Web 2.0 In Depth

A Doctrine for Change - Lawrence Lessig Again

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:30:00 EST

I was again reading and reviewing Lawrence Lessig's work tonight. The man is so very articulate and his observations so compelling. If you haven't become a student of his work, please take my advice and give it a try here.

At the 2002 Open Source Convention Lessig challenged the audience to get involved in the political process. A tireless advocate for open source, Lessig shared some basic concepts that are a solution to most of the barriers preventing our soceity from overcoming the major challenges of the time. A complete transcript of Lawrence's keynote presentation made on July 24, 2002 is available here. In summation his logical findings were as follows.

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.

The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.

Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.

Ours is less and less a free society.

Watch the video from Big Thinkers wherein Lessig explains his views on freedom our culture and creativity.

Citizen Journalism as a Catalyst for Transforming Media

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST

Another incident on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) hits YouTube, and the world is once again asking the question if BART Police are using too much force, the police acted appropriately, or if BART passengers simply recorded a snapshot in time that could be interpreted at a later date. In the recent past, to find out what happened during an incident such as the most recent BART scuffle, you would be dependent on a newspaper’s beat journalist to hang around a police station. He’d get a copy of the official police report, perhaps talk with one of his friends on the force, and transcribe what he gathered.

Virtualization Expo Call for Papers Deadline December 15

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:45:00 EST

Delegates will leave Virtualization Expo with a full understanding of the interaction between virtual servers and the rest of the data center infrastructure. Indeed our overall aim is to ensure that all attendees leave the Jacob Javits Convention Center with abundant resources, ideas and examples they can apply immediately to leveraging Virtualization in their own corporate datacenter, on the desktop, and elsewhere. If you wish to submit a speaking proposal for the 8th Virtualization Expo, April 19–21, 2010, then you can do so right here

What Does Internet Routing in Space Mean for the CTO?

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST

Yesterday, 23 November 2009, an Atlas V rocket from the United Launch Alliance successfully launched the Intelsat 14 satellite (IS-14). Liftoff of the Atlas V occurred at 1:55am ET. The satellite separated successfully two hours later. Today we received word that the satellite’s solar panels have deployed and all is well. Great launch! There is something [...] Related posts:

When the Crowd is Racist at Google

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 07:30:00 EST

If you search Google Images for "Michelle Obama" (no quotes), the first image you'll see is a poorly photoshopped picture of her as an ape. You'll also see a Google Ad on that page that links to Google's explanation of why such a blatantly racist photo is the top-ranked one at ...

How Economic Challenges Help Enterprise 2.0

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:30:00 EST

Enterprise 2.0 is described by Carl Frappaolo and Dan Keldsen as, "a system of web based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise." It is basically social networking for businesses. This article explores how the recent economic challenges are promoting the growth of Enterprise 2.0 in businesses.

A Swift Kick to the IPv6 Backside

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST

The institutional horror stories continue, the old Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) address space is nearly gone, and if we do not transition to IPv6 with its nearly unlimited address space the Internet will grind to a halt.

Cloud, The New Taste of the Internet

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:45:00 EST

Lately there seems to be a minor debate among the clouderati about the semantic differences between the term "the cloud" versus the use of "cloud computing". So I thought I'd jump into the fray.

As someone who spends his days eating, breathing and sometimes drinking cloud computing, it's fun to see how the debate has recently devolved into a debate purely focused upon the finer semantic nuances of the various terminologies. The debate seems to generally focus on the varied usages within the companies that are attempting to "cloud-ify" themselves & their products/services. This cloudification seems to be the trend du'jour within the technology industry, an attempt to augment marketing materials and or product positioning to include cloud related buzz words, whether they make sense or not.

Actually one of the better stated criticism comes from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison who observes that cloud computing has been defined as "everything". It's everything and nothing in particular, a trendy word that is used more to impress than explain a particular problem. I for one completely agree.

As a marketing term, cloud has enabled us to broadly define the movement away from the desktop / server centric past to the cloud [Internet] enabled future. Wikipedia's cloud definition says it well, "it is a paradigm shift where technological details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure "in the cloud" that supports them". Yup, enough said.

This message is to of you -- the ones who are jumping on the cloud bandwagon, let me say this as plainly as possible. Regardless of whether it's "the cloud" or "cloud computing" it all comes back to the fact that it's a buzzword. A way to say we're cool, we're now, we're new, with out saying it directly (a neologism). It's the New Coke of Computing / the new taste of the Internet.

So what is The Cloud? It's the Internet. And what is Cloud Computing? It's the next big thing in computing, it's using the Internet.

Businesses Need to Capture Web Data for BI to Work Better

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:22:00 EST

For businesses looking to do even more commerce and community building across the Web, text access and analytics forms a new mother lode of valuable insights to mine. Text-based content and information from across the Web are growing in importance to businesses. The need to analyze web-based text in real-time is rising to where structured data was in importance just several years ago. Indeed, for businesses looking to do even more commerce and community building across the Web, text access and analytics forms a new mother lode of valuable insights to mine. As the recession forces the need to identify and evaluate new revenue sources, businesse need to capture such web data services for their business intelligence (BI) to work better, deeper, and faster.

Crowdsourcing: Testing the Limits with John Winsor

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:00:00 EDT

Having grilled some of the top minds in the software business, this installment of Testing the Limits will deviate slightly from the norm. With us this month is John Winsor – author, entrepreneur and crowdsourcing expert. After a successful career as a journalist and magazine publisher, John founded Radar Communications in 1998, where he implemented a [...]

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Cloud Executives Feature on Cloud Computing Expo Power Panel

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 20:30:00 EDT

Before the New York version of its International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, which is about to be held again in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara Convention Center, 2-4 November, 2009), SYS-CON.TV invited four leading industry thought leaders to discuss how Cloud Computing brings the economics of the Web to Enterprise IT and where the move to the cloud will take the industry overall. The participants were Amazon.com VP & CTO, Werner Vogels; Rackspace CTO, John Engates; Booz Allen Hamilton Principal, Rod Fontecilla; and Sun's CTO of Global Sales & Services, Hal Stern.

My Thoughts on Ulitzer

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 14:45:00 EDT

Ok, so, here are my thoughts on Ulitzer... As a blogger, I focus on traffic and I spend quite a lot of time optimizing my SEO. Since the target audience of my articles is much greater than the reach of my blog, Ulitzer is actually helping me increase my content reach. Moreover, Ulitzer does it in a very fair way since links back to my posts or other locations are without the evil "nofollow" providing a nice SEO boost. It also gives me some good metrics that are very useful data point on the effectiveness of my blog article. And last but not least, it allows my article to appears in news.google.com, which is a very nice channel extension. So, all of these to say that while Utilizer might be seen as a competing channel to bloggers, I think that bloggers should realize the tremendous value it could bring to their blog. I think to materialize this value to bloggers, some sort of WordPress plugin would be very useful. I think that allowing bloggers to show and combined Ulitzer/SYS-CON stats, comments, Tweets/ReTweets with their blog posts would be a killer feature. Another approach would be to expose a simple REST API (just HTTP JSON gets) and do a sample Wordpress plugin showing developers how to integrate Wordpress with Ulitzer. Anyway, just some random thoughts.

MLB.com: Ignoring Requests for Removal from Email List

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:45:00 EDT

A few months ago I purchased Giants tickets through MLB.com to take my mom, nephew and boyfriend to a game. It was the first time I’d personally purchased tickets to a Giants game, so understandable that I would now be on their email list. Right away I started receiving emails from MLB.com. I like baseball, but not enough to want emails about it, so I scrolled to the bottom of the email and clicked to unsubscribe. A confirmation page came up confirming that I had indeed unsubscribed. But apparently, it didn’t take on their end.

"Web as Platform" Has Been Replaced By “Cloud Computing“

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:00:00 EDT

First Web 2.0 conference was held October 5-7, 2004 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco. Lot has happened in the last five years like the theme “Web as Platform” as a terminology is dead and has been replaced by “Cloud Computing“. In this year’s hype cycle for emerging technologies, Gartner has positioned Web 2.0 under [...]

Opinion: The Real Cost of Acquisitions - the Zimbra Story

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 06:00:00 EDT

There are reports that Yahoo has put Zimbra on the block. Honestly, this came as no surprise at all to us at Zoho. I remember scratching my head when the acquisition was made; I didn't see how an enterprise/business focused open source offering like Zimbra fit with Yahoo, as a technology, as a business or strategically. Zimbra is an open source installable product offering primarily intended to be installed within medium to large organizations. Yahoo has never made an installed product in its history and is mainly focused on consumers, with an occasional foray to sell those consumer-focused applications to small businesses. Zimbra's service provider offerings made no strategic sense to Yahoo either, because Yahoo, being a service provider itself, has no interest in selling technology to other service providers like Comcast. Finally, we have been on both sides of the product vs. web-service divide, and I can assert with confidence that it is not easy to take a product and make it into a scalable web service; in fact, the main reason Zoho Mail got delayed was that it was originally written as an installable product, much like Zimbra, and we essentially rewrote it to be a web service.

Positive Word of Mouth and Your Brand - Part 1

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:30:00 EDT

I was giving a seminar on the "18 People You Need To Connect with on Earth" which really focuses on crafting a strong social capital portfolio when one of the participants came up to me in tears during the first break. She didn't know if what she was doing right now in her life is what she really wanted to do. In fact, she was thinking of seriously leaving her job and doing something totally different. Out of fear of raising any doubts to her employer she continued with the seminar. During the lunch break, her workshop partner (who was not a co-worker) confided in me that he felt she did not want to work with him and that she might be racist because she avoided every conversation with him. I shared with him that she was dealing with other things that had nothing to do with him and assured him that nothing she was experiencing was directed at him.

Will Customers Nominate Themselves as Stories?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:11:00 EDT

If asked, will customers submit themselves as possible case study or success story candidates? From consumer-products companies to B2B to nonprofit organizations, many now actively solicit stories with self-service “Share Your Story” links on their Web sites. Apple created a... Casey Hibbard

The Power of Social Media

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:00:00 EDT

This afternoon I was sitting in a meeting discussing a potential upcoming marketing campaign to target developers. It’s a great concept, and I am looking forward to seeing it come to fruition. However, during the course of the discussion, it became clear that ad buys would be the primary driver of traffic. My chief concern was that the developer audience uses ad blocker software at a higher rate than the general population. We don’t have data on it, and no one was sure how to get it. I asked the community at Hacker News, and was pointed to this posting about the downloads of AdBlock Plus. That was a good start, but to really get an answer about which we could feel happy I came up with this hack to get quick and dirty numbers.

Is Ulitzer a New Trend or the Ultimate Death of Journalism?

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:00:00 EDT

I must confess I am very new to Ulitzer as an online channel of social communication media. But I am delighted about its raison d'être. However, I cannot help but ask these questions: Is Ulitzer the beginning of a new trend or the ultimate death of journalism? Or is it the glorification of e-journalism? The realization of a new journalism practice in the age of Web services and Internet Technology? These series of questions are being answered everyday as the new social media moguls and barons and baronesses of the Internet Media launched another online media channel, one after another.

Limit Anchor SEO Text Links To 55 Characters?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:30:00 EDT

This of course has an impact in writing your titles for pieces you want linked to – especially for those with a habit of taking the article title and linking it to the page. Most are aware a title should be under 70 characters to have maximum impact in Google. From a test I did, Google ignored words in a title after 70+ characters. But if Google only attributes the first 55 characters in a link, does this mean there’s at least a 10-20 character no-man’s land to consider when creating links & headlines?

Everyone Will Be Profitable Except Facebook

Fri, 15 May 2009 21:45:00 EDT

A revealing new report on monetizing social media predicts everyone but facebook stands to make money under the current business structure of leading social networks. The study, the latest from ContentNext Media, Inc. and authored by renowned analyst Lauren Rich Fine, compares the top social network to a local mall, suggesting "it might be time to start charging rent" to be on the platform, as mobile carriers already do.

Building A Startup For $5k, Really?

Sun, 03 May 2009 15:00:00 EDT

In today’s Oregonian, Mike Rogoway’s article “Tech entrepreneurs defy recession“ quotes me as being able to build the first version of MioWorks.com for $5,000. Well this is very true but may be a little misleading so let me explain how this can be. The team behind MioWorks is not just me. There are three other founders that have dedicated every extra waking moment to building the application over the past several months. Of this team two are technical mavens and two are business guys.

eMarketing Summit @ InnoTech Portland

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:43:00 EDT

Today I attended the preamble to the InnoTech conference in Portland, OR called the eMarketing Summit. The day was filled with energetic and passionate speakers that made the $149 fee well worth the price. The topics varied by speaker but there was a common theme - there is much more to marketing these days than just blasting out advertising. Words including interaction, experience and engagement resonated throughout the presentations.

Can a CNO Work Remotely and Effectively?

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:30:00 EDT

The short answer is yes. Technology greatly facilitates the possibility and communication between executives and company heads, but depends on each individual company and the goals/objectives for that particular CNO. In today’s virtual world, companies are finding that traditional concepts no longer apply and are challenging the entire corporate structure with an infusion of creativity.

FatWire Reports 40% Increase in 2008 Revenue

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:45:00 EST

FatWire Software announced that in 2008 the company delivered its strongest year ever, with revenue growth rates far exceeding that of the Web Content Management industry overall. FatWire achieved an astounding 40 percent growth in total year-over-year revenue, reaching $44 million in sales in the year ending December 31st, 2008.

Exclusive Q&A with Mike Vernal of Facebook

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 05:35:00 EST

More than a thousand sites are using Facebook Connect, says Mike Vernal, a member of the Facebook Platform engineering team, in this Exclusive Q&A with SYS-CON's Web 2.0 Journal. Some prominent examples Vernal mentions include Citysearch for local reviews, Joost and Vimeo for video sharing, and a number of blogs, including TechCrunch and Gawker.

API-Oriented Web Development: The Concept of a Web API

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 13:30:00 EST

The Web is slowly changing from a visual resource designed to externalize information to people, to a non-visual resource that's able to facilitate machine-to-machine communications. The catalysts of this change are non-visual communications that are enabled using APIs, or Application Programming Interfaces. These APIs allow you to leverage within your own application both behavior and data that somebody else has built and hosted, as if both the functionality and information were local.

The Coming Network Evolution: Cisco Gets It, Do You?

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:30:00 EST

I think it is only a matter of time before ALL of the leading networking players start talking about the (strategic importance of the) network as a way to succeed in an uncertain economic climate. Last week, in "Cloud Computing, Virtualization and IT Diseconomies" I talked about the increasingly intense pressures already building on static network infrastructure, and the underlying need for more intelligence and automation.

The Web API Expert: The Emerging ProgrammableWeb API

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 16:00:00 EDT

In the last two columns we talked about the emerging platform of the Web, and the use of Web APIs found through directories. Now I have something to show you that lives up to that hype, in essence a layer of technology, on-demand, that lives between the API provider and the API consumer, which is an API itself. It's the ProgrammableWeb API, which is an API-enabled registry/repository that allows you to find and access thousands of existing APIs out there.

Web API Expert: Why Web API Directories Are the New Search Engines

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:15:00 EDT

Last week we launched a new column called “Web API Expert,” in essence, to provide a deeper focus on the emerging number of Web APIs out there, and show how to leverage them for mashups or other applications. This is the most exciting and interesting area of the emerging Web right now, and the more you understand what’s coming, the better you can take advantage.

Managing the Performance of Complex Web 2.0 Applications

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 14:00:00 EDT

In its relatively short lifetime, the World Wide Web has had a dramatic impact on the way information is presented and shared. Before the Internet and the Web were available, "big media" companies invested heavily in expensive research, writing, editorial, printing, post-production, and broadcasting infrastructure to create compelling and thoughtful media assets for consumers.

Bringing Business Value - Integrating Web 2.0 Tools in the Enterprise

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:30:00 EDT

Web 2.0 tools are doing a wonderful job of providing consumers with cool and productive new ways of performing common, simple tasks over the Internet. These tools primarily perform a single task such as allowing consumers to manage their photos, read their favorite newsfeeds, express themselves online through blogs, and communicate with friends via social networks.

Web 2.0 Is Fundamentally About Empowering People

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:00:00 EDT

'Unlocking content to be remixed into new business value' is the driver of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, says Rod Smith, IBM VP of Emerging Internet Technologies, in this Exclusive Q&A with Jeremy Geelan on the occasion of IBM's release of a new technology created by IBM researchers, codenamed 'SMash' - short for Secure Mashup.

Where Are RIA Technologies Headed in 2008?

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 02:45:00 EST

I am always being told off by i-technologists for quoting Picasso as having said that computers are useless. But I still love his reasoning: 'Because they can only give you answers.' Picasso, like AJAXWorld Magazine, liked questions. So we thought we would share with you what some of the world's leading rich Internet application pioneers are thinking may be the next questions that we need to see answered. From that, readers can themselves infer: where is AJAX headed next?

Adopting Web 2.0 into the Enterprise

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:30:00 EST

Within the past few years, Web 2.0 has become a major technology trend, dramatically impacting the way consumers interact with information and applications. This consumer trend is now extending into the enterprise; however, businesses have been more reluctant than consumers to adopt these new technologies.

The Culture Root for Web 2.0 and Barrack Obama

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 10:00:00 EST

As a web 2.0 guy who blogs on 'Direct from Web 2.0', I did not see this coming. In fact, my preferences were Mitt Romney from the republican side (maybe McCain too) and Hilary Clinton from the democrat side. I think the three of them (Mitt Romney, John McCain and Hilary Clinton) will do better in the oval office than other candidates. Just like how venture capitalists pick CEOs for their portfolio companies, I put 'experience' and -track record of execution' very high in my assessment. If you are conducting a CEO search for your company, would you pick someone who just graduated from Harvard executive MBA, or someone who has been there, done that and has been doing that for the entire life?

Developing Situational Applications with Web 2.0 Mashups

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 04:15:00 EST

The evolution of Web sites to dynamic rich interactive applications is a true revolution for users. But for ASP.NET developers tasked with building high-performing scalable applications, it presents major challenges. The features that characterize blogs, wikis, personalized pages, and other data-driven Web 2.0 applications fundamentally change processing, transmission, and rendering workloads, and require new approaches and solutions. In Web 2.0 applications:

The OpenAjax Technology Vision: Accelerating Customer Success with AJAX

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 10:45:00 EDT

The Alliance's mission is to accelerate customer success with AJAX by promoting a customer¹s ability to mix and match solutions from AJAX technology providers and by helping to drive the future of the AJAX ecosystem.

How and Why AJAX, Not Java, Became the Favored Technology for Rich Internet Applications

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:15:00 EDT

'The Java backlash,' writes Bruce Eckel, 'has been building up steam, and we're starting to see some fundamental shifts because of it.' Java has been around for 10 years yet applets are not the primary way that we interact with the web. Applets are not ubiquitous, and everyone got excited about AJAX instead.