Archive for June, 2009:

Sony Walkman Turns 30

Published on June 29th, 2009 View Comments

Hard to believe it, but the Walkman will turn 30 on July 1.
Thanks to the ‘tubes for reminding me of this, specifically to this 13-year-old kid’s review of the Walkman, compiled after using it in lieu of his iPod for a week.
Well worth the read, if only for a laugh, and an interesting study in [...]

Twitter for Reporting the News

Published on June 29th, 2009 View Comments

The events surrounding the reporting of Michael Jackson’s death last week bring up issues with news reporting that I think are worth discussing.
Granted, this discussion isn’t new, but it’s interesting, at least to me.
Twitter offers a new channel to reporters, due to its immediacy and network effects, i.e. it’s very quick to publish and easy [...]

Citizen Journalism Gets a Test

Published on June 25th, 2009 View Comments

Twitter has a pretty impressive list of news stories its users have broken and covered more accurately than mainstream news outlets.
To name a few:

Hudson River plane crash
Iranian election riots
Several earthquakes in multiple countries, e.g. Southern California, Mexico City
Wildfires every year, e.g. Fall 2007
Terrorists attacks in Mumbai
Virginia Tech shootings

The immediacy and speed of updating Twitter when [...]

An Interesting Trust Experiment Begins

Published on June 24th, 2009 View Comments

I’ve been yammering on about trust as the key component to encouraging participation in online communities for a couple weeks.
Today, Facebook opened its walls to allow search engines to index anything you publish, meaning the layer of trust can be removed, and all your updates *could* be released into the wild.
The change has been rolled [...]

Measuring Influence and Reputation

Published on June 23rd, 2009 View Comments

The debate about whether FeedBurner’s inclusion of FriendFeed subscribers is a good or bad thing has me thinking how to determine a person’s reputation and influence.
As I keep saying, trust is the key component to New Web. Without trust, it’s difficult to build a community around anything.
Reputation and influence are the next big things in [...]

I Need to Use FriendFeed More

Published on June 22nd, 2009 View Comments

Did anyone notice a larger than normal bump in their FeedBurner stats last week?
Last week, the FeedBurner numbers shot up from about 1,000 readers to more than 1,500. I’m behind on my reading, but so far, I haven’t seen this covered anywhere but on the FriendFeed blog.
Some movement in subscribers is common. However, this was [...]

Vote for Sessions Launches

Published on June 17th, 2009 View Comments

So, Tim mentioned last night that Oracle Mix had launched this year’s iteration of Suggest a Session.
There are big changes from last year’s inaugural run. First off, it’s no longer called Suggest a Session, but rather Vote for Sessions.

From the name, you can get an inkling of the biggest change, i.e. you won’t be suggesting [...]

Implications of the 90-9-1 Rule

Published on June 16th, 2009 View Comments

Last week’s post on the 90-9-1 rule was pretty popular. It bounced around Twitter and FriendFeed, and thankfully, Disqus’ Reactions feature allowed me to track comments on it.
So, like any good blogger, I’m going where the traffic is.
The 90-9-1 rule interests me for a number of reasons beyond the obvious applications it has to driving [...]

I Like Shiny Things

Published on June 15th, 2009 View Comments

I really do love new stuff, especially when it comes to software and has a “developer release” or “alpha” or “beta” tag on it.
I can’t help it. I’ve tried to stay away from buggy releases, but I always come back, if only to feel like I’m playing with the latest, greatest version.
Are you like that?
Anyway, [...]

The Race for Your Identity: Twitter vs Facebook

Published on June 13th, 2009 View Comments

It’s been a while since I blogged over here, the last few months have been intense adding new members to my team in the national security group.  We’ve been working on some really great projects that I’d love to talk about but I’d have to kill you.  There is something new on the horizon that [...]

Geolocation Edges Closer for Me

Published on June 12th, 2009 View Comments

If you read here, you probably know I’m a fan of geolocation and its possibilities.
Yeah, it’s creepy and risky, but then again, broadcasting your location is always risky, whether you do it via geolocation or Twitter, just ask Israel Hyman.
In fact, if you tweet from an iPhone Twitter client that uses the location feature, Twitter [...]

OpenWorld 2009 Suggest a Session Starts June 16

Published on June 11th, 2009 View Comments

Mark your calendars for June 16.
The Oracle OpenWorld Blog announced today that Suggest a Session will be back on that day for this year’s mega-conference (which will be October 11-15, 2009 at Moscone in San Francisco as usual).
If you recall, last year’s Suggest a Session for OpenWorld was a big hit. Confused?
Here’s a recap:
If you [...]

Browsers Wars on Like Donkey Kong

Published on June 11th, 2009 View Comments

I saw this post about how to provoke an argument with a geek from Wired on Digg, just as I was formulating this post about the escalating browser wars.
Good timing, since debating which browser is best will undoubtedly start an argument.
Anyway, the release of a developer version of Chrome for the Mac has definitely got [...]

90-9-1 Rule Skews the New Web

Published on June 10th, 2009 View Comments

You’ve probably heard of the 90-9-1 rule of communities, outlined here by Jakob Nielsen.
If not, here’s the summary:
In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.
News over the past couple weeks underscores this theory. First, [...]

OpenSocial in the Enterprise Session from Google I/O

Published on June 8th, 2009 View Comments

As promised, Rich’s session from Google I/O has been posted, and I’ve embedded here for your viewing pleasure.

It’s a panel so, if you don’t want to invest the full 60 minutes, you can skip to Rich’s demo, which happens between 13:24 and 20:59.
He gives a quick demo of Connect and shares some OpenSocial gadgets that [...]

Jury Duty is a Broken Model

Published on June 8th, 2009 View Comments

On Friday, I received a summons to appear for jury duty.
First, let me say that I’m in favor of civic duty, the right to a jury trial, all that.
I don’t think I’m the only one who dreads a summons to jury duty though. This is the first time I’ve been called in Oregon, and they [...]

Google I/O Sessions Live

Published on June 4th, 2009 View Comments

Some of the sessions from Google I/O have been posted, including the Wave breakout sessions.
I know one of these conflicted with Rich’s panel session, “OpenSocial in the Enterprise”. Rich was both bummed he had to miss it and worried that after the morning’s rousing keynote, no one would show up for his session.
Although he didn’t [...]

My Thoughts on Wave

Published on June 2nd, 2009 View Comments

Rich dumped his impressions and thoughts on Google Wave yesterday. Now it’s my turn.
In a weird coincidence, I heard Soundgarden’s “My Wave” earlier today and immediately thought of Friend of the ‘Lab Floyd’s penchant for beginning his posts with song lyrics. Not sure why he’s stopped doing that, it’s a great little calling card for [...]

OraTweet Ready for Flight

Published on June 2nd, 2009 View Comments

I mentioned a few weeks ago that OraTweet, Noel’s mirco-blogging package built in APEX, would soon be released to the public after he made some tweaks to get it production-ready.
Today, he unveiled it. You can download OraTweet here.
It’s provided free of charge, as-is, and requires Oracle 10g or 11g and APEX 3.1.x or higher. [...]

The Enterprise Implications of Google Wave

Published on June 1st, 2009 View Comments

Five minutes after I posted my Google Wave analysis, I ran into Dion Hinchcliffe’s excellent analysis of Google Wave.  A must read for Enterprise 2.0 folks.

This is exactly what I’m envisioning happening with Google Wave in the enterprise.  It will become the “glue code” for the user experience.  It won’t replace existing back-end apps, but [...]

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