Thursday, April 27, 2006

On my iPod

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Returned from a business trip to Boise around 5pm in San Jose today and zipped up highway 280 on a typical gorgeous bay area day that we all have been missing oh so bad...got home in time to slip into some walking gear and head down to the beach (which i had just seen pass by during the decent down the coast from the plane which looked very much like the google map of my neighborhood) for what looked to be a very promising sunset.

Finally got to catch up on my podcasts which i enjoyed quite a bit and therefore am recommending a walk to the beach or the mountain or to the park and a listen-

  • Two podcasts from Jeremiah Owyang. 1. that is an update on a white paper that he and Dennis McDonald wrote on how business and IT need to work together to manage Web 2.0 tools. They start off vocalizing what i have been feeling lately- since Jan 06 there has been tremendous output in the Web 2.0 space most of the time too much to keep up with! Of particular interest are their comments about Web 2.0 applications in the enterprise. 2. A Discussion with James Gross of Feedster. Great insight on RSS and the best part is when they mention helping someone setup a RSS feed and the user getting the XML broswer page and thinking that they had 'broken something'. Yep have heard that reaction myself from first time RSS users- so subscription usability is something that will need to be addressed. When discussing Ads in RSS feeds, I also liked Robyn Tippins comments about early adopters (tech geeks) not clicking on Ads from web sites- with an example that she had a friend that runs a 'mommy' site who does very well with her Ad revenue-because her visitors are not the tech geeks who tend not to click on Ads-although it might benefit the site owner. Always think about who clicks on these-but never do myself.
  • Listened to the latest 'The SalesRoundup" podcast about proposals. I like these guys and often get some great tips from them. Although i do need to ping these guys- they need a section on their web site were people can leave comments etc (they still request phone calls and e-mail to communicate with them). Two episodes ago they did a podcast on communicating in 2006-and how things have chanced- yet made no mention of blogs as a method of listening and communicating with clients.
  • Business Week does a great job of presenting podcasts on a whole bunch of topics. Although i subscribe to a couple feeds-i especially enjoy the 'Behind the front cover' podcasts. During each podcast the author(s) and editors of the front page article are interviewed and discuss how they went about writing the article. Browse through the list available i am sure you will find something of interest. Today i listened to 'Blue Chip Views'

Monday, April 24, 2006

Among the audience- The Economist weighs in on New Media

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Debbie Weil at BlogWrite for CEOs pointed me to the Economist's New Media Survey which is from their April 22nd, 2006 issue.

i love the phrase 'participatory media' and am glad that the traditional media is using it to describe the new media culture. It is obvious that there has been a recent explosion of creativity that is driven by this new-media culture in which we are no longer just the audience but have become active participants.

If you have met with me recently we might have talked about what some our calling the 'My-Space' generation and how that is starting to affect the enterprise. As the workforce gets younger (and all that baby boomer knowledge walks out the door) i am betting we will see more and more employees who come into enterprise as participants. In the Economist piece it refers to what Chris Anderson says is the most powerful industrial force of our time--peer production.

Recently i have been working with companies to facility the input of company, executive and industry information into strategic account plans (SAPs) which are account management tools that help account teams produce a complete view of their customers that is shared across teams, management etc. in order to ensure successful strategies to retain and grow business. In order for SAPs to be useful to the account team (not just management) there needs to be an ongoing conversation between anyone that touches the client and everyone needs to see some personal benefit of sharing information. The traditional problem with SAPs is not what data can be automatically inputted into the document but getting sales people to actually add value based on their interactions with the client and actually believe that there is indeed value in sharing or at least recording that information.

If enterprises nuture the -peer production- force that Chris Anderson talks about with tools that encourage participation as part of the daily work flow i think we will see two things- 1. those companies will be able to recruit and retain the best talent coming into the workplace with a participatory mind set and 2. sastified customers

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Agile Information Intelligence Podcast

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A couple posts back i mentioned that i had gone to Delphi Group's 'Information Intelligence Summit' in Phoenix. One of the guest panelists was Factiva's VP of products Dennis Cahill and as a follow-up he was interviewed by Dan Keldsen of the Delphi Group.

I didn't get a chance to listen to the podcast until this afternoon and a couple things of interest to me that i am glad to hear in public coming from one of our leadership team members:

  • Dennis talks about the product group moving into the agile development space when building out new products. Just last week i commented on how I felt bad about product development folks that need to keep up with the marketplace and how impressed i have been over the last year and a half. It seems to be working and customers are definitely seeing the benefits.
  • A discussion on enterprise search provides a glimpse of where search is going in the enterprise.
  • Dennis talks about the importance of listening to the marketplace in order to participate with customers in understanding how to use content better.


Garden Visiting to avoid 4 eyes

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I was probably in 4th grade when i got my first computer. It was a brand new Commodore 64- which according to this site probably retailed for US$200-$300. At that time this was a huge investment for my parents since we had just immigrated to this country but thank goodness they did indulge me because that was just the start i needed. I remember vividly how my mother would tell me to turn it off because it was going to ruin my eyesight (oh wait is that memory from 20yrs ago or just the last time i visited her?). I managed to need glasses by the time i was 10 and today i am blind as a bat without my glasses/contacts (and no i am not convinced that it was the computer but more so genetics).

....so to avoid 4 eye syndrome that my mother claims to be perpetrated due to my excessive use of the computer and to celebrate Earth Day, yesterday i managed to stay away from the laptop and spend the majority of the day outside.


I was invited to go to The Garden Conservancy Peninsula Open Day in which three private gardens in Atherton were open to the public. Garden Conservancy experts estimate that more than two-thirds of great American gardens have already been lost to the tides of time. We got to spend the afternoon strolling through 3 gardens in the Peninsula and i got to take some pictures of some of the beauties we saw. This one was stunning. Thanks to Donald for the lovely afternoon...

Today as you probably notice i spent some time updating my blog site. Inspired by the beauty i saw yesterday perhaps but let me know what you think!

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Podcasts Outnumber Radio Stations

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According to this article on Publish.com (a Ziff Davis company) Feedburner claims they now distribute more podcasts than there are radio stations on the planet. Feedburner was only founded in 2003- while the invention of the radio was in the late 1880's. I wonder if XMS and others count in the numbers as well. Either way it is yet another example of how media is changing at the speed of light.

I kinda feed bad for product development folks in the industry who not only need to keep up- but need to find that next big thing. I know we are constantly bombarded with requested from customers for inclusion of new media whatever the flavor of the month it is. I even tend to be a big mouth about what i want to see in our products (me a big mouth you ask ;-)...I was recently speaking to a new colleague about the fact that over the last year and a half i have been extremely impressed with our product release cycles (i have been at Factiva for 7 yrs)- we delivered RSS very early on, we are monitoring blogs and other web content and are now looking at other types of media- very exciting

Blog Plumber

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got a visit from the Bloglines Plumber this evening. I think all companies should think of having a little fun announcing there systems are down for maintenance. Very nice Bloglines!

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Graphical world opens for visually-impaired people

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From my ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) TechNews email newsletter-


The IST-funded Interactive Tactile Interface (ITACTI) project has developed a new device that will use a graphical display to open the world of images to the visually impaired, just as Braille makes text accessible..more

definitely interesting as we start discussing making visualization a common information delivery mechanism. Our text based products have been certified for the visually impaired for a while- I remember quite well because i used to work with our govt team and it was a huge step in selling to agencies that by federal law had to use services that incorporated standards in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines for accessibility. As more products produce visual outputs technologies like what IST is working on will become even more important.

Advantage to being on the West coast

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well my friends there are many advantages and those of you who have talked to me over the last 12 months that i have been out here are probably sick of hearing about it....

so here is a simple one that would make anyone enviousness (lol btw)-- at 9pmPST we get to see what google special logo is going to be used for the next day cause is it midnight on the east coast. Great to see google prompt Art and specifically Joan Miro whose birthday is tommorrow April 20th. Great design-

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Blogs 'Essential' to a good career-

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Ok i have to post this because it seems like everyone is talking about it. i saw it first on Jeremiah Owyang's blog which just happens to be one of the first i check every day- and many others referred back to Jeremiah as well (his google juice is probably officially sky-rocketed).

the Boston Globe put out an article about blogging being essential to a good career take a look for yourself and then read Jeremiah's comments and Tim Bray's from Sun.

A colleague also alerted me to Apple's court battle update(and another)- on Apple going after an ISP that hosted a blog that supposely leaked information. Seems that the contention is that bloggers should have the same rights as journalists to not reveal their sources....at least if you get fired from your job due to your blogging you can possible have enough juice for it to not matter.

Google Mashup in New York Times online

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The New York Times has provided a travel column that presents a 36hr weekend long itinerary for different cities every week for a while. Now they have now created a Google Mashup which i think is a pretty cool way to interact with this type of content. Since it is nytimes.com-users do need a login to view the full text. (I found the posting on Steve Rubel's Micopersuasion blog by the way)






As i have blogged before i have delivered graphical newstand applications which allows users to click on countries in a global map and then be presented with a 'virtual' newsstand- with 14 days of cover to cover articles from all global top publications browserable by section. (see screen to the left and click to enlarge) Adoption has been good and overall it has certainly increased the usage of the portal/intranets that similar solutions have been implemented in. In addition to these custom newsstand solutions, we have some other offerings that display news hot spots using global map images. I am dying to have some time/or find a customer that is interested in playing around with some of the map APIs out there to see how we can deliver Factiva content to enterprise users.

i have a couple of ideas-do you have others? post them in the comments section!



Monday, April 17, 2006

FORTUNE 500 Business Blogging Wiki

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With the FORTUNE 500 2006 update comes an update to the FORTUNE 500 Business Blogging Wiki. According to the folks that run that wiki 27 (5.4%) of the FORTUNE 500 are blogging as of 4/4/06. Note, this site is user edited as it is a wiki. I have looked at this wiki before and it is useful (although some sort of flag-indicating that indeed there was an entry would be great as well as actual RSS headlines once you dive into the companies- although some like the Amazon profile seem to already do that). The promising thing in the long run is that they are working on creating a Business Blogging Index, comparing the stock performance of companies that blog with those that don't.


On a separate note-which of course makes me smile>>>when i was looking for the FORTUNE 500 list FORTUNE reports that there are more women running FORTUNE 500 companies this year than there were last year. Currently, 10 FORTUNE 500 companies are run by women (up from 9 last year), and a total of 20 FORTUNE 1000 companies have women in the top job (up from 19). you go girls....

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Lazy/Busy sunday afternoon (kinda like Work/Life)

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on this busy/lazy afternoon that even saw some late afternoon sun and nice sunset after all day grayness- i did the following in addition to my blog surfing:

>>> downloaded Linkedin's Outlook plugin- very very cool- i have a feeling it will become a very useful tool for me. Immediately i saw value- the 'keep in touch feature' alerted me to a personal e-mail from a former collegue that i had just never gotten back to. The neatest feature i have found so far is the 'Grab' feature that allows you to highlight a sender's signature and with one click import into you outlook contact list- with all the data in the right fields! I uploaded a quick avi film here that will give you an idea of how it works)-- i just hope this doesn't crash my outlook like Plaxo eventually did. I found Plaxo overall annoying and although i use the web version i have since disabled my outlook plug-in.

>> downloaded the Google Talk for BlackBerry- i have been waiting and waiting for Verizon to support the Yahoo! Messenger Blackberry feature- it seems that Google didn't have service restrictions. Now i can't wait to have someone ping me! (danielavbarbosa in case you feel the need to be first ;-)

By downloading two desktop applications- i broke the golden rule of experiment in which you should do one thing at a time to control the environment. oh well atleast i decided to wait until next week to download the google desktop search appliance which is on my to do list- hope nothing crashes...

>>I have a couple of Ning applications that i have been playing with. I created a new one because i needed to upload a AVI file for item #1 above. I can use it as a library for my media files if i do not want to host on a web server. i have to spend more time playing around with ning-on the list

>>last weekend i stayed away from the laptop and took monday off- with a focus to catch up on my reading. Since i had to be in Pheonix on tuesday i headed down to Tucson- and got a room near the pool. I caught up on my reading finally finishing books that i had been browsing and hungering to have the chance to read cover to cover- Naked Conversations, The Search, Good to Great and a handful of magazines that i have needed to dig into--all thought provoking and energizing. On my return home flight the poor guy who helped me hurl my luggage up in the luggage comparment must have thought i had bricks in there. When i returned- i updated my physical top shelf
of books as well as my Ning Bookshelf

RSS in the Enterprise

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I have touched upon this subject in the past in my blog and even recently with a little bit about my personal use of RSS. RSS as a delivery mechanism is a powerful way for a user to take control of the content they want to ingest and use in their daily lives. The user can extend beyond what they typically read quite easily. i think the key today is end-user control with opt-in/opt-out. That model might change as the enterprise looks at ways to use RSS to deliver 'must have' content to users-but the real value will be in the user retaining most of control of what they see. That control can be user initiated-i subscribe to a RSS feed- or pushed i get this RSS feed because of who i am, who my customers are or what my management or team members want me to see.

There is an interesting conversation about Enterprises blocking RSS that is going on at Shel Israel's Blog in which i have participated in and you can also. See my comments among others.

Last week, i was at the Delphi Group's 'Information Intelligence Summit' in Phoenix. Factiva was a sponsor and i lucked out with a free pass. As i put my thoughts together this week i will probably share more of what i heard in this blog.

One of the keynote speakers was Matthew Glotzback- Google Enterprise-Product Manager. He talked about the evolution of the 'office worker' to the 'knowledge workers' to the 'Self Directed Innovator' in the workplace. A interesting concept to think about. My thoughts on some of what he was speaking about is that the 'Self Directed Innovator' is going to want tools that allows them to innovate using the various information sources they have available or are producing. RSS aggregators,Wikis, social applications etc. are going to be the tools of choice for these innovators not the existing enterprise applications they have access to and are told they need to use. Those companies that encourage the use of what i think is being call web 2.0 applications will come up on top- much like those that encourage blogging and other methods of becoming a participant in the market place.

In the same vain of the work/life discussion that came up on Shel Israel's blog- Glotzback pointing to the value of Google inside the enterprise brought up similar concept that our home lives and work lives-mix all the time and the tools we use should also. Like me, i assume that many corporate users of RSS- extend our use and knowledge capture about our clients, industries and even our own companies- beyond the work day. Whether i am at the office reading my bloglines feeds or sitting at home on my personal computer the universe i look at is the same.

I wonder how deep Shel Israel's new book about Web 2.0 startups will look at the users and how it is affecting the enterprises using these applications. Is Web 2.0 good for enterprises and what will be the adoption rates-quicker then blogging? I am sure others are discussing so if you 'see' a conversation point me there!