The Social Network

Social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace are now more popular than personal e-mail, finds a report.

Business is not generally busienss because it is advanced or well trained. Lets be honest about how firms consume IT. When generally Gold Partners and other firms decide to use an IT technology it means its already long established in the consumer market. If you want to see the future don't look to business, look to the consumer market, look to how poorer, younger and most women use technology over the older, more educated and wealthier males who frankly have only vested interest in preventing change.

I have been deeply disturbed as my career in IT has progressed in how the top IT experts in the UK are almost blind to technologies that are emerging, and how they push technologies that don't work to the point of utter disaster.

For example consumers have turned away from online email sites to social networks. Why? Because email is terrible, social networks sites are far better ways to communicate and share information.

For example, my hotmail account is so flooded with with unread messages its long since stopped being of any use. Also think about how poor the UI of any email service, even Outlook is. They are just list of messages. And with these lists of message generally employees are able to cause massive amounts of damage to the IP of a firm, distributing different copies of key documents that float around, siloing contacts and data in massive inboxes that soon fill up, ccing and responding to all until everyone has too many emails to do anything. If you have a job today and never want to do any real work the easiest way is to just read all your email every day.

Social Networks are the way to go and every IT department should be looking at either making use of LinkedIn of Facebook or using SharePoint MySites as an internal social network. Social Networks are better at sharing information, and developing communities of expertise and skill, and insuring reuse of information.

Sadly in its current version MySites with SharePoint is pretty primitive. Microsoft knows that Social Networks are the future, but its moved forward in starts and fits. The good thing for Microsoft is that no company is really moving a Social Network tool beyond just document collaboration and blogging.

If you want to see the key new technologies they are MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Ning and other social clustering and "group think" tools. But when will businesses get the point? Just like the Internet and blogging before them companies have the story of social networks backwards. Right now as Facebook finally is you employees best site for finding advice from past contacts and experts many firms are finally BANNING Facebook.

I imagine it will take a few years before some firm like Microsoft takes the lead and shows how social networking can enhance IP. For IT firms that really care about business, maybe 1% of IT firms, I would suggest trying to make a point to your business stake holders that community is what makes your company have value.

Social sites eclipse e-mail use

Social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace are now more popular than personal e-mail, finds a report.

The Nielsen survey of users' habits found that 67% of all those going online were spending time at social network and blogging sites.

Interest in the category is growing four times faster than the other top four sectors, said the report.

In the UK one in every six minutes of the average web user is spent at a social site, it found.

"Social networking has become a fundamental part of the global online experience," said John Burbank, chief executive of Nielsen Online in a statement.

"Social networking will continue to alter not just the global online landscape, but the consumer experience at large," he said.

Modular Windows plan 'welcomed'

By Daniel Emery
Technology reporter, BBC News

Plans to introduce modular features in Windows 7 have been welcomed by the European Commission's former Microsoft monitoring trustee.

Windows Features allows users to turn off applications such as Media Centre, Media Player and Internet Explorer.

Professor Neil Barrett said this would help promote effective competition.

EU regulators have ended full-time monitoring of Microsoft, which was started to ensure the firm complied with an anti-trust ruling.

Speaking to the BBC, Professor Barrett said it was a welcome move on all fronts.

"Microsoft did this off their own bat. From their perspective, making the operating system modular is a good thing.

"For competitors, this will allow them to compete on all fronts.

"It also benefits European Commission monitoring, as this will give them a clear understanding of what would be needed in the future should other firms fall foul of anti-trust laws."

Microsoft is currently facing an anti-trust filing led by browser maker Opera, and supported by Mozilla, the makers of Firefox, and Google, who last year launched Chrome.

The companies have complained that Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer into Windows XP and Vista is anti-competitive.

Time line

In 2004, a legal ruling forced Microsoft to share information about the internal workings of its software with rivals. It was also hit with a 497m euro (£441m) fine for abusing its dominant market position that stopped rivals prospering in the desktop and server software markets.

The ruling forced it to unbundle some of the products included in standard installations of Windows such as Media Player.

The 2004 decision also made Microsoft pass information about its operating systems to rivals so they could improve the way their programs worked with the software.

Microsoft appealed against and lost the court battle to overturn the fine and was then hit with another penalty of 899m euros (£798m) in February 2008 for defying the initial ruling.

Professor Barrett said part of the problem was that the US and EU operate in very different ways.

"US firms follow the Harvard school of competition: find a market, dominate that market and then use that domination to beat the competition into submission.

"US firms come here, speak the same language (especially in Britain), and think they are working in an identical environment.

"They're not, because in Europe, that type business model isn't remotely fair."

EBay-style feedback for services

Source BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7934042.stm

People in England will get more online powers to rate GPs, police, childcare and councils, Gordon Brown has said.

He said it was wrong that consumer websites such as Amazon and eBay had "higher standards of transparency" than those for public services.

Officials liken the new approach to the Tripadvisor site, where travellers can share their thoughts on hotels.

The PM promised an "information revolution", but the Tories said public services were still too bureaucratic.

In a document called Working Together, Mr Brown acknowledges the government has been "much too slow to make use of the enormous democratising power of information".

He sets out what he calls "a new agenda of public service reform" and says government must transfer more power to parents and patients.

'Systematic access'

A site comparing council services is due to go live in May and the government is also bringing together a national crime map for England and Wales to be available online by the end of 2009.

From this summer, patients will be able to comment on local services and provide feedback on GPs via the NHS Choices website.

Childcare providers are to undergo similar scrutiny from parents via a site expected to be up and running early next year.

Mr Brown said: "We are ushering in a new world of accountability in which parents, patients and local communities shape the services they receive, ensuring all our public services respond not simply to the hand of government, but to the voice of local people."

Office Live test with Windows 2000

Tested Office Live on Windows 2000 with IE 6. Document collaboration features do not work. But I was happy to see I could build a web site in Small Business Live using my Windows 2000 machine.

But since document collaboration is the killer app of SharePoint I would imagine Office Live, which is SharePoint in the Cloud is still not going to be of much value on older Windows 2000 machines. I have found there are a disturbing large number of such machines still in use. I have tested SharePoint installations on this box and they have worked. So Office Live is blocking certain OS configurations like Windows 2000 or Linux.

Sad facts about Office Live vs Google Docs

Though Google Docs has more functionality that Office Live its UI is very confusing and even though it has been my Document editing platform for years I still have a hard time making use of most of the functionality. Office Live offers a better best fit to most users and a better UI, BUT, I started a paper in graduate school. I have 2 Linux computers and in the current form Office Live can't handle them. So I am continuing to do my graduate paper in Google Doc.

Is this a problem?

Traditionally Microsoft could count on total client ownership in most businesses. The occasional Mac was handled via a Microsoft Mac team. But with the rise of the micro-lap top more and more of your information workers are going to demand support to their very small machines that run better on Linux. As you so smaller and smaller Linux with Open Office becomes a better and better option.

As long as you have a few important people on Linux you can't really join them up to Office Live but you can to Google Docs. AND the two don't connect yet.

Maybe my love of Linux is blinding me to the fact that Microsoft own the desktop space and will continue to do so. Well for my own professional sake and for Microsoft future in the Cloud, they better either embrace Linux or hope that change does not come.

Going Wide with SharePoint, I continue my experiments to make the easiest wide outlay

In search for a wide page layout I start above making a basic SearchCenter page



By removing the search elements I have a wide single column to work with to layout web parts. Still not really what I am looking for but to do a quick and dirty page this may work. You probably still need to make edits in Designer, which I am hoping to get away from.

Taking SharePoint Wide

Today at a conference someone complained about MOSS Quick Launch left navigation bar making clean page design difficult. So I am going to see different ways I can make wide pages.

The first is a modification of the wide search results.



Then you can edit the page by going to Site Actions > Edit Page:



This approach only gets you so far, the tags on the top of Search can not be removed in the browser.



So its time to open the page in Designer





Now I think that you probably need to use an experienced HTML/SharePoint developer to modify the ASP.NET code behind the page to produce a wide page.



I am going to continue to play around with this and see how it goes.

What if you need to customise a SharePoint 2003 Site

If you are using SPS 2003 or WSS 2 I would always suggest considering an upgrading to WSS 3 or MOSS 2007, I would especially recommend migrating before implementing graphic changes. But if you really need to implement customisations to SharePoint 2003 sites follow this information from MSDN

Customizing SharePoint 2003 Sites and Portals: Using Templates and Site Definitions

But be warned this is hard, really hard. With SharePoint 2007 you have master pages but wiht SPS 2003 you have to edit 3 xml pages: WEBTEMP.XML,
ONET.XML, SCHEMA.XML

ONET.XML modifications are are true pain. I really think any IT department should put a freeze on new SPS 2003 customisation.

Colonies of 'Cybots' May Defend Government Networks

A video capture of UNTAME, depicting "near real-time network discovery, topology mapping, and monitoring," according to Trien.

The Cybot Age could soon be upon us. But be not afraid; this isn't Star Trek. We're not talking droves of evil cyborgs bent on galaxy domination.

If all goes as planned, in just a few years colonies of software robots -- "cybots" -- linked into a "hive" mind could be defending the largest computer systems in America against network intruders.

Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory say the program behind the cybots — Ubiquitous Transient Autonomous Mission Entities (UNTAME) — will be very different from current cybersecurity systems.

Joe Trien, who leads the team at the lab's Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, said what will make cybots so useful is that they will be able to form groups, function autonomously and respond almost immediately.

Trien likened the UNTAME framework to the Borg, a fictitious race of cybernetic organisms in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" that assimilated other cultures throughout the galaxy.

"The difference between an agent-based system and UNTAME is that the cybots are designed to function on their own and they can regenerate," he said. "It works with other robots, and what it does is known by the collective. So when you lose a robot, the collective hasn't lost the information that robot was able to achieve up until the point it was killed."

That's a quantum leap from current network "intelligent agents," which specialize in a single task and report to a central node or human administrator.

Trien said there is little danger that cybots will organize and take over the world, stressing that the real-life "cyborg collective" would be bound by human directives. But he did acknowledge that there is a risk of malicious cybots running awry.

"There's always that risk, and that's why we’re hesitant right now," Trien said. "If we don't put some boundaries on these cybots, they could turn against us. The potential is always there."

UNTAME's new levels of speed and automation will likely prevent hackers from targeting one area of an network while using a diversion at another location.

Job interviews, should I talk about blogging?

2004, during a job interview the interviewer thinks that they have seen your blog. Makes mental note without saying anything. Recommends you don't get hired because you blog and are thus a risk.

2009, during a job interview the interviewer thinks that they have seen your blog. They ask you about the blog (Provided its not about drugs, revolution or sex (2% of blogs)). They recommend you get the job because you are motivated and knowledgeable.

This is not a joke. When I was looking for a SharePoint 2007 role in 2006 recruiters all took the blogging information off my CV. I remember in 2005 sitting in a massive IT consultancy as the "senior architects" (ignorant old close minded arrogant fools) mocked the idea that they could benefit from internal blogging.

The blog has won the day. Not just because of its logical and easy structure, but mostly because people of knowledge (I don't dare include myself in this) have produced amazing blog knowledge

Microsoft testing new Internet search engine Kumo

Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed it is testing a new Internet search engine it hopes will power the US software giant out of distant third place in a market dominated by Google.

A Kumo.com search engine being privately tested by Microsoft workers is reportedly based on semantic technology that enables it to understand sentences and relationships between words.

Current search engines, including software used by Google, rely on matching words typed into search boxes with those found at websites and in data found on the Internet.

"There's a good deal of excitement brewing over this test, both internally and externally, which we're always glad to see," Microsoft Live Search general manager Mike Nichols wrote in an online message.

"Our hope is that our employees will give us great feedback on our new features and that it all becomes part of the external experience soon."

The Internet has buzzed with speculation regarding whether Microsoft intends to replace its Live Search with Kumo since an internal memo written about it by Satya Nadella, a Microsoft senior vice president, was leaked online this week.

Microsoft said Tuesday that the memo that ricocheted quickly about the Web "is in fact accurate."

Nichols posted a "sneak peek" screenshot of Kumo with his message at an official Live Search blog website.

Nichols said it remains to be determined whether the Kumo codename with replace "Live Search" when it makes its public debut.

"We're using the Kumo brand and URL for this test experience to make sure employees understand they're in a test experience," Nichols wrote.

"We believe this will encourage more active feedback. As for rebranding, it's something we're still considering."

Nadella said in his memo that statistics show that people searching online often don't find what they seek and that Internet hunts take more than 20 minutes in nearly half of the cases.

"We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks," Nadella wrote.

"During the test, features will vary by country, but you'll see results organized in a way that saves you more time."

Microsoft tried last year to buy Yahoo! for 47.5 billion dollars in a vain effort to merge online resources to better battle Google, which rules more than 60 percent of the US online search market.

Yahoo!'s share of the market is about 21 percent and Microsoft trails with 8.5 percent, according to recent figures from industry tracking firms.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has stated publicly that he is still open to a deal with Yahoo!, which recently hired a new chief executive who is mulling the California Internet pioneer's options.

Source