Over the past two decades, we have been fascinated with the ability to recreate electronically what we used to do on paper. Then print it out again to paper. With the advent of email and the Internet, communication has become more instant and less nuanced. Add cell phones and PDAs to the mix and we're never alone.
In today's New York Times, there was an article on Web Sites Set Up to Celebrate Life Recall Lives Lost (you need to register on the Times site, but well worth it. The NY Times website is excellent). Of the more than 74 million personal blogs hosted at MySpace.com, it is no surprise that some of their subscribers have died, leaving their personal blog behind.
Friends of the deceased are saying goodbye, offering condolences, and even continuing the relationship through these personal blogs. Families are learning more about their departed children. One example in the article is about a girl you likely heard about last week if you live in the Portland/Vancouver area:
… a 17-year-old from Vancouver, Wash., named Anna Svidersky was stabbed to death while working at a McDonald's there. As word of the crime spread among her extended network of friends on MySpace, her page was filled with posts from distraught friends and affected strangers. A separate page set up by Ms. Svidersky's friends after her death received about 1,200 comments in its first three days.
It may be that we are now incorporating technology in a way that is redefining who we are, both as individuals and as businesses. Last week at the InnoTech conference, the session on Why Blogs Matter for Business presented by Ryan Buchanan, CEO of eROI, was standing-room only. His PowerPoint Presentation is worth a look.
Technorati Tags: MySpace, Business Blogs
April 27th, 2006 by Day Tooley
Posted in General, Blogs | Enter a comment »
Yesterday's announcement by Apple that Mac computers will now be able to run Windows applications may soon become moot as Web 2.0 applications become available. Web development techniques such as AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) are enabling browsers to run applications without having to be bound by a particular operating system or purchased software.
One early example comes from ajaxWrite.com who promises one new 'free' application per week. Currently, only standards-based browsers are supported, which means that Internet Explorer users are not compatible. But if you use Firefox or Mozilla as your browser, then check these out:
- Want a word processor? Click here. (loads in 6 seconds)
- Want a simple graphics sketch program? Here's one.
OK. Here's a free application that IE users can use.
- Want to edit your video files? EyeSpot or Jumpcut will let you do it in your browser.
There is still open source. I have downloaded Portable OpenOffice.org and put it on my thumb drive. So reading/writing Word, Excel and PowerPoint files can be done from any computer with a USB port. (144 MB can be downloaded for free from http://portableapps.com/apps/office/suites/portable_openoffice and run from your iPod or USB thumbdrive.)
While you're at it, you might want to add Portable Firefox to your thumbdrive as well.
Del.icio.us Tags: Open Source, Web2.0, Microsoft, Ajax
Technorati Tags: Open Source, Web2.0, Microsoft, Ajax
April 6th, 2006 by Day Tooley
Posted in Web 2.0 | Enter a comment »
There is something qualitatively different about today's web. A dominant theme is thrusting all of us into the new Web 2.0 era. That theme is collective intelligence.
"None of us is as smart as all of us" - Walt Kelly's Pogo - 1954
The Wisdom of Crowds - Book by James Surowiecki - 2004
Businesses who are willing to give up some control in order to acquire cooperation and collective intelligence will be the winners as we move forward. This is the central principle behind the success of the giants born in the Web 1.0 era (Google, Amazon, eBay, BitTorrent, and Wikipedia) and now are leading the Web 2.0 era.
* Some migration examples:
| Web 1.0 |
|
Web 2.0 |
| DoubleClick |
–> |
Google AdSense |
| Ofoto |
–> |
Flickr |
| Akamai |
–> |
BitTorrent |
| mp3.com |
–> |
Napster |
| Britannica Online |
–> |
Wikipedia |
| personal websites |
–> |
blogging |
| evite |
–> |
upcoming.org and EVDB |
| domain name speculation |
–> |
search engine optimization |
| page views |
–> |
cost per click |
| screen scraping |
–> |
web services |
| publishing |
–> |
participation |
| content management systems |
–> |
wikis |
| directories (taxonomy) |
–> |
tagging ("folksonomy") |
| stickiness |
–> |
syndication |
* Thanks to Tim O'Reilly and his thoughtful article published last fall.
Here are the 7 core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:
- Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
- Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
- Trusting users as co-developers
- Harnessing collective intelligence
- Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
- Software above the level of a single device
- Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models
So why should businesses care?
A recent ZDnet editorial concluded that Microsoft won't be able to beat Google: "Microsoft's business model depends on everyone upgrading their computing environment every two to three years. Google's depends on everyone exploring what's new in their computing environment every day."
What are your competitors doing?
Technorati Tags: web 2.0, EasyStreet
April 4th, 2006 by Day Tooley
Posted in Web 2.0, Collaboration, Websites, General | 1 Comment »
