JimWorth.com

What Is It About Instagram?

2012-04-09T21:13:00.003-04:00

Instagram gives a brief, but intimate peek into their lives, their loves, and their joys.

The news was a shock. No, it can't be. Facebook is buying Instagram for $1,000,000,000? No, wait, it already happened? Oh, boy, there goes the neighborhood.

That was my thought immediately. Then I read the statement from the newly minted multi-millionaire CEO of Instagram, Kevin Systrom, "It's important to be clear that Instagram is not going away." Well, that is some comfort, but it's not the "going away" I'm worried about. it's the "getting all caught up in the Facebook thing" that is worrying me.

It was just earlier today that I was remembering my post, "Facebook Today, Reminds Me of AOL in 1998", that I thought to myself, "I love apps like Instagram that let you have a small slice of photo sharing without all the overhead that Facebook brings", and then Bam! it's all over and Instagram is taken over by Facebook.

It got me thinking how great these sharing tools have become. A simple app that lets you take a picture, geo-tag it with your location, and then apply one of 17 or so filters to make it exceptionally cool. Gees, I could never take a good picture until Instagram came along. And then all of a sudden friends were saying "great shot," "cool pic," "Wow, stunning." Check out a sampling of my masterpieces here.

I've been on Instagram for a year or so. In that time, I've carved out a small subset of my twitter crowd and became closer to each of them by what they share in photos of their lives. I have a few friends in Australia that share their "summer down under" pictures during the long, cold North American winter. Then, there is my friend in Calgary for even the cool spring days here when he posts snow cover pictures well into April. I have other friends who keep me current on the fast growth of their babies and toddlers.

It is just too good. Each picture is a masterpiece, a little slice of life, that makes the relationship a little stronger. Most of these people, I've only met on twitter or maybe face-to-face just once at a conference or some event. Instagram gives me a brief, but intimate peek into their lives, their loves, and their joys.

Judging from the backlash today, many people feel like I do. One friend is already well on his way to exporting his pictures and deleting his account, just because he dislikes Facebook so much. Well, I'm not going that far, but I do hope that Facebook does not pull a "Gowalla" with Instagram.

Please Facebook, don't mess this one up. It's the best thing going out there right now.

Steve Jobs: Impressions from the Biography

2011-11-17T18:07:00.000-05:00

Steve Jobs was quite a remarkable man. I rarely read full books and cannot remember the last time I read a biography. But I just finished a fast 3 week journey through the recently released 650 page biography by Walter Isaacson. (Kindle on iPad edition, by the way) It was quite a remarkable story and even more remarkable with its openness (as pre-approved by Steve) to be a clear, unbiased account of the author’s impressions after over 40 interviews with Steve and more than a 100 with those that knew him. What results is a enduring picture of a 20th / 21st century technology icon who is as unique as the products he introduced.

I’m not one to do book reviews, but I wanted to share some of my impressions mainly because his work had such an impact on my career and my “early adopter” mentality.

Steve is a several years older than me, but as he and Bill Gates were redefining the computer market from two different angles, I was just entering the workforce, having worked on both IBM and Apple computers, programming my way through the last few years of college. I remember watching the product rollouts and also choosing sides during the 80s when I needed to bet on the technology that would determine my career. I chose Microsoft and continued to keep an eye on Apple through the rollouts of various products through the 80s and 90s. Then when the 21st century Jobs emerged, I left my first choice behind and made the switch to Apple products, first with the iPod, then iPhone, iPad, MacBook Pro and finally even a Mac Mini, just because. The technology released in the last 10 years has been nothing short of revolutionary and we should all be indebted to Jobs for his persistence, his perfectionism and his vision to go with his gut.

As I was reading the book, many asked me what were my impressions. Here they are in no particular order.

Steve was a very hands-on manager. He never hid behind reports, market surveys, PowerPoint slides, or “expert opinions”. He was naturally curious and drove for perfection in everything he did. Early stories tell of how he insisted on every element of the original Mac design right down to the perfection of the layout of the circuit boards inside the case itself.
He was never afraid to voice his opinion. When you would show something to Steve, he would generally reply with one of two signature responses. Either he would “love it” (which was rare) or he would simply reply “That is sh—“ . No matter how hard the team worked, he was always stepping on egos and ridiculing his staff. I guess it made it all the more special when he finally liked what he saw. He insisted in hiring only “A-players” and equally insisted that everyone needed to have thick skin and needed to hear the truth (even though his “truth” often reversed into something else later depending on his moods.)
Steve and Bill Gates were really good friends through it all. I was taken by how much of an impact Microsoft had on the original Mac software. Their commitment to develop Word and Excel for the Mac was a big decision that paid of quite well for both Apple and Microsoft. Through the years, the two sparred often quite publicly and one would think maybe hurt feelings or grudges would take over. But the two truly needed each other and right up to the end when Bill came by to visit Steve in his final months, the two had a tremendous mutual respect for each other. I suppose they had each other to share in their common but equally unique journeys through the explosion of the personal technology wave.
Steve knew his life was likely to be cut short. Even before he was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, he pressed on to move as fast as possible. He was eager to make a difference, not for the money, but for the pure pleasure of making truly remarkable products. But looking back, his more significant work happened in the last 10 years of his life. He had a string of wins one after the other with the original iPod, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, iPhone, the App store, and finally the iPad. (We often forget the contribution his company, Pixar, made to animation with Toy Story and a string of hits through the late 1990s and 2000s with Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Cars, and Wall-E.)
He was a dedicated family man when it finally counted in the end. Jobs was very private as he lived, but after his death, he allowed the “family man” side of him to be documented. The book has several great pictures with Steve and his children (including 2 teenagers still at home). Yes, he made many mistakes, but in the end, was a dedicated husband of 20+ years and a loving father to his kids.
Steve, went to “find himself” during his early years. Very vocal about his experimentation with LSD and his travels to India, he did not have a strong religious foundation and instead spent his entire life searching and focusing on eastern philosophies. As a teenager he claims he abandoned Christianity because he could not reconcile why there was suffering in the world. In the end, he continued to be unclear about the afterlife and says he had come to a 50/50 conclusion about the existence of life after death. He did begin to make “deals” with God as he described it. One was that he really wanted to live to see his eldest son, Reed, graduate from high school. It’s sad that such a visionary in the tech world could be so confused all his life about the spiritual world.
Apple is Apple today only because of the unique vision, leadership, and drive of Steve Jobs. The company started with his inspiration, grew quickly through its early innovations, nearly choked on corporate “hand’s off” management without Jobs, and then was revived to become the world’s most valuable technology company under his encore leadership. Yes, Apple still has a great pipeline and will likely put out several more innovations over the next few years, but I would expect that it will unfortunately wind down without the wind of Steve Jobs in its sails and never get back to its earlier glory.

In the end, Steve wanted to write the post script. I feel I should give him that same honor here in this post.

“What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us. I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow…We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation to all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me” - Steve Jobs

Thank you Steve. You certainly succeeded by adding your “something” to that flow. For that, those of us in technology are truly grateful.

Rest in Peace Steve Jobs.

Seven Days with my iPhone 4S

2011-10-21T12:38:00.003-04:00

I must confess, I held on to my 3GS for the full 2 years and I just finally got my iPhone 4 back in May. I really have been enjoying it, and by 2:30pm, on the day that iOS5 came out, I had quickly updated my phone, but had no plans to move on to the 4S.

When I was watching the 4S introduction at the Apple event a few days earlier, I remember immediately answering a poll on Mashable.com where they asked “Would you be upgrading to the 4S?” I quickly answered “No” and thought that was the end of it. But I am always interested in in these new devices so I keep a close eye on the technology. I was very intrigued by some of the new features of the iPhone 4S especially the voice control from Siri as well as the expected improved performance and speed.

On October 14, just a week ago, as I was heading home from some errands in the mid morning, I decided just to stop by my local AT&T Store. I noticed some barricades for the line and I noticed there were just two people standing at the front door (a worker and a customer). In fact, I didn't even realize it was a line and just walked right for the door and was stopped. I had no intent to buy, but thought I would just come by and check out the excitement for the phone. (There wasn’t much, by the way.)

While waiting, I realized I could simply renew a family member’s contract (who was quite happy with her iPhone 3 – she uses it for phone calls!) for another two years and go ahead and get my iPhone 4S. I would just have to transfer it to my account. About an hour later, I walked out with the brand-new iPhone 4S 32GB unit and plans to sell my only five-month-old iPhone 4 on eBay.

So it's been a week and I have some first impressions. First of all, the performance is indeed great. I ran a few benchmarks on the 4 and the 4S using BrowserMark from RightWare. (bit.ly/brmark) . When I ran it on the iPhone 4 running iOS 4.x, the reading came back 34,253. After the upgrade to iOS 5, that same device scored 53,353. So just by upgrading to iOS5, I saw a 55% increase in the benchmark. I ran the same on the new 4S and got a blazing 85649. That’s 2 ½ times the speed as my former iPhone 4 running iOS 4.x. The iPhone 4S is FAST.

I've been experimenting with Siri. In fact, I am dictating this now because Siri, not only is your personal assistant, but also provides a voice input for any application that would normally use the keyboard. I find it works well and gets most of the words right. Siri, on the other hand as a helpful assistant, is a bit temperamental. Yes she can read my calendar, tell me the weather, and do a Google search, but more often than not, when I need her, she cannot understand me and way too often, cannot connect to the Internet. Siri is a cloud-based app that depends on access to Apple servers in order to do anything other than local dictation.

I never really like talking to anything or giving verbal command in general. I enjoy talking to people through my phone but not to my phone, so I'm not sure if it will ever catch on for my normal routine, but it is an interesting feature nonetheless. I’m sure in time it will improve, but for me, Siri as a personal assistant is nothing more than a novelty.

Another nice feature is the introduction of shortcut keys, a little-known feature of iOS5. They have taken the much maligned “autocorrect” feature and allowed you to create your own abbreviations that help you rather than introduce errors. Nice concept! If you go into Settings, General, Keyboard, you will see the ability to create keyboard shortcuts. I created one for my email address because I type it so many times as a login entry.

Another feature of iOS5 that I certainly like is Twitter integration. For me it means being able to tweet directly from a picture. Now, it’s not such a big deal to add a picture in my Echofon client, but tweeting directly from the photo viewer is a nice plus.

The iMessage feature certainly looks good. It is an alternative to text messaging but, like FaceTime, it only works with the with Apple devices. We would be better off if we could get an open standard for this in the future. I’m sure the carriers don’t like this new competitor to their overpriced text-messaging feature.

The camera certainly is an improvement. Pictures are crisp and clear and the video is hi definition. Built in photo editing features also add convenience. Unfortunately you have no standard definition choice for video. So, here we go using up much more storage than we need. Plus, HD adds a lot of time to share your videos on YouTube or other services.

The new Newsstand features nice. So far, it is just a nice way to pull together magazines. That’s something I will likely use more on my iPad than on the iPhone

One of the real exciting new promises of iOS5 is the iCloud service that allows immediate synchronization of songs, photos and calendar entries. I found it works well with songs, but have been reluctant to try it with photos and disabled it for calendar entries. Using Google calendar I began to see multiple entries and, in some cases, missing entries so I turned it off. I think iCloud shows great promise but I think it can take some time: 1) for me to learn how to use it and 2) to see how it works with other Cloud services such as various Google services and 3) for all the bug fixes to be deployed.

One thing I did notice was that just by default it asked if I wanted to back up my device to the cloud. I thought that was great idea so I enabled it on my iPad, my iPhone and also my son’s iPod Touch. All began to back up immediately and I got a message saying I had used up all of my storage and I needed to purchase more. So the 5 GB provided by the cloud really is not enough and immediately you are encouraged to buy more.

They say the iPhone is really the same on the outside and totally different on the inside. I certainly won't argue that but I did notice the silent switch moved down ever so slightly, enough that most cases will have a little trouble. It is the switch on the upper left side just above the volume switch that has moved down about 1/8th of an inch. I might just have to carve out my speck case a little bit with a razor blade to make it work perfectly.

Overall I'm pleased with the iPhone 4S mainly for it’s blazing speed. I'm also equally pleased that I was able to sell my old 16GB iPhone 4 for nearly equal the price that I paid for a new 32 GB 4S. Judging from the HD video, it looks like I will need that extra storage.

So, for this early adopter, I found it a good experience to upgrade. It will just take a little more time than I thought to learn the new features, and sorry but in my experiences regarding iCloud, I can’t say “It Just Works!”

So what do you think? Please add your comments below or on twitter. Are you going to spend the money to get the new 4S or can you wait for the 5? For me I am fortunate to have three AT&T contracts in the house and a family where I am the only one eager to upgrade the devices as soon as they come out. So when the iPhone 5 comes out in June or so, I will probably get an opportunity to upgrade again.

It's Not the Tools; It's About the People

2011-07-29T13:01:00.001-04:00

We are all on Google+ now. It’s great because of who is here.
We were all on Quora at Christmas, because of who was there.
We continue to stay engaged on Twitter because of who is there.
We are bored with FaceBook because of who is there.
We use LinkedIn because of who we can find.
We use SocialCast in the Social Business Council because of who is there.
We use Jive with the Community Backchannel because of who is there.
We use Yammer in our jobs because of who is there.

It’s not about the tools, it’s about the relationship. The great thing about any social network is the socializing that takes place there. Yes, the tools are nice and a bad tool set can certainly squelch the conversation. But it's not about the tools it's about the relationships.

I've had the opportunity to speak with many people over the past few months who are not at all engaged in the social web. The line goes something like this…."I don't have time for all that social media." What they are really saying is "I don't value those relationships and what I learn there. I get all I need from other sources."

That’s fine. When people start to understand what they can get, the relationships they can build, and what an amazingly large diverse set of ideas is out there, they decide to connect.

Many stick with email and cocktail hour networking. That’s fine, I do that sometime too, but I find it is not at all efficient as a stand alone activity. It’s good when I want to go deep with someone, but at a typical event, I can only do that with 1 or 2 people. At best, I'll touch base with 5 or 10. During that same evening, I can touch hundreds or even thousands through online tools.

Through my Blog, Twitter, Google+ and various private communities, I can keep a conversation going with hundreds and my network can jump into overdrive when needed.

If you don’t want to use the social media tools now and think it’s too geeky, that's fine. We used to say that about CompuServe and then AOL came along to break the ice among the masses. Then came FaceBook and everybody went online.

It is indeed gone widespread. Google+ may not replace FaceBook. Everyone may not get on Twitter, but in the long run, the mega trend is that, more and more, our lives are moving online. What was once called a “virtual” meeting is just a meeting.

Do any of you call your FaceBook friends “virtual” friends? Do you call these virtual conversations? No, it’s a wall post, it’s a message, it’s real interaction.

Social is happening, it is happening in different rates for different people, but there is no going back. As my friend Chris Rollyson says, It’s an “and” world, not an “or” world. We keep getting more ways to connect, as a result we are more connected, and finally we can innovate and move faster.

That is just what’s happening. Don’t deny it.

So go ahead, get social. You can start by connecting with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+ and while you are at it, subscribe to my blog.

See you online!

Seven Days with Google +

2011-07-05T22:23:00.009-04:00

The Google+ introduction is a major tectonic shift in the social software landscape. Its aftershocks will be felt for some time to come

I received my invitation to join Google + last Wednesday evening from @ITSinsider. It was a bit of a surprise. I had just heard of the launch a day or two earlier.

Since then, it's been a daily party like I have not seen with any other SNS (social networking service) launch. We had heard something about Google's Social Circles back during SXSWi, but the launch turned out to be just a rumor of what was to come just four months later.

iPhone in browser mode

My first take will be a little different from most because my time with G+ has been almost exclusively on an iPhone 4 or iPad 2. Of the 15 or so hours I've been on G+, only about 15 minutes or so have been on a PC. Even though the product is optimized for the full PC / Mac OS or Android mobile OS. I must admit, even with its many flaws, the iOS experience is good enough to keep me coming back.

Here are my first impressions.

Central to the User Experience is the circle concept. We all socialize in various circles. Google+ has made that literally the metaphor. G+ daily offers me up to 500 invitations to add to my circles. If the person is not yet in G+, they will get an invitation. If they are already in, they join into my circles and I begin following and sharing with them. (Be patient, G+ is still throttling invitations.)

Since I have not use the PC version with a webcam, I'm missing out on Hangouts - multipoint video chats. That will come in time. I expect very good value for work groups and enterprise applications of this feature. I also expect integration with Apple products with the forward facing camera (ala multi user FaceTime). With the recent introduction of Apple's FaceTime and now Google's new Hangout feature, perhaps personal video conferencing will finally reach the tipping point to general adoption.

I'm also excited about the ease of adoption. Google+ has quickly added most of my social graph to their SNS and the conversations are quickly turning to real substance other than just discussing Google+ itself.

So what are my takeaways so far?

iPad in Desktop Mode

1. This is going to be big. Google+ has scaled very quickly showing robust, well thought out features. It works easily on many platforms, combines access on any device to central cloud storage, performs well, and has already attracted the necessary early adopters.

2. This will evolve quickly. Google is known for quick iterative innovations and promises constant upgrades and introduction of new features. They also appear to be leveraging many of their various products without any sign of internal power struggles that will derail progress.

3. Facebook and Twitter have a real competitor now. Most early comments have been that Facebook should be scared, but little has been said about Twitter also being in Google's sights. With the recent announcements of tight integration between Twitter and Apple's iOS, it looks like the Google+/Android camp is stacking up as a good alternative. It might even be a three way race if the rumored Facebook / Skype entry materializes. Anyway, like Facebook, Twitter has been acting monopolistically as of late (terms of service, acquisitions, apathy to partners) It is good to see a product come along that offers a viable alternative.

iPad in Mobile Mode

4. Enterprise 2.o is in the game plan for Google+. All the talk about Consumer and Facebook should not hide the fact that Google+ coupled with Google Apps will offer a powerful platform for enterprise collaboration, eating away at the SMB market first and later moving up the food chain to the Fortune 500 market. E2.0 stalwarts such as Jive Software, Socialcast, Yammer, IBM Connections, and, to a lesser extent, SharePoint will see Google+ providing a new alternative in the young and growing Enterprise 2.0 collaboration market space.

That's my first look. So much more can be said, but there will be plenty of time for that in the future. The Google+ introduction is a major tectonic shift in the social software landscape. Its aftershocks will be felt for some time to come. So find me on Google+ http://gplus.to/jimworth and let's continue the conversation. I look forward to adding you to my new Circle of Friends.

The Social Mobile Enterprise

2011-05-31T10:53:00.004-04:00

Enterprise social mobility is the next big thing.

Yes, I said it. I'm going out on a limb and predicting that the next major wave of enterprise innovation will be a combination of today's emerging social networking explosion fueled by a move to mobility in mass. It feels like a very stable limb based on all that I have been seeing over the past few years.

Let's look at it in context. Many have written about mega trends in evolution of enterprise technology. Rawn Shah wrote an excellent piece recently outlining the move from Mainframe, to Departmental Computing, to Personal Computing, to Internet Computing, to today's Social computing environment. I think the next in line on the same scale may be Mobile Computing.

It's funny, as I read this list, and the traditional mentions of "Computing", I realize that term has run its course and it really is time to retire the term "Computing" since it has become irrelevant, something reserved for calculations, tabulations, lists, etc. Ever since the Internet age, it's really about collaboration and connectivity, not computing.

The Enterprise mobile revolution is happening. A recent Infographic by Zendesk says, of Fortune 500 companies, 80% are deploying or testing iPhones and 65% are deploying or allowing iPads. Over the next few years, every enterprise will have made major headway into allowing BYOD (bring your own device) linking iPhones, Androids, and iPads into the enterprise systems. I am convinced that the convenience and serendipity enabled by Mobility makes all the difference in driving engagement of today's Social Enterprise systems being deployed (see my post on the Upside Down Enterprise Portal).

Mobile brings a new dimension to communications. For me it started with the Palm Pilot back at the turn of the century (I always wanted to say that) when we began to sync with our calendar and contacts to have this information right in our pocket. I remember the excitement of having my assistant schedule meetings and then watching them "air sync" right to my device, while I was on the road.

Many a corporate road warrior (including me) became completely dependent upon his BlackBerry (or CrackBerry as we called it) in the mid-2000s. The BlackBerry showed the world that it is very useful to have instant access to calendar, contacts, and now email, all in one device. An entire generation of boomers and X-ers became proficient at the thumb typing model on the excellent blackberry keyboard. Soon after getting mine, I remember discovering the browser and beginning to do simple web access activities (checking weather, flight times, simple ecommerce) with the very limited and clumsy early blackberry browser.

Then, my life changed when I moved to an iPhone in 2009. I had just heard a "future of technology" conference speaker refer to this generation of smartphones, not as powerful telephones, but as small / portable computers. The explosion of the Apple app store and those that followed for other platforms (particularly Android) quickly showed the world that these devices could become a major supplement and often a substitute for the laptop computer. I giggle to myself when I see someone walking between meetings awkwardly carrying his open laptop, trying to preserve his connectivity to the corporate wifi while changing rooms. That will be a fleeting "sign of the times".

As corporations were finally figuring out the power of social networking platforms, they began to exploit SharePoint, Jive, IBM Connections, Socialcast, Yammer and a host of other Enterprise 2.0 Platforms. They found they could use these tools to connect a widely dispersed workforce, create rich employee profiles and online communities to meet and work. The activity stream and microblogging emerged as a way not only to communicate in quick short messages, but to also allow the system itself to inform colleagues of progress being made, milestones being met, and steps taking place along the course of a project.

These platforms are indeed game changing, but as the mobile revolution has been continuing, many of the E20 platform and tool vendors forgot that they were retooling an enterprise based on a 2000 paradigm. Many were designing with the idea that they needed to connect stationary knowledge workers who only log in from their corporate desktop or laptop. Their solution to mobility is to allow a worker to connect to the E20 platform from his / her VPN connected laptop. This severely hampers adoption. Relying only on the normal 8-5, at the desk, environment for social engagement is truly unnatural.

Each of the collaboration platform vendors recognizes the need for a mobile component and they have been working hard to create that capability. Like all transformations in technology it moves in steps. They focus most of their effort on the laptop / desktop worker and then "bolt on" the mobile capability as an afterthought.

The game is changing again. It is time now to create environments that recognize the following facts:

Workers are mobile, even in their office
Workers collaborate 24x7
Firewalls are going away
Workers will continue to bring their own devices to work
Tablets will not go away
Laptops will become much less relevant (like Desktops have)
Knowledge work is being distributed to external partners

The next generation Social Mobile Enterprise solutions must be designed to allow:

Mobile access to all corporate services and information assets
Cloud based storage accessible to all business partners
Mobile connectivity among the workforce in the same office and across timezones
Mobile / Social stickiness through "Gamification" engagement models
Mobile / Social connectivity with equal access for employees, contractors, and business partners

What do you think? Are you also seeing this trend? Can you give some examples of what your enterprise is doing or planning in the comments below?

(By the way, this post was authored on my iPad and edited only iPhone. Only the final upload, graphics and hyperlinks were done with my laptop.)

133 Curated Tweets from April 2011

2011-05-01T23:18:00.008-04:00

It was a hit last month, so here it is again. My curated list of tweets from April. As you can see, I focus on Cloud Computing, Twitter, Communities, iPad, Enterprise 2.0, Location Based Services, Gaming, Mobility, Social Business and a few other topics.

My Blog Posts

150+ links, I tweeted in March, all in one place http://bit.ly/gUgKDV
The Upside Down Enterprise Portal http://lnkd.in/Dj5Dpa
Tune In to the Social Web http://t.co/HH2fkdA

Chat (Twitter Chats)

Transcript for last night's #LeadershipChat now available http://ow.ly/4HQlg on leadershipchat.net
Forrester: A webpage w/video is 50x more likely to appear on page 1 Google than 1 w/out http://t.co/nh73FQ7

Cloud

The Future of Microsoft Office is in the #cloud http://dlvr.it/PdKTl
HOW TO: Optimize Your Content for the Cloud http://on.mash.to/e6gi4Y
Message from John Chambers: Where Cisco is Taking the Network http://t.co/1uOLfiI
First look at Microsoft Office 365: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9215883/First_look_at_Microsoft_Office_365

Cloud Crash

This Amazon cloud crash is affecting no less than 4 of my daily activities so far! http://t.co/34kz58k
Amazon's cloud crash takes many with it http://t.co/34kz58k
Amazon's failure continues. I expect this will dampen #cloud euphoria a bit http://t.co/4YH0DPU

Community

Community Managers: What They Do, Why You Need Them -- InformationWeek http://t.co/saLbr0g by @cflanagan
More on Community Managers: The Second Leg Of The Social Business Stool http://zite.to/dRkMjG
Are you building and managing E2E Communities? http://zite.to/dUeXw0

Enterprise 2.0

Corporate Microblogging Helps Employees Migrate Work Convos Online http://bit.ly/f4orbI
Enterprise 2.0: Why All Business Software Must Go Social http://bit.ly/gNregG
Are you culturally ready for #e20 / #socbiz? http://cot.ag/fAGsiO & http://cot.ag/gJl0uB by @themaria
Social Intranet –The Intersection Diagram http://j.mp/kogbZ8 explained very well by @adowbor
Social Networking for Business - WSJ http://ow.ly/4GcnC
Looking at IBM's collaboration assessment tool: http://ow.ly/4I46c Compares your best practices with 450 other firms.
Creating a Social Intranet Where Your Employees can Learn http://socl.ly/gLEPQp
To bond or to bridge, is that the question? http://t.co/CMPYAbf by @lammiia
Congratulations to @GuatamGhosh on your move: Joining Social Business and Enterprise 2.0 firm Qontext http://t.co/IlI3diX
Beyond Quora: 9 Q&A Services for the Enterprise http://v.zite.com/ia1zxl
6 Ways to Use Curation for B2B Social Media http://zite.to/gESAo9
Redefining RSS from tech terms to social collaborative behavior terms http://bit.ly/ft9kU5 by @dpontefract
IBM Says Merge your Email into the Activity Stream http://ow.ly/4ADGg
Open the Activity Stream app on the mobile, see what's important to do that day/right now. http://t.co/8OdWi7q

Easter

Four Lessons From the Resurrection http://t.co/xyaeR57 by @mhmcintyre
The Privacy of Jesus http://wp.me/p1jd28-cU

Gamification

Gaming the Enterprise, Part 1 of 2 http://bit.ly/humHTb by Dachis's @tomcummings & @vzrjvy
Enterprise gamification http://bit.ly/ilCszu by @webtechman
The purpose of gamification http://zite.to/eJFUkv

Infographics

How Are Mac & PC People Different? [INFOGRAPHIC] http://bit.ly/fzwBgv
In the evolution of the mobile operating system, Apple was a late entry. INFOGRAPHIC http://bit.ly/hjUnq5
The 5 Best Free Tools For Making Slick #Infographics (by @ambermac) http://feedly.com/k/hRumnc
The Winners & Losers of Social Networking [INFOGRAPHIC] http://t.co/3o03kUj http://yfrog.com/gzumxjrj

iPad

iPad 2 gets glasses-free 3D display using front-facing camera for head tracking: http://aol.it/hUrqbo
5 Great iPad Social Networking Apps http://bit.ly/euQ8IL
Ten innovative, unusual and just plain cool uses for the iPad: http://bit.ly/eWxH6L
News360 iPad App Review http://bit.ly/ezzUA0 new #iPad App gives you photo news in a unique format.
Revenge of the iPad? PC market tanks in first quarter: http://bit.ly/fhrTA8
Why the iPad Appeals to Older Users: They stick to basics http://bit.ly/g1m2KR
iPad 2 vs. XOOM: sales comparison ugly for Motorola? http://bit.ly/gIvNZf
Report: No Apple iPad 3 in 2011: http://bit.ly/i1mV7o
iOS 5 For iPad Features And News http://goo.gl/fb/hfpsZ
Ready or Not, iPad, Other Tablets are in the Enterprise http://ht.ly/4F0WP
Sign of the times: iPad 2 heads to Toys R Us http://pulsene.ws/1kDEp
Essential iPad Apps For Network And System Admins | Your Network Toolkit http://t.co/uUbTTNw
The Best New Apple iPad Productivity Apps http://t.co/XREeJki
Apple may outshine tablet rivals for years http://usat.ly/gUBhQI
Have an iPad? Get May edition of @wired iPad app free: http://wired.com/app
iPad for Business Round-Up: Tablets Cutting into PC Sales, Doctors Prefer iOS... http://zite.to/fMsLWR
One year after iPad: Is Adobe Flash still relevant? http://zite.to/iNtJ6z
iPad for Business Round-Up http://zite.to/ksyK4r

Job Search

How to Build Momentum in Your Job Search http://pulsene.ws/1ivMh
In transition? Great article about networking from HarvardBiz: http://s.hbr.org/h31Rzw

Location Based Services

Promote Your Small Business Blog with the ShareThis Plugin http://is.gd/Ct3d3q
Why Location-Based Services Will be the Killer App of the 2012 Elections http://pulsene.ws/1tAs7
Checking out of LBS http://t.co/ac9sTPF by @peterkim
Foursquare in the Enterprise? The Two-Year Lag from Web 2.0 to Enterprise 2.0 http://zite.to/krqBaO

Mobility

First Look @MapOmatic replaces your mobile map and shows where friends are: http://tinyurl.com/5wfktdx
NYT: Augmented Reality Comes Closer to Reality http://nyti.ms/ikqQIQ
In case you missed it: FDA Issues Rules for Mobile Medical Devices http://bit.ly/f8r8BV
The 'post-PC era' might be closer than we think http://zite.to/hgjQxc
Mobile Megatrends 2011 http://bit.ly/eIDyuK
I'm getting more and more convinced that mobile will be the "tipping point" for #e20 adoption too http://goo.gl/Pcrio
Why we need the mobile, social, intranet... Mind Blowing Mobile Social Media Stats http://goo.gl/Pcrio
Employees Are Using Their Own Devices. Is Your Policy Up-to-Date? http://socl.ly/hhLjdY
Square’s Payment Service About To Get A Huge Boost From Apple http://t.co/cocsmzY swipe a Visa on your iPhone
Socialcast Mobile Feature Release – New Android App (beta) and iPhone Updates http://t.co/e2mVT6X
What Will the Smartphone Market Look Like in 2015? http://t.co/rP6eLPT
iPad and iPhone Really Taking Off In Enterprise http://t.co/SgYWpGD
Rumor: White iPhone 4 in June, iPhone 5 in Sept - Bloomberg http://t.co/un2Sozk
Now I just stumbled upon this gem of mobile resources from @ppk http://www.quirksmode.org/mobile/

Other Stuff (unclassified)

April Fools 2011: The Big List http://tcrn.ch/hfkZ3e
Tech jobs boom like it's 1999 http://usat.ly/eDI5Gs "Jobs plentiful in Silicon Valley"
Good advice in today's WSJ: http://on.wsj.com/e3oaRI 4 Questions CEO's should be asking about IT
Amazon, Love The Kindle Ads Idea, But The Right Price Is $99 http://bit.ly/fb2nPn
18 Million WordPress Blogs Compromised In Attack http://rww.to/eU1aLS
the rest of the story to the "Jump The Shark" line, http://www.jumpedtheshark.co.uk/
Hole in Plane Leads to Emergency Landing, Twitpic Shows Details http://tinyurl.com/3ubjkfq
Had a great briefing on semantic web. Starting to research on http://bit.ly/ehlxzR & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSHALS
Curiosity piqued Royal Wedding lip readers decipher for the rest of us. http://bit.ly/jbYnKx
Royal wedding highlights: 5min video [Telegraph UK] http://bit.ly/lny5FQ

Social Business / Social Media

Social business strategies that will take your business from the dark ages to the Renaissance http://bit.ly/9BAcrV
Oh, I could get lost here for hours: http://bit.ly/adHbI5 Google Social Circle
Social Networking Strategies for Finding More Work http://bit.ly/dHyVKI
[blog] social business summit london part 2 http://bit.ly/dXmVbH
The tweets are about to start for #sbs2011 Singapore. Read the London tweet archive for a preview: http://bit.ly/eh6YyD
Read the tweet transcript from @dachisgroup #sbs2011 Singapore http://bit.ly/eiawsO
Serendipity Happens...insightful preso and post http://bit.ly/eK9pwU by @anadatagirl
Why There Is No Facebook For The Enterprise http://bit.ly/eQEYV0
Summarizing Social Business in Asia from #sbs2011 http://bit.ly/fsPb3j
From @davegray: I'm open-sourcing all my Connected Company images under a Creative Commons license. Spread the word! http://bit.ly/fu1zji
18 Social Networking Icons http://j.mp/e3lnuk
@CarlGriffith's #SBS2011 summit summary. http://j.mp/esGiGN
Social Business Design Cometh http://post.ly/1xsK6
Essential #socbiz stuff http://rww.to/dOiNTJ
Authentication, representation, communication, personalization, reputation: 5 Pieces of Online Identity http://t.co/JFC2Z10
The flat organization is not a new idea...RWW post on #e20 #socbiz by @klintron http://t.co/nIoCuXR
"The 2.0 Adoption Council - Asia Pacific Briefing" May 10, Webinar http://t.co/UCg1iji
#sbs2011 reminder... there is a list of Summit presenter's Twitter accounts here http://t.co/XXyzfYT
Why social business is different - Reusing stored collaboration http://zd.net/h5DDZ4 by @dhinchcliffe
Google: Larry Page Ties Employee Bonuses To Social Strategy http://zite.to/fdKIdR

Sunday Series

Sunday Series: "God Has Dwelt Well with Me" Click 4/10 message: http://bit.ly/9qjoaN Or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/kvYDTh by @DavidGuzik
Sunday Series: "Blessed Is The Man..." Click the 02/13 message: http://bit.ly/agsqhz or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/dNP2rV
Sunday Series: "Living the Normal Christian Life" Click the 4/3 message: http://bit.ly/fAmPt4 or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/f3Xgdh
Sunday Series: "Why Easter Matters" Click the Easter 2002 message: http://bit.ly/hQLCmq Or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/hQMy9l
Sunday Series: "Come Join the Dance" Click the 3/13 message: http://bit.ly/hwJfHh Or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/ecOHEU

Tablets

Admob: 43% of owners spend more time on their tablet than PC http://j.mp/dNlV00 http://yfrog.com/h2508rej
Tablet computers as seen from 1994 - http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2011/04/tablet-computers-as-seen-from-1994.html
Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet with Honeycomb and an optional stylus to hit this summer | http://t.co/9q7rqQZ

Tracking Your iPhone Location

Reading how to visualize your own iPhone tracking data. Requires OS X. http://bit.ly/hHYJyi http://yfrog.com/h65nwnxj
Disabling location services won’t stop your iPhone from tracking your location http://dlvr.it/PdV3G
Here is the Windows version of iPhone Tracker. It works for me: http://huseyint.com/iPhoneTrackerWin/
Wall Street Journal take on the iPhone tracking issue: http://on.wsj.com/ePwOW1
Steve Jobs: Apple has "never transmitted" precise iPhone location to itself (WSJ) http://on.wsj.com/kTvzVL "Will testify before Congress"
iPhone keeps record of everywhere you go http://t.co/i86jlg6
Stalk Yourself: Use R to Analyze Your iPhone Location Data http://t.co/iRSSYh3
3 Major Issues with the Latest iPhone Tracking “Discovery” http://t.co/YiNOX8f

Twitter

OK, so this give's some insight on the shuttering of tweet archiving services: http://bit.ly/f0n5ki Twitter to make $$$ on APIs
Could Twitter Get “MySpaced”? http://bit.ly/f58Sao
Netherlands passes Japan as most Twitter-active country in the world: http://bit.ly/hR6GNW
10 ways nonprofits should use Twitter http://bit.ly/kTbj3r
What Are Twitter Chats and Why Should You Care? http://bit.ly/llit8a
Have you seen Fizz? http://fizz.bloom.io/ It visualizes tweets in a way.
For Geeks—How to Capture Tweets in Real-time with Twitter's Streaming API http://oreil.ly/hLhBEt
Twitter Announces Fire Hose Marketplace: Up to 10k Keyword Filters for 30 Cents! by @marshallk http://t.co/0AJYRzA
London 2012 Olympics: it will be a Twitter Olympics – Telegraph Blogs http://t.co/Dxm2tSY
TechCrunch report on Twitter vs. UberMedia battle brewing http://tcrn.ch/hA5tji http://yfrog.com/gyjdshdj
Now I'm beginning to understand. I found my answers from Mr. Google http://www.thechasescene.com/the-usguys/

Tune In to the Social Web

2011-04-24T21:27:00.001-04:00

I often find myself describing the "social web" to my friends. Many are interested and wonder what I mean. I go on to describe it with a simple analogy.

The social web is like an engaging radio station, but imagine you have never purchased a radio. The signals are moving around, there is great music, stimulating talk, and even some good educational content. Until you get a radio and tune to the station, you will have no idea such interesting and engaging content is out there. Buy that radio, tune in and presto! You discover a whole world of knowledge and conversation out there that had been passing you by.

The social web is much like that. Through the combination of tweets and blog posts, there are exciting conversations taking place. Most likely, you would really get value if only you knew they were taking place, listened in, and were confident in how to add your voice.

I was with a friend the other day who is searching for an high level business development position as a result of the, all to common, "corporate restructuring" of this day. He is doing all the right things, making phone calls, attending networking events, and polishing up his resume, but he wanted to talk with me about twitter. How would he get started and what should he do? I gave him a short but simple tutorial, starting with my radio station analogy. You see, he wants to join into the conversation about opportunities within his industry. He wants to plug into the inside story on developing startups in his field and learn of trends and opportunities out in the market. He just needed to get familiar with the new medium.

I took him through the basics: get a nicely cropped photo for Twitter, turn off the protected tweets, start following a few interesting people. I even told him to look for hash tags in his industry and then seek out and follow those interesting people tweeting with those tags. I think he is well on his way to get in on the conversation.

I have seen this repeated many times. It is rewarding to bring others into the conversation and help them "tune their radios" to the right stations. There is the blogging Mom who is now joining the conversation, the budding theologian sharing his thoughts through blog posts and tweets, and the computer network professional who is building his business through a reputation for good work ethic amplified by engaging blog posts and tweets.

You don't need a fancy website, a custom domain name, or even Facebook to do this. You just need to dive into the deep end of the social web, join into the tweet stream, and maybe even blog a bit. There is a big world out there with hundreds of millions of interesting people. Why don't you just "tune your radio" to the right station and then join us in the social web.

Next thought...Building your personal brand on the social web. Stay tuned.

The Upside Down Enterprise Portal

2011-04-07T22:37:00.010-04:00

A new type of “citizen editor” is emerging, becoming a trusted source of curated content on the web.

I’m a curator of news. Like many people, I use twitter to gather the latest in technology opinions and developments. My particular interest is Social Business and Mobile gadgetry. Other people follow photography, sports, science or one of any variety of focused niche topics out on the web.

When we find something interesting, we retweet (RT) it to our Twitter followers or share it with our Facebook friends. Sometimes we send it as is, other times we add a commentary and pass it on. Most of the time, we are tweeting links (URLs) to other content. We are sending “pointers,” so to speak, to content that we find interesting on the web. Over time, we gather a following and become a valuable editor or curator of the news. Some turn it into a business like Mashable or Engadget. Others just do it as a hobby and use their “passion” to build relationships with like minded people or those wanting to learn more about that particular subject.

This model of curating information has turned the traditional media on its head. Gone are the days when a few powerful editors of the major print and television news outlets decide what the world should know. Do you remember the days before CNN when just three broadcast networks decided what to share with the public every night on the evening news? Times are certainly different now with many varying outlets to source our information. The real value comes when our “social network” shares what they feel is relevant. A new type of “citizen editor” is emerging, becoming a trusted source of curated content on the web.

On a typical day, I will monitor twitter feeds early and late in the day to catch up on the events, attitudes, and happenings. I have become efficient with the RT (retweet) as a means to share what I am learning. In fact this innate desire to share is driving the explosive growth of the social web.

Twitter has the “ReTweet”, Facebook has the “Like”, and Google just recently announced the “+1”. In fact if you look around, the ability to share is everywhere on the social web. Aging systems have the "email only" share choice, but modern software is being fitted with increasingly sophisticated share mechanisms that make it easy to share relevant content with your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and a host of other groups.

On my iPad, applications like Zite, Pulse, and even Murdoch's The Daily all build in native functionality to share content that the reader finds interesting. YouTube even does it, but still ignores the "tweet this" option. It really is a new way to promote content and get the word out, taking advantage of the clout and credibility of friends or colleagues to share content that they find interesting within their social circle. Content goes "viral" quickly and takes on a life of its own when friends share it with friends.

So, where am I going with this? I had the "Aha!" moment recently as I was at the office reading news stories from the corporate intranet. I found a great story and wanted to share it with my corporate colleagues (aka followers). The familiar share button I always find on the public web was missing. Why don't we build this share capability into today’s enterprise portal? This new way of the emerging “citizen editor” can be applied to the corporate intranet as a means to share content relevant to the employee masses. It can be done much more effectively than the old Network News model when Corporate Communications comes up with slick stories and pushes it on all the employees.

This “secret sauce” of the modern intranet embraces the same concept. Abandon the old push model and embrace the “citizen editor” or “employee curator” concept as a means to share news and make stories and messages go viral in your company. Engagement goes up, good ideas spread, and information is quickly shared within a healthy collaborative culture.

Do you like the idea? Below is a straw man proposal to consider as you go through the next redesign of your corporate intranet.

Tomorrow's Social Intranet environment should have the following basic building blocks:

Self Service Employee profile with IM presence
Microblogging function (See Rawn Shah's Forbes post)
Ability to follow / friend a colleague
Corporate and user generated news feeds / articles
Blogging platform
Wiki platform (for collaborative authoring)

To make it truly social, add these advanced sharing (curation) abilities:

Share ideas (tweets) internally with followers / colleagues / or the entire company
Tweets should include any content on the intranet or internet
Share button built into all content pages
Metrics to track number of shares for each piece of content
Most popular content is automatically featured on the portal home page

To make this content truly accessible it should be available on various form factors:

Desktop / laptop access for all functions
VPN remote access for all functions
Mobile access on all popular platforms (Android, iOS, RIM, …) for limited functions such as news, microblogging, email, calendar, alerts
Mobile access on employee’s personal devices

Finally along with the technology, there needs to be an equal or greater effort paid to the cultural change needed for a culture of collaboration, trust, authenticity, and transparency.

We are a few years into a revolution of content sharing and creation on the social web. It is only a matter of time before employees demand the same functionality within their corporate intranets. The smart communications officer will see the future being played out on the social web and begin to implement it within the enterprise today.

What do you think? Do you have examples where forward thinking enterprises are doing this already? Do you agree that this is the future? Or do you have another view. Please add your view in the comments below or in your tweets, shares and +1s.

Fully Curated - Tweets from the Month of March

2011-03-30T22:48:00.001-04:00

I often hear that people enjoy the articles that I share. I've even been hearing the term "curation" recently. I know it was a big month for tweets and decided to take a little time to pull together a list of what I curated from my twitter feeds during the month of March. Here it is in one place...a month full of tweets.

Amazon Locker

Amazon faces backlash over music locker service http://goo.gl/ew5KF
The Cloud Will Be Your Hard Drive, Despite The Record Labels’ Greed http://t.co/AqzzNNj
HOW TO: Use Amazon Cloud Player With iOS Devices http://t.co/zO0J7Om

Apple

Rumors: iOS5, iPhone5, iPad3...Cloud-Based iOS 5 This Fall? http://bit.ly/h47fwx
Rumor: iOS 5 will be a 'major revamp,' won't debut until fall http://pulsene.ws/17isK more heavily cloud-based iOS
Apple Releases iOS 4.3.1 http://bit.ly/gYoOC5
iPhone 5 rumor central http://t.co/poa3QEk (info graphic) http://yfrog.com/gzmzczcj
Apple To Let Users Use Cloud Service To Download Songs To Multiple iDevices http://pulsene.ws/14ebq
good post on post-PCness http://www.sampletheweb.com/2011/03/04/dear-apple-youre-not-post-pc-until-you-cut-the-cord/

AT&T

Why AT&T Bought T-Mobile http://pulsene.ws/15Lsd
One bad company buying another: AT&T buys TMobile http://tinyurl.com/6cfe8j2
RWW AT&T Starts Sending Letters to Jailbroken Tetherers, Will Automatically Charge Fee http://rww.to/f1hRLx

My Blog Posts

Facebook Today, Reminds Me of AOL in 1998 http://t.co/Kuu6VfM
Here's my iPad 2 first impressions blog post http://t.co/yteyHCY
My Post illustrating Mobility and Ease of Consumption http://is.gd/DDukd5

CIO

The 4 Personas of the Next-Generation #CIO now on #hbr http://bit.ly/en5EHK?

Cloud

Great, simple explanation of Dropbox; http://t.co/2xbw4tO
Cloud computing: A market for computing power | The Economist: http://bit.ly/hAlInv

Enterprise 2.0

Expertise Location: The Killer App for Enterprise Social Computing http://t.co/aOnkEGR
List of Enterprise 2.0 CFP winners is now available #e2conf. Congrats to the winners! http://bit.ly/e63w84
good discussion w/ IBM'er on adoption ; The Psychology of Collaboration http://feedly.com/k/dNnqrL
Excellent analogy: email vs. SocNets. :Trains, Sliding Doors and Social Networks http://tumblr.com/xhe1qji74d
BT Intranet SharePoint 2010 examples http://goo.gl/tSZAS
Merck looks to Facebook for employee portal, CSR effort - Medical Marketing and Media http://t.co/EpOHV71
Social Business Begins by Unleashing Your Business Talent http://bit.ly/eMfjxc By @elsua
The military shows the need for information sharing and local decision making http://t.co/vzXPiu9 post by @BartSchutte
Challenges of transforming large, rigid org cultures into agile and aware networks: Great post: http://t.co/kVlkB8r.
Awesome, Socialcast evolves the #hashtag for all people to understand - http://is.gd/0P1M5i
If true other teams are running plays on field while MSFT is in locker room deciding uniform colors. http://engt.co/h739tL
Good advice on social software adoption: http://t.co/tsaf2XE
Video: The Conference Call http://post.ly/1gajI
Social Intranet – The Intersection Diagram http://t.co/S2taO5l by @adowbor

EBay

eBay acquires GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion http://dlvr.it/Lnhjd

Experts

List of Social Intranet, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Engagement, and HR Technology Experts http://ow.ly/4nbeu

Future

Gaming for engagement is trending... using game design in non-gaming contexts http://bit.ly/h62xXc
How do you become a futurist? http://bit.ly/ik3jKx "claim you are and people either believe you or not" says @rossdawson
1373 Twitter users with "Futurist" in their bios http://bit.ly/eHnL2r
[VIDEOS] The latest robots are virtually indistinguishable from people http://bit.ly/esxMLX
Very cool #future "day in the life" video (Corning) http://bit.ly/e1PX0U "A Day Made of Glass"
Top 10 Dying Industries: Newspapers, Photo Finishing, Record Shops make the list: http://bit.ly/gbVv2g

Google

Google copies Facebook's Like Button http://bit.ly/e1iBSY
Google Announces New Service for Nonprofits http://is.gd/ZroO4B
Half A Billion Blog Posts Later, Google To Give Blogger A Revamp http://dlvr.it/KGBTD

Groupon

Groupon moving towards real-time location based coupons. Two buttons: I'm Hungry, I'm Bored. http://Ez.com/grpn
CHART OF THE DAY: Watch Groupon Go From 0 To $25 Billion In The Blink Of An Eye http://read.bi/ea2POb

Infographics

How Small Businesses Are Using #SocialMedia [INFOGRAPHIC] http://t.co/aQU16xQ
The #SocialMedia World Before Twitter And Facebook [Infographic] - http://bit.ly/dQhQHP
Infographic of the Day: The Next 25 Years in Emerging Tech | Co.Design http://t.co/7tkiBKB
Who’s Really Scanning All Those QR Codes? [INFOGRAPHIC] http://pulsene.ws/149cx
#Tablet comparison #infographic - http://ow.ly/48nMB http://yfrog.com/h06mjvaj
nice info graphic on the culture aspect http://dld.bz/Mcyc
Should you be on LinkedIn? [infographic] http://bit.ly/dVMvLa
How Mobile Shopping Is Changing The World [Infographic] - http://bit.ly/h2UETL

iPad / Tablets

18 Million #WordPress Websites Now Available in #iPad Format http://on.mash.to/g8gY8t
iPad to go on sale outside US: Apple Inc to stick to plans to roll out product this week. http://bit.ly/f3wulH
BlackBerry Playbook Will Be Available In 20,000 Retailers http://tcrn.ch/feSMBw
RT @MacOutfittersPA: Read our new blog post, iPad 2: First Impressions http://bit.ly/fF7zg2
7 Twitter Apps For iPad: http://bit.ly/expOJl
Five ways the iPad 2 works on the buyer's subconscious: http://cnet.co/hmQ3RC
The Week in iPad Cases: The iPad 2 has landed: All your choices explained http://yhoo.it/dXANhF
Apple could face iPad 2 component shortages: http://yhoo.it/i5CNIS
This looks like a promising iPad app. http://www.stuckincustoms.com/2011/03/03/100-cameras-in-1-for-the-ipad/
Why the iPad is awesome @TreyRatcliff shows off cool photo processing app http://t.co/75XrXU8 100 cameras
Equal Time…iPad 2: The Skeptic’s Review: http://bit.ly/gZpzLV
iPad 2: A Gaming Machine?: The iPad 2 is out, but is it a good gaming machine? http://bit.ly/dJfilH
Dell and HP: Two computer giants prepare for a world no longer dominated by the PC http://econ.st/h3EHnJ
Putting iPads To Work -- my guide: http://t.co/6l96oFh by @waltmossberg
How To Collaborate With Others Online Using Your iPad http://goo.gl/fb/Y8cuu
iPad Essentials for the Network Administrator http://goo.gl/ZDuhg
The 3 Best iPad PDF Markup Apps; - http://goo.gl/CDO1c
Interesting: what is in that iPad smart cover: http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-2-Smart-Cover-Teardown/5089/1
iPad 2 jailbroken, no ETA on public release http://pulsene.ws/158L9
Backordered: Total iPad sellout - 70% new buyers: http://bit.ly/gPwzPp Fortune Article
So, what's inside the iPad 2? http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-2-Wi-Fi-Teardown/5071/1
IPad2 offers aspiring movie makers the whole package http://usat.ly/hLjX9c via USA TODAY
My hunt for the elusive iPad 2 delivers some big game http://zd.net/fc2en4 <-my story in comments
Mobile Harmony: iPad 2, Android & Windows 7 http://bit.ly/hh2f2Z
Maybe... Here's What's Coming In The iPad 3 (AAPL) http://bit.ly/hTLz0i
iPad 2: Thin, Not Picture Perfect My review: http://t.co/KDziWmM #ipad2 by @waltmossberg
How does apple really feel about their new Ipad2? Here is the video: http://goo.gl/j4w0J
Want a 3G iPad 2 and Own an iPhone? Here's How You Save $130 http://bit.ly/eMRVBe
Original iPad Better Than Ever: Here's why. Price and Apps http://fxn.ws/gQjhnm
Unleashing creativity in many ways... How the iPad revolution has transformed working lives http://t.co/o7n8t1C
Did you write a post on how to transfer your data from your first iPad to your new iPad 2? A. Yes http://bit.ly/id7wLX
How To Use iPad 2 | A New User Guide http://t.co/5lTsJJD [massive post on how to use your new ipad]
It's Apple's 'post-PC' world -- we're all just living in it. http://r2.ly/7c5j
10 more top 10 reasons to buy an iPad 2 http://bit.ly/i8y2LW
An iPad Lover's (Initial) Thoughts On iPad 2 http://tcrn.ch/dH7ujY
iPad 2 Rollout Leads to Massive Deflation in Secondary Market http://pulsene.ws/13Rck
Watch the iPad 2 March 2nd Event Keynote - http://t.co/RFKqyo0 #iPad2
Steve Jobs announces iPad 2 http://bit.ly/hOzJUO #ipad2
Watching the live blog: http://engt.co/dV3fmx for iPad2
It's iPad day! Faster, slimmer, 2-camera iPad said likely: http://bit.ly/gl74VG <-summary of latest rumors Wednesday, March 02, 2011
To take on Apple, new tablets go where iPad won't - http://bit.ly/fq8V1T
Check out "The DVD Era Finally Ends – Thanks to the iPad" http://bit.ly/gn2ywA

Japan

Japan: whatever happened to the nuclear meltdown? http://bit.ly/hzSUNr March 23
Catching up on developments in Japan http://n.pr/h916CQ March 19
These images are just sobering. If you need some perspective click here: http://bit.ly/gTZdVU March 16
I don't have words big enough to persuade why you should. The pics from Japan tell that story. http://ht.ly/4f4KT, March 15
Cometh the hour http://pulsene.ws/15ihx by @jobsworth, March 14
Amazing views of the devastation in Japan http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm March 13
Desperation and panic grip Japan (Reuters) http://reut.rs/fIBSrH "Like a scene from a disaster movie"March 12
Google is helping to curate info about the Earthquake. http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html March 12

Location Based Services

Neiman Marcus Launches Nationwide SCVNGR Challenge http://tinyurl.com/4gjruko

Introducing LinkedIn Today http://t.co/Ya7SBrC

MySpace

Amazingly, MySpace’s Decline Is Accelerating http://bit.ly/dHtTFh

Mobility

Want to Engage Senior Executives? Think Mobile. http://bit.ly/gbvCjl
Nine Powerful Apps That Convert Your iPhone Into A Knowledge Hub http://bit.ly/frB3Nk
The Judge Group Launches Mobile Website - March 16, 2011 (Phila) http://ow.ly/1bNwaX
March 28, Phila, Mobile Health Forum http://t.co/FbPKijK
90% of the world now lives in a place with access to a mobile network http://goo.gl/KaTzL
Hmmm..I need to give this a try... How to build location based app in five minutes, with no coding http://bit.ly/dRQdw4
AT&T Confirms Mobile Hotspot Support for iPhone http://bit.ly/fcxKKq
The 10 Most Innovative Companies in Mobile: http://su.pr/25JI2F
My fav so far is instagram... 22 Ways To Tweet Photos & Images from your iPhone: http://bit.ly/ieWmWv
How Mobile Shopping Is Changing The World [Infographic] - http://bit.ly/h2UETL
http://ow.ly/4pnph Smartphone use is expected to increase by 50% in 2011

Salesforce

Salesforce buys Radian6 / http://tcrn.ch/eXxCsC
Salesforce.com buys Radian6, an excellent move! Details http://bit.ly/gDETbH

Social Business Summit

RT @joningham: My post on John Hagel session at #SBS2011 http://bit.ly/ijsN27
All the tweets, pics and posts from Social Business Summit Austin: http://jimworth.pbworks.com/w/page/37688605/Social-Business-Summit-2011
Reflections on Social Business Summit 2011 - Syndey and Austin http://t.co/wJ0clCl http://yfrog.com/h48b5rp
Social Business Summit 2011 first half round up http://dach.is/gmghEB
2011 Social Business Summit Review http://bit.ly/fjciuO
Social Business is Here: Review of the 2011 Social Business Summit Austin http://t.co/z3Atf0C by @andyjankowski
Curated #sbs2011 tweet stream, courtesy of @keepstream. http://dach.is/gohoQv
check out #sbs2011 to see great feedback on Dachis' first summit in Sydney. Join others near you: http://bit.ly/70rO2V

Social Business

Career path of the social business professional - Being Peter Kim http://t.co/FbkXTZV
Watching the rise of "Social Business" over Social CRM, Enterprise 2.0. http://yfrog.com/h48t3dj http://bit.ly/hAIkwQ

Sunday Series

Sunday Series: "Absolute Truth" Click the 3/21 message: http://feeds.harvest.org/ANB or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/fwqQdt by @greglaurie Sunday, March 27
Sunday Series: "Raising The Dead" Click the 3-13 message: http://bit.ly/efUfoz Or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/e8gptp Sunday, March 20
Sunday Series: How Close Are We? Click the 3/06 message: http://bit.ly/f8lYKw or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/fcxmxy @bridgefm Sunday, March 13
Sunday Series: "From Thunder to Love" Click the 2/20 message: http://bit.ly/getBcM Or direct to mp3: http://bit.ly/faVuYx Sunday, March 06

SXSW

2011 Insights from @bobpearson1845 http://bit.ly/hdPLxn
RT @ShannonPaul Blog post - My Takeaways From SXSW Interactive http://bit.ly/ey0sq9
SXSW 2011: Great for Networking, But No Technology Breakthroughs http://t.co/zqN2P0n
Zappos spreading the #Happiness story w/ new #brand. at #SXSW http://bit.ly/dQNQOS
At each SXSW a new technology gains early adopter attention, one contender is groupme http://t.co/tblUkoc

TED

Topsy's "Selinah", 1 of 10 amazing "Ads Worth Spreading" from #TED: http://www.ted.com/initiatives/aws/selinah.html
Target's "Kaleidoscopic", 1 of 10 amazing "Ads Worth Spreading" from TED: http://on.ted.com/8yFb
Intel's The Chase, 1 of 10 amazing "Ads Worth Spreading" from TED: http://www.ted.com/initiatives/aws/the_chase.html
TED Ads Worth Spreading: If You Only Watch 10 Ads This Year Make It These http://www.ted.com/initiatives/aws
RT @jordanayan Rode in Google's new self-driving car at #TED a highlight of the conference [video] http://budurl.com/TEDcar
Here is a link to a detailed story on the amazing kidney printing demo at #TED2011 - http://budurl.com/TEDkid

Trends

No one uses the phone anymore http://bit.ly/fuJngc
Entire movies compressed into single barcodes http://ow.ly/4au4T
"Google before you tweet" is the new "think before you speak" http://bit.ly/newtruthisms
Something to do with those old books Masterful sculptures made from large books. http://bit.ly/eOicoL

Twitter

Best practices for the "retweet" http://t.co/xQyjDr7
10 Memorable Tweets From Twitter's Five Years in Existence: http://abcn.ws/eryfvf
How do you explain what Twitter is to someone that’s never used it? http://bit.ly/gp6vo4
YES!!! Finally got my Twiter https option!!! Everyone should enable it!! http://bit.ly/dLPrFB http://tnw.co/ech1SY
Captures reasons why I prefer Twitter to Facebook - http://t.co/PxNPpB2
How to do Twitter in 15 minutes a day http://ow.ly/44nz8
Paper.li is my fav so far… 4 Ways to Read Your #SocialMedia Updates as Newspaper http://bit.ly/ibgVEs
Very Cool: try VisibleTweets - looks great on a large screen! Eg: http://bit.ly/hV0Dvx

Facebook Today, Reminds Me of AOL in 1998

2011-03-22T17:03:00.003-04:00

Tweet
I find myself more and more leaving the constraints of Facebook and stepping out into the deep end of the social web.

It was an interesting time, 1998. The early Internet starter kits were beginning to make it out. Netscape had introduced a nice browser. Microsoft was playing catch up with Internet Explorer. Mozilla was still around. The Internet was a wild west.

EBay and Amazon were just starting to get traction. There were a few tools for creating websites, and a few email services, but it was a rough time with people stumbling around in an attempt to reach out and publish information on the web. You needed a webmaster, well versed in HTML page markup or PERL scripts, to do anything worthwhile online.

In the late 1990s, the Internet was not a fun place for the masses. It was difficult to get around, set up an email address, or share files. America Online had just begun carpet bombing the US with millions of free AOL CDROM disks delivered through the US Postal Service in an attempt to snag as many subscriptions as possible.

The appeal was clear. Families in record numbers were buying their first desktop computer, loading up AOL, connecting their modem and beginning to share pictures, email, and news stories with each other. AOL started in the mid 1980s as a private network, but was quickly morphing into a gateway and a guide for the Internet by the mid 1990s. The famous “AOL Keyword” had become a universal locator for web content. Families in the millions jumped onto the internet through the safety of AOL. Soon AOL was flying high, valued large enough to buy the traditional media company, Time Warner. Just about then, the bubble burst and we all came back down to earth, ready for a new wave of innovators on the web.

A few years after the crash, Tim O’Reilly coined the phrase Web 2.0, and a few college students started building The FaceBook to allow students an easier way to connect and share with each other. As AOL was descending and the Time Warner merger began to look like the biggest corporate failure of all time, the social web began to take shape. Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Del.icio.us, Myspace, and Facebook began to gain ground with the early adopters. By 2009, Facebook was starting to gain real traction and in 2010, the new platform had a breakout year with Time Magazine granting “Person of the Year” honors to its founder Mark Zuckenberg.

Facebook is nice. It’s teaching us all a new language of “Likes", comments, status updates, tagging, and general open sharing of our lives. While allowing us to share among close friends, it is also pushing the limits on privacy, and teaching us all to read the fine print as we all become more and more comfortable with expanding the circle of trusted friends that we share our lives with. Messaging on Facebook is so easy, many have abandoned email all together and just “Facebook” each other (that’s sending a note through Facebook). People often don’t know an email address, but find their friends by name and send them a message. Chatting is all the rage as well. Groups connect, share their lives, and expand their friendships online, blurring the lines between virtual and real.

Many people and businesses are using Facebook now as their primary branding website, drawing on the large population online. But at the same time, early adopters and web savvy professionals continue to push the envelope using twitter, flickr, youtube, twitpic, tweetchat, about.me, instagr.am, foursquare and a host of other “wild west” style social media tools. The social web is fully functional and all functions that are now done in the safety of Facebook are also done in the openness of the social web without the restriction of a closed circle of “friends.”

AOL put fences around the Internet in the late 1990s and allowed families and newbies a safe way to navigate, read news, follow “New Kids on the Block.” The public could share with each other online and join along out loud whenever a new message was delivered: “You’ve got mail!”

Just like AOL back then, Facebook today puts fences around the social web allowing an easy way for families and newbies to share photos, status updates, “likes”, and news of Justin Bieber in the safety and security of a protected social web environment. The real social web continues to thrive and innovate. I find myself more and more leaving the constraints of Facebook and stepping out into the deep end of the social web.

I wonder if, in a few years, Facebook will grow to enormous market value, purchase one of the Web 1.0 or traditional media companies and then go through a similar self-destruction as the openness of the full social web takes over. History does have a way of repeating itself. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or online (on Twitter).

iPad 2: You Only Have One Chance to Make A First Impression

2011-03-12T09:05:00.012-05:00

My 7 year old son is sitting next to me. He just woke up and came downstairs to grab my iPad 2 from my hands. His first words..."Oh cool, you got iMovie"

That's OK, he can play with it for now. I have been up for 2 hours and can take a break to write up my first impressions. I'm typing on my laptop because writing a blog post on the touch screen keyboard is just too slow for this seasoned touch typest. But that's OK. The iPad is not designed to replace a laptop. It's another animal all together. As Steve Jobs said it is part of the Post PC class of devices.

I unboxed my new 32GB White wifi unit last night at 6pm. Here's how it went.

It came fully charged
I plugged it into to iTunes and was automatically asked if I wanted to restore from my iPad 1 (16GB wifi) backup. The restore took about 15 minutes, but no apps came down.
I had to manually select all the apps and do another sync. This time it took about 20 minutes. I went to eat dinner and came back about 6:45.
All passwords needed to be re-entered (mail accounts, app store, etc.)
By 7, I was up and running. Most frustrating was that my app icons were all over the place. I needed to manually set them back where I wanted them. There was no real rhyme or reason to the app location on my iPad 1, but over the last 11 months, I had built up about 6 pages of apps and just become accustomed to where they were. I guess the discipline of cleaning this up was really necessary. So no big deal.
I tried to call a few friends with FaceTime. I got through to my iPad buddy Nate who was setting up his too (read his post). In about 5 seconds I saw him with his 3 year old son and we had a nice chat. We had nothing really to talk about so we hung up. I called two more, but got no answer. Later that evening my iPhone buddy RB called me back...that is really cool. I like FaceTime.
The camera is nice, but remarkably coarse and low quality, especially in low light. It works, but I expect this will be one of the upgrades when the iPad 3 comes out. For now, coarse front camera is better than no camera...kind of like the early camera phones. The back camera is better, but you need good light, not the ambient light at my house after dinner.
Yes, it is fast. I'm not sure if it is 2x as fast or 9x the graphics, but if Steve says so, it must be true.
I really miss my standard Apple iPad case. The store did not have any accessories, so I'm using the iPad "au natural" with no case. I'm not sure I will go with the standard "smart cover". (See the review here.) I really like to cover the back, it prevents slips when I set it down and also makes it easier to hold. There is a reason they put a textured cover on a book. I would never read a metal slippery magazine. I really don't get where Apple thinks we will all do that. Back to the case, I put my iPad 2 in the standard Apple iPad 1 case and it looked like a skinny kid in his father's suit. Even with the baggy fit, I may use that case until I can buy one with the same function that fits the slimmer offspring.
Speaking of kids, my 7 year old is all over this iPad. He is making some incredible music with Garage Band and already working some videos with iMovie. Both are incredibly powerful applications, perform well on the iPad 2 and bring pleasure immediately in their simplicity and ability to create a slick media product. That's $9.98 I don't mind spending.
It's not about the device, but about the media and the content. I reloaded Murdoch's "The Daily" and caught up on the news...There is plenty of it today with the horrible devastation in Japan. All my content feeds work well....web browsing with safari (I didn't even notice any of the improvements), tweeting with twitterrific, gmail, and a new app called Zite. It creates a custom magazine based on my tweet reading habits (kind of creepy, but it looks promising)

Well, that's what comes to mind right away. I'm an experienced iPad user who is eager to stay on top of the technology as it evolves. It's a good experience that just got a little bit better. In time, I'm sure I'll have plenty more to say, but this is one happy Early Adopter.

Now if I can only get it back from my son.

Mobility Brings Ease of Consumption

2011-02-27T14:31:00.006-05:00

You've probably seen the commercial for the NFL Network where the hi-tech fan goes through his day glued to the content from the NFL Network while seamlessly switching between all his consumption devices: TV, Tablet, Laptop, Smartphone, and then back to the TV when he returns home. I went through something very similar this week, but without all the dazzling special effects.

My story does not involve the NFL, but rather The 2.0 Adoption Council. This group really rocks. It's a great collection of Enterprise 2.0 / Social Business peers that have become good friends in the 18 months that I have been a member. One of the many benefits of membership is the ability to have direct access to some of the best minds in the industry. They are called Guru Sessions and take place regularly through a teleconference line. That could be a good topic for a blog post, but that's not where I'm going with this. It's just the context. Read on.

My schedule did not allow me to join the last two guru sessions that typically take place on Tuesdays at 1pm. First of all booking gurus like Andrew McAfee, Shel Israel, Don Tapscott and now Chuck Ganapathi, SVP of Products at Saleforce.com discussing the rollout of Chatter is no small feat. To have an opportunity to have a private briefing with these leaders in our industry is very valuable. It is insight we could never get from our normal channels. Quite frankly, it gives each of us a totally unfair advantage within our companies as we position ourselves to be the leading authority in our organizations on Social Business, Enterprise 2.0, and general state-of-the-art collaboration issues.

The approach is simple. Line up an expert, prepare a few questions, keep a back channel open for conversations and collaboration during the session, and most importantly, archive the conversation for those who could not be there live. I am one of those who really is enjoying this replay capability. When I think back on it, the sequence of events is quite remarkable. Now, with a variety to tools, unheard of at the beginning of the internet revolution, I can get unprecedented access to some invaluable content.

I want to tell the story so that other early adopters can visualize an approach that I think is indicative of the future. The example I mention is time shifted consumption of the Guru Session content, but you could apply this to any webinar or online event you attend (or miss).

This is what I did. If you are also one who is too busy to catch a session (or any webinar / teleconference for that matter), you can do the same thing too. But like most adoption issues, we often need a little nudge to get us over the hump. Let this be your nudge. This is how I did it last Wednesday.

1. Pay attention to schedule of upcoming sessions (generically, webinars, teleconferences, events and the like), see if I can attend and take part if at all possible.

2. When I cannot attend, monitor the back channel (Socialcast in the case of the council, Twitter hashtag archive for public events), look at the flavor of the questions and answers to decide if it is good to hear the archive.

3. Notice the link to the playback archive, click the button and begin to listen (in my case over coffee the next morning at 5am through my iPad). The MP3 link typically plays immediately in the native quicktime player.

4. Cut and paste the URL of the replay and email it to myself for later listening.

5. Later in the day, while commuting to work, plug my iPhone into the aux jack in my car, Open my email (on my iPhone), click the URL for the replay, listen while driving.

6. When I get to the parking lot at work, put on my blue tooth headset, pop the phone into my pocket and walk into work (while still listening to the reply).

7. Throughout the replay when not driving, glance down at the backchannel discussion in the community (Socialcast in the Council's case, Twitter in the generic case) and follow along in real time with the comments for context.

8. Get into the office, continue listening, log on to the desktop version of the backchannel and continue following along in real time.

9. Write a blog post while finishing the session to let everyone else know how valuable this is. (the sessions and also the ability to consume on multiple platforms).

It's like the recent NFL Network television commercial in many ways. The spot is really a sci-fi fantasy, but using the tools available now, today's reality is getting incredibly close.

My Personal Technology Hype Cycle

2011-01-23T16:47:00.004-05:00

This week, I’m looking at Tumblr, Ubuntu Desktop, SCVNGR and a few other technologies. Over these first few weeks of 2011, I’ve checked out Quora, Instagram, and Hot Pursuit (from EA) just to name a few. Some people say I’m tech savvy, others say I spend too much time with the “magic box” (iPhone), others say simply “I don’t know how you find the time for that”. Most just don’t care.

That’s fine with me. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am curious and I don’t mind taking a few risks with my time in order to discover useful innovations. Like all innovative people or organizations, success requires a bit of risk taking. We see it with the most innovative companies, they spend millions and sometimes billions on risky endeavors. They know that many of them will fail and turn into a waste of time and money. They try to ensure efforts are focused, but failure is simply a cost of innovation. You will make mistakes often, but the payoff is great. As a entrepreneurial friend once told me 1 in 10 startups hit it big, so he keeps doing them, sometimes several at a time. Eventually he expects to hit it big.

The same goes with innovation and personal productivity. If one is willing to invest the time (that’s my case, because I don’t have millions or billions of dollars), some of those investments will pay off. Others will be a waste of some time.

As I was thinking it through today, I was taken by the simplicity of Gartner’s Hype Cycle curve. Gartner is famous at posting these hype cycles for various topics such as Social Software, Emerging Technologies, or Consumer Mobile Applications. They are so famous, there is even room for a Hype Cycle Parody piece by CIO columnist, Thomas Wailgum. His work from last summer was definitely tweet worthy.

So I thought, maybe I should paint a similar picture for my particular interest in technology. This is a fast moving cycle and will be quite different in 6 months. It also will not match your personal hype cycle since we are all drawn to different technologies for different reasons and priorities.

Anyway, I think you might find this interesting. You will find some items where you relate, but I expect more often you will find differences. That’s fine. That’s how we learn. I look forward to hearing what is on your personal hype cycle and where it falls on the curve.

So here is the first ever Jim Worth Personal Technology Hype Cycle, January, 2011 edition:

Technology Trigger: Focus.com, MacBook Air, iPad 2, iPhone 5, Ubuntu Linux, Tumblr, SCVNGR

Peak of Inflated Expectations: Instagram, Quora, Pandora, Pulse, Posterous, Wordpress

Slipping down the slope: EA’s Hot Pursuit, Win 7, Google Reader, Eventbrite, Barcamp

Trough of Disillusionment: Yammer, Foursquare, Gowalla, Angry Birds, Ustream

Slope of Enlightenment: Instapaper, About.me, Kindle, Newsgator,

Plateau of Productivity: iPad, Twitter, iPhone 3gs, PBworks, Google Analytics, Blogger, Socialcast, Google Groups, MyWi hotspot

My 21 Personal Productivity Discoveries in 2010

2011-01-01T11:35:00.009-05:00

It's January 1, 2011 and as I read all the reflective posts, it has me thinking of the new technology that I experienced in 2010. Before we all forget what a big year it was and dive right into 2011 innovations, let's take a moment to reflect.

For me, it was all about the Social Web, Mobility, and of course, the iPad (the only device to make the list). What an impact these innovations have had! I'm not an analyst or a app vendor, and have no agenda to promote any particular technology. I simply seek out technology to simplify my connection with others and to make my day more productive .

2010 was a year of experimenting for this "Early Adopter". This day, one year ago, I had no idea I would discover and incorporate the following into my regular routine. I bet many of these tools were (or maybe are) new to you as well. I'm sure there are some I missed and many that I have yet to discover. So please suggest more through comments or Tweets.

MyWi (iPhone hotspot)

Twitterrific twitter app

WTHashtag.com tweet archiving

Pbworks.com simple wiki

Google analytics stat tracking

Google reader RSS reader

Kindle on iPhone / iPad eReader

Socialcast community microblogging

Instapaper cloud based bookmarking

Goodreader PDF/PPT reader for iPad

Quora crowsourced Q or A

Posterous blogging

Barcamp unconference approach

Ustream personal broadcasting
Eventbrite event registration
iPad tablet
Angry birds timedraining game
Pulse RSS reader

Pandora personal radio

Foursquare location based service

Gowalla another take on location based services

OK, they are not all productive (Angry Birds, Foursquare and Gowalla) but those that aren't, do break new ground and are enjoyable (for a season, at least).

The really neat thing is you told me about all of these innovations. I learn about them by keeping up with the conversation on the Social Web. I'm sure I will think of others that I forgot. But just looking at this list of innovations I didn't even know about 12 months ago is a bit overwhelming.

I wonder if this pace of innovation will continue into 2011. I can only imagine what next year's list will look like on New Years Day, 2012. It's going to be a great ride. Let's take it together.

Is it Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business?

2010-12-30T08:24:00.016-05:00

During the Holiday break, I jumped into Quora, the growing crowdsourced Q&A site. If you have not given it a try yet, you should check if out. There are some sharp people there.

I could not resist when the question came up: What are the distinctions between Social Business & Enterprise 2.0?

My answer is posted here. but I figured, hey, this is worthy of a blog post. I hope you agree (about the blog post part.). This is my view as a practitioner / player in this space. There is no right or wrong answer since this field is quickly evolving, just lots of opinions. (you can read other answers here.) Therefore I respectfully submit mine.

Q. What are the distinctions between Social Business & Enterprise 2.o?

A. In my view Enterprise 2.0 involves social networking within a large enterprise. This includes a single profile of each employee, communties made up of those employees, and an activity stream tying it together (alerting colleagues to activities and events with those profiles and communities). Microblogging is another aspect of E2.0. #E20 is the twitter hashtag for Enterprise 2.0

In parallel, we are seeing other aspects of social media make it's mark (reputation monitoring and marketing through consumer channels such as Facebook, YouTube, flickr, twitter). #socialmedia is the common hashtag.

CRM systems are starting to expand to enable engaging with customers and partners in a meaningful dialog. This is commonly called Social CRM. #SocialCRM or #SCRM are common hashtags.

E2.0 activities evolve to include mixed communities made up of employees and external business partners. There are some camps that continue to call this Enterprise 2.0 and others that want to call it something else (external Collaboration for example).

Social Business pulls it all together to convey any business use of social media or web 2.0 activities and practices. Just like E-Business pulled it all together in the early e-commerce days, I believe Social Business pulls it all together for corporate web 2.0 applications today. #SocBiz is the hashtag.

These terms are used mostly by vendors and practitioners. Most corporate leaders prefer to speak in business terms referring to professional networking, collaboration, or online communities, among other generic terms. I seldom hear the terms Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business among business executives.

Do you have another view? Please tweet it or post below in the comments. Or just let me know what you think on twitter at @jimworth .

Your eNewsletter is Old School

2010-12-17T10:20:00.015-05:00

I still get many e-newsletters in my inbox. Many of them have very good content, but I am finding that I get more and more frustrated with the lack of social integration. I receive something interesting, I want share it with my network. If I were "old school", I would just forward that email to all my friends...yuck.

So I look for the share features that are starting to emerge. I received one recently that had a link to share it on twitter. I clicked it and got a twitter window with a very cryptic preformatted tweet (ugly headline, shortened URL, and a hashtag ad for the newsletter platform)...double yuck.

It got me thinking...as I look at these e-newsletters that were all the rage just 5 years ago, it is painfully obvious to me that it is time for these companies to "get social". I'd like to share some strategy and tactics just in case you find your e-marketing method "old school" and are longing for a way to break out and get social in 2011.

Here is my short list of recommendations. These were created with an event management company in mind, but probably translate well to anyone using e-mail marketing to promote their organization.

Leverage your e-newsletter into a ongoing twitter campaign
Build a community with your audience using a microblogging tool (maybe from Socialcast) and a community platform (maybe from Jive)
Update your website and communications with various "share" features (see this example blog)
Utilize YouTube and Flickr to share the excitement of your events with your audience
Encourage blogging from and about your events
Add a twitter hashtag to every event and promote it in all literature and communications. Register it on what the hashtag
Utilize a wiki to crowd source and then archive tweets, blogposts, and user generated content about your events

If you would like to expand on these recommendations, share example best practices, or just add you 2 cents, please tweet it or comment below.

Let's make a resolution to drop the "old school" e-marketing tactics of the 2000s and move full speed into the "new school" social media tactics of the 2010s.

None of Us is as Smart as All of Us

2010-12-04T07:18:00.012-05:00

It's a quote from "One Minute Manager", Ken Blanchard. It's also the perfect title for this short blog post.

I've been gathering tweet logs and blog posts from several conferences over the past year. I do a little work to set the stage and the crowd adds content. It's a great model.

If you have any interest in the latest thinking in Social Media / Social Business / Enterprise 2.0 / Crowdsourcing and the like, I think you will find this wiki valuable. It provides full social web coverage for two Enterprise 2.o conferences, the European Enterprise 2.0 Summit, Defrag 2010, and a local Barcamp that I am very proud of helping to organize.

Check it out and make it better: E20 Wiki Workspace

(btw Look here if you want more witty crowdsourcing quotes.)

What's So Special About the iPad

2010-11-14T20:35:00.006-05:00

I admit, I am a bit of a gadget freak. In my suburban home shared by two parents and two kids, we have technology throughout: 3 laptops, 3 desktops, 2 iPhones, 3 iPods, Wii, Roku, Blue-ray, Netflix, screaming fast FIOS broadband (internet, tv, and telephone service), whole house DVR, and a house and yard covered by WIFI.

Yes, I also bought an iPad and have been using it now for 7 months. I find myself regularly hearing from friends and pundits who point out the limitations and say "I'll wait for the next generation.". In the meantime, I'm enjoying what I have today. Let me try to explain the appeal. I bet it will ring true to other early adopters and fellow iPad owners.

Instant on - it is on and connected to the web before my ROM BIOS boot message appears on my laptop
All day battery life - my laptop batteries are so bad, we keep them plugged in all day and whenever we use them. The iPad runs often for 2 or more days without a recharge.
Portability - with the standard Apple protective case it is the size of a small book. No cords, no accessories. I just grab it and go.
Continuous and free software updates - Apple and app providers update OS and application software for free as soon as it becomes available. This keeps everything at the latest release level and cleans out bugs quickly. (Microsoft could learn a lesson here)
Social Web and email- Twitter, facebook, websites, email, blogs, it handles it all very well.
Video and audio - I have yet to see a better device for pulling it all together: YouTube, Netflix, digital movies, iPod, podcasts.
Games - my kids (and I) love the great games. The display, the touch interface, the speakers: they all work swimmingly together.

Say what you will about the lack of flash support, the difficulty typing, and the lack of ability to build complex spreadsheets and presentations. I'm tired of doing that stuff anyway. All I really want to do is simple short communications (tweets, email, blog posts and the like) and then quickly experience what the web has to offer in video, news, entertainment, and updates from my social circle. For that, the iPad is just right.

Thank You Apple for, yet again, not giving incremental improvements, but rather for dreaming up a new experience that we all wanted but never thought to ask for.

Twitter, The Activity Stream of the Social Web

2010-11-07T07:58:00.005-05:00

I've been on Twitter almost 2 years now and have some observations. I love the transparency and the "Work Out Loud" attitude it promotes. It truly is the nervous system of the Social Web.

Let me mention some basics first and then dig into it a little on how I think this simple tool is revolutionizing interactions on the web. First of all the basics:

A tweet is a 140 character statement that is sent to followers.
A retweet (RT) is when a follower finds that interesting and sends it on to his/her followers
A hashtag (#E20 for example) is a user generated tag that helps identify a topic in the tweet.
One can search on a hashtag to find all recent tweets on a particular topic.
When you first sign up to twitter, you have no followers, and you follow no one...boring
In time, a new tweeter begins to follow interesting people and others begin to find the tweeter interesting and follow him/her.
Once you get to a critical mass (50 or so followers and following you) it starts to get interesting
A direct message (DM) is a private tweet delivered to one person
A @message is a semi-private tweet that is delivered to that one person, but visible only to all who follow both of you that are conversing. You compose the message by beginning with @ followed by the recepient's twitter name.
A tweeter's full tweet stream (except for DMs) is available for public viewing from the tweeter's profile.
Many people use twitter.com for their tweet platform, but most use some other twitter "client" or program on their desktop, laptop, or mobile device. There are dozens of good twitter clients available for free.
Tweets can contain a link to interesting content. Most often the URL is shortened by an automated URL shortener (remember, we are working with just 140 characters here)

The beauty of Twitter is the simplicity. When you put this all together, you have a constant ebb and flow of conversation. The conversations create community. Communities create relationships, and Relationships create lasting value. Let me give you some examples.

The transparency of twitter allows one to "overhear" a conversation. When two people you follow are messaging each other, you can monitor the conversation in your main twitter stream. It's interesting, you learn that a relationship exists just by witnessing the tweets.

Sometimes it's like "high school", you can see who is hanging with the "cool people". For example if there is a "rock star" on a particular subject (call him Jerry) and I see he and a good friend of mine (call him John) are having a back and forth conversation, I can watch and say "Hey, I didn't know John knew Jerry that well". John must be a "rock star" too. My opinion of John is elevated and I suddenly see him in a different light.

The openness of the platform makes it easy to join the conversation. Simply enter you thoughts with the twitter IDs of John and Jerry at the beginning and just like that, you are in the conversation as well. I think that is one of the great appeals of twitter, the ability to have meaningful converations and begin meaningful relationships with just a set of short messages.

Another great thing is the ability to join in and stay out at your convenience. Since the tweets are all captured, you can pick up the conversation later and not miss a thing. However, with the steady stream of tweets, many are missed. That's alright. If someone wants to catch your attention, they just need to enter your twitter name into a point for you and it shows in your @mentions stream.

Finally, there is nothing like the "now" effect of twitter. Again, a "rock star" may be on line tweeting and if you reply immediately, it is likely he or she will see it before it gets lost in the long stream of tweets from other fans. There is nothing else like the accessibility of those tweeting. Generally if you see a new tweet, you can bet they are online right now and reading what comes their way. Yet another way to cultivate the conversation and begin to build a relationship.

I wonder what you have observed in the subtlety of the interactions and relationships you have built in Twitter. Tweet me @jimworth or add your comments below.

Lessons From the Crowd

2010-09-24T21:09:00.028-04:00

It was an amazing event. About 125 Social Media experts, novices, and curiosity seekers came out this past Monday for BarCamp Doylestown, an "Un Conference" on Emerging Social Business. It was great. The excitement and energy in the room was something we had only dreamed of. In fact one on-site tweeter summed it up aptly tweeting: "Presentations in the main room of #barcamp18901 are very much like twitter --many voices at once; easy to be drawn in another direction"

Rather than write about the event as many others have, I'd like to write about how the event came together. For those of us organizing it, I think it is safe to say, none (or maybe few) of us has ever been involved in anything quite like it.

But first, here are the lessons we learned:

It's all about losing control. A crowd organized project is about letting go and watching what a group of motivated people can do with a common goal and clear guidelines. In the right environment, the crowd will act productively in creative ways to meet that goal.
We work because we want to, an all volunteer team is the best.
Anyone can organize a meeting, but only as a last resort. We can work very effectively through transparent online information sharing using twitter and a wiki
"Work out loud" by default, sharing every idea and thought openly, and move to private messages only when absolutely necessary.
Skip the kickoff meeting, let the event kick itself off online, let relationships form, watch the group form, and watch it "gel" a little into the project
Let people volunteer and then hold them accountable for decisions and actions
Anyone can speak up when uncomfortable, listen to their suggestions
Anyone can act in the group's best interest and on the group's behalf. They can act on their own, or choose to gain consensus. It's their call.
Anyone can join. The group becomes self selecting and people rise and diminish based on their choices and preferences.
Spread the celebration for the victory to everyone in the crowd who contributed to the success.

If this piqued your interest, please read on for the context and how these lessons were learned.

Like a fire that starts from a tiny spark, this BarCamp started with a simple tweet

jimworth: Thinking we should plan a Doylestown social business "bar camp" unconf. Any ideas? @barrypeters @bsdalton @NealWiser ChuckHall @markmag

Within just a few hours, all 5 had answered back with comments like:

"I have been wondering about that, too"
"Happy to explore with everyone"
"I'm in"
"I am in we need a location and a date"
"Sounds great! I'll check out the link"

We agreed quickly on a hashtag because the tweets with the names of the organizers started getting unwieldy. We chose #barcamp18901 (for the local zip code) and started to tweet publically about our plans to organize the event. We put the hashtag in each tweet and the initial group and soon other organizers could monitor the conversation.

After a week, we decided to have a face to face planning meeting. We picked a Starbucks for its convenient location and it's free wifi. Still no email or phone calls had taken place. A few had met for lunches to talk about the ideas, but there was no formal organizing. The tweets with the #barcamp18901 hashtag continued.

Expanding on this transparent communication, we decided to set up a public wiki page to organize our thoughts. Using the incredibly powerful and simple wiki from pbworks.com, we created a planning page with a strawman proposal for the event. The page has gone though 84 edits since that initial strawman, but if you follow the link, you will see how we listed the ideas, crossed them off, improved them, documented tasks, asked questions, and generally kept all our notes out in the open for full visibility and transparency.

This transparency proved to be quite valuable. We were all busy people with jobs, families and other responsibilities. We had very little time to get together and even less time to meet up in person. Throughout the day on our iPhones, Droids, and laptops, we monitored the #barcamp18901 hashtag and went to the wiki page to organize our thoughts.

One week after that first tweet, we were meeting at Starbucks at 7am for the first of three face-to-face meetings, a timeslot that soon gained the nickname of "the new noon". It seems we all enjoyed getting together early before the start of our day.

With iPads in hand, we went over the wiki notes, we captured new notes, and then updated with wiki later that day. We all had our assignments, and began to take them on, crossing them off on the wiki as we made progress. A few got started on the venue, others set up the Posterous blog, Facebook page, Youtube channel, Flickr, twitter, and gmail accounts.

I took on the ticketing with a recommendation from a friend to use eventbrite.com. Wow, that was easy. I created an account and started to poke around the site to see how I would set up the event and the free ticketing. As I experimented, I quickly realized, it was all ready to go in just about 10 minutes. I kicked off the event, created an initial "Announcing BarCamp Doylestown" blog post and we were off and running.

For the next few weeks, we continued to tweet, update the wiki, and count the registrations as they trickled in. We promoted the event through the @BCdoylestown twitter account and then through retweets from the organizers. It came together very quickly and by mid August, we decided to meet again and see how it was going. Back to Starbucks at "the new noon" and this time we picked up a few new organizers. Sponsors were beginning to appear and it was coming together. @markmag suggested we update the registration site to ask a few extra questions as the attendees registered. So we started gathering an interesting fact about each attendee, and also asked if they would like to lead a session and if so, on what topic.

More promotion followed, we moved to email lists, linked in connections, and more tweets and retweets. Something snapped by Labor Day and on some days registrations were coming in as many as 5-10 per day. We began to get worried that it would sell out 3 weeks before the event and started wondering if we should raise the attendee limit from 160 to 180. We had picked the magic number of 160 based on the advice of @markmag and @the_spinmd. They said we should register 2x the number of attendees we wanted. The logic was based on their past experience with Barcamps in Philly where usually only 1/2 the number registered showed up when the price was "free". We were wondering, given all the excitement, that maybe we would get better than the anticipated turnout.

We continued to promote, tweet and organize the meeting in the public eye on twitter and the wiki. We shared the password so each of the organizers had the ability to post on our channels. Several people posted on posterous, several on twitter, and one even set up a LinkedIn group.

On Sept 7, just 2 weeks before the event, we had our final planning meeting. It was then that we started organizing the topics and learned that @mannyrechani had secured Newsgator as the food sponsor. We already had a venue sponsor, a soft drink sponsor, and a snack sponsor, but were really looking for someone with deeper pockets to cover the local catering that @nickeyh had worked out. Newsgator came forward and for about the price of a coast-to-coast airline ticket, covered the food and locked up the prime sponsor position for the event.

For the final week, we worked to organize the topics. We used the wiki again to build on the topics. We asked potential presenters to fill out more details on the wiki (not a big response rate), and also asked participants to help us pick the better topics through an online voting tool donated by AppFusions. That proved to work nicely in learning what was of most interest to the attendees, but in reality, the best voting is onsite at the barcamp itself.

@chuckhall printed up large poster pages of the topics and we created a voting process (on the wiki again) that all the organizers agreed to. We broke down and had a few conference calls for final logistics and declared on Friday afternoon that we were ready to go for the Monday event.

How did it go? Check out the site for full coverage.

For all of us, it was a rewarding and educational experience. Specifically I learned:

You can lead without having any authority
"Working out loud" is a very effective way for the crowd to self organize
Transparency and Trust can enable anything
Viral online promotion works
Free online tools are mature and powerful enough for effective collaboration: eventbrite.com, twitter.com, posterous.com, appfusions.com, youtube.com, linkedin.com, gmail and google docs just to name a few
The four pillars of Social Business were lived out: Trust, Transparency, Authenticity, and Collaboration

If you want to see or shape where we go next, just join the conversation by monitoring #barcamp18901 for BarCamp Doylestown.

Thanks to the organizing crowd: @bsdalton @ChuckHall @jimworth @NealWiser @MRubillo @MannyRechani @markmag @cariofthevalley @the_spinmd @Nickeyh @barrypeters there is a new understanding and appreciation of Emerging Social Business right here in our town of Doylestown, PA.

2000 Tweets

2010-08-01T20:40:00.008-04:00

Yes, I’m closing in on 2000 tweets. It’s at 1997 as I write this and I didn’t want to just let the milestone pass with no recognition.

It’s really not such a big deal. I’ve seen many others with many more tweets. And just saying a lot is not really a reason for celebration, but somehow, I think hitting this milestone says something about how I’ve embraced the social web, how I’ve opened up and decided it’s OK to share many of my thoughts, ideas, and opinions on a very public stage. In fact, I understand all my 2000 tweets along with the other 20 Billion out there are being archived in the Library of Congress. It would make the first time, to my knowledge, that the Library of Congress cared anything about what I had to say. That’s for sure.

So, what goes into 2000 tweets? I remember my first tweet, something like this. “I just set up my twitter account, now what.” I remember the response I got from an experienced friend. “Tweet”, he said.

And tweet, I have. It started as a trickle. I found about a dozen friends to follow. I kept my tweets protected. I would only accept followers if I knew them. I continued this way for about 7 months then something snapped. I had about 40 followers at this time and was starting to get engaged in a global crowd working on enterprise social media applications. I was beginning to have some interesting conversations and meeting like-minded people all over the country and soon all over the world. I'm not sure why, but all of a sudden, I decided to open it up. I remember another friend said (through a tweet), go for it. You’re in for a fun ride.

So what have I tweeted about? Funny, they come and go so fast, I don’t really remember most of them. There are a few however, that seem to endure my memory. Most of them are interesting observations that my “following” crowd has sent my way. I find many of them useful and add my 20 character analysis and send them on. Most of these have something to do with new developments in Social Media, Social Networking, Enterprise 2.0, and Social Business in general. I’ve found so much information in blogs, articles, surveys and such that have enriched my understanding of this quickly changing landscape.

Then there are the Apple tweets. You see, I got an iPhone about 16 months ago and have been enamored with advances in mobile technology ever since. I followed closely the announcement and then the hoopla around the release of the iPad (ending up buying mine on day 1 from the tweet peer pressure). Then there was the leak on the iPhone 4. I remember tweeting something like “I wonder of this was an accident, or some marketing ploy by Steve Jobs”. I continue to listen to and chime in on the iPhone vs. Android debate. I don’t really care which is best, but rather enjoy the advances brought on by competition.

Then there was the Google Buzz debacle. I remember ranting about how the introduction of Google Buzz exposed the private mailing list of the early adopters. In some cases revealing secrets that were best kept secret. That was the time that @jowyang tweeted that Google Buzz was like an old girlfriend. I chimed in that it was more “like a spited girlfriend who shared all your secrets with the world”. That one got lots of mileage and all of a sudden Jeremiah and I were sharing the RT rounds. It was nice, if only for a brief few days, to be in the same company Mr. Owyang.

I started noticing some of my peeps tweeting about their political views, their religious views, and many topics that would be too sensitive for the office, or even for happy hour. But I found that they tweeted nonetheless and the community embraced their openness, sometimes agreed, but never chided anyone for truly speaking their mind.

I thought, heck, I should share some ideas too. That’s when the Sunday Series started. So, 31 of my 2000 tweets have been links to weekly mp3 messages, sharing the simplicity of the Christian Gospel. They go out each Sunday Morning as a nice diversion from the normal flow of tweets. Hopefully, the messages have spoken to someone with what they needed to hear at that moment.

Then, there have been the foursquare tweets. I really enjoy experimenting with location based technology. Foursquare and Gowalla came along at just the right time, making it fun to tell the world where you are and what you are doing there. I don’t tweet all my foursquare updates, but each of my 30 or so mayorships have been tweeted, along with the subsequent oustings. It’s harmless fun.

The conference tweets have been engaging. Taking part in the “back channel” during a webcast or a conference session is invigorating for a wise cracker like me. In the past, I had to whisper to a friend and snicker. But now with twitter, I can make my comments and often times they are picked up in real time. I remember a webinar when it moved from education to sales talk. I tweeted “Uh Oh, I hope this doesn’t turn into a sales pitch”. That got retweeted a few times with the webinar hash tag, and I think it may have turned the conversation away from where it was going.

I got the bright idea to gather a listing of blog posts from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference. Using the wiki from pbworks.com, I set up a framework and tweeted it with the conference hashtag. Within 1 week, over 25 people from the conference contributed and it has grown into a very comprehensive summary of the conference.

Then there was the tweet that started a conference. I said something like "Thinking we should plan a Doylestown social business "barcamp" unconf. Any Ideas?" That one picked up very quickly and now we are off and planning our first Social Business Un-conference for this coming September.

One of the funniest exchanges was just after I launched a big software system at work. I remember tweeting “I just released my largest software project of my career, on time and on budget”. It got bounced from a friend in Spain to a new friend in Australia. It was a Monday evening for me, and a Tuesday morning for him. I remember he said, something cute about me limiting scope or something, I chimed back with a few explanations and we had a quick round the world conversation right there. That’s the power of Twitter.

Then there was the day that we were all waiting for the Tsunami to hit Hawaii. I remember tweeting a friend on Maui and asking him how things were as they prepared for the waves to hit. We stayed in touch, I followed a few “breaking news” feeds and thankfully saw that it became a non-event for the 50^th state.

So, 2000 tweets have come and gone. It is my contribution to the global conversation. 2000 tweets could become a 150 page manuscript. That’s a lot of writing, but mainly, it’s just an extension to the conversations I have every day. What’s great is that these conversations are reaching much farther and returning much more than I could in my limited daily conversations. I think the best thing about 2000 tweets is the many new relationships that have been built. Literally hundreds of new people are part of my social and professional circle now due to twitter. Many of which, I have met face to face and then continue to keep the conversation alive through the tweets. There is something special about having a crowd that I can always talk with and will always be willing to listen.

I’m looking forward now to see where the conversation will go next.

Coming to Grips with a Social Way of Working

2010-07-16T11:18:00.014-04:00

Over the past years, I've come out of my shell. Having been in IT and also online for many years (CompuServe and before), I've come to really embrace my online activities and a new way of working and interacting with peers, colleagues, and friends.

I tweeted about it recently referencing this HBR blog post: 10 Reasons to Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life.

(note: originally posted July 16, 2010, and refreshed Dec 4, 2010)

It's true, my online life and my off line life are merging and the online aspect makes my off line aspect more fulfilling. Enough of that "navel gazing", lets talk about what has changed in my daily activities.

Mobile is the "Tipping Point"
First of all, I do everything on my iPhone or iPad. I was a blackberry user for many years and watched my social circle expand greatly when I switched to the iPhone 3Gs about 14 months ago. With a powerful mobile device, the 10 items listed below can be done very frequently throughout the day. Without a "smartphone", you're limited to finding time to fire up a computer on a wired LAN connection or locating a wifi hot spot and laptop to engage in social media. It's just too much trouble.

News is Targeted to me
1. Twitter is my central information source. I've stopped watching local and national news. I've stopped reading newspapers. Occasionally, I read the local page in my local paper, but other than that, most everything I see, I've already seen in twitter. I'm selective who I follow and look for people who have something to say that I find interesting and engaging.
2. I get my weather from my iPhone / iPad Weather Bug app. Often, I don't even check the thermometer outside when I wake up. I just check the Weather Bug app on my iPhone for the current temp and forecast.

Communities are "Where it's at"
3. I use Socialcast and Yammer all the time for several important communities. At work, it's part of a large network of 4000+ employees all around the world. Within a peer group (20Adoption Council) Socialcast is the platform for very active conversation throughout the day with others who think like me all over the world. Google Groups and Yahoo Groups along with a couple of private email lists still feel like communities, but they are losing importance.

Email is much less important
4. I use gmail for my personal mail and make a point to keep it completely separate from my company mail. My day job mailbox is squeaky clean with only company business. Anything personal goes to gmail.
5. Most of my gmail is made up of lingering e-newsletters and notifications of what is happening on my social sites. Very little actual 1:1 communication happens there any more. When it does, I often miss it
6. I text a lot, but still keep it within my current 200 message monthly limit

Professional and Personal Networking
7. I make a point to connect with nearly every professional I meet on Linked In. I started there about 4 years ago and have seen that network recently exceed 850 connections.
8. Facebook is great and I use it regularly to keep up with non professional contacts (family, friends, people who my family would join for dinner, you get it). I keep that very personal and generally closed. I have about 100 "friends" there, and stay away from the high school reunion crowd. That was a long time ago...Why would I want to share my personal life with them now?

Location Based Enjoyment
9. I enjoy experimenting with Foursquare and Gowalla right now, but limit my "friends" there to people I'm comfortable with knowing my whereabouts.

Central Document storage with Crowd based Authoring
10. I've been using Google Groups, Google Docs, and Yahoo Groups for some time now for controlled online sharing. These are good, but I see them being replaced by crowd friendly tools. I'm really liking my recent experience with a consumer wiki tool from PBWorks. I have found it very useful for crowdsourcing links. See what I mean at my E20 Wiki Workspace.

There you have the basics. The reality is most of my communication throughout the day is on my iPhone or iPad through Twitter, Socialcast, gmail, Foursquare and Facebook. I check into my corporate email now on my iPad, but am not tied to it like I am my personal feeds. I find I am more and more comfortable sharing my thoughts and ideas with trusted colleagues. This steady stream of information can be intimidating, but I've come to a point where it's OK to miss something even if it was a message addressed directly to me. If it is important, it will come again.

Willing to Foot My Own Technology Bill
It may go unsaid, but I'll say it. My personal technology and productivity tools are much more powerful and flexible than those provided by my corporate employer (or any corporate employer for that matter). I don't mind. In fact I prefer it that way. I like the flexibility and much prefer using my own tools just like I enjoy driving my own car and dressing in my own clothes when I come to work.

What do you think? Does this resonate with you? Please share this post (RT) and add your comments below.

Enterprise 2.0 Conference Recaps

2010-07-06T20:03:00.005-04:00

One thing I learned at the recent E2.0 Conference in Boston was the power of a simple wiki. I started by trying to compile a list of interesting blog posts and tweeters from the conference. I started with a short list and decided to try the pbworks.com wiki engine. I posted a skeleton list and then tweeted it. With in 5 days it had grown to become a very compressive list that still grows. Please visit and contribute more. Thanks to the power of the crowd for creating such a great list!

Link here

2 Months with my iPad

2010-05-31T08:44:00.007-04:00

Welcome to all the new Global iPad owners.

Here is what I've learned since I got mine as an impulse buy on the US launch Day, April 3.

My favorite apps / ways of working:

Twitterrific for tweets
Weatherbug for weather
Instapaper for saving tweets
Amazon Kindle app for my books
Facebook on the safari browser
Yammer on the browser or iPhone app
Google maps
Gmail as the default mail client
Netflix for watching the instant queue
Planets for sky gazing

What are your favorites?