Disruptive influences

Virtual Blogger

2007-03-25T13:13:00.000+01:00

I've finally found time to update the welcome character at the top-left corner of this blog with a virtual me! - all courtesy of the team over at at oddcast.com

Let me know what you think of it.

P.S. - anybody who thinks it's funny to leave a comment along the lines of 'so why do we still need the real John' may find they don't get a Christmas card next year...;)

How many Tyrannosaurs in a gallon of petrol?

2006-11-29T22:41:00.000Z

...and other such questions can be asked at Google answers. The way it works is that you type in a question, pay a little money ($2.50) and the answer comes back within 24 hours.

I've heard of a similar text message service in the UK which will find out answers to questions for about a £1 (I can't remember the name of the company right now - maybe I should ask Google answers?).

In case you were wondering, the answer is that the carbon content of one tyrannosaur is equivalent to that in about 460 gallons of petrol. (You can build 1/460th of a tyrannosaur using the carbon in 1 gallon of petrol.)

Disruptive Influences is taking off!

2006-11-25T19:31:00.000Z

Today sees the launch of two new Disruptive Influences sites!

Disruptive Influences: Tesco and Technology looks at one of Britain's most successful companies and their focus on technology as a key enabler for growth and profits.

For those less commercially-inclined it also includes the exclusive video 'Dance of the Melons'.

Disruptive Influences: Jackanory - 'Crossing the Chasm' presents a review of Geoffrey Moore's seminal guide to marketing and selling technology products to mainstream customers. It also helps explain this blogsite's occasional references to Jackanory (the long-running BBC childrens television series designed to stimulate an interest in reading).

i-Pod saves man's life!

2006-11-18T23:31:00.000Z

Well, almost...

A lost mushroom picker in the USA was found by rescuers after they managed to see the glow of his i-Pod Nano.

i-Pods. Is there anything they can't do?

'Hostile' blogs threaten voter / politician relationship?

2006-11-18T21:16:00.000Z

Matthew Taylor, Tony Blair's outgoing chief strategy adviser, spoke on Friday of fears that the internet could be fuelling a 'crisis' in the relationship between politicians and voters.

Speaking on the same day that Tony Blair carried out an online interview Mr Taylor expressed concerns that the internet was adding to the growing demands being made on government.

In particular he spoke out against blogs saying, "What is the big breakthrough, in terms of politics, on the web in the last few years? It's basically blogs which are, generally speaking, hostile and, generally speaking, basically see their job as every day exposing how venal, stupid, mendacious politicians are".

He went on to say that part of the problem was the culture associated with 'net-heads' which was rooted in libertarianism and "anti-establishment" attitudes (I think the same criticism was levelled at satirical TV shows such as 'That was he week that was' in the 1960s - or you could go further back to Hogarth's drawings in the early 1700s, and no doubt many more examples besides...).

Mr Taylor (who was speaking at an e-democracy conference in London) is missing the point.

Bloggers aren't usually saying anything on the internet they wouldn't say to their friends or family in ordinary face to face conversations. The difference the internet makes is that those once relatively private thoughts and opinions are now visible to everyone - including politicians.

The message to politicians should really be 'deal with it!'. To be fair (and just to prove that not all bloggers are hostile to politicians), many politicians have embraced the internet in a far more positive way than Mr Taylor - and I don't just mean the well publicised blog 'webcameron' by the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition in the UK, David Cameron.

David Miliband, the UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), has been experimenting with a departmental blog. Of course this blog can be accused of political bias - this is politics we're talking about after all - but, from what I can see, it allows comments to be posted that express a whole range of views and opinions - not all supportive of either him or his department. Which is as it should be.

To finish, I'd like to return to Mr Taylor's comment that blogging culture is rooted in anti-establishment attitudes.

If you were ever asked to describe the antithesis of an anti-establishment character in the UK - a typical 'middle englander' - then you'd probably at some point mention BBC Radio 2, that cosy, cardigan-wearing radio station loved by the middle-aged middle-classes of Britain.

Yet Radio 2 listeners would appear to be some of the most avid bloggers there are, examples being the hundreds of comments on the Chris Evans show blogsite (not to mention the wierd and wonderful postings to the Terry Wogan show message board!).

Google prepares for YouTube lawsuits

2006-11-16T23:34:00.000Z

Wow, it feels like weeks now since I last posted anything about Google's purchase of YouTube!

Thinking back I have a hazy memory about mentioning the possibility that Google might face a stream of lawsuits from parties whose copyright may have been infringed by YouTube. Basically, who would have ever sued YouTube when they had no money to speak of? But Google is a different story...

Well there appeared to be proof today that Google at least is taking the threat from lawsuits seriously. In completing the purchase of YouTube for $1.65 billion Google set aside $200 million in escrow for a year to "secure certain indemnification obligations".

You don't get to be as successful as Google without a degree of prudent planning!

Guide to using del.icio.us

2006-11-15T22:50:00.000Z

Following on from his excellent 'Cocktail Party blogging' piece a couple of weeks ago Charlie O'Donnell is back with Part II of his series "Getting into this online stuff".

Having looked at business blogging last time out this article explores better ways to manage bookmarks and favourite links on the web using a tool called del.icio.us

del.icio.us (which is actually at the "icio.us" domain) is the web 2.0 way to remember, discover, and share URLs.

The article covers similar ground to one of the early lectures of the Manchester Business School MBA MIS course, but I'd recommend it to anyone who wasn't at that particular lecture (that'll be the whole world, minus 15 people...) - or even those who were there but fancy a refresher!

(By the way, in the intro to Part II Charlie positions the article as perhaps being better suited to those who might not be as tech savvy as others - I guess that'll be me then....).

Pirates copy Vista - before it's even released!

2006-11-14T22:15:00.000Z

Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007 have only just gone gold - meaning that the code for their initial release has been finalised and released for manufacturing - but already their anti-piracy measures have been cracked.

Various pirate websites are offering a version of Vista available to download, called 'Vista Billgates'.

Mass-licence or business users of Vista will be able to buy a copy from November 30, while the release of the consumer edition is scheduled for January 30 next year.

It is thought that Microsoft will be able to respond to the pirate threat by simply deactivating pirate copies by sending a patch through Windows Update - a tactic it has used in the past to tackle pirated versions of Windows XP.

Java for all

2006-11-14T21:46:00.000Z

Sun Microsystems, once a billion-dollar dot-com darling, has positioned it's rebound strategy squarely behind the open-source movement.

Sun has begun to make its Java technology an open-source software project available for free on the internet. This is a major reversal of policy for a company which once fiercely protected the source code used in 3.8 million mobile phones, supercomputers, medical devices and other gadgets.

Making Java an open-source project allows programmers from around the world to examine, modify, fix bugs and contribute new features in Java's underlying code. It requires that any changes be made public.

What Sun hope to achieve is to extend the life of Java, by turning more developers into Java programmers who will themselves create additional software to support Sun products.

'Killer app' too late for Zune?

2006-11-14T21:37:00.000Z

Microsoft believes that it has found the 'killer app' that will allow it's Zune to challenge Apple's iPod - wireless technology, allowing users to beam photos and songs to one another.

On November 14th, the world's largest software maker will launch the 30-gigabyte Zune and start selling songs to U.S. buyers at the online Zune Marketplace, in a challenge to Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store.

But it is the innovative use of wireless technology that Microsoft believes will give it the edge over iPods.

If only they'd thought of it 5 years ago, before they allowed Apple to walk off with 75% of the US market for digital music players...

One in a Hundred Thousand

2006-11-08T20:05:00.000Z

According to blog tracking firm Technorati 100,000 new blogs are created every single day, with around 1.3 million blog posts made each day.

With all these people putting their thoughts and opinions online for the world it's interesting to note that, while English and Japanese are the two most popular blogging languages (with Chinese in third place), Farsi has moved into the top ten of languages on the blogosphere.

Farsi is a Persian language spoken in Iran and Afghanistan - neither of which are countries famed for their freedom of expression (just ask Salman Rushdie).

Perhaps this is an example of the web offering the opportunity to practice free-speech in a safe, anonymous manner in places where that might otherwise not be possible.

Technorati also report that it is currently tracking more than 57 million blogs, of which around 55% are updated at least once every three months.

Some of them must be good!

The popularity of each blog is ranked by how many other sites link to it. There are 4000 blogs with more than 500 links, making them the blogging elite. This blog isn't quite in that league yet, currently ranked 1,008,987 out of 57 million.

Second Life - Beginners Guide (part 2)

2006-11-05T21:39:00.000Z

The ever-excellent BBC continue to open up the virtual world of Second Life to those of us yet to investigate its wonders for themselves.

On Friday (Nov 3rd) a BBC reporter, Mark Ward, spent a day getting to grips with the place and its inhabitants. You can read how he got on here.

One observation - Fridays working at the BBC must be great fun when you are being paid license-payers money to play computer games!

Utube suing YouTube

2006-11-04T20:25:00.000Z

Ten years ago the Universal Tube and Rollform Equipment Corporation decided to embrace the internet and created a website to advertise their company's wares to potential customers.

The name they chose for this website? Utube.com

Sound at all familiar?

Universal Tube's website received 68 million hits in August, making it one of the most popular manufacturing websites! Even higher volumes of traffic to the site forced it to be shut down for several days in early October (around the time of YouTube's purchase by Google).

Utube has now filed a lawsuit asking that YouTube stop using youtube.com, or pay Universal Tube's costs for creating a new domain.

Ever wondered how many websites there actually are?

2006-11-02T21:52:00.000Z

In August 1991 the first ever website went online. If you want to see what it looked like click here. Pretty incredible how things have moved on since then!

And, in case you were wondering, according to internet monitoring company, Netcraft, there are now more than 100 million websites online (101,435,253 to be precise).

YouTube to go Mobile

2006-11-02T21:47:00.000Z

Many of the clips on YouTube are taken by people using the cameras on mobile phones. Well, by 2007, they could well be watching the clips on their mobile phones too.

Chad Hurley, YouTube chief executive and co-founder, told an advertising conference that offering video services on mobile phones was a key opportunity for the company.

"Within the next year we hope to have something on a mobile device, it's going to be a huge market, especially for the video mind-set we're dealing with, it's a natural transition," said Hurley.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=93&objectid=10408854

Could Latin Become The #1 Web Language?

2006-11-01T19:07:00.000Z

The presidency of the European Union revolves on a six-monthly basis around all of the member countries, and from July to the end of the year that honour is held by Finland.

One of the responsibilities of the presidential country is to host a website, promoting it's activities as president. There are twenty official languages in the EU (and plenty more unofficial languages) but most countries restrict themselves to hosting a website in their own language, along with English and French.

But Finland have gone one step further.

Every month they produce a newsletter on their website, available in English, French and Latin. And the best thing about this? More people subscribe to the Latin newsletter that to the French version!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6079852.stm

Wikipedia for Spies

2006-11-01T18:52:00.000Z

Knowledge sharing through online encyclopedia such as Wikipedia has proved so useful that even the secretive world of espionage is getting in on the act.

The US intelligence chief, John Negroponte, has announced 'Intellipedia', which allows intelligence analysts and other officials to collaboratively add and edit content on the government's classified Intelink web much like its more famous namesake on the World Wide Web.

A "top secret" Intellipedia system, currently available to the 16 agencies that make up the US intelligence community, has grown to more than 28,000 pages and 3600 registered users since its introduction on April 17. Less restrictive versions exist for "secret" and "sensitive but unclassified" material.

Proponents of Intellipedia claim it could lead to more accurate intelligence reports because the system allows a wider range of officials to scrutinise material and keeps a complete, permanent record of individual contributions including dissenting points of view.

But even though access to Intellipedia will be strictly controlled there are still fears about the security of sensitive information. "We're taking a risk," acknowledged Michael Wertheimer, the intelligence community's chief technical officer. "There's a risk it's going to show up in the media, that it'll be leaked."

Firefox 2 breaks the 2 million download mark

2006-10-31T22:06:00.000Z

If internet browsers were rated in the same way as we rate pop songs then Firefox from Mozilla may have just managed to take the number 1 spot from Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) days after their launches in October.

Within 24 hours of its official launch Firefox 2 was claiming 2 million downloads. Microsoft countered by claiming that IE7 reached 3 million downloads, but after 4 days.

Whoever wins the download battle (and my money has to be on Microsoft in the long term) the critics have already acclaimed Firefox 2 to be the better product.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/ie-v-firefox-the-battle-begins/2006/10/30/1162056909108.html

Headline Grabbing?

2006-10-31T21:45:00.000Z

On October 25th when I posted a blog entitled 'The Virtual Tax Man Cometh' I'd never have guessed that by October 31st Nick Miller at Reuters (in the Sydney Morning Herald) would run pretty much the same story under the headline 'Virtual World: Taxman Cometh'.

Now I'm not for one second suggesting that Reuters borrowed my headline, or indeed the story. After all, I'd written my blog based on reading an article on October 23rd that The New Zealand Herald had syndicated from Stephen Foley, an independent journalist reporting out of New York.

But you have to admit that the headlines bear a remarkable similarity...

Law-breakers of the UK unite

2006-10-29T14:05:00.000Z

Everybody has read or heard about strange, anachronistic and just plain stupid laws from around the world which, although they remain on the statute books, nobody in this day and age is ever likely to be charged with breaking. While it's possible to imagine a time when 'milking another person's cow' might have been worthy of the attention of our legislative bodies, times change and laws become obsolete.

(That said, the mind boggles as to what event - or events - prompted legislators in Florida to decide it was necessary to explicitly outlaw sexual relations with porcupines!).

Well, here in the UK we may be about to about to witness a law on the brink of becoming obsolete.

It's currently illegal under UK copyright legislation to copy a CD onto a digital music player. That's right - everyone in the UK who has copied their existing CD collection onto their i-Pod (thought to be more than half of British consumers) has broken the law.

But before anybody rushes to their local police station to hand themselves over to the authorities, wait! The British government has caught onto the fact that the country's intellectual property laws are out of step with society and have instigated a review under Sir Andrew Gowers. Gowers has been asked to report back ahead of the pre-budget report in November.

Until then, we should hopefully avoid adding to this country's prison over-crowding problem!

Cocktail Party Blogging

2006-10-27T20:40:00.000+01:00

As you can probably tell from previous blog posts I'm new to blogging, still learning the ropes, finding out what works and what doesn't work. I'm trying to stick to writing about things that interest me, and which are (vaguely) linked to the themes of my MIS class at Manchester Business School - disruptive technologies, innovation theory, web 2.0, knowledge management, etc.

To be honest, I never really expected anyone to actually want to read the blog, let alone folk from as far afield as Canada, the USA, Espana, Singapore, Vietnam, Poland, etc (you know who you all are - and you're most welcome!).

This afternoon I was trying to think of a way to explain to other non-bloggers why I blog, why I enjoy blogging and, more importantly, why they should blog too. I was struggling to come up with the right words and, as ever, the web has come to my rescue.

Charlie O'Donnell at Oddcast has a really good post on his blog thisisgoingtobebig which provides ten tips on business blogging using the analogy of a cocktail party. I wish I'd read this 4 weeks ago! Great advice for anyone starting a business blog. I particularly liked tip number nine:

Meet people that are going to help you enjoy the party, not people who you think you need to meet. First off, the industry notables are going to get mobbed at a party like this, and they definitely do in the blog world. Second, they're often not the most interesting people to talk to. Don't you just get kind of sick of the way people fawn over the who's who? Treat everyone like a who.

So whether you hail from Salford or from San Francisco you'll always be treated like a 'who' at this blog!

E-bay rules for PS3 release...

2006-10-27T15:57:00.000+01:00

Interesting post linked from Digg.com. Seems a bit extreme to me especially for a single product...

The reality is that people will try and defaud using a system like Ebay. To try and introduce rules to avert this for a single product really seems a bit pointless. I'm sure the clever folk at the other end of the PC will work out another way to relieve people of their cash !

http://www.2old2play.com/News/eBay_restrictions_on_PS3_and_Wii_Auctions

Oddcast

2006-10-26T23:48:00.000+01:00

On my travels around the internet I came across a really cool company called Oddcast. Oddcast is a New York company that specialise in developing conversational characters that 'intelligently interact with customers on websites'.

See for yourself on their website, or better still, try out one of their website 'freebies' for yourself. Just in time for halloween, why not send a friend or loved one an email containing a personal message - read by a virtual dracula? Or perhaps Frankenstein's monster is more your thing?
http://host-d.oddcast.com/php/start_halloween_card/door=174&cl=48&AID=0

IBM versus Amazon

2006-10-26T23:22:00.000+01:00

In a case that could be seen as old world versus new world, Tuesday's Financial Times reported that old 'Big Blue' IBM has launched legal action against Amazon.com, accusing it of breaching intellectual property rights that underpin the online retailer's business model.

IBM holds an industry-leading bank of 40,000 patents, but has previously worked hard to be seen as a willing licenser of its own intellectual property. Ironically Amazon has become notorious for its agressive defense of so-called business method patents.

A date for the court case has yet to be set but the market has already picked the winner - Amazon's share price edged up by nearly 1% on the news.

i-Pod Code 'Cracked'

2006-10-25T20:08:00.000+01:00

Happy 5th birthday i-Pod. Through a combination of slick marketing, cool design and tactics to limit the competition it's gone from strength to strength, selling more than 60 million units worldwide. It's even become the generic name for digital music players, in the same way as Sony's 'Walkman' did for personal cassette players.

But all is not well...

According to some commentators the i-Pod is losing its cool, with declining sales being linked to the fact that the signature white headphones are now simply too common. As if to illustrate this even George Bush has one!

But perhaps the biggest threat to Apple's i-Pod domination came on Tuesday with the claim by 22-year-old Norwegian Jon Lech Johansen that he'd managed to crack the i-pod / i-tunes ecosystem. Today, songs purchased from Apple's iTunes store can't be played on non-iPod devices, and, if you've bought songs from other music stores, the chances are you won't be able to play them on the iPod either since they use a form of copy protection that Apple doesn't support.

Johansen has developed programs to get around these restrictions, and plans to license them to digital music stores that are looking to sell copy-protected songs capable of being played on the iPod.

This is likely to be good news for consumers - increased competition possibly leading to lower priced digital music downloads - but bad news for Apple.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-music/apples-ipoditunes-code-cracked/2006/10/24/1161455702584.html

The Virtual Taxman Cometh...

2006-10-25T19:41:00.000+01:00

With Second Life signing up its millionth 'resident' last month even the US congress has decided to start taking it seriously.

It has launched an investigation into the 'philosophical problems thrown up by people and corporations conducting valuable business inside a computer game'.

In other words the US government sees transactions taking place within the virtual world as posing a threat to their income from sales tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty.

What they can actually do about it isn't immediately clear - but with some entrepreneurs within Second Life supposedly making $200,000 per year (with $1 currently worth 270 virtual dollars) we can be sure that governments everywhere will be after their share.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10407096

Second Life - A Beginner's Guide

2006-10-22T19:04:00.000+01:00

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to online virtual worlds - the real world seems to take up enough of my time already - but it's certainly an interesting area and one which I'll no doubt return to in future blog entries.

For now though, check out this beginners guide to 'Second Life', a virtual world home to an online community of more than 640,000 regular visitors:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/check/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi?redirect=st.stm&news=1&bbram=1&bbwm=1&nbram=1&nbwm=1&nol_storyid=5337406

No more copyright theft - Scout's honour!

2006-10-22T18:23:00.000+01:00

It didn't take long for the claims of copyright and intellectual property infringement to start heading YouTube's way as soon as it was owned by a company with 'real' money.

On Friday YouTube were forced to wipe nearly 30,000 files from its website after Japanese media firms said that their copyright was being infringed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6069692.stm

And then, on Saturday, a website posting FA Premiership goals on YouTube was warned that it infringed Premier League copyright. On this occasion if appears that YouTube has disable the links to 101greatgoals.blogspot.com but it continues to host links to other Premiership goals.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6072266.stm

Perhaps YouTube (and other video posting sites) should take a lead from the Boy Scouts. Scouts in the Los Angeles area will now be able to earn a merit badge for learning about the evils of downloading pirated music and videos. The new badge shows a film reel, a music CD and the international copyright symbol, a 'c' enclosed in a circle.

Any current (or former) Boy Scouts looking to earn this badge will need to demonstrate that they have learned how to identify five types of copyrighted works and three ways copyrighted materials may be stolen. Apparantly the LA Boy Scouts may also visit a film studio to see how people can be harmed by film piracy - an outing which I suspect will put the badge beyond the reach of the members of my old Boy Scout pack in Doncaster...

http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-music/intellectual-property-theft-is-evil-scouts-honour/2006/10/21/1160851172265.html

The Very Ordinary Case of Anna Eagin - Alternative Endings

2006-10-13T21:30:00.000+01:00

Peter Kawalek of Manchester Business School (MBS) uses the fictional character of Anna Eagin to very succinctly illustrate how the world might look to the generation growing up today for whom blog sites, ichat, wikis and multimedia websites are common facts of life. Have a read for yourself at the link below:

http://mbsmis2006.blogspot.com/2006/10/very-ordinary-case-of-anna-eagin.html

On the back of a debate in our MBS MIS class on Thursday I decided to look again at Anna's life and imagine a different outcome for her. I truly hope that my version of events is the less likely outcome, but to imagine the worst might help us think of ways to protect ourselves (and others) from those out there who wish to pervert and subvert the brave new world of web 2.0.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Anna Eagin is aged 15 and a half: Top of the Pops is now dead. MTV and its like are the source of constant enquiry: Can they survive? Anna (favourite bands The Arctic Monkeys and Sandi Thom) is typical of the new generation that don’t need Top of the Pops or MTV. They have YouTube and MySpace. Anna is skilled in both. She communicates with school friends and family using these sites and a variety of others, including Flickr and her blog site. She also meets new friends through these sites. Tonight she is talking to fifteen-year-old ‘SydneyKid’ over in Australia. He turns out to be called....Tony Studabaker, in reality a 32 year-old US Marine. After 'grooming' Anna, Tony flies across from America and abducts her. She is rescued 3 days later in Germany.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/3481219.stm

Aged 17 and a half: Anna has become a concerned environmentalist. She has an RSS feed to the BBC for news on this subject. She also uses sources from Greenpeace and other organisations. Her particular passion is campaign for the whale. She enjoys several ichat video conversations with Cath and Mike, two well-known environmentalists in their research station in Canada. She also writes very succinct, poignant messages about the whale on her blog site. She builds up a small but appreciative readership....Anna and her readership are distraught to find out that the information Anna has been posting (un-edited) from Greenpeace has been heavily biased to support the pressure group's own agenda and is factually incorrect. As a result Anna's blogsite loses its credibility. Anna begins to question her own support for Greenpeace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Spar_oil_rig

http://www.highnorth.no/Library/MediaWatch/le-of-br.htm

Aged 19 and a half: ‘Reclaim the desert’ is the name of a local campaign in Anna’s neighbourhood. The desert in question is a small area of open land that has fallen into disuse. Although it is just behind a row of shops, it features a pretty view to the local canal. It used to be a green site but now cars have started parking there and local market traders store equipment and trailers over weekends. It has become alternately muddy or parched (hence the name for the campaign). Anna can remember when she played there as a small child and joins the campaign, helping to create the website. She also uses her video camera & Mac to record and edit the recollections of elderly people. ‘There wasn’t a romance in the district that didn’t at some time find its way to the small bench there by the canal’ says Betty, aged 71...One of the local market traders (an amateur computer hacker), angry at Anna's interference, sets out to discredit her. He guesses correctly that one of the most frequently used words on her blogsite might be her password. With this he hacks into her home PC and accesses personal information which he then uses to access child pornography sites. An international FBI investigation leads to Anna being arrested by the local police. She eventually manages to clear her name, but not before having been expelled from University and her family's house has been daubed with graffitti.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/yorkslincs/series6/computer_doctor.shtml

Aged 21 and a half: Anna applies for and gets a management job in your organisation...How will you convince her that personal information held on your company's HR files cannot fall into the wrong hands? Will she believe that your corporate wiki or intranet is not simply a tool for corporate propaganda? How will you prevent fraudulent use of her system log in details? I think Anna will be scared. Anna will want you to make her feel protected and reassured.

As I wrote at the start, this isn't meant to be 'gloom-mongering'. For example, I think that there are a number of as yet untried possibilities for new media within my own organisation. However, I'll be looking to build in safeguards along the way - not everyone using the internet does so with the purest of motives.

Bitter, moi?

2006-10-12T23:00:00.000+01:00

In all the talk surrounding Google's $1.6billion purchase of YouTube the driest commentary I've seen so far has come from Dick Parson, CEO of Time Warner which owns AOL.

Claiming that Google paid a 'knockout' price for the video entertainment site, Dick added that, "The AOL guys would've loved to have got YouTube. We looked but decided AOL not only has better technology but it's also in-house".

"Here are lots of reasons why we did not go to Google level (on price). YouTube has no earnings. How do you convince the market you can make money? Google can do that better than anyone and I didn't have Google dollars".

Saucer of milk for Mr Parson?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10405581

Evolution of dance

2006-10-12T22:41:00.000+01:00

OK, so at first glance it might not seem to follow in the same vein as the business / technology postings to date, but if you're one of the 12 or so people in the world who haven't seen the 'History of Dance' video on YouTube yet (it's so far been viewed more that 33.5 million times!) then check out the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozp8Cnnpt0Q

The business angle on this particular story is that the star of the video, 30 year old American Judson Laipply, is now making his fortune on the corporate entertainment circuit. The dance routine acts as a comic finale to his talk on the theme of 'Life is Change' which addresses management issues like choices, sales and marketing, workplace relationships, goal setting and team building!

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/youtube-dance-star-gets-corporate-gig/2006/10/06/1159641504182.html

Bloggers beware

2006-10-12T22:23:00.000+01:00

Amateur bloggers (like myself) may need to think a bit more carefully before posting their musings to the world after a court case in Florida this week.

A Louisiana woman was ordered to pay $11.3million in compensation after she used an internet forum to accuse another woman of being a con-artist and a fraud.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/law-reins-in-wild-webbers/2006/10/12/1160246262871.html

While I'm tempted to say 'only in America' I'll probably think twice before accusing anyone of fraudulent or illegal behaviour on this site...

It's not just for kids!

2006-10-08T20:08:00.000+01:00

In case you thought that MySpace was just for kids, according to comScore Media Metrix's analysis of U.S. internet traffic in August half of the site's users are 35 or older. Teens under the age of 18 made up only 12% of the total users (down from 25% a year ago):

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/myspace-generation-gets-older/2006/10/06/1159641495209.html

Is Web 2.0 becoming Dot Com boom 2.0?

2006-10-08T19:22:00.000+01:00

MySpace, the social networking website, currently boasts around 90 million active users. It was reported in the press last month (September) that Britain alone is adding 25,000 MySpace member profiles per day. This, along with other user growth predictions, led RBS Capital to estimate MySpace might be worth $15billion to its parent company, News Corp, within 3 years.

See the full article below, taken from the Sydney Morning Herald (even the Aussies have caught on to the web 2.0 phenomenon!):

http://www.smh.com.au/news/BUSINESS/MySpace-could-be-worth-15b-in-3-years/2006/09/28/1159337257922.html

Seeing as News Corp. profits for the whole of 2005 were just over $2billion (on revenues of just over $24billion) was Mr Murdoch's purchase of MySpace for just $580million less than a year ago the bargain of the century?

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/snapshots/1381.html

It certainly looks that way, especially when, if reports are to be believed, Google is offering three times that amount - $1.6billion - to buy MySpace rival YouTube:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5414432.stm

I'm sure that neither Eric Schmidt nor Rupert Murdoch lose any sleep over something so trivial as a $1.6billion investment, but both must be secretly hoping that the world continues to choose to seek entertainment on the web - rather than, say, going to the pub with their non-virtual friends...