Such activity could well be a drain on productivity, but the paper does point out that not all types of cyberloafing is bad for business.  In fact, browsing the web has been shown by several studies to have a positive effect on cubicle life in general.  It allows people to cope with life and work stresses and may even contribute to increasing a worker’s “business intelligence”, thus boosting productivity.

The effect of checking and responding to email, however, is not quite so clear-cut.  As it requires time and effort to manage emails, it can generally be a drain on productivity.  However, companies concerned about cyberloafing should avoid knee-jerk reactions such as a blanket ban on all personal web usage. The net result of such a response would almost certainly be negative in terms of general morale.

The only sustainable response to this challenge is to start managing by objectives - not tracking input.  In other words, set clear goals and objectives for you team and measure productivity by how well these goals are met, not by much much time is seemingly put into achieving them.

The Internet genie has long escaped the bottle - don’t waste your time trying to stuff him back in. Instead, focus your effort in leveraging the technology to boost your business’ competitiveness.

Cloud computing refers to the trend where computing power is becoming a utility that is generated remotely in the in the Internet’s vast backbone infrastructure (”the cloud”) and delivered as a service through the web.  The so-called Open Cloud Manifesto essentially calls on the major IT vendors to avoid erecting proprietary fences for the cloud platforms they are developing.  The hope is that with open standards, customers can easily port data, applications and services between different cloud platforms.

While few would argue against the benefits of such open standards, there is certainly going to be a bitter fight over exactly whose standards and conventions to adopt before the dust settles.  This a par for the course for any emerging technology.

Currently, IBM, SAP and Cisco appear to be driving forces behind the manifesto - these are services and commodity hardware providers who stand to benefit greatly when cloud computing really does take off.  At this stage however, the real pioneers behind cloud technology are absent from the list.  The likes of Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com and Microsoft are, not surprisingly, more cautious about potentially giving up any competitive advantage they have built up for the sake of altruistic openness.

The current flap is just a minor skirmish.  As cloud computing grows at its current pace, a full-scale standards war could well be on the horizon.

Download the Open Cloud Manifesto Draft 1.0.9 as pdf here.

Google Ventures will be focusing on early stage investments in young start-ups. It is expected to invest up to US$100 over the next 12 months - not just in the internet and software space, but also in areas such as clean-energy, bio-tech and health care.

So, if you believe you’re on to the next big thing and could do with a financial leg-up, why not pitch your vision to Google Ventures?

Here’s a rather creative attempt at explaining the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 without any words from the folks at Not in Words:

In essence, semantic technology encodes meanings separately from data, content and application code.  Through this, software is supposed to be able to provide more intelligent and responsive interaction than with traditional informational technologies alone.

In the search space, the holy-grail of this “meaning-centered” approach is to enable so-called “natural language queries.”  This is the idea that you can ask natural questions or discuss things at a conceptual level as you would with another human-being and expect the search engine to understand you and provide relevant responses.  This is very different from how search is conducted currently where you basically search for keywords that you guess would be relevant to your topic.

In Google’s case, the new technology can apparently “better understand associations and concepts related to your search” - thus enabling Google to offer you even more useful related searches.  This will be presented as an expanded list of useful related searches and the addition of longer search result descriptions.

For more insight into the Semantic Web, check out this “Introduction for Noobs” by Manu Sporny below:

Many among this wave of start-ups are taking full advantage of the maturing Internet to market their ideas and find partners, suppliers and customers.  Increasingly, these start-ups are also leveraging on  the rise of web-based services to manage core operational functions efficiently and cheaply.  Everything from setting up your office IT network to invoicing and managing your books can now be managed easily and effectively through the web.

A recent New York Times article gives an interesting anecdotal view of this trend of forced entrepreneurship in the United States.

Clients and associates often ask me for advice on purchasing PCs for their businesses.  In most instances, I have no hesitation in recommending that they go the Mac route - it simply is the most logical choice in the long run for a small business.

Wondering whether the make the switch for your business?  Check out MacLife’s compilation of 10 reasons your small business should run on Macs.

If you haven’t even heard of Twitter, there’s no need to feel bad - its still a very recent phenomenon, even when measured in Internet time.  But it is a rapidly growing phenomenon and could be a useful tool to grow your professional connections.  So do check out CIO magazine’s quick and easy guide on how to Twitter for business people.

This according to Hong Kong entrepreneur Sir David Tang who argues that “pessimism has an uncanny knack of being self-fulfilling.”  Read more about how shedding our sense or pessimism can help put the global economy back on track in Sir David’s Viewpoint on the BBC website.

Many pioneering “A-List” bloggers are apparently turning their backs on blogging because the medium has become too big, too impersonal and too blase. Yet blogs themselves have blossomed - new forms such as micro-blogs (Twitter) have evolved, and traditional media such as newspapers, radio and television now update their blogs faster than their core channels.

Perhaps the clearest sign that blogging is maturing as a medium is its embrace by the business world.  Companies large and small now view blogs as just another business tool that is well suited to diseminating their corporate mesaages internally and externally.