.SharePoint.PowerShell

Source Sohel Rana

Hey, I am a System Admin not a Programmer, isn't PowerShell just over the top

No again.

PowerShell basic functions are much cleaner and easier to run than the same stsadm.exe code.

Example of PowerShell for dummies

Here is a use case. You have been given two backup files from a development box and you need to install the two sites in a web application, each in its own site collection with its own database. We assume here you have already added a second content database.

The web application is on port 80, and is called http://test and the two content databases are WSS_Contet and WSS_Content2. You need to update 2 backup files, one at D:\backups\home.bak and D:\backups\work.bak. Work.bak will be restored to a site collection at http:/sites/work

You are just going to be running PowerShell, you don't have time to make any saved scripts. You were thinking about just using stsadm but your boss, say a project manager, says you must use PowerShell.

Well the good news it is easy. Very easy to do this.

We assume you know how to get in to PowerShell here, if you don't here is a helpful introduction.

So you are logged in to PowerShell with the appropriate rights to the database. I have generally logged in to the server with the Farm account and not the Admin accounts

The first step I do is to list out the Web Applications on the server. You type the PowerShell command:

Get-SPWebAppllication

And you get a list of web applications, there ports and their URLs. One of the URLS in the example is http://test

Now to restore the back to http://test on WSS_Content type the following PowerShell command:

Restore-SPSite http://test -path D:\backups\home.bak -DatabaseName WSS_Content

PowerShell will ask you to confirm that you rally want to do this. Wait until the task completes.

Then to build the second site type:

Restore-SPSite http://test/sites/work -path D:\backups\work.bak -DatabaseName WSS_Content_2

This then takes care of building the new site collection for you, and puts it in the database WSS_Content_2.

Its that easy!

Web 3.0 Lab: Proof We Live in the Real World and Not the Matrix...

2011-10-12T04:28:00.000-07:00

Web 3.0 Lab: Proof We Live in the Real World and Not the Matrix...: These two graphics show the geo-tagged tweeting over a several hour period. We have displayed the tweets "Matrix" style, with green dots .

Google+ for everyone

2011-09-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Google+: Now open to everyone - TNW Google:

Google+ is now open to everyone. Recently Google+ has had some social policy teething pains, especially around the issue of anonymous access of users. Google+ requires a 'real name' which many users, especially established web personalities who have blogged under a different name for years don't agree with.

But beyond that the tool is simply the best technology for social grid management ever made. And it would probably be worth anyone's time to give it a try.

BCS Overview Demo

2011-09-15T02:19:00.000-07:00

Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 Demo Part 1

Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 Demo Part 2

Business Connectivity Services in SharePoint 2010 Demo Part 3

Windows 8 Demo

2011-09-13T12:13:00.001-07:00

Ireland's Technology Blog has a video with some more new information about Windows 8. Video requires flash so no Pads.

2011-09-13T09:25:00.001-07:00

Microsoft Releases First Test Version of Windows 8 - Ina Fried - News - AllThingsD

Windows 8 looks to be playing catch up with the now dominate Apple for a space it once owned.

BCS - External Content Type in SharePoint Designer 2010

2011-09-09T09:45:00.000-07:00

The writing is on the wall for all of us

2011-09-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

Once the leader in web presence Yahoo! collapse along with the fall of MySpace is a stark reminder that in the Cloud business moves very fast.

"When the history of the internet industry comes to be written, Yahoo! will deserve a special place in it for all the wrong reasons. Rarely has a company managed to destroy so much shareholder value in such a short space of time. Before Ms Bartz was brought in to run the business, Yahoo! rejected a bid from Microsoft that valued it at around $45 billion on the ground that the offer was too stingy. Today, its market capitalisation is a mere $16 billion or so."

More trouble for Yahoo!: Carol goes out the portal | The Economist

Yahoo! just fired CEO Carol Bartz and it seems the only reason the story is out is the way it was leaked via email. The way the world learned that Yahoo! would have a new CEO was more of the story then the fact that the struggling firm was in even more trouble.

Today Yahoo! is worth $30 Billion dollar less then what Microsoft offered for it a few years ago. In the past 5 or so years Yahoo! has last around $100 of value for every man, woman and child in the United States.

This is despite about 7 billion page views a day. That is a page view of every man, woman and child on Earth. Yahoo! is still one of the most visited domains in the Universe. But in the Cloud you can't just convert eyeballs in to dollars in any direct way like you can on TV with advertising. Yahoo! has failed despite being for the most part rather popular.

Nokia's developer network hacked

2011-08-31T07:18:00.000-07:00

Nokia developer network appears to have been hacked with the potential lose of personal data of users.

BBC News - Nokia's developer network hacked:

'via Blog this'

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 tablet review - reviews for UK IT professionals - V3.co.uk

2011-08-31T03:56:00.000-07:00

Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 tablet review - reviews for UK IT professionals - V3.co.uk: "With its 10.1in 1280 x 800 screen, however, the Stylistic Q550 is much smaller than traditional Windows Tablet PCs and closer in size to recent devices such as HP's TouchPad and those based on Android. It also borrows much of the styling, with rounded edges and a screen that fits flush with the front bezel.

But unlike most consumer tablets, the Stylistic Q550 supports pen input from a digital stylus as well as touch gestures. This enables handwriting capture, as well as making it easier to pick out small objects on the screen, which is often necessary with the Windows 7 user interface."

'via Blog this'

Tripoli Tweets

2011-08-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

Tweets showing on a map in Tripoli after the fall of Gaddafi's compound

We are starting to see some of the first geo-tagged tweets coming from Tripoli. You can track real time tweeting intensity with our Clima.Me tool:

Not seeing anything most time now but keep an eye on this to see Libya come to life on the web.

BBC News - UK student wins Microsoft Excel World Championship

2011-08-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

"UK student Rebecca Rickwood has won a global competition to find the best user of Microsoft's spreadsheet software, Excel 2007.

Rebecca, who is 15, was one of 228,000 competitors from 57 countries. She beat 78 students in the final round.

Competitors were required to perform timed tests to demonstrate their skill at making spreadsheets.

Rebecca was presented with her $5000 prize yesterday at a ceremony in San Diego, California."

BBC News - UK student wins Microsoft Excel World Championship:

BBC News - Microsoft revenues hit a record as Xbox sales soar

2011-07-22T09:07:00.000-07:00

"The US technology giant Microsoft said its annual revenues hit a record of $69.94bn (£43.4bn).

Sales of the company's Xbox 360 videogame console and its Office software helped fuel the growth.

Net income at the world's biggest software maker jumped 23% to 23.15bn for the year.

The figures, which beat forecasts, showed final quarter revenues reached a record high of $17.37bn, leading to profits of $5.87bn.

Sales rose 8% to $17.37 billion, a boosted chiefly by sales of Office, Xbox and server software behind Microsoft's push into cloud computing."

BBC News - Microsoft revenues hit a record as Xbox sales soar

But the really key paragraph is:

"Microsoft's business division, which sells the Office suite of programs, including Outlook, SharePoint and Excel, was the company's biggest seller in the quarter, increasing sales by 7% to $5.8bn."

So SharePoint is now big business, on the same level of Outlook and Excel, the killer apps of Microsoft's suit.

How To: Create Publishing Web Sites in SharePoint 2010 (ShowMe RTM)

2011-07-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

Using the Ribbon in SharePoint 2010: SharePoint 2010 New Features from l...

2011-07-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

.NET frameworks 3 and 3.5 go out of support

2011-07-14T11:17:00.001-07:00

.NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 are now unsupported (as of 12^th July 2011) and you need to move to .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 or later to remain on a supported configuration. If you’d like to discuss the implications of this upgrade to your applications, or require any guidance, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Full details can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeandotnet

Full support lifecycles for all the .NET Framework versions can be found here:

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?sort=PN&alpha=.NET+Framework&gadate=0&msdate=0&esdate=0&medate=0&Filter=FilterNO

What every SharePoint pro should know about Google+, it rocks

2011-07-12T03:48:00.000-07:00

Today I read that Google+ has added over 10 million users in the first couple of weeks. After a week of testing it I an see why. Google+ on the surface looks like a better UI version of Facebook, but at its core it implement a wonderful simple technology in managing social networks: circles.

Circles give you ways to manage your friends and associates. You can organize all your contacts in circles. You can then publish information to different circles. So Google+ gives you technology to communicate to close friends or associates while still tracking major celebrities you don't know. The simple technology of circles merges a private friends network with a public blogging publishing tool, effectively merging Linked In, Facebook and Twitter in to one tool.

Google+ is a real game changer. Using it you start to get a feel for just how bad the existing technology set is. Facebook UI and features are very dated. Facebook did not really push the envelope back in 2003. The outdated design becomes obvious after spending a few hours working with Google+.

Google has certainly set the standard for how social computing will work. Sadly nothing in 2010 MySites comes even close to this. Hopefully Microsoft will have time to catch up, but for now Google has carried out a coup in the Social space.

Microsoft launches Office in the cloud

2011-06-28T07:38:00.001-07:00

BBC News - Microsoft launches Office in the cloud:

"Microsoft is launching a cloud-based version of its Office software suite.

Called Office 365 the service puts the familiar e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration programs on the web.

Microsoft said the programs will be accessible via desktops, laptops and tablets plus Microsoft, RIM, Apple and Android smartphones.

The launch is aimed squarely at Google and others who already offer web-based business software."

Well BBC is a bit late on the story, but the Cloud version of Office is here.

Microsoft launches Office in the cloud

2011-06-28T07:38:00.000-07:00

BBC News - Microsoft launches Office in the cloud:

"Microsoft is launching a cloud-based version of its Office software suite.

Called Office 365 the service puts the familiar e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and collaboration programs on the web.

Microsoft said the programs will be accessible via desktops, laptops and tablets plus Microsoft, RIM, Apple and Android smartphones.

The launch is aimed squarely at Google and others who already offer web-based business software."

Well BBC is a bit late on the story, but the Cloud version of Office is here.

Filters are the problem

2011-06-24T10:27:00.003-07:00

Filters are the problem

2011-06-24T10:27:00.001-07:00

Flowr's online business collaboration shows app threat to SharePoint tools updated

2011-06-15T02:45:00.000-07:00

"Flowr is pitched squarely at small-to-medium businesses, and the pricing reflects that. It’s free for a basic account, which allows up to five users. Premium accounts, with a range of additional features, cost $59 per month for up to 15 users (additional users are $3 per month)."

Flowr's online business collaboration tools updated

The growth over the next decade in Enterprise collaboration is going to be around SMEs that today are using email as their only tool. Microsoft is going after this area with Office 365 but when you look at an app product like Flowr you see that a company can get moving with most of the same features from the Cloud for a fraction of the investment.

The app economy has blown the rough off development making faster innovation at lower cost and opening the pie to more smaller players. Will Microsoft be able to respond in time, well that will be very interesting.

Terence McKenna - Time Acceleration

2011-06-02T03:06:00.000-07:00

Okay yesterday we talked about noosphere, today we are posting a short talk from the king of drug induced mysticism himself Terence McKenna. Are we crack pots?

Well this is a unusually lucid and almost materialistic presentation by McKenna, and we would suggest some of the wilder New Age ideas of the past century can provide means of thinking about the current changes in human culture facilitated by mobile Internet.

New Age was one of the key influential myths for early adopters of "Cyberspace", and we should not be surprised that the current revolution in our understanding is influenced in large part by it. Just as science was originally created by people influenced by alchemy.

The key question to ask is if McKenna's ideas sound familiar today because reality has come out as he predicted and is developing along the lines of ever rapid development, or because our culture has created a myth of such development. Certainly mobile computing and the Internet are evolving faster than anyone could have imagined, but the same can not be said for genomics, cancer treatment, space flight, or green energy.

Its important to keep in mind that part of the entire selling pitch of mobile technology is this kind of rapid evolution towards some kind of singularity. But in the end Web 3.0 devices are just mobile phones that go online. What we do with this simple concept is up to us as a civilization.

Web 3.0 Lab: Windows 8 will be a mobile OS

2011-06-02T02:38:00.000-07:00

Web 3.0 Lab: Windows 8 will be a mobile OS:

The new version of Windows is aims at more mobile platform. Thing is they seem to be embracing the as yet unproven Windows 7 Mobile interface. The OS will potentially free Microsoft from the desktop and take on Google's Android and Mac iOS domination of the mobile computing world. Or it might get people to see that mobile can be extended to the PC and open the door to Android slates and Android PCs.

Microsoft is trying to put a positive spin on this, but it is hard to escape the conclusion that this is a move Microsoft was forced to take. They will be changing the core look and feel of their flagship product. They will be making it look more like their mobile product. And their mobile product is getting killed in the market.

The concept of a mobile Windows is cool, and Windows 8 is just more proof that Web 3.0 will be the mobile web. But Microsoft is going to play a game it has not played for a long time: second place.

(Personally we find the layout of the Windows Mobile phone too restrictive. The squares impose a certain pattern of presentation on you, all heavily branded by Microsoft. The entire joy of Androids is the fact it is a light weight OS with the apps you select arranged the way you want them arranged. We have a bad feeling about this one.)

Office 365 and Windows Phone 7

2011-05-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Tech Bubble 2.0, Wall Streets concern, given its record of getting things wrong, is no reason to worry

2011-05-21T17:07:00.000-07:00

"Tech Bubble 2.0? Maybe. But many in the venture capital community have rebuffed that notion, saying that important lessons have been learned since the first bubble in the late 1990s. In other words: This time, it's different."

LinkedIn IPO Through The Roof, Funders Rebuff Talk Of Bubble from Huffington Post

Firstly let us make one thing very clear. The Dot Com bubble of 2000 never really happened, not the way the media reported it. Certainly there was a collapse in stock prices around a cluster of Internet companies. But this was not because the companies themselves were weak. Rather the collapse was a fiction created by a Wall Street out of control, one that three masses of money too early and pulled the money out a few years later when the largest transformation in communications since the printed word didn't fully form in two years. The Dot Com bomb was entirely due to the greed and stupidity of people on Wall Street.

After this so called collapse the Internet, freed of so much influence from the parasite class, was able to enter its true golden age. After the Dot Com collapsed we saw the rise of blogging, social network sites, the creation of Facebook, podcasting, video sharing, music downloads, and now geosocial. If Wall Street was with it or not the Internet rapidly moved from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 in large part by collective work of millions.

After Wall Street declared the Internet dead Wikipedia create the largest single store of information in world history through crowd sourcing, a Harvard undergrad made a company that now has 600 million members, Google's stock went public (and despite fears of another collapse back then) the stock and company is doing fine.

The Internet is not a fad. Nor is it really possible to value the contribution the Internet will place upon humanity. Asking how much the collection of Interent companies are actually worth long term would be like asking how much the first 100 printing presses of 50 steam engines would be worth to the world economy. In reality these innovations were worth more than the entire wealth of the planet at that time.

But that is not to say there is no danger of a short term collapse, there very much is such a danger. Not because of the firms themselves but because, as we should all know by now, Wall Street is dominated by a lot of disturbed drug addicted sex addict trying to steal as much money as they can who use masses of technology they are either too stupid or too drug out to understand. Its very likely they will dump masses of money in to new firms and as soon as the herd instinct changes pull it out in mass.

But the Internet itself will survive. In face as we saw from things like Wikipedia, Linux, and blogging the Internet is driven by a much bigger collective event than the money on Wall Street. The Web was actually better off after all the investors left in 2001. Freed of the pressure of bag men who didn't understand the industry people who did understand the web were free to actually built a better web.

Imagine if the investment houses has remain around, had bought out Wikipedia, all the blogging sites, and the social networks. Do you think crowd sourcing, creative commons, or citizen journalism would have gotten anywhere? I doubt it.

Cloud computing already flopping? Lessons from Sony

2011-05-20T02:17:00.000-07:00

The BBC never comes out and just asks the obvious question. Are the cases of Sony and Amazon just growing pains for the Cloud, or is the Cloud over hyped? Well given what some people were saying last year about saving the environment, reducing costs to a fraction, and giving better service it should come as no surprise that the Cloud turns out to have serious real world.

I have worked a great deal with the Cloud, and the conclusion I have come to is that it is a lot harder to execute than most people relieve. That people are going to certainly put a lot of stuff on the Cloud, but data centers will very often be the best value option for most Enterprises most of the time.

Cloud will be a bit win for SME, but they will have to live with security problem, loss of data, and all the million problem with making your business someone else's concern. Outsourcing never lived up to the hype and neither will the Cloud. Essentially the problem is that you are giving the core of your business to someone else. The smaller you are the more Cloud can do for you, but the less and less you matter to Cloud.

BBC News - Cloud computing after Amazon and Sony: ready for primetime?: "Cloud computing may be the hottest thing in corporate computing right now, but two IT disasters - at Amazon and Sony - beg the question: Is cloud computing ready for primetime business?

It's a nightmare moment. You are under pressure - to meet customer orders, finish a project, execute a deal - and nothing. Your computers, servers or network are down. If you are lucky, a few nail biting hours and a reboot or three later, you and your IT team have restored services.

But what if your IT infrastructure goes down and there's nothing you can do because your computing power sits in the cloud, provided over the internet by another company? When a key part of Amazon's EC2 cloud service collapsed, many of the firm's customers were reduced to publishing apologies on their websites, and click 'refresh' on Amazon's service health dashboard.

Two of Sony's online gaming services, meanwhile, were hacked, compromising confidential data of more than 100 million customers."

Web 3.0 Lab: Huddle on death of the enterprise

2011-05-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

Notes based on talk of Alastair Mitchell,, CEO and co-founder of Huddle: The death of enterprise as we know it

The talk was given by another staff.

Huddle provides content management and collaboration like SharePoint but in the Cloud.

The key is the "consumerization" of IT. As consumers we now have access of easy use of Cloud services on many devices. Especially the Digital Natives have grown up with apps and mobile devices that give easy functionality which they choose for themselves and configure to share and communicate.

The established structure of IT in the Enterprise is a restricted controlled access. But today 95% of users in the west use some form of their own devices or software to do their job. The personal device is breaking down the Enterprise's control over information systems inside the Enterprise. But also employees store personal data on company networks, perhaps as high as 50%.

Also techie workers want to work at companies with high tech new stuff.

So the Enterprise is being torn in part with IT departments on one side driven by FUD and techie users at the work space.

Huddle believes that its technology can resolve this debate at the center of Web 2.0. Huddle believes that IT needs change because staff life experiences will not.

Huddle holds up the Cloud as solution to this problem. IT departments need to put aside their security and control concerns and embrace the Clout. The Cloud will reduce cost and promote agility. Cloud applications will also allow more variable devices to connect in to the business functionality.

Huddle deals with security via several levels of security: physical, application security layer, testing of security. Huddle notices that 86% of SharePoint users say they would rather use email than SharePoint. Huddle sees adoption as a key feature over SharePoint. Huddle claims 90% adoption. Though the stats Huddle gives here is a bit misleading. They give Huddle adoption and SharePoint satisfaction. But they should compare adoption to adoption or satisfaction to satisfaction.

Huddle also points extensive adoption by the government of Huddle. I would also note the government makes extensive use of SharePoint.

Today any business need can be meet with a Cloud based service that can live on many devices. Rather than IT solutions are coming up with open APIs, based in the Cloud

These are Web 3.0 Lab notes and do not necessarily reflect the views of Huddle or any of the presenters at Internet World 2011.

Web 3.0 Lab: Huddle on death of the enterprise:

Web 3.0 Lab: Microsoft near $7 billion deal for Skype

2011-05-10T08:20:00.000-07:00

Microsoft to buy Skype, will it be a game changer?

Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on a deal to buy Internet phone company Skype for between $7 billion and $8 billion, and a deal could be announced as early as tomorrow, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The report cited people familiar with the matter who said negotiations were ongoing and could still fall apart. Microsoft representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Luxembourg-based company provides a software-based communications service that allows people to make free voice and video calls over the Internet to other Skype users using almost any Internet-connected device. The voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP service also allows people to make and receive calls from regular telephone numbers using a paid service.

Interest in the Internet telephony giant has been high since online auction giant eBay, which had acquired Skype in 2006, sold off its controlling interest in Skype. Facebook and Google had previously been mentioned as possible suitors for the company, which has been around since 2003 and averages 124 million connected users per month.

The combination of the deal of Nokia and Skype could suddenly make Windows 7 mobile a game changer in the mobile industry. But the news so far has had no impact on Microsoft's stock. Looks like traders are taking a wait and see attitude about Microsoft's efforts to take over this stock. Certainly Microsoft's former domination of the PC universe has suffered under Web 2.0 failures. With Google and Facebook taking a lead people might be wise to be unsure that Microsoft will be able to take advantage of the mobile Internet or Web 3.0.

Out take is that Microsoft is very well position to make better use of Skype than eBay. Skype fits nicely in to the Office 365. And Skype will also extend the Nokia Windows 7 competitive position. We have noticed that the movement to mobile devices is speeding up the pace at which people change machines. People might use a PC for 5 to 7 years. People get new smartphones ever couple of years. So in 4 years from now people could have two upgrades of their smartphones. We have also seen people willing to change smartphones. People have moved from Palm to RIM, RIM to iPhones and iPhone to Android already. If the Windows 7 mobile phone on Nokia creates an attractive offering it might only take a few years for Microsoft to retake much of this area.

In the Pro are for Microsoft we have:

Microsoft strong position in PC making it still the main platform people create and use information.
Nokia new phones are excellent.
Microsoft Office 365 could become the Office productivity platform of almost all business users very soon.
Skype purchase.
The excellent reviews Windows 7 Mobile has gotten.

Against Microsoft are these problems:

Weak mobile reputation.
Strong position of Android in mobile area.
Web 2.0 owned by other firms like Google and Facebook.

Though it is hard to predict the future things look a lot better for Microsoft today after the Skype deal.

Web 3.0 Lab: Microsoft near $7 billion deal for Skype:

BCS - External Content Type in SharePoint Designer 2010

2011-05-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 Business Connectivity Services (ReviewCam)

2011-05-03T08:07:00.000-07:00

Microsoft and RIM to make partnership

2011-05-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Ballmer Microsoft CEO

Steve Ballmer Announces Big Partnership With Research In Motion:

"Steve Ballmer just took the stage at Research In Motion's conference to announce a new partnership between Microsoft and RIM.

"Bing search and maps are now the default on BlackBerrys at the OS level, says analyst Michael Gartenberg, who is on hand.

"Ballmer also said Microsoft would invest 'uniquely' in BlackBerry services."

From Jay Yarow at Business Insider

The potential alliance of RIM/Blackberry with Microsoft is so logical it is a bit surprising how long Microsoft avoided it. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft stack has had a mobile device for almost a decade now in Blackberry. With the massive presence of Blackberry already in place in Microsoft stack offices it makes more sense for Microsoft to work with RIM and maybe even merge than for Microsoft to try and salvage its own mobile business.

Office 365 beta, Microsoft finally makes it to the Cloud with SharePoint

2011-04-15T11:56:00.000-07:00

Office 365 beta is here. And the wait is almost worth it. Almost. First the good news. You get SharePoint and Office Web Applications in a Cloud solution. And this is real SharePoint 2010. You even have the ability to start workflows, edit page layout, set site properties and even open the page in Designer 2010. Everything with the same ribbon and SharePoint 2010 because it is SharePoint 2010.

With a basic under 25 user Office 365 beta you get Outlook Web Application, which looks and feels like the real office. You get a basic web site which frankly is terrible. But the real killer app is, or will be, Cloud based document Management using Office Web Apps and SharePoint 2010 Team Sites!

Now on my computer I could not create document using the Web App, but I would imagine they will fix that soon or I will fix my machine. Oh and you get Lync too but frankly anyone in a small business who needs another cloud based IM service must be living under a rock.

Frankly for a 25 person of less business Lynch will be useless give Skype and other basic IM services. But the ability to use SharePoint and Outlook in the Cloud is pretty cool.

And I am going to be clear about this: Office 365 beta is not kind of SharePoint 2010, or something that looks like SharePoint 2010; it is SharePoint 2010. This is Microsoft breaking in to the Cloud in a massive way. Good job folks, now get the phone to sell.

Sponsored by Clima.Me, the geo-social analytics framework

Web 3.0 Lab: BBC News - How is technology changing protests?

2011-04-13T02:29:00.000-07:00

BBC News - How is technology changing protests?: "Technology has always been at the forefront of policing protests, from video cameras, CCTV and now social media. But it is the protesters who are now using technology to their advantage."

Web 3.0 Lab: BBC News - How is technology changing protests?:

How much information does IT produce? Try a number with 19 zeros!

2011-04-06T14:30:00.000-07:00

World's information consumption: 9,570,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes per year: "The world's roughly 27 million computer servers processed 9.57 zettabytes of information in 2008, according to a paper to be presented April 7 at Storage Networking World's (SNW's) annual meeting in Santa Clara, Calif.
The first-of-its kind rigorous estimate was generated with server-processing performance standards, server-industry reports, interviews with information technology experts, sales figures from server manufacturers and other sources. (One zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power, or a million million gigabytes.)
The study estimated that enterprise server workloads are doubling about every two years, which means that by 2024 the world's enterprise servers will annually process the digital equivalent of a stack of books extending more than 4.37 light-years to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system in the Milky Way Galaxy. (Each book is assumed to be 4.8 centimeters thick and contain 2.5 megabytes of information.)"

Web 3.0 Lab: The Tablet is mobile, cameras and 3G now becoming ...

2011-04-06T03:35:00.000-07:00

Web 3.0 Lab: The Tablet is mobile, cameras and 3G now becoming ...: "Pickup in Lens Orders Points to More Tablets With Cameras - PCWorld Business Center: 'A lot of first-generation tablets didn't feature came..."

This confirms with our own survey of local tablet sales centers in London where staff have told us the ability to attach to the 3G network has become a make or break features for tablet sales. It seems that a tablet must have all the features of a mobile phone and then some, rather than being a half way hybrid between a PC and a mobile phone.

This is good news for the players coming at the tablet space from the mobile side: Android, Apple and potentially Blackberry. This is continued bad news for Microsoft though, as a tablet evolves to be more and more like a mobile phone the strengths of Windows will count for less on the mobile space.

What were are fearing on tablets is people want a camera, they want mobility, they want a camera and video but they don't care to much about productivity and file sharing features. Perhaps as the tablet space expands people will see their potential as productivity tools, but right now they are being seen as big phones rather than mobile PC, and this is very bad news for Microsoft.

Web 3.0 Lab: Cancer Research UK embraces Wikipedia

2011-04-04T02:54:00.000-07:00

In a move that shows the emerging importance of Social Media, Cancer Research UK has announced that it will be enhancing Wikipedia pages on cancer. This is because Wikipedia pages come up higher in search than the Cancer Research UK's own web pages. Here is part of the story on BBC:

"Cancer Research UK is turning its specialists loose on the internet to get them to tidy up the online encyclopaedia - wikipedia.

"The charity said many people researching the subject are turning to the website.

"But it said there were problems with accuracy and clarity on some of the pages.

"Wikipedia said it encourages experts to edit the site as they have a lot to contribute.

"Cancer Research UK's website has pages of detail about a range of cancers.

"However, using a search engine for the terms 'Breast Cancer' puts the charity in eighth place on the results page. Wikipedia comes second. A trend it repeats across other cancers."

BBC News - Cancer charity to tidy up wikipedia

Cancer Research UK move illustrates the importance of a two track approach to social network research. Having an excellent authoritative web page is no longer enough. It is critical to engage social media like Wikipedia, blogging, twitter and facebook.

The lesson here is that the line between experts and laymen is no longer respect by the Internet itself. In fact crowd sourced content engines like Wikipedia will dominate search results. Therefore experts, if they really want to get their message out, must work with the community as peers rather than broadcasters.

Web 3.0 Lab: Cancer Research UK embraces Wikipedia:

BBC News - Microsoft takes Google complaint to EU

2011-03-31T02:07:00.000-07:00

From the BBC:

"The post goes on to list five different ways in which Google, according to Microsoft, has sought to control the search market.

Those are:

Using technical measures to stop Microsoft's search engine Bing from indexing content on Google-owned YouTube.
Blocking Microsoft Smartphones from operating properly with YouTube.
Controlling access to online copies of out-of-copyright books.
Limiting the ability of businesses to reclaim "their own information" generated through Google advertising campaigns for use elsewhere.
Compelling leading websites to only use Google search boxes on their pages.

BBC News - Microsoft takes Google complaint to EU

The idea of Microsoft filing over anti-trust against Google is a sad milestone in the computer giants inability to extend its brand in to the Web. Considering also how ineffective companies were in the 1990s going after Microsoft using this same tactic, it is maybe a bit surprising that Microsoft would try it themselves. But then again if anyone knows about anti-trust litigation it is Microsoft.

I generally view the Microsoft vs Google debate in this way. Both firms are, in their industries monopolies and monopolies are generally bad for consumers. But all monopolies are not created equal. I would rather have a single firm making all the radios than a single firm owning all the radio stations. Monopolies in the content area entail political power that is troubling.

Still it is highly ironic to see Microsoft doing this. And frankly the case looks rather weak at first glance.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab: Here Comes Nobody: Clay Shirky Needs ...

2011-03-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab: Here Comes Nobody: Clay Shirky Needs to come clean on his work for Libya...:

Web 3.0 Lab: Here Comes Nobody: Clay Shirky Needs to be More Honest on Libya:

Opinion Piece

Clay Shirky has some explaining to do about his work with Libya

In 2007 Clay Shirky, guru popularizer and advocate of Web 2.0 technology, addressed his work for Libya in 2007. In a brief blog post on the issue he said:

Over the weekend, Evgeny Morozov asked about my consulting with the Libyan government in 2007. In March of that year, I was invited by Monitor Consulting to come to Boston to speak to a Libyan IT minister about using social software to improve citizen engagement in coastal towns. The idea was that those cities would be more economically successful if local policies related to the tourist trade were designed by the locals themselves.

Clay Shirky on his Consulting Work on Libya

Shirky goes on to admit that he was naive, but one issue remains open: how much money was Shirky paid for the work.

My Shirky may be naive but no one would call him stupid. There is no way in 2007 he did not know that Gaddafi and his regime had carried out a number of terrorist attacks against Americans in Europe. He could not have not known the nature of Gaddafi's regime and that any profit made in the tourist industry, which Shirky claims he had hoped to promote via consulting, would certainly line the pockets of Gaddafi and his forces. At the time Bush and Blair were desperate to make it seem that Gaddafi had changed as a result of the war in Iraq, but I don't think Shirky had any such stake in the war in Iraq and his calculations were likely not as naive as he now claims.

And since 2007 a great deal has been learned about the Monitor Group project. We now know for certain that under the cover of pro-democracy work the Monitor Group was conducting a lucrative PR campaign for Gaddafi with the expressed purpose of raising his profile in the Western world, while doing nothing to promote democracy. Shirky may have not known that in 2007, but he most certainly must now and it would be good to know more details about Skirky's relationship with the Monitor Group.

To be fair we live in a global world where many of us find ourselves in bed with less than honorable partners. The United States finds itself more and more co-dependent and the butchers of Tienanmen Square. We burn oil produced by dictators who don't recognize the fundamental humanity of women or have journalist killed. He impose drug laws we know are destroying communities in South America, we invest in nations we know are destroying old growth forests and wiping out communities and species that live in them.

In the past 30 years the rise of a new free market has also seen the decline in the very idea of daily ethics. In the rush to profit we forget about Tibet, natives of the rain forests, women of Saudi Arabia, journalists in Russia, democrats in China, and even the poor in our own nations. America has even seen a political movement with no other purpose than to continue to deny health coverage to 30,000,000 people. Moral goodness has clearly stopped being much of a force in our day to day lives.

Its not that Capitalism is innately evil: its only that are often innately humans evil. Or maybe just innately lazy about their moral principles. Or just innately careless.

But more important than wikis and blogs to building a better future is our ability to see when we have made a grave error. We are rich in technology but poor in humility. Clay Shirky's avoidance of stating how much he profited from work with Libya makes his entire defense of the power of Web technology to promote human development seem hallow.

One thing the cyber-community has proven itself to be is fickle. If Shirky does not come clean soon about the extent of his revenues off work with Libya he might find himself sharing a virtual dog house with Julian Assange.

There are plenty of people in Tunisia and Egypt who actually have used the Internet to change their society, and I think we would all rather read books by people we can feel confident are real heroes.

Robert Hooker

UPDATE: After doing some more research it is now pretty obvious that Shirky is almost certainly down playing his work for the government of Libya under Gaddafi, that or until this year he was playing it up for some reason. In also every bio we can find of him on blogs, and his profile on Amazon. In fact on his Amazon profile Libya is the only government mentioned.

Now if he had only had one meeting with the government of Libya and, as he claims, he resulted in nothing, why was he mentioning the government of Libya again and again in his work after that time?

Its hard to escape the conclusion that Mr Sharky was part of the Monitor Groups efforts to raise the status of Gaddafi and Libya, that he was repeatedly speaking about this work to lend his own status as a Internet Utopian to the regime in Tripoli. The extent to which Shirky was working his experience with Libya in to articles. For example when a article is titled “Social production is the great opportunity of our age,” says web maven Clay Shirky and then goes on to mention Clay Shirky's work for Libya in the first paragraph there is a clear giving to Libya the prestige of the article itself. When his Amazon page for Cognitive Surplus also mentions his work in Libya we can only conclude that he was not just involved in one off with Libya IT in the hopes of doing something good, but was using Monitor group to profit off his reputation by selling it to Libya.

This is much more than the moral compromises many of us need to make to play the bills, it looks more and more as a well thought out plan to profit by associating his extremely optimistic ideas about technology with the ruthless regime of Libya, and the only motivation could have been profit.

Clearly Shirky is now too morally compromised to serve as an effective spokesman for the cyber-dissident movement. Perhaps he should take some of the money he made with Monitor group and take a nice long vacation. Hopefully NYU will carry out a full investigation of the ethics of their professor in this matter.

Web 3.0 Lab: Tokyo Twitter Density

2011-03-21T11:28:00.000-07:00

Web 3.0 Lab: Tokyo Twitter Density:

Tokyo is one of the most dense locations for geo-tweeting on the planet. Tokyo, London, Amsterdam and New York see some of the highest usage of twitter on the planet. In these cities, and many others, twitter flexibility and simplicity is making it the ideal Web 3.0 tool. Not only can people quickly access information from contacts or on subjects from anywhere, and many people are deciding to give geo-position with their tweets.

What we are seeing is a rapid uptake of geo-tagged tweets coming from the major cities, producing a continue flow of real time information about what is happening on the group in major cities. Some people even view these as the thoughts of a collective intelligence of the cities, but we find that way to Science Fiction.

But the potentials both positive and negative of such a crowd sourced flow of information are amazing. On one had it offers one of the most extensive form of monitoring and Surveillance, but also a instrument of collective culture creative, consumer knowledge sharing and democratic organization.

One thing is certain, the consumers have embraced the production of geo-tagged information in a way that would have been unimaginable just five years ago, and the trend looks only likely to continue.

Where there are Clouds there is Rain

2011-03-20T16:22:00.000-07:00

We have probably all heard the wonders of Cloud computing from pre-sales teams. Cloud computing will reduce energy consumption, reduce costs, improve innovation, and all kinds of other things.

Well over the past two years I have seen a number of Cloud projects at various orgnaizations, and none have worked out as intended.

My impressionis that the Cloud is being way way oversold. Why? Because even though the Cloud makes sense to IT providers and outsourcing firms as a way to potentially increase profit, there are no real benefits to most clients. In fact working with the cloud, especially the current Microsoft Stack in the Cloud produces complex issues around security, access control, sign off, and boundaries of responsibility that significantly slow down project deployments. Clients generally find themselves waiting much long for a Cloud solution than they would have a simple data center.

This is not to say that the Cloud is dead, it certainly is not. But I have restrained my expectations for what the Cloud can offer a great deal in the last year. The key problem is security. Generally the requirements for security in a Cloud solution handcuff the solution and make it almost impossible to move forward.

The Cloud has read head first in to IT's dirty little secret. In data centers we generally put the software in and spend the weekend before fixing all the mistakes we made. If we have direct access to the boxes we might be able to meet our deadlines. IT projects are still riddled with mistakes, oversights, and miscommunication between parties and players. That is simply the nature of complex projects in technologies changing all the time. Having a single data center helps to resolve many of these issues at the last minute.

But the Cloud often isolates the production environment from the people who can make it work. Software is deployed in to solutions beyond the deployment teams control. The inability to "pound it with a hammer" at the last minute has bogged a number of projects in endless efforts to document everything before hand. I am seeing very basic projects now producing hundreds of pages of documentation which consumes months of work.

So far I have yet to see a Cloud project that did not take at least 5 times as long as a traditional data center project. My hunch is that unless a set of Out of the Box Cloud services are soon developed and sold at lower cost than software licenses, cost conscious consumers will simply return to what worked in the past: installing software on servers. As server become cheaper, faster and more powerful and as SharePoint becomes more and more the standard office management system it will actually become easier to keep IT in house. And what I am seeing now is that there is a strong movement in that direction.

I am not prepared to say the Cloud has failed, only failed to be the miracle it was promising.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial W...

2011-03-15T03:15:00.000-07:00

Doing a search on the term "Web 3.0" will first and foremost take you to a large number of articles talking about the Semantic Web. Google searches on Web 3.0 resolves to Wikipedia article on the Semantic Web.

gayed Ahmed Tarek

Finally, Semantic web became such a failure that they called whatever is going on now 2.0 and semantic web should be 3.0.#geektweet

1 hour ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply

Semantic Web is a concept that has been around about as long as XML and even HTML. The idea is that a new way to write data to the web will be created that will make it easier for a single user to find precisely the data they want.

The most common architectural framework we is Resource Description Framework or RDF. RDF aims to code data in statements of three terms in a relationship. A classic subject object predict kind of solution. A large group of these "triplets" creates a "triplestore". The notion is that a large triplestore will be able to draw conclusions beyond the data encoded.

For example you might have a triplestore with the following facts encoded:

Coen Brothers directed True Grit (2010)
Jeff Bridges stared in True Grit (2010)
Bob Hooker did not see True Grit (2010)
Bob Hooker saw Tron Legacy
Jess Bridges stared in Tron Legacy
Tron Legacy was released in 2010
True Grit (2010) was released in 2010

Demos systems like this can then draw inspiring conclusions like Coen Brothers and Jeff Bridges worked together on a movie that came out in 2010 but Bob Hooker did not see it, but Bob Hooker did see a movie staring Jeff Bridges.

Okay well maybe something a bit more useful could come from it, the idea is the same.

As long as you pretty much know what you want to come out of a triplestore and build it correctly you can conclude fairly obvious things. If a triplestore has cured anything or come up with any theory yet we have not heard of it.

If the Semantic Web will someday scale up to actually being useful is a open question. It would be really cool if it did. But if it works or not it is to a central part of the changes that are going on it the web that can be meaningfully called Web 3.0.

We suspect Semantic Web will keep trying to be part of some future web event, and that it will be being pushed as a core part of Web 4.0. The idea of automated "thinking"has been the Holy Grail of Computer Science from before most people could access a computer, and will probably always be an attractive idea to computer researchers if not consumers.

What tend to define Web 3.0 as not semantic, but rather the extension of the Web 1.0 (content) and Web 2.0 (Social Graph) into the spatial domain. Web 3.0 web content and social nodes are both tagged with spatial relationships and able to form social relationships based on current location.

But more than that, Web 3.0 means that users have access to the Web just about where ever and whenever. Web 1.o answer what, Web 2.0 answer who, and Web 2.0 will answer where.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0

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For use the key technology change that makes Web 3.0 a distinct and revolutionary phase in the evolution of the Web is the fact that the Internet is now with the user all the time. The line that broke in the world form online has been broken.

Just a few years ago a common way to insult people who posted online was to say they "should get a life" or "should get out more", but today people are posting on twitter on trains to work, while waiting in bars for friends, or from lounges of museums. Foursquare, Facebook places and Gowalla extent the activity of being online to the activity getting out and about in the real world.

This ability to do while you surf, to consume and produce content anywhere has changed radically the nature of the user experience of the Internet. It is this change in the lived experience of the Internet that makes the term Web 3.0 useful.

The change does not require the Semantic Web, nor would the Semantic Web cause this change. So we tend to see the Semantic Web as independent of the key event that we call web 3.0.

Web 1.0 put people in contact with a great deal of information. The stereo type of a Web 1.0 geek is someone consuming masses of pointless data pieces while not in social engagement. The truth is though there never was a Web 1.0, people who used the web a great deal would find forms like Usenet for form community on. People have always viewed the Internet as a social experience first and foremost.

Web 2.0 expanded the ability of people to join and form community online for just chat groups to Social Graphs. Web 2.0 stereotype geek is someone who lives their entire social life from their bedroom or Starbucks. A "Web 2.0 geek" has lots and lots of friends on Facebook but never goes out. This was very empowering for people disabled people who could not leave the house, but it tended to make the focus of social interaction the bedroom or study.

Web 3.0 takes the web in to the world. A Web 3.0 geek is someone who can't make eye contact because they are glued to their blackberry or iPhone all the time. They are online all the time, never more than a few minutes from checking their twitter account.

A more positive way to think about it would be:

Web 1.0 is reading about a protests on a group's web site before hand, going to it, and going home and looking information on the web about it in the news the next morning.

Web 2.0 is learning about a protest on Facebook, seeing the people who are going to go, IMing to people who will go on from you Social Graph, going to it, coming home and posting images to your blog or Facebook page that night.

Web 3.0 is learning where a surprise protest is going to meet 10 minutes before it happens on your blackberry, video tapping it on your iPhone and posting tweets and images on your phone from the event, reading the Facebook entries on the way home and once you get back not even bothering with you PC because you already know everything and are too tired. Rather watch TV while tweeting on your android.

This mobilization of the Internet experience has nothing to do with the Semantic web, it is entirely independent of it. The mobile post-PC Internet (with is the third wave or Web 3.0) will happen without Semantic Web like meaning, and Semantic Web like meaning, if it is possible, could happen without adding mobility to the Internet.

We at the Web 3.0 Lab thing that by adding more spatial dimensions you will get improved semantic understanding. Much of our social understanding is spatial. Reasoning that some people hope to get out of triplestores we think will emerge out of geo-tagging of information. Spatial arrangements of data will drive interesting conclusions about how that data relates to the real world, how it is used, and therefore what it means.

The Web 3.0 Lab has a working model of meaning that is a bit different than what the Semantic Web assumes. While the Semantic Web sees data as meaning what it is about, or what it captures or contains, we seeing the meaning of data coming from how it is used. We feel that this is a more mature understanding of language evolved over the past decades by linguist and social scientists.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial Web

Fast Selling Device of All Time, From Microsoft

2011-03-10T13:08:00.000-08:00

Kinect controller">

"Microsoft has sold more than 10 million Kinect sensor systems since launch on 4 November, and - according to Guinness World Records - is the fastest-selling consumer electronics device on record.

"The sales figures outstrip those of both Apple's iPhone and iPad when launched, Guinness said.

"Kinect is an infrared camera add-on for Microsoft's Xbox 360 games console that allows it to track body movements."

BBC News - Microsoft Kinect 'fastest-selling device on record'

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial W...

2011-03-07T07:16:00.000-08:00

For example you might have a triplestore with the following facts encoded:

Coen Brothers directed True Grit (2010)
Jeff Bridges stared in True Grit (2010)
Bob Hooker did not see True Grit (2010)
Bob Hooker saw Tron Legacy
Jess Bridges stared in Tron Legacy
Tron Legacy was released in 2010
True Grit (2010) was released in 2010

Okay well maybe something a bit more useful could come from it, the idea is the same.

But more than that, Web 3.0 means that users have access to the Web just about where ever and whenever. Web 1.o answer what, Web 2.0 answer who, and Web 2.0 will answer where.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web 3.0

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The change does not require the Semantic Web, nor would the Semantic Web cause this change. So we tend to see the Semantic Web as independent of the key event that we call web 3.0.

A more positive way to think about it would be:

Web 1.0 is reading about a protests on a group's web site before hand, going to it, and going home and looking information on the web about it in the news the next morning.

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 is not the Semantic Web, its The Spatial Web

Web 3.0 Lab focus on the BRICs: Web 3.0 Lab focus on BRICs: Social Network and Web...

2011-03-01T01:45:00.000-08:00

Social Network and Web 3.0 services has a large presence in Russia, the fourth largest Social Network market in Europe.

The Web 3.0 Lab has taken a look at on the ground tweeting in Russia for some time. Using our twitter analysis tool we looked at Moscow which is a major center for geolocated tweeting with a score on our scale of 85 to at 20:00 GMT. At that same time St Petersburg, tweeps intensity was 54 This compared to Berlin is a low area for geolocated tweets with a score of 66 0n the same scale. But for BRIC this level of Web 3.0 activity is not that impressive. At that time Mumbai 59 out of 100 twitter intensity. In Brazil, entering the evening, the score was Sao Paulo had high tweeting at 78. The conclusion is that Russia is very much part of a truly global internet, and Social Networks could exert a power use as a media. Over evaluation of overallgeo-tagged web activity and data is 53 for Moscow center on our Clima scale.

But unlike Brazil and India few in Russia would probably argue that it is a working democracy, and though India and Brazil have their problems, given the authoritarian nature of Putin's rule of Russia is more likely to face grass roots call for Regime reform.

Russia: the fourth largest social networking market in Europe

Russia has had some harsh criticism of Google and has threatened to review it's internet policy, which they say would be modelled more on China's tightly controlled censorship. Will it be watching you more than you watching the internet?

Although right now Russia has a very open internet culture, even Medvedev has a video blog- http://blog.kremlin.ru/ . In the last few days there have been strong condenation from Medvedev and Putin about the effects of Google. We have some information about Russian social networks from The Fresh Network who has followed Russia and its active social network.

"The January Web Index for TNS shows that two leading social networks in Russia are witnessing the kind of acceleration in growth that we have seen in other social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

One of the main social networks in Russia, Odnoklassniki (Одноклассники) is reporting 30 million registered users. The site, which (as the name suggests) connects classmates is used in both Russia and the Ukraine and attracts 8 million visitors each day. VKontakte (В контакте) is Odnoklassniki’s biggest competitor with a reported 28 million registered users and 1.4 billion page views each day and 13.09 million visitors each month.

These statistics are impressive and firmly place Russia as the fourth biggest market in Europe for social networking. The total number of users of both of these sites is remarkable given that in 2008, Russia’s overall internet population was reported to be just 33 million people. It is true that internet access is increasing rapidly in Russia, and the growth of social networks is accompanying this. When people go online for the first time they appear to be joining and using social networks almost immediately."

Sounrce:

Russia: the fourth largest social networking market in Europe

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab focus on BRICs: Social Network

Wisconsin and the limits of web power | Dave Karpf | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

2011-02-27T10:53:00.000-08:00

"But, just as the Egyptian protests were aided by social media, rather than caused by social media, the roots of this fight are really quite different.

"Labour unions offer a bedrock structure for large-scale collective action. Governor Walker is attempting to remove that structure. If he succeeds, internet-mediated organisations won't be able to fill in the gap. Groups like MoveOn.org can be tremendously effective, particularly in the new media environment. But they can't organise workers in a specific industry or city to improve wages, working conditions and benefits. MoveOn is never going to sit across from management at the negotiating table.

"That's where "organising without organisations" reaches its limits: you need to build institutions of power if you're going to confront institutions of power. When the going gets phenomenally difficult, you need courage and commitment to succeed, not just a wifi hotspot."

Wisconsin and the limits of web power | Dave Karpf | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk:

Web 3.0 Lab: 10% Chance Your Windows Mobile Update Will Have Pr...

2011-02-27T04:27:00.000-08:00

This is not the news that Windows Mobile needed right now. With a tiny fraction of the smartphone market Windows is competing in a market where excellence is just taken for granted.

BBC News - Microsoft says phone update failed 1 in 10 users: "Microsoft has revealed that 1 in 10 users who tried to install a software update on their Windows mobile experienced problems.

"The company had previously said that only a 'small number' of handsets were affected.

"Owners have reported a range of issues following the download, from phones crashing, to becoming completely unusable."

Microsoft must wake up to the fact it is up against three products that combine excellent in software and UI. Blackberry is a extremely stable and easy to use platform. I am a long term Blackberry user and its continued strong position does not surprise me.

iPhone is an excellent piece of technology. I have found it to be a pleasure to use. But perhaps the most serious threat is Android. Using a Linux fork Google has finally been able to bring the quality and stability of Linux to a wide audience of ordinary users with Android, and Microsoft must fight on quality, price, and ease of use.

I have a very grey view right now of Microsoft Mobile's possibility. I wonder if in the combined push for Cloud and Xbox is Microsoft has the talent base to also put up a major fight back in mobile. In the Xbox and Cloud space Microsoft are fighting from strengths, but in mobile they are weak and not looking any stronger.

Web 3.0 Lab: 10% Chance Your Windows Mobile Update Will Have

Google vs Facebook, the big battle

2011-02-26T08:25:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Google blunts Facebook phone app on Android: "Google has stepped up its data battle with Facebook by blunting the social networking site's app on its phones.

"An update for its latest mobile operating system will see users' Facebook contacts disappear from the phone's address book.

"Google said it took the action as it was no longer willing to exempt Facebook from its data-sharing rules.

"The decision has been seen as indicative of growing tensions between the two internet giants."

I have tested the Facebook Phone app, which just showed up on my Android and I am rather unimpressed. Firstly its a massive privacy violation. Secondly, I hate talking on the phone so what the point. Don't we go online to get away from having to talk to people?

Web 3.0 Lab: The Internet down in Bahrain?

2011-02-26T03:47:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Internet traffic has been flowing in and out of Bahrain during the entire protest. Many people in Bahrain complain about slow and limited access. This may be due to a combination of censorship and high volumes, but the Internet has not been taken down at any point so far in a Egyptian style.

The NYT today reported:

"As protests have erupted in Bahrain over the last several days, the government has severely restricted the access of its citizens to the Internet, new data from an organization that monitors Internet traffic strongly suggests."

Internet Use in Bahrain Restricted, Data Shows - NYTimes.com

We partially confirm this with our own tool this morning. Even before reading the report we could tell that geo-tagged tweeting from key areas in Bahrain had collapsed. Our tool use exponential decay to model how a tweet looses significance over time, so a sudden unplugging of the Internet would not result in an immediate collapse, be a rapid fall in value.

Given that yesterday for high schools around Sulmaniya Hospital yesterday of 50 on our scale of 100 this mornings score of 3 would indicate a major interruption of service. Track this site.

But this is not the complete story.

We are seeing moderate levels of tweeting with geo-locations for Manama, specially Sh Abdulla Ave, Manāma, Bahrain Track this site in real time

We are also seeing significant fluctuations across location and time in Manāma this morning. All scores as significantly suppressed from highs of yesterday but there still are certain locations with modest tweeting.

Now it is important to say that our tool tracks the geo-locations assigned to tweets via the Twitter API. It is possible that false geo-tagged tweets are being generated by the government to make it look as though the Internet is still happening. We strongly believe the Bahrain government has been conducting a campaign of disinformation on twitter for several days.

It is also possible that people are simply retweeting posts. Retweets carry the original geo-tag so we will have to watch over time to be sure we are not seeing the effects of retweeting. We included this feature in our measurement because we wanted to see the overall impact of a tweet from a location on the entire world, rather than counting heads. We are more interested in the overall systems impact of tweeting at a given location. During the Arab revolts this has lead to us seeing elevated tweet levels for specific locations. But it may also meant hat a high score is only the echo effect of retweets over time.

Update: But this story is moving very fast. We have just noticed a rapid rise in the level of tweets coming for Pearl Roundabout. We can not confirm with our tool that this is actual tweeting being done on mobile devices and laptops in area. Track levels here.

Web 3.0 Lab: The Internet down in Bahrain?:

Web 3.0 Lab: Social Network and Web 3.0 services has a large pr...

2011-02-24T00:45:00.000-08:00

Russia: the fourth largest social networking market in Europe

Sounrce:

Russia: the fourth largest social networking market in Europe

2nd March 2009, 05:33 pm by Matt Rhodes

Web 3.0 Lab: Social Network and Web 3.0 services has a large pr...:

Pro-Union Website 'Defend Wisconsin' Blocked In Capitol

2011-02-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

A website being used to help organize protests against Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin has been blocked from the Capitol Building in Madison, according to reports.

The site, http://www.defendwisconsin.org/, was inaccessible from the building on Monday and into Tuesday morning, CNN reported.

Pro-Union Website 'Defend Wisconsin' Blocked In Capitol

Dealing with a troll bomb

2011-02-22T15:35:00.000-08:00

A troll bomb is the next security threat to Social Networks.

Facebook Chat Now Available in Hotmail Inboxes Everywhere

2011-02-22T15:29:00.000-08:00

"When it was first announced that Hotmail would offer Facebook chat access from within the inbox, it was only available to six different regions.This week the Hotmail team has expanded the feature to reach customers worldwide."

Facebook Chat Now Available in Hotmail Inboxes Everywhere

Web 3.0 Lab: WEB 3.0 ANALYSIS: GADDAFI HAS LOST CONTROL OF EAST...

2011-02-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

Base upon the start of geotweeting coming out of Benghazi, Libya we a confident that the telecommunication infrastructure in that region is no longer in the hands of the regime, and that Gaddafi must have lost most, if not all, control over much of Eastern Libya.

We have been monitoring Benghazi, Libya for a couple of weeks with out geo-tweeting tool. This tool allows us to follow the density of real time tweeting in Libya or anywhere in the world. Today we saw our first tweets with geotags coming out of Benghazi. We had been looking for this event as we have predicted that he start of geo-located tweeting coming out of Benghazi could only happen once the regime had lost control of the telecommunication infrastructure in the area. Last week we defined this as the event which would show Gaddafi's control in Benghazi had been destroyed.

So the emergence of these first geotagged tweets is a major even in the revolution in Libya.

Just the fact that some tweets are being made from the coast of Benghazi is like a radio transmission from London during the Blitz or a letter from Stalingrad: proof that the people's will is not broken and that they have the will to win.

If ever a proof of the profound value and meaning that Web 3.0 can hold was needed, here it is!

Web 3.0 Lab: WEB 3.0 ANALYSIS: GADDAFI HAS LOST CONTROL OF EAST...:

User generate content in YouTube is giving the truth about violence

2011-02-20T13:27:00.000-08:00

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab: News agencies dependant on User Gener...

2011-02-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

As the web3.0 lab can confirm that reporters are relying on user generated content. A long-time BBC correspondent from the region Jon Williams also confirms the story.

"The BBC and other news organisations are relying on those on the ground to tell us what's happening. Their phone accounts - often accompanied by the sound or gunfire and mortars - are vivid. However, inevitably, it means we cannot independently verify the accounts coming out of Libya. That's why we don't present such accounts as "fact" - they are "claims" or "allegations".

"Similarly, the flow of video - the so-called "user-generated-content" - has dwindled to a trickle as the authorities have periodically turned off the Internet. That means we have an additional responsibility - to be clear with our audiences not just what little we do know, but perhaps more significantly, what we don't."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/02/reporting_from_libya.html

Web 3.0 Lab: Web 3.0 Lab: News agencies dependant on User Gener...:

Web 3.0 Lab: Twitter analysis predicted demos in Pearl Roundabout Bahrain

2011-02-19T13:11:00.000-08:00

Overview

By analysis the tensity and pattern of geo-location tagged tweets in Bahrain we were able to confidently predict a mass demonstration in Northern Bahrain several hours before it began.

Our Prediction

Based upon our experience and analysis of the twitter trends on the ground in Bahrain this morning, we were able to make this prediction at around noon Bahrain time:

Web 3.0 Lab: Anticipating more protests in North Bahrain today:

"From our morning analysis of the intensity of tweeting in North Bahrain, the pattern and spread of this intensity, and the content of #Bahrain and #lulu hashtag on Twitter we are predicting that there is a high probability of continued civil unrest and protest in North Bahrain, and that the Regime will again likely not be able to contain or control the scale or extent of protests."

Track tweeting from around Lulu Pearl Roundabout in real time with this tool.

This is significant because at that time news reports we were reading from journalist inside Bahrain were saying that it was uncertain what would happen. We were reading some reports of people being scared after recent killings and even of smaller turn out.

This contradicted what we were seeing on the ground with our twitter analysis tools. We could see a massive crowd of people who were twitter so much that there must have been 10,000s of them. They were mass in high concentrations near Bilad Al Qadeem. At one point this morning tweeting levels from that location were almost as high as those in the center of NYC.

How we made the prediction

On previous days we had seen this pattern before mass protests on Pearl Roundabout. We could tell that a massive number of people were collected and were motivated to communication. Our observations of Bahrain people living in London is that protests involve heavy levels of social networking. Protesters in Bahrain are making extensive use of various social networks to coordinate and inspire protesters, and to keep in touch with large families.

People in Bahrain have far more extended families than most westerners. People preparing to undertake a risky protest against a violent regime would also want to keep their family informed. Twitter is an ideal tool to broadcast status to a large group of people.

So from these factors we ignored the cautious statements from major media sources and predicted that a mass demonstration would take place in Northern Bahrain and that the regime would not be able to control it without resorting to mass killings.

The protesters would have had a mixture of deep determination and concern for their safety and the safety of their families. We have spoken with many people from Bahrain who struggle constantly to keep in touch with their extended families. Social Networks on the Internet work well for this.

So this spike west of Pearl Roundabout could only mean a group preparing to confront the regime.

Several hours later the news reports came in that this is precisely what happened.

Limitations of our current model (and yes we are working on these)

But there were certain things we could not see with our tool. We could not see the retreat of the Army for the Roundabout or peaceful strategy protesters would take. We continue to explore semantic analysis to give us a more nuanced understanding of what large mean.

But we are pretty confident that we have demonstrated the value of this kind of analysis, and this will be part of the news gathering and reporting of the future.

Also our model has been useless in Libya, were events are moving very quickly. Our analysis of Libya has been based on semantic analysis of the #Libya. This has lead us for some time to believe the regime there was weaker than many people imagined in the west, but we are still developing the solid model to make more firm predictions based on Twitter content in this area.

Conclusion

By using our Twitter density analysis model we were able to see people massing this morning west of Pearl Roundabout. From our previous observations and our analysis of the related Twitter and Facebook content we were able to confidently predict a highly probability of a protest starting today in Northern Bahrain. Several hours later this is what happened.

We feel this has helped demonstrate the value to journalists to this kind of analysis in the right conditions. There is a requirement that a society have a high level of Internet adoption. Our tool has been useless in trying to see what could be happening in Yemen and Libya. But for Bahrain it has proven very effective.

Web 3.0 Lab: Twitter analysis predicted demos in Pearl Roundabout Bahrain

Microsoft just gives up on Blogging, and joins with the best

2011-02-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

What can you say about the new partnership between Microsoft and WordPress?

It shows both the weakness and strength of Microsoft.

First the weakness. Microsoft can't make something as simple as a blogging tool. This is a bit odd since in 1999 I was able to kludge a some Pearl discussion code to form a basic Blog. Oh if I had thought to make that in to a product. It shows a profound weakness of Microsoft in the Web 2.0.

But Microsoft can make up for weaknesses by merging with strength. It has no Web 2.0 presence so it partners with Facebook. It can't do blogging so it partners with WordPress. It can't do mobile so it partners with Nokia.

Remember this is Microsoft. Its not so much as they make things, its that they bring to market things other people made. Innovation and Microsoft are two words you don't see together that much anymore. But Microsoft's role is not innovation, its bringing order to CTO and CIO lives. Its giving the Enterprise a one stop shop and selling XBOXs.

YouTube used to spread Iranian protests

2011-02-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

We can not confirm but these image were posted. They are suppose to be from Iran. But given the current situation they could be from any number of nations. The weather would make Iran seem more reasonable. It certainly does not look like Libya or Bahrain. But demonstrations are spreading wildly through the Arab world.

This account was created three day earlier. The user does not identify themselves. This pattern of usage of social networks is very common among Iranian and Libyan protester.

Web 3.0 Lab: The Structure an Nature of a Troll Bomb

2011-02-18T11:43:00.000-08:00

Discussing the nature and structure of a Troll Bomb, like the one carried out by Bahrain before their crack down on peaceful protesters.

We believe a Troll Army attack upon social networks is a much a potential cyber threat as crackers. And will be much harder to combat.

Troll attacks on social networks like YouTube and Twitter are likely going to be the next major security concern. Human rights groups trying to use social networks to effect change in their nations are particularly vulnerable.

Currently we are analyzing the data from the situation in Bahrain, identifying patterns in such attacks to develop analysis tools for future use by human rights groups and business trying to protect their reputation. Maybe even the good people at Twitter will take a notice.

Web 3.0 Lab: The Structure an Nature of a Troll Bomb

Web 3.0 Lab: In Bahrain both pro-government and anti-government...

2011-02-16T09:20:00.000-08:00

A facebook page that supports the regime in Bahrain. Unlike Egypt in Bahrain supporters of the regime are actively engaging social media.

Marwa Al Dossary is an account of Twitter. "Her" picture is rather too attractive, and her posts too clearly pro-government and, frankly, full of distortions to not suspect that se is an account created by the Bahrain regime to try and combat the growing influence of social networks.

This includes, sadly, distortions of the truth, like "her" claim that no one was in Pearl Roundabout (something we know to be utterly false from looking at tweeting coming directly from that location) to posts from YouTube showing violence.

It is easy to dismiss these as government plants, but looking at YouTube and Facebook one can not escape the conclusion that a number of people in Bahrain support the current regime, and that they and the government have determied to fight it out in social media.

Today (16 Feb) there will be two protests in Bahrain, one pro and one anti government. Below you can find links to follow both.

Pro-gov: http://t.co/6FAe5Zt

anti-gov: http://t.co/023HDdt

Web 3.0 Lab: In Bahrain both pro-government and anti-government

Web 3.0 Lab: What now for tweeter, how ready is the social media tool to support the spreading Arab Revolt

2011-02-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

What now for tweeter, how ready is the social media tool to support the spreading Arab Revolt

We have been watching the fast moving events in the Arab world to try and see how the social networking tool of twitter on mobile phones and smart phones can be used to organize protester.

What we are finding is that there are great disparages between Twitter uptake and use in different nations of the Middle East facing political protest.

For example we see almost no evidence of on the ground tweeting in Algiers, Algeria, with the highest score of 4 out of 100 using our tweeter meter tool
See Algiers, Algeria Real Time Tweet Levels

The story in Aden Yemen is a bit different. In most of Aden we are seeing no tweeting, but from the airport to the coast we have seen fairly high tweeting in what we suspect is an area organizing itself to protest.

For example in Al-Midan St, Aden, Yemen our model gave a real time geo-positioned tweeting score of 41 out of 100, which is very high for a smaller city in the developing world.
Sell Aden Tweeting levels here

Manāma, Bahrain is also showing much higher levels of tweeting than usual with a score of 60 out of 100 when we last checked. Again we assume that protesters are using tweeting to organize themselves and communicate, and as showen to defiance which is becoming familiar a large number of them are posting their locations. We have also seen a significant rise in the score for Bahrain through the day, rising from a score of 30 out of a hundred to 60. Since our scale is logarithmic this is more than a 100% increase and constitutes a sudden and unusual spike in tweeting around the protests.
See Manāma, Bahrain here

Tehran protests in Azadi Square seem not to be geo-tweeting at all with scores of 0 out of 100. We suspect that given the recent memories of crack downs on protester in Iran in recent years Iranian tweeters and bloggers will go to greater lengths to hide there location. We also suspect the anti-western policy of the government has limited the penetration of social network technology.
See Tehran Azadi Square Tweeting levels here

Conclusions:

There is a disparate social network landscapes that the growing Arab revolt faces. In the Gulf states geo-located tweeting has be adopted and any future protests in Bahrain, Qatar, Lebanon and even Yemen will have Twitter available as a tool, but more isolated nations like Algeria, Lybia, and Iran are likely to have more limited use of Web 3.0 tools to support political protests.
It has been an article of faith that giving ones geo-location in tweeting would be a violation of privacy which would only serve to increase the power of the state. What we may be seeing in the Arab world is a very different kind of future. It seems that many Arabs are openly geo-tagging their tweets as a sign of defiance to their governments. Also a young large motivated community of educated Arabs is more capable of taking advantage of the organizational advantages of geo-tagging than the older established power structures they oppose. At least in the face of the aging dictatorships which have ruled the Arab world since the end of colonialism technology is on the side of the protesters.
There is a possibility that by this time next year we may actually have an entirely new kind of political organization and radicalism which can maturely use social networks and geo-tagging to create agile protests the established states of all but the most advanced nations will never be able to deal with.
Twitter's minimal technology requirements and ease of use makes it an excellent communication tool for protesters in the developing world.

Web 3.0 Lab: What now for tweeter, how ready is the social media tool to support the spreading Arab Revolt

Web 3.0 Lab: Rise of the Arab Web

2011-02-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

Web 3.0 usage, especially Twitter, has exploded in the Arab world.

You can track the level of real time tweeting in Tahrir Sqr, or anywhere in the world, with the easy to use free tool

Total Social Media research project Clima tracks the intensity of Web 3.0 adoption and use anywhere in the world. Recently the Clima team has been glued to Cairo. Clima's Tweether Report has found a dramatic rise in the use of Twitter in Egypt through through much of the revolt.

Clima Beta tool can be used here free of charge.

Even when the Internet was shut down by Egypt's government tweets were getting out. Global communities of users were retweeting (or RTing) tweets so that any information coming out of Cairo was rapidly distributed globally. Collaboration and social networks played the same role in the Arab revolt that the printing press would have played in the US or French revolutions.

Once the Internet was available again Cairo Twitter exploded, with the intensity of tweeting rising dramatically over the weeks of protest. Usage in Tweeter reached levels like one normally only cities in Tokyo, London or New York.

To monitor the real time tweeting in Tahrir click here

Today is the first day after Mubarak resigned, and we are seeing very high usage of Tweeter in nations that allow it.

In a recent check the Tweeter intensity for key Arab on Saturday Feb 12, 2011 at 11 GMT cities was

Tahrir Sqr 50% (Was 90% last night) See real time score
Beirut is 57% city center See real time score
Doha Qatar 72% city center See real time

To grasp the meaning of these levels look at two European cities at the same instance:

Rome 32% city center See real time
Paris 86% city center See real time

Now there are a number of factors involved here. One is that it is still morning in Europe and several hours later in the Arab world. Another is that Saturday is not as big a day off in the Arab world.

Also retweeting posts carries the geo-tagging on the post with it. So when I retweet a post from Egypt it counts as another tweet from the location of the original tweet, not from my location. Al Jazeera is being heavily retweeted in the rest of the world raising Doha's score.

But still this rise in the intensity of Arab tweeting is still amazing and we believe very real and likely long lasting.

Arab cities will tend to either be far poorer than in Europe and have less smartphones (Cairo), or if they are rich have a far smaller population (Doha). The normal stereotype of technology is that it should take years for the developing world to take on a new technology. We have gotten used to seeing the third world pick up new technology faster than we did. But I think with Twitter was are seeing something amazing in the Arab world. Users there have leap frogged the west and are using the tool more intensely and more intelligently then the west.

But also the story is about the rise of the global tweeter user. Arabs are finding that not only can they communicate with themselves via tweeting, but also with the wider world. And the wider world is engaged in the Arab revolt via tweeter and providing a massive collaborative community which has been well ahead of their governments or established medias.

For several weeks the richest source of global information has been Al Jazeera, which not too long ago was branded a propaganda mouth piece by the USA, and tweeting. The rise of the Caliphate 3.0 may be just around the corner.

You can track the level of real time tweeting in Tahrir Sqr, or anywhere in the world, with the easy to use free tool

Web 3.0 Lab: A very very loud 15,000 Arabs, or maybe more

2011-02-15T15:15:00.000-08:00

Track real time Twitter intensity for Tahrir Square Cairo and any location on earth. A free tool we rushed from pre-production to support the Arab revolt.

Social media intelligence firm Sysomos spent a lot of time analyzing the tweeting coming out of Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen over the past several weeks. Sysomos was only able to identify about 15,000 tweeters with geo-locations in the three countries. This is less than 0.03% of the global population of 52 million tweeter users. Sysomos did conclude that a number of tweeters in these areas may be covering their identities.

If this is true, than they were a very load group of tweeters. On the night of January 11th and January 12th Total Social Media tweether report for Tehrar Square registered over 90% score, more in line with New York of London than Cairo. Even several days after the event tweets coming from Tahrir Square are ranging between 30% and 60%, which would be high for 15,000. On the night Mubarak fell we were seeing elevated level of tweeting through most of central Cairo and Giza more in line with a western city.

So what accounts for the fact that so few Twitter users could have made so much noise?

We have proposed the following explanation:

A large percentage of active Twitter users in Cairo were concentrated in and around Tahrir Square on the nights of January 11th and January 12th. That they were tweeting at a very elevated rate, probably almost continually. Not the typical user firing off a few tweets on lunch or a movie, each tweeter in Tahrir Square was probably a mini-printing press.

Egyptian political organizers were making good use of Twitter as the ultimate radio. Many of the available tweeter account and mobile smart- phone in anywhere in Egypt was probably being used by organizers to get their message out and to keep people on the ground informed. These tweeter accounts would be on continually, firing off messages almost around the clock.

Re-tweeting carries the geo-tag of the original tweet with it, so the global network of supporters provided a amplification platform for the people in Egypt, multiplying almost each tweet many times if not many hundreds of times over.

We have observed elevated tweeting rates in other parts of the Arab world since January 29th. We believe that a large number of Egyptians, and Arabs, have opened new Tweeter accounts in the past few weeks. We also believe that after the Cairo revolt tweeting is likely to become the social networking platform of choice for much of the developing world

We suspect that future intelligence reports will find a major increase in the use of tweet in the Arab world.

Track real time Twitter score for Tahrir Square Cairo

Reference:

How Egyptians Used Twitter During the January Crisis

Web 3.0 Lab: A very very loud 15,000 Arabs, or maybe more

A rave review for Windows Mobile Phone

2011-02-15T15:12:00.000-08:00

"The Windows Phone 7 is as easy to use, or perhaps even easier than any of the other mobile phone operating systems currently available. Instead of scrolling through page after page of apps, all the information you care about is front and center. When you want the apps, a single tap takes you to an alphabetical list when you can find what you want quickly. Its screens are beautiful; I would go as far as to say that I found it better looking than the iPhone. It was fast with no loading screens popping up other than to play games. Even web pages loaded up without much waiting about. Microsoft has set a fairly strict set of hardware requirements for all the companies making devices that run Windows Phone 7."

A Week With Windows Phone 7 Tuesday February 15, 2011, Fatema Yasmine The Next Web

What will Office 365 be? Microsoft's take on the Cloud

2011-02-15T06:51:00.000-08:00

Microsoft is producing a full spectrum of Cloud services which will included productivity, collaboration, business and management as well as Azue platform and data services. Office 365 will be cloud services targeted towards three key areas:

Productivity: Office in the Cloud
Communication: Office Live and Office Exchange in the Cloud
Collaboration: Office Live Meeting and SharePoint in the Cloud

Office Live Meeting and Office Communication will become Microsoft Lync Online.

The four pieces of Office 365 will be Office, Sharepoint, Exchange, and Lync. Together these three will provide a Cloud solution to SMEs which will provide document creation, communication in real time and non-real time, meeting, and collaboration.

In more detail these services will provide all the key tools that most information workers need.

What Office 365 will not include is specific business tools such as CRM, BI or of LOB applications. Microsoft will provide other Cloud services for this, and in keeping with the Windows and .NET tradition you will be able to develop your own solutions and package them to be hosted in Windows Azure and to use SQL Azure for storage.

A happy surprise is that these packages are not limited to ASP.NET. You can develop applications in Ruby, PHP, or Java. I am a big fan of PHP because of its rapid development and like the idea that systems I may have developed in PHP can go to the Azure Cloud without migration to ASP.NET. PHP is not a strong typed language and would be difficult to migrate to ASP.NET.

Global data storage calculated at 295 exabytes

2011-02-14T14:38:00.000-08:00

: "Mankind's capacity to store the colossal amount of information in the world has been measured by scientists.

The study, published in the journal Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes.

That is the equivalent of 1.2 billion average hard drives.

The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books.

'If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 13 layers of books,' Dr Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California told the BBC's Science in Action.

Information revolution

By 2007, 94% of stored information was kept digitally
Computer storage has traditionally been measured in kilobytes, then megabytes, and now usually gigabytes. After that comes terabytes, petabytes, then exabytes. One exabyte is a billion gigabytes."

BBC News - Global data storage calculated at 295 exabytes

Intellect presses government to promote IT in UK economic growth - 2/14/2011 - Computer Weekly

2011-02-14T09:36:00.000-08:00

"The government has agreed to promote the role of technology in leading the UK's economic growth, following a meeting with IT industry body Intellect.

Business secretary Vince Cable and communications minister Ed Vaizey met with senior figures from IT suppliers at the roundtable meeting.

Speaking at the event, Vince Cable said: 'Strong and sustainable growth is the key to rebalancing our economy. That's why the growth review not only focuses on emerging sectors, but also those that are already strong, like the technology sector.'"

Intellect presses government to promote IT in UK economic growth - 2/14/2011 - Computer Weekly

Web 3.0 Lab: Lesson from the Cairo Revolt for Twitter: its not the number of Tweeters but the network

2011-02-14T04:25:00.000-08:00

Track real time tweeting in Cairo with this tool.

We have been following the intensity of tweeting in Cairo and have learned an important lesson: tweeting is best viewed as a Network rather than as a collection of people with tweeter accounts.

In a recent blog post we noted

We went on to observe that actual tweeting with geo-tags for Tahrir Square often reached levels about what we might see in major European cities like Paris.

So what was going on?

We believe a number of things happened to caused a small initial number of tweeters giving their geo-position to produce such a large number of geo-positioned tweets:

As the revolt went on there was likely a large number of people opening tweeter accounts and wanting to give their geo-position, or not knowing they were giving it.
People who had been hiding their location stopped doing so as they became more confident that they would win.
Geo-tagged tweeters were re-tweeting from the Square tweets posted by people without Geo-tags, so those political activists who were hiding their position were reposted in to the stream with a geo-tag.
A large number of people around the world were retweeting geo-tagged tweets, which carried the original geo-tag from Tahrir greatly elevating the counts for Cairo.
That journalist and other observers on the square with phones registered in other places were tweeting with geo-location turned on (wouldn't you?).
That people at the Square were motivated to tweet at very high levels.
That organizers were using Twitter as a kind of radio and were using many mobile devices and tweeter accounts constantly.

We conclude that it is better to look at the overall network for a specific place than just trying to count unique tweeter users. The network community gives a level or emergent social network behavior that is not well understood by looking only at unique users.

That is to say Social Media is media that is best understood as social not individual, which should probably have been obvious.

Networks can often make use of a small number of nodes to create a vast amount of content. While other networks full of more nodes may produce much less content. This is seen again and again in web studies and is called the power law effect. For example a tiny percentage of bloggers can produce most of the blog posts read and linked to. A small number of Twitter accounts have vast numbers of followers and get the most retweets.

What we saw in Cairo was probably a small group of tweeters who were concentrated, motivated and growing in number. While most tweets are never retweeted people all over the world were retweeting almost anything coming out of Tahrir Square. This then also meant that people in the Square were more likely to see the tweets of others around them and respond. A power law came in to effect.

So even though the population of tweeters in Cairo an Tahrir Square was lower than at any given time in the center of London or New York, these Egyptian Tweeters were able to produce a vast quantity of information which was of very high value to global users.

A tweet from Tahrir Square while Mubarak was refusing to resign simply is not the same as a tweet from Time Square for a foursquare check-in or two friends discussing lunch. Most tweets go ignored by the community, during the Tahrir Protests that was not the case. People around the world were glued to tweets and major new channels were actually reading the content of tweets form Cairo on television.

Measuring the total number of people tweeting could not account for the vastness and popularity of the tweets they were producing. Nor would looking just at the level of tweeting be able to tell you anything about social event that was happening. But keeping in context the events that were happening, looking at the small number of tweeters and the vast numbers of tweets they produced helps to understand the process of producing knowledge and organizing activists that was happening. Few tweeters were able to send their tweeting score sky high, they were also also able to help organize a revolution. Makes us wonder what we have done lately.

The overall network effect of tweeting in Tahrir Square therefore produced a more powerful an verbal network than probably any other similar sized cluster of tweeters anywhere in the world.

Web 3.0 Lab: Lesson from the Cairo Revolt for Twitter: its not the number of Tweeters but the network

Web 3.0 Lab: After the celebration, Tweeting in the Arab world after the Cairo Revolution

2011-02-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

"After the celebration, Tweeting in Cairo After the Revolution
Providing some context on twitter usage in Cairo compared to other major cities"

Web 3.0 Lab: After the celebration, Tweeting in the Arab world after the Cairo Revolution:

Cloud Power from Microsoft

2011-02-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Microsoft launches a major ad campaign in London to promote its Cloud Power brand

Snapshot of the Digital Workplace NetJMC/Intranet Strategies

2011-02-11T03:41:00.000-08:00

An interesting article outlining how the digital workplace can evolve over time.

Snapshot of the Digital Workplace NetJMC/Intranet Strategies:

"Model A is where most organizations are today: three distinct worlds, each providing value in different ways.

Model B is a big step forward, and often the trigger for senior management interest when collaboration becomes part of the intranet. That often marks the arrival of business support as one of the intranet strategy drivers.

Model C has re-positioned the “ex-intranet” as part of the overall digital workplace. Here, the networked collaboration of discovering and discussing, along with the structured, project-driven collaboration live side by side with the managed content and applications of the “ex-intranet”.

Model D is the most future-oriented. It considers the digital workplace to encompass not just the internal world but parts of the external world as well. This makes the “new intranet” a blend of managed, collaborative and social content. The digital workplace itself has become a platform for the extended enterprise."

Analysis and Guesses: Nokia and Microsoft form partnership

2011-02-11T03:40:00.000-08:00

"Nokia has joined forces with Microsoft in an attempt to regain ground lost to the iPhone and Android-based devices.

"The deal will see Nokia use the Windows phone operating system for its smartphones, the company said.

"It means that Nokia's existing operating systems will be sidelined."

BBC News - Nokia and Microsoft form partnership

It actually very hard to be at all positive about this news. Actually given the current configuration of forces and changes in the mobile world it looks like 2 Web 3.0 also rans who used to be dominate in their sectors are making a utterly defensive pack.

Nokia has been pushed by Apple and phones running Google's Android OS in to the low end of the smartphone industry. It nows seems only a matter of time before they lose their dominate position in phones. Recently a leaked memo from their new CEO Elop spoke of a platform that was burning rather than on fire.

Microsoft Windows 7 has been an utter bomb, perhaps even worse than the earlier versions of Windows Mobile which, though terrible, benefited from more limited alternatives. Windows Mobile 7 on Nokia may make a play for the cheap smartphone market.

I can certainly see this being attractive to a lot of business who want to move their staff to smartphones. Nokia is a popular platform for cost conscious enterprises and no one has ever gotten fired for going with Microsoft (yet).

But this will be a commodity niche in a much larger market. Only a small percentage of phones will be given to people by work.

There is also a possibility that a Windows 7 Nokia phone could become the cheap smartphone for younger and poorer buyers, especially buyers in the developing world.

The Power Law impact of social promotion over SEO

2011-02-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

The is the life of the views of this blog. As you will see I have had a steady rise for over 2.5 years. This growth was coming from mostly Google. A steady flow from SEO. But two events happened. One was a post I made on

In 2009 I blogged on Linux and got a negative response from a Linux fan site. That is the one bump.

Recently I noticed the Facebook new photo UI, which was launched as a kind of surprise attack by Facebook. I blogged wondering if Facebook had finally killed Flickr, and tweeted it. The tweet went viral for a day. And that it the other spike.

Social Network spikes bring in a lot of views, but they are not necessarily favorable and they don't stay. Google is still the king of finabibility tools for most content and you are good to kept to that.

My Second Life blog has become more dependent on Tweets and Facebook. But it is hard to keep a steady flow of views when you are only broadcasting to your Social Graph of a massive global chat room, which is Facebook and Twitter. Google gives content access to the entire globe.

Twitter happens, how Twitter can impact your blog

2011-02-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

Okay now if you are an A-list blogger this does not apply to you. But if you are running a small site and you are thinking about promoting via Google SEO and Twitter I give the graph above of my blogs long term growth.

You can say a very long term growth pattern of per day views, following a weekly pattern, being driven by Google SEO. And then a Tweet I made about Facebook and Flickr went viral on Tweeter, and you can see the long term pattern is blown.

The thing about Social Networks for a smaller scale niche blogger, you will one in a while get a massive hit from a tweet, but the patterns of RT are mysterious. They seem to be utterly random and the impact does not last long.

Gartner Magic Quadrant Report Is Out – Tableau Progresses! | Tableau Software

2011-02-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

Gartner Magic Quadrant Report Is Out – Tableau Progresses! | Tableau Software

Facebook introduces the Fickr Killer?

2011-02-04T02:40:00.000-08:00

Facebook has just reased the new photo interface. We are seeing it in London though it may be unavailable in some domains. Frankly you now pretty much have everything you got from Flickr. So the question is if this is a Flickr killer?

The one Time I saw the Future, really

2011-02-04T00:09:00.000-08:00

Reading Mashable recently I came across a story of Lymbix. From the story I have learned:

"Lymbix, makers of the ToneCheck Outlook plugin that checks the emotional tone of content in e-mail, entered an agreement Tuesday with software-maker Sherpa Software to bring ToneCheck’s sentiment analysis technology to IBM’s suite of Lotus products.

"The ToneCheck software is meant to prevent professionals from making inadvert textual faux pas, something Lymbix founders Matt Eldridge and Josh Merchant believe is a significant issue for enterprise. Licensing the ToneCheck API to Sherpa Software for Lotus integration is just one of many deals the pair hopes to orchestrate in the year ahead."

Emotional Spell Check Coming Soon to Lotus Notes

Via some later research I found that Lymbix began R&D on this product in 2009. The thing is in 2005 I wrote a short story called Spinners, where I define a key "future" technology called a Spinner that would check emotional tone, and even assigned a date for it. Below is the section from the story Spinners (Robert Hooker 2005 self published):

"Spinners had been developed in the early decades of the 21st Century. Just as the first information workers to get PCs were discovered to be such poor spellers it was necessary to install spelling checks on all computers, later generations proved to be unable to control the “tone” of their writing. Companies would want to control the amounts of negativism or positivism certain correspondences reflected, planning and managing their level of emotional nuance.

"Thus spinners become normal parts of all text systems. Spinners would check for the emotional level of a document, scoring it on hostility, friendliness, ambivalence, and hundreds of other emotional dimensions that could model the feeling communicated in a message.

"These could be set so that employees did not communicate an emotional tonE not accepted by the company. Spanners might recommend changes to the author, prevent sending unacceptable communications, or even change the message without the sender or even receiver knowing."

Okay so what is my point. This is a bit more than just a vanity post really, because the story of Spinner examines the impact that a virus that infests Tone Checking technology causes to a major government IT project that works to combat terrorism. Essentially the story is one on a Road to Singularity, where a emerging AI system called Vision becomes more and more paranoid and independent as faced with a series of counter moves by a strange set of alternative organizations able to deploy counter attacks.

background-color: transparent; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">Okay well enough about my short story, which I didn't bother to try and get published at the time. The key point of this blog is these tone systems are a major potential security block. I mean I really doubt many hackers are going to attack spell checking system. Spelling is one of those things that people complain about but generally if you got a few documents with mis-spelled words you would notice it pretty quick and re-install necessary software. But image the emotional tone of your document production was being screwed with by a virus?

I would be interested in learning what Lymbix thinks of this potential.

A working draft of my story Spinner is follows.

BBC News - Google eyes Apple in tablet war

2011-02-03T03:03:00.000-08:00

Motorola's Xoom tablet will be the first built around the honeycomb release of Android

BBC News - Google eyes Apple in tablet war: "Google has unveiled an operating system for tablet computers aimed at ramping up the competition with Apple's iPad.

More than 15 million iPads have been sold since Apple launched the gadget in 2010.

The latest version of Google's Android OS is called Honeycomb which has been specifically optimised for tablets."

Microsoft is still essentially out of this area. How long can they stand by the sidelines?

Well it took them until 1998 to make a Windows OS that was as good as the 1984 versions of the Mac. Microsoft has a real talent for landing on its feet.

Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results

2011-02-02T01:49:00.000-08:00

"Around late May of last year, Google told me it began noticing that Bing seemed to be doing exceptionally well at returning the same sites that Google would list, when someone would enter unusual misspellings.

"For example, consider a search for torsoraphy, which causes Google to return this:

"In the example above, Google’s searched for the correct spelling — tarsorrhaphy — even though torsoraphy was entered. Notice the top listing for the corrected spelling is a page about the medical procedure at Wikipedia.

"Over at Bing, the misspelling is NOT corrected — but somehow, Bing manages to list the same Wikipedia page at the top of its results as Google does for its corrected spelling results:

Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results:

Is the Internet now a fixed feature of human culture like language?

2011-02-01T13:31:00.000-08:00

Share the Point: If yougovernment shuts down the Internet, shut dow...: "If your government shuts down the Ineternet, shut down your government. A slogan that Americans debating a 'Internet off switch' should consider"

We have seen in Egypt what a government turning the Internet of looks like. Its not a security measure, its not something any society would ever want, and its not a power a President should. It is only an oppressive action.

And as we learned in Egypt this week, it may no longer be possible. The Internet may have entered our collective social inheritance for future generations, like language or mythology. Something no state can take away.

Orwell tried to imagine a regime so oppressive that in the end it would try to take language away. Once of the striking things about 1984 is how impossible much of the project of the entire novel seems. How cold a culture which turns on everyone and destroys all knowledge continue to maintain the needed technology and civil control to to stay in power.

The thing about 1984 is that it is impossible. The novel is a nightmare sequences, extending the negative side of power to a point beyond the possible.

And I think today closing the Internet down is beyond the possible.

Bob Hooker

If your government shuts down the Internet, shut down your government

2011-02-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

If your government shuts down the Ineternet, shut down your government. A slogan that Americans debating a "Internet off switch" should consider.

BBC News - Microsoft warning over browser security flaw

2011-02-01T01:25:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Microsoft warning over browser security flaw: "Microsoft has issued a 'critical' warning over a newly-discovered flaw in Windows.

In a security advisory, the company warned of a loophole that could be used by malicious hackers to steal private information or hijack computers.

The bug potentially affects every user of the Internet Explorer web browser - around 900 million people worldwide."

Apple, Microsoft and Google, the battle is joined

2011-01-31T02:03:00.001-08:00

My overview of where the tablet and Cloud are fighting it out between the 3 major players.

ZDnet Down Under on what I call the "Cloud War" how Google, Apple and Microsoft are fighting for the future of device to Cloud computing.

BBC News - Microsoft profits flat despite strong Kinect sales

2011-01-31T00:59:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Microsoft profits flat despite strong Kinect sales: "Microsoft's profits for the last three months of 2010 were barely changed, despite the popularity of its Kinect controller and strong sales of Office 2010 to businesses.

Net income was $6.63bn (£4.18bn), down from $6.66bn in 2009.

Sales in the Windows division fell 30% because of the launch of Windows 7 in the corresponding quarter of 2009.

The results were better than expected, as analysts had predicted weak PC sales would hit Microsoft harder."

Despite all the doubt, year after year Microsoft still does better than most people anticipate.

RIM to release SharePoint App

2011-01-26T07:41:00.000-08:00

Document Mgt Roll-up: Full Libre Office Release, SharePoint Docs on Blackberry: "In the mobile space, Research in Motion (RIM) has said that it will be releasing a Blackberry SharePoint client that will manage documents and share SharePoint calendar events."

Maybe it is just mean but my impression is that Microsoft should embrace RIM as their mobility partner in the same way they have embraced Facebook as their social network partner. Build the alliance with RIM leading to purchase or just extremely close partnership.

RIM essentially is the Microsoft player in the Smartphone market, a low cost easy to use solution popular both with business and the lower end of the Smartphone market. Blackberry is the mobile phone Microsoft should have made.

I know from personal experience that a few years back Microsoft had very negative attitudes towards Blackberry, butt hat was an entirely different world. Today with the likes of Google and Apple eating up the mobile market it makes sense for Microsoft to play a strong hand in an alliance than try to finally make a good mobile phone OS.

Does Flickr have a point, the death of niche site in the face of massive Social Network sites like Facebook and Twitter

2011-01-26T03:09:00.000-08:00

Back in 2004 Flickr was the flagship of Web 2.0 sites. Great community building tools, wonderful interface, ability to self publish text and images quickly with an innovative tool, and RSS feeds allowing you to link the tool up to outside sites.

Then it kind of lost it way. Maybe it was all because of Yahoo! buying it, or maybe it was the greatest threat to IT firms: they become to inward looking. For several years Flickr seemed more interested in regulating and controlling its users than enabling them, and it actually changed its early branding which stressed the connectivity and flexibility of the tool to a site that focused in on itself, even to the point of showing images of staff rather than users in the community icon.

The result of combined failures of Flickr and Yahoo! is that the Social Graph is owned by Facebook. Well under new outsourcing by Yahoo! you can now attach your Flickr site to Facebook. This works great for importing your friends.

But the authentication of account using Facebook was not working for me. I was able to do it with Google though.

But I have to wonder. I have just created a Flickr account using my Google Account. On Google I have a Picasa site with hundreds of images in it. There is no way I will ever load all those images to Flickr and given Flickr tendency to delete accounts for unknown reasons I frankly don't see the point.

Now I actually have my social network that I have built up on Facebook in Flickr, but again I have photo sharing on Facebook and people go on that site every day, what do I get by having photo sharing on Flickr. Given I can't even post a bit.ly URL on Flickr the tool just seems like more work to get a smaller audience to see my pictures. Why not just do what most people do already and post images on Facebook.

Now I am sure some Flickr enthusiasts will tell you that you get more functionality, though I frankly can't see it. I would respond that other photo enthusiasts I have read are as quick to complain about the limits of Flickr. Even if Flickr offers more functionality than Facebook it is at best marginal and likely will be just as good shortly.

So what is the pont of any marginal targeted site in the age of Facebook. Are sites like YouTube and Flickr only as good as Facebook does not yet offer that functionality?

Is there any space for Web 2.0 services between Blogging, Twitter and Facebook? I have my publishing tool, my promotion tool, and my social network. Other sites support the three, my YouTube videos are distributed via blogs, FB and Twitter. But as for photos Google and Facebook already provide me a massive amount of storage, why would I waste my time with a third place to dump images unless it is obvious to me what I am getting?

Finally SharePoint can perform like a real CMS system, thanks to Blog Remoting

2011-01-25T14:12:00.001-08:00

Lets be honest, the fact you are constrained to 200 GB databases is a real pain in SharePoint. The fact that you have to store all your documents in database is the cause of this and many other problems.

Because SharePoint since the beginning stored the documents as unstructured blob objects the load places on SQL Server by SharePoint solutions has been a limited factor.

Blob storage probably offers no real benefit for the massive cost. Blobs can not be indexed by SQL Server, so you have to run SharePoint Search Crawler or Fast to index a store of data you have in SQL Server. I mean think about that!!!!

Worst of all you have to put every documents loaded to SharePoint in the most expensive storage.

100 GB limit on SQL databases drives the creation of lots of little sites, each a silo.

But you pain is over with SharePoint 2010 running with SQL 2008. The solution is RBS or Remote Blob Storage. With this technology SQL stores the blobs as external files, while still presenting the SQL interface to SharePoint.

This reduces the content you need to save in SQL by 95%. That is right, a 1 TB database should become 50 GB!!

Now you can run a true Enterprise document system with every part of your organisation sharing documents centrally, as it should be. NO SILOs of Site Collections any more. All because of one SQL side technology.

So send an email to your SQL DBA and start talking about RBS in SharePoint 2010. This way you can architect true Enterprise Content Management systems in SharePoint like you get with OpenText, FileNet and ECM, but at a fraction of the cost.

BBC News - Buy into it: The technology of online shopping

2011-01-22T02:41:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Buy into it: The technology of online shopping:

"Shopping online is now easier — and more popular — than ever, whether for physical goods like books or groceries, or music and movie downloads.

The web made its name as a home for bargains, since internet retailers could undercut shop prices by avoiding overheads such as rent.

But using the web to lower prices is not the only hi-tech trick that internet retailers have up their sleeves."

Rober1236 Jua the Cyber Trekker of Second Life

Microsoft explains Windows phone 7 'phantom data'

2011-01-20T07:59:00.000-08:00

BBC News - Microsoft explains Windows phone 7 'phantom data': "Microsoft has confirmed that some handsets running its Windows Phone 7 software are sending and receiving 'phantom data'."

What I find telling about this story is how long it took this issue to emerge and how little I have heard about it. When the iPhone 4 came out I think we knew every little bug and major problems in a few weeks.