Wikipedia, the poster child for collaboration. Nice little piece over at Wired.com. This quote from Sue Gardner, Wikimedia Exec Director, sums it up well:
“It’s a promise that people are going to work together, it’s a demonstration of people working together in good faith and the democratization of information and freedom of access to information and all of that is continually under threat.”
Happy B-Day guys, and thanks.
Cheers,
Eric
Twitter’s Response to WikiLeaks Subpoena Should Be the Industry Standard | Threat Level | Wired.com.
“… the company successfully challenged the gag order in court, and then told the targets that their data was being requested, giving them time to try and quash the order themselves.”
Interesting article over at the NY Times - Facebook Wins Relatively Few Friends in Japan – NYTimes.com. There are several native Japanese social networking competitors, which are undoubtedly undermining Facebook’s attempts there. But, there’s some belief that the fundamental difference in how privacy is valued between Japan and the US/western European-derived cultures that is creating the wedge. The article contends that Japanese users place a higher premium on their privacy than is compatible with Facebook’s vision of every bit of our lives visible to everyone all the time.
See this site, also, for more information on other countries’ use.
Ever played (really… more like explored) SecondLife? The keyboard and menu-based controls to control movement, gestures, etc. are a major barrier to it being as much as it could be. It would be great, however, if someone adapted or replicated Microsoft’s Kinect/avatar capabilities for SecondLife. Like the stuff coming from Israeli company PrimeSense, and the open source development kit. :-)
Cheers,
Eric
Interesting analysis of the new Polaroid/Gaga glasses, over at gizmodo.
An interesting trend of new apps in the consumer social web is that of closed networks. For example, limiting social networks to certain sub-sets of contacts/friends, or to a fixed maximum number, or giving them a shelf-life. Enterprise collaboration solutions already support this implicitly, with email distribution lists, persistent group chat channels, etc. Hopefully we can see this supported in a more integrated and pervasive fashion across the various disparate tools used in the enterprise.
In the meantime, check out:
Cheers,
Eric
Over at Mashable, Brian David Johnson from Intel has noted a few of the key themes they think will shape network-connected devices in 2011. His list, as most things about technology these days, emphasizes consumer technologies and use cases:
- The screen is the device. We’ll use whatever screen best fits what we want to do and where. Tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc.
- The next computing environment = the bed. (?? Yeah.)
- Cars
- People still love TV
Overall, the predictions aren’t exactly Earth-shattering. However, they do underscore two key trends of the past decade-plus:
- Consumer technologies influencing enterprise technology
- Technology enabling work to erode your personal life
For the past several years consumer technologies have been driving innovation back in to the enterprise. Two examples of the consumer-enterprise relationship are, of course, the iPhone and the Blackberry. People with iPhones on their personal accounts started demanding their enterprise IT organizations support them. More important for the 2011 predictions, perhaps though, is the Blackberry precedent. Blackberries enabled work to intrude into our personal lives. As did high-speed broadband and other technologies too.
So, I don’t think we’re yet to the point of holding conference calls at night from bed. And, we won’t see a step-change in car-based working until cars can (and are allowed to) drive themselves (it’s coming, though). But I do think we’ll see continued intrusion of work into our personal lives.
Cheers,
Eric
PS, for a genuine futurist’s imagining of working while on the road, read science-fiction novel Mother of Storms.
OK, this isn’t about collaboration, but it’s pretty interesting anyway. A Minnesota company, LVX System, has invented an intriguing new way to connect your PC to the network. Well, sort of. They put special LEDs in ceiling light fixtures, and attach a corresponding modem to desktop PC’s. The LED’s and the modem exchange digital data through (very, very) high-speed flickering. They claim they can get about 3 megabits/second, and that this could help alleviate some of the spectrum congestion.
Cheers,
Eric
Our good friends over at Google have added a nice bit of Executive-friendly functionality: the ability to delegate your email account to someone else. It’s just another step on its path to (hopeful) full enterprise-grade use, but it’s an important one. Middle- and senior- managers everywhere delegate email and calendar management to assistants. See the blog entry here.
Cheers,
Eric
OK, so this is kind of off-topic, but interesting nonetheless. Key line:
one of the two species of bacteria has evolved the ability to transfer electrons directly to their neighboring species, allowing both to get more energy out of the limited food available.
Check out the article here.
Cheers,
Eric
