Archive for Notable + Quotable
by Celine Roque
October 22, 2009 at 10:44 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
Ten Useful Examples of the Real-Time Web in Action
Highlighting their utility, Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb gives several examples of how real-time web is helping companies and services. “The real-time web isn’t just about immediacy, it also offers things like presence information, syncing, efficiency and responsiveness.”
Make social media a business tool, not a distraction
In the Miami Herald, Cindy Krischer Goodman present tactics by different people on maximizing social media while minimizing wasted time. “Niala Boodhoo, who co-writes the Poked blog for MiamiHerald.com, offers another approach for those who intend to take a peek at Twitter and end up spending hours clicking on links or forwarding tweets. She suggests monitoring how much time you spends on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter with a Mozilla Firefox plug-in called Leechblock. “It’s the perfect way to police yourself,” she says. You can specify which sites you want to block, you can set a time limit for a site or block access for a set period of time (9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday).”
Done: Reduce Task Friction to Get to Task Completion
Leo Babauta gives advice on keeping task simple in order to finish them faster on Zen Habits. “Small is better when it comes to getting to completion. It’s easier, which is less friction. It’s less intimidating. But more than that, small tasks and projects are victories. You can quickly get to completion and feel great about it. And that compels you to keep going.”
Coming Soon: Internet Apps that Heal Themselves
In ReadWriteWeb, Sarah Perez features a European research called the SELFMAN project – an effort to make web apps that are self-configuring, self-tuning, self-healing, and self-protecting. “Already the team has had promising results. For example, Scalaris, an open-source scalable transactional storage for Web 2.0 services won first prize in the IEEE International Scalable Computing Challenge 2008. Peer-to-peer video streaming application PeerTV uses SELFMAN to quickly test an evaluate new P2P components. There’s also a demo of a distributed Wikipedia that can handle more queries than the current version and a graphics program that lets multiple users collaborate on a design. Van Roy believes that SELFMAN represents the first step towards an internet filled with “unbreakable” applications. “Right now we’re just scratching the surface,” he says.”
10 Ways to Get Your Staff to Love – And Respect – You
Humor, empathy, honesty and leadership – these are the qualities that makes for a well-respected boss, says Jim Taggart on Brazen Careerist. “Encourage a learning culture within your team. Show leadership by starting with yourself. Lifelong learning is not a 9 to 5 proposition; it’s about how you absorb new experiences at work and through community service, training courses, assignments, reading, travel, etc. It’s a reciprocal process: employers provide opportunities to learn and grow, but employees also need to engage in activities outside of work.”
“Network neutrality” or “network neutering”?
An editorial by Nate Anderson of Ars Technica that answers the accusations of net neutrality opponents. “Net neutrality actually encourages the sort of innovation that we want in our networks—higher speeds, open access to innovative new applications and uses—the FiOS model. And everyone can profit from it, including the ISPs. Removing even the threat of such action encourages not innovation but modest speeds, high prices, and discriminatory throttling of user connections.”
How to Handle the Pessimist on Your Team
On Harvard Businness, Amy Gallo cites a study that says being proactive is the best way to counter employee negativity, including some case studies on how to deal with it. “Roderick Kramer, William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business, says that it is the role of the leader to understand the underlying cause of the pessimism before acting. Some people are dispositional pessimists whose knee-jerk reaction is to see the negative in everything, while others may be expressing a pessimistic point of viewbased upon informed logic,” Kramer says.”
A Little Privacy, Please
Scientific American’ Chip Walter features computer scientist Latanya of Sweeney Carnegie Mellon University, director of the Laboratory for International Data Privacy. “Several years ago Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, famously quipped, “Privacy is dead. Get over it.” Sweeney couldn’t disagree more. “Privacy is definitely not dead,” she counters; those who believe it is “haven’t actually thought the problem through, or they aren’t willing to accept the solution.”
A Week in the Clouds Without a Notebook
Frequent business traveler Steve Rubel blogs about his teleworking experiment using only a smartphone and cloud-based apps. “The reason is simple: all of these devices are pocketable. A laptop isn’t. I don’t want to carry a laptop because it’s mental baggage. I don’t want to be thinking about where it is. Smartphones and USB keys are like appendages. I always know where they are. Plus, I know that one day soon we won’t need to carry laptops on business trips because these phones – which are really pocket computers – will be able to do it all, including hook up to hotel TVs. I am trying to experience this future now.”
by Celine Roque
September 29, 2009 at 9:58 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
Is intimate personal information a toxic asset in cloud datacenters?
On Radar, Professor Carl Hewitt shows the advantages and disadvantages of government regulation in data center security, and presents other options for this issue. “This is a future that we expect most readers would find distasteful. There is an alternative: A client cloud is a local cloud controlled by a client, e.g., a family cloud might consist of the cell phones, computers, security cameras, home entertainment centers, Wi-Fi access points, etc. of a family. Semantic Integration could be performed in clients’ clouds so that clients by default store their information in cloud datacenters in a way that it can be decrypted only by using a client’s secret key.”
How Tim O’Reilly Aims to Change Government
Marshall Kirkpatrick features a technologist’s crusade to make government more responsive to citizens, how he’s going about it and what he’s learned. “Technologist Tim O’Reilly is spending time in Washington, and bringing Washington officials to San Francisco, to do something different – perhaps something more realistic. O’Reilly is trying to help government become a platform for innovation. A “government as platform” would supply raw digital data and other forms of support for private sector innovators to build on top of.”
When Collaboration is Literally Life or Death…
On ZDNet, Oliver Marks lauds the US military’s use of collaboration tools in a highly secure and organized manner that private companies can emulate. “Industrial strength strategic planning of collaboration environments will definitely separate the weakly organized from the ultra connected and clued up and is a key differentiator in modern business.”
Cloud computing: YOUR data – right?
ComMetrics cites recent events like Amazon’s remote deletion on Kindles as another reason to clearly define cloud data ownership. “Bottomline: Storing data using cloud computing (like Google Chrome OS does) means there is no local storage, so nothing can be owned, only rented. The only way around this problem is to download data and images to one’s PC.”
Rural broadband = more jobs, better salaries
Matthew Lasar features a report by the US Department of Agriculture Rural counties that says although broadband has proven to be economically beneficial, there persists a wide gap in high-speed Internet penetration in the countryside and in urban areas. “Only 41 percent of rural households had broadband access in 2008, the USDA says, as opposed to 55 percent nationally. And adoption rates still lag behind cities, with a “marked difference” between urban and rural use. Only 70 percent of rural households with access to broadband embraced it in 2007, the report says, as opposed to 84 percent of city dwellers.”
Killing Email: How and Why I Ditched My Inbox
Leo Babauta details his experiments on phasing out his email and keeping his dependence on it to a minimum on Zen Habits. “Q: Why so extreme? Why not just filter and check email less often? A: I’ve tried a number of tactics with email, including extreme filtering. For awhile I set up a special email address for friends and family and close colleagues, and everything else was shunted into a special folder to be read less frequently. It still took up too much of my time. I don’t check email as often as most people, but it was still a chore I have been enjoying less and less. So I decided to try something different.”
Work Smarter, Not Harder Tip: Fill Your Days with Sand, Not rocks
Jeannie Chan of Brazen Careerist ponders about what enables her to be good at multitasking. “It allows me to be completely focused at the task at hand. Whenever I have worked on mega-tasks, I would get fatigue mentally quicker. I would get distracted easier, probably because I wasn’t able to see the end of the tunnel. With a lack of focus, I would just simply not get as much done… Also, with a to-do list of tiny tasks, I would never feel like I was unaccomplished at the end of the day. I would always be able to cross off something!”
License Plates for the Internet? Digital Security for Personal Identity
Neville Pattinson floats the idea of a countrywide digital identity credential on Digital Nomads. “This is a big idea that could solve a lot of problems. In the best case, this would take the form of a digital identity credential issued by a single government agency. Other industries, such as banking, payment and healthcare, could potentially use the ID as a way to secure identity, online access and Web-based transactions. Much as Social Security numbers and Drivers Licenses did until cyber-crime made them as unreliable as ID credentials.”
by Celine Roque
August 27, 2009 at 7:36 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
10 great ideas from five great bosses
Jody Gilbert lists what she’s learned over the years on how top leaders deal with problems in Tech Republic. “Become a small picture kind of boss. It’s critical that you help everyone understand the overall goals and objectives of the organization. But don’t forget that the best leaders also bring those goals down to the smallest details of individual jobs. Learn to help everyone, at every level, understand how his or her specific contribution can make the whole organization more successful.”
Are we solving the same problem?
Discussing the real issue at length is essential to finding a common acceptable answer, says Seth Godin. “This is the biggest disconnect I know of. It happens all the time in B2B sales, in service marketing, in getting along with your boss and even in hiring someone. One side thinks they have figured out a solution. They spend a long time talking about the solution, architecting it, refining it, pricing it, pitching it, delivering it. The other side ends up not liking what they get. The disconnect: the first side says, “this solution is exactly as we described it!” the other side says, “it doesn’t work right.”
How Knowledge Can Hurt Innovation
Scott Anthony of Innosight and HarvardBusiness.org warns about making assumptions that can blind managers to opportunities and threats. “Chip and Dan Heath described the curse of knowledge nicely in their 2007 book Made to Stick (highly recommended to all innovators). The basic problem: people who have deep knowledge about a topic sometimes assume other people have that same knowledge. That can lead to major missteps.”
The Big Question: Are You Better Than Yesterday?
In his guest post on Four-Hour Workweek, Chad Fowler shares an excerpt from a book that aims to sharpen problem-solving skills. “How have you taken better action today for improving your career than you did yesterday? Make one more contact, submit a patch to an open source project, write a thoughtful post and publish it on your weblog. Help one more person on a technical forum in your area of expertise than you did yesterday. If you every day you do a little better than yesterday toward improving yourself, you’ll find that the otherwise ocean-sized proposition of building a remarkable career becomes more tractable.”
Work as Play
Leo Babauta writes his ideas on how to make work fun for yourself or for others in Zen Habits. “Turning work into play doesn’t mean you don’t work hard, or that you never do boring tasks. If you’ve ever played a sport, you know that you work as hard as anyone when you’re playing or practicing — but that’s no problem, because you’re having a blast doing it.”
Fake Rocks, Salami Commanders, and Just Enough to Start
Merlin Mann’s 43folders has an article on perceived barriers to getting started and how to get past them. “It’s not that successful and productive people don’t see those same barriers or feel that same fear—it’s just that most of the good ones have figured out how to either accept the fears as a natural part of the process, or they just choose to ignore each fakey barrier the second it appears.”
Breaking free from the Web: New rehab caters to Internet addicts
Lynne Peeples reports on a facility that seeks to cure individuals from too much Internet dependence on Scientific American. “The retreat’s founders think that Internet addiction is a serious problem, affecting between 6 and 10 percent of the online population. But how do you know if you are an addict? A list of 12 “signs and symptoms” appears on the new reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Program’s Web page—from a “heightened sense of euphoria while involved in computer and Internet activities” to “being dishonest with others” and “physical changes such as weight gain or loss, backaches, headaches, [and] carpal tunnel syndrome.”
by Celine Roque
August 6, 2009 at 7:36 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
That Funny Email? No One’s Laughing
In his column, Words at Work, David Silverman ponders the difficulty of adding tone to written words, and the dangers of miscommunication when the intended humor is lost on the recipient. “In business, anything not explicitly written (as a friend of mine once told me after reviewing my documentation of a meeting’s minutes) does not exist. An interoffice communication is not The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and there should not be room for disagreement about what it means.”
Businesses use Twitter to communicate with customers
Jon Swartz of USA TODAY talks about social media’s role in customer service and cites specific examples of how companies are taking advantage of it. “The popular communications technology has helped companies quickly and inexpensively respond to customer complaints, answer questions and tailor products and services. It has supplemented current customer services, easing the load on call centers and expensive mailers that most consumers abhor. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and online software services such as LiveOps, Salesforce.com and RightNow Technologies are all are being used to improve customer service, retain users and gain a competitive advantage.”
The time is right for open source management apps
Forrester Research says managers think open source software is now at the point that it can be used for enterprise work tasks, reports Denise Dubie in ComputerWorld. “Forrester polled more than 2,225 software decision-makers at enterprise and SMB companies in late 2008 and learned that 55% of those surveyed are interested in, implementing, expanding or piloting open source applications. Just 2% of those polled indicated they were planning to decrease their use of open source and 1% said they would remove the applications. Another 33% were either not interested or unaware of their company’s plans with open-source software.”
Online Marketing Tips Video: Online Reputation Management
Search Marketing Gurus’ Li Evans present a video on social media monitoring and relationship building to protect your reputation. “You cannot ‘manage’ your reputation out on the internet, it’s very, very difficult. But, what you can do is manage relationships. You can build relationships with people inside forums, whether they are the community leaders or they’re bloggers, you can get out there and actually build relationships that can help you in a crisis situation. If you’ve established a really good foundation of relationships, a lot of times, bloggers or community members will come to your defense when something bad is happening. So this is a really great way to help get the word out about you, but also your reputation in crisis situations.”
Mind Mapping Project Management
Tactical Project Management on mind mapping advantages for information gathering and project documentation, including a run-through of popular applications: “Mature project management organizations often have a set of templates that project managers are required to publish lessons learned, status reports, meeting minutes and scope statements. Mind maps can be also used to collect and organize the information prior to populating these standard templates. Ideally, the PMO or PM methodology’s governing body would accept the mind map as an acceptable format. Using mind mapping tools enable the PM to effectively perform the work and efficiently meet any administrative template requirement.”
How to Disarm Combative Conversations
Harvard Business’ Holly Weeks gives management strategy tips for dealing with abrasive individuals in the office. “To achieve success in difficult conversations, you have to give up completely the combative approach. And don’t fool yourself that you can give it up partly. That only works if our counterpart partly gives it up too — and that is beyond our control.”
Practical Database Change Management
Frank Kalis puts the spotlight on databases, encouraging IT to be as proactive as they are in client application change management, and presents a sample workflow on SQL Server Performance. “Just like applications, most databases evolve over time in-line with the latest business requirements. Changing the database component therefore is (or better: should be) an integral and crucial part in every application life cycle and I’ve realised that this part is not given nearly as much of attention as it should. The purpose here is to introduce you to database change management as it is handled in our workplace.”
Persevering in the face of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt
Michael Hugos highlights several quotes from the book “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles” by Steven Pressfield. “Whether we call it that or not, lots of us (most of us?) are freelancers. Some of us earn a living as serial employees (a year here, eight months there, two years somewhere else). Others skip the employee part and work as contractors or start their own companies. So if the traditional play it safe options are disappearing, I might as well do what I really want to do because then, even during periods when the going is tough, at least I can always say I’m doing what I want to do. There’s just one big question though: What is it that I really want to do?”
by Celine Roque
July 24, 2009 at 8:03 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
Be Selective With Your Social Networks
With plenty of social networks and limited time, Entrepreneur’s Jennifer Shaheen advices caution when joining them. “What is this new social network or affinity group all about? Is your potential customer in this group? To find the answers to these questions, spend some time looking at the demographics of the typical member. You can often find them by reviewing the information on the about page or the advertising section of the website. Check out third-party information on the community–this may include blogs, media outlets or research groups. Look for research that shows outcomes, not just the demographic or membership information.”
Is Your Networking Effective or Is Technology Making You Lazy?
Sandy Norton underlines the importance of follow-up in building relationships for networking. “We hear so much about personal branding but regardless of the newest buzz words, branding is nothing but your reputation and your integrity. As it has always been, your decision to ignore people and not follow-up properly will affect your reputation and bring questions about your integrity. With social media that affect can be faster and much more far reaching and damaging than in the past. Many companies have learned this the hard way. Don’t burn your bridges with people because you never know where they may be in the future. Networking isnot a sprint, it is like running a marathon. You need to be in it for the long haul for it to be successful.”
Reputation, Social Media And Your Boss
Mitch Joel shares the results of a research on corporate attitudes to social media on Twist Image. “Anytime there is a platform that is open and fairly democratized, institutions and companies more accustomed to “controlling the message” get worried and express the potential for corporate damages that could be associated with employees speaking their minds. In this study, 74% of executives felt that online social networking platforms make it very easy to damage a company’s reputation.”
Finding New Employees, via Social Networks
In the NY Times, Julie Weed features some of the methods companies employ to search for new talent on the web. “…Mr. Scanlan said that recruiting through his employees’ social networks was a natural progression from using Craigslist and job Web sites over the past few years. He hopes to make this grass-roots type of recruiting part of his company’s culture. ‘This is beyond the H.R. department,’ he said. ‘All employees should be talent recruiters.’
The new networking
Bill Lohmann discusses the do’s and don’ts of online networking in the Times Dispatch. “Talk to anyone who knows social media, and they use words like ‘genuine’ and ‘transparent,’ ‘personalization’ and ‘immediacy,’ ‘relevance’ and ‘value.’ Whether you’re an individual or an organization, forgetting any of those is the fastest way to have people tune you out. The same goes if you don’t produce anything worth reading, or, even worse, if you’re perceived to be a guy ringing a doorbell selling magazine subscriptions. People don’t want to be spammed. Or to hear what you ate for breakfast.”
Social networking — a different kind of friendship
On eConsultancy, Geno Prussakov takes a look at several types of social networks and varying degrees of closeness for online friendships. “Some believe that all social networks are generally the same, but in a video posted by BusinessWeek a week ago Danah Boyd of Microsoft pointed out that the assumption that there is essentially only one sort of social networks (that we are talking about in different ways) is wrong. There are, in fact, 3 types of social networks: (i) personal networks (people you trust, and sincerely care about), (ii) behavioral social networks (people you spend time with, and communicate with on a regular basis), and (iii) articulated social networks (examples: cell phone address book, Facebook, Twitter). ‘The challenge is that we don’t understand the relationship between these three types of social networks and we’re trying to find ways to make sense of the theory that has come out of sociology and try to apply it’ to our marketing said Boyd.”
The use—or nonuse—of social tools sparks Twitterstorm
Lauren Barack from the School Library Journal on the role of social media in modern education. “The issue comes at a critical time. Library media specialists, already hampered by dwindling budgets over the years, are feeling the impact of the current recession, with further cuts to resources and even staff. So how to remain relevant has never been more important. The fact that the conversation was itself conducted via social media only underscores the need for media specialists to be conversant with these tools.”
Confessions of a social network-aholic
Leslie Toy describes getting burned out by a little too much connectivity in SGV Tribune. “Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a hermit who hates human contact. But something about the increased ability to keep in touch makes me more possessive of my privacy. As people my age continue to grow up with ever-accelerating technology, it will be a challenge to stay in the present instead of worrying about how to word current whereabouts or how pictures will appear on public profiles. When you obsess about what your life looks like to others, I find you forget to enjoy it for yourself.”
by Anita Campbell
July 20, 2009 at 8:02 am · Filed under
Distributed Work, Notable + Quotable, Web Commuting
Monday, August 3, 2009 has been designated “Telework Day.” Right now it appears to be mainly a Virginia initiative — but individuals and businesses across the United States are being encouraged to participate too.
The Telework Exchange has a dedicated page for Telework Day, providing:
On June 10, 2009, Virginia Governor Timothy Kaine issued an Executive Order to “green” Virginia – calling for reductions in energy consumption and efficiency in state government operations as well as a statewide Telework Day to save the energy of commuting.
The Commonwealth of Virginia, Telework!VA, and Telework Exchange are encouraging organizations and individuals to telework from home or a remote location on Monday, August 3, 2009 – Telework Day
WHY?
Telework is a win-win-win opportunity for organizations, employees, and the environment.
Telework supports:
- Reduction of traffic, greenhouse gas emissions, and wear and tear on public transportation
- COOP: Business as usual
- Personnel recruitment and retention
- Real estate savings
- Work/life balance and commuter-cost savings
So be green, give your car a rest, and make a pledge to telework on August 3.
As you can tell from the above language, it’s being touted as a green initiative and a way for all of us to reduce our carbon footprint. The Telework Exchange site has a built-in calculator that helps you as an individual see how much you are saving (or could save) in commuting costs, as well as the pounds of pollutants you avoid putting in the air by telecommuting. For instance, by using the calculator (you have to register first), it told me that each year I am saving $1,185 in commuting costs based on commuting to my last job, and 1575 pounds of pollutants.
Government officials like the idea of telework, because it takes pressure off of already over-burdened roads, and has the potential to keep the air cleaner.
For employers it can be a productivity enhancer and cost saver. According to PC World magazine:
Not only can telework help companies green their processes, but it can also pay off in productivity savings. For instance, Cisco recently reported it was able to save some $277 million in employee productivity costs alone by sending employees home to work.
“Telework Day is an important opportunity to advocate telework as a business strategy that can have a positive impact on the bottom line and improve organization efficiency,” said Jennifer Thomas Alcott, program manager for Telework!VA. “Telework is one of the most effective ways for people to greatly reduce their work-related carbon footprint and demonstrate that ‘work is something you do, not a place you go.’”
When it comes to employers, you’ll get the most benefit if you have systems and applications in place to make it easy for employees to work remotely. Systems need to be able to support their work so they don’t have to work against the systems. Remote work requires the right types of IT systems, business software applications, and telecommunications systems. Employees will obviously need to be able to communicate, access business applications, share files, and otherwise make it “business as usual.” While it’s possible for employees to work at home with limited access to company systems on a single day or two, as an ongoing way of doing business you may be required to rethink and overhaul your systems to make them more “remote-worker” friendly — if they are not already.
Telework Day could be a way to “stress test” your systems and see how conducive they are to employees working remotely. By participating in Telework Day — or designating a Telework Day of your own in your business — you can test out your systems and see what you’d need to change in order to make telework more widespread.
by Celine Roque
July 14, 2009 at 11:35 am · Filed under
Notable + Quotable
Web 3.0: The Web Goes Industrial
Peter Sweeney of Social Computing Journal marks the difference between Web 3.0 and its predecessor, as well as the changes it will bring. “This story reads much like the first Industrial Revolution. Artisans and skilled tradesman used to create everything by hand. Then, through the emergence of a handful of technical innovations, came the age of mass production. It was a profound turning point in human history, affecting every aspect of daily life. Today, most content is still created by hand, the best of it by highly skilled artisans drawing on centuries of scholarship and experience. Recently, we’ve seen significant innovations in social approaches to content creation. But Web 3.0 industrialization takes content manufacturing to an entirely different level. Instead of users manually creating content, machines automate the heavy lifting. Consumers simply push the buttons and get stuff done.”
The challenges of supporting a client with telecommuters
Teleworkers have special needs and TechRepublic’s Susan Harkins offers tips on to help determine and meet those needs ranging from policies to technology. “Supporting the IT needs of either or both type of worker is tough. Clients are put at risk when their networks extend into employees’ homes. Another challenge is that you’re in a position to recommend and implement the technologies telecommuters need, but you generally aren’t in a position to control abuse or enforce standards. You’ll have to find a balance between your clients’ needs and your participation in the process.”
What Is Google Squared? It Is How Google Will Crush Wolfram Alpha
Erick Schonfeld shares his impressions of Google’s newest project on TechCrunch. “One of the next frontiers of search is taking all of the unstructured data spread helter-skelter across the Web and treat it like it is sitting in a nice, structured database. It is easier to get answers out of a database where everything is neatly labeled, stamped, and categorized. As the sheer volume of stuff on the Web keeps growing, keyword search keeps getting closer to its breaking point. Adding structure to the Web is one way to make sense of all that data, and Google is starting the tackle the problem with a Google Labs project called Google Squared, which Marissa Mayer mentioned earlier today at the company’s Searchology briefing.”
Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage
Matthew Clarke of Boxes and Arrows formulates possible guidelines for the effective use of Wikis in a corporate environment. “When it comes to implementing Wikis across a large enterprise such as a global corporation, a new set of concerns affect the balance of power. Management wisdom is required to maximize participation while keeping business objectives clearly in sight. In my experience, it is rare that a single Wiki site within an enterprise is open to contributions by any employee. Where this is the case, moderation is likely to be required because of the large numbers of contributors who have no direct accountability to each other. The concerns at the enterprise level relate to how numerous organizational Wikis within the enterprise can be integrated into the IT infrastructure and how the use of Wikis can most effectively support corporate goals.”
Teleworking a Hidden Fix In Disaster Recovery Plans
CIO’s Michael Crawford encourages managers to beef up their teleworking readiness in terms of tasks, technologies and people for uninterrupted operations during emergencies. “One of the best kept disaster recovery and business continuity secrets in the industry is not even on companies’ radar: that’s the failure to push teleworking for staff as an ideal fallback measure. One problem is that most teleworking arrangements operate under informal agreements between employers and employees. However, the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) plans to investigate the use of teleworking as a contingency plan as part of its disaster recovery policy.”
The uncertain whims of social networking sites
An incident at Digg pushes Kenneth Barbalace to blog about group behavior of users and moderators on social networking sites. “While these social networks are great things, their users are at the whims of the social networks’ moderators and admins arbitrarily enforcing rules. This past weekend, some of my favorite “friends” to follow on Digg got banned as a result of a hit job done to them by their political opponents (Read more here). On Digg, as with any social network, certain terms of service rules are poorly thought out and easily violated due to the way certain features are designed. As a result these conditions are routinely violated by the social network’s user base and very unevenly enforced.”
Grow Up, Mark Zuckerberg
Andrew Keen writes about Godwin’s Internet Law in relation to Facebook, calling on its founder to take responsibility for the content on his Website on Internet Revolution. “Like it or not, Facebook-style networks represent the future of media, and Mark Zuckerberg is a 21st century media mogul, a digital version of William Randolph Hearst or Rupert Murdoch. As traditional newspapers and book publishers wither away, so all media will morph into electronic networks like Facebook, which will become the major viaduct of information and entertainment. Thus, network-owning guys like Zuckerberg are becoming the Citizen Kanes of the 21st century — accumulating the great wealth and massive power of a latter-day Hearst over the channels and platforms that organize and distribute information. With massive power and wealth comes massive responsibility.”
First-Mover Disadvantage in Social Media
Andrew Keen again, this time questioning one of Silicon Valley’s long held tenets. “Yes, everything is timing. And timing that timing is key. First-mover advantage only works when it’s clear what business is being moved into. So the real entrepreneurial winners of this war will only emerge once it becomes evident what, exactly, is the business of social media. I can’t predict the future of social media. But one thing is for sure: Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed will one day seem as archaic as Jonathan Abrams’ 2003 version of Friendster now appears today.”
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