Planet Enterprise 2.0

The Noisy Channel: Heading to SIGIR

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:53:06 -0400

Hope to see lots of you at SIGIR! Sounds like there are already great tutorials underway. I’ll get there tonight for the reception, where they will announce the triennial Gerald Salton Award winner (who will deliver tomorrow’s opening keynote). I’m looking forward to the paper, poster, and demo presentations, and of course to the Industry Track on Wednesday. Unfortunately, I have to return to my day job on Thursday, so I won’t be able to attend any of the workshops.

If you’re attending, I hope you’ll find me and say hi–after over a year of blogging, there are far too many people I’ve gotten to know but never met face to face! If you’re not attending, then I encourage you to follow the coverage on Twitter. Since there seems to be some confusion about which hashtag to use, I suggest you follow sigir OR sigir09 OR sigir2009 (yes, there is sometimes value to favoring recall). I promise to blog about it when I get back, but I hope you’ll forgive me if The Noisy Channel is a bit quiet over the next few days.

Jeff's Search Engine Caffe: Off to SIGIR 2009

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:45:00 -0400

I'm off to SIGIR 2009. I'm volunteering with registration, so stop this afternoon or tomorrow morning to say hi.

Look for SIGIR coverage soon!

/Message: Kindle License Agreement, Annotated

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 08:10:31 -0400

I finally found the Kindle license agreement, via an InformationWeek piece, and wondered if there was anything in it that suggested that they have users' acceptance of the right to dekindle materials.

Here it is, with my annotations embedded in square brackets.

Amazon Kindle: License Agreement and Terms of Use
Last updated: February 9, 2009

THIS IS AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN YOU AND AMAZON DIGITAL SERVICES, INC. (WITH ITS AFFILIATES, "AMAZON" OR "WE"). PLEASE READ THIS LICENSE AGREEMENT AND TERMS OF USE, AND ALL RULES AND POLICIES FOR THE KINDLE DEVICE AND SERVICES RELATED TO THE DEVICE (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY RULES OR USAGE PROVISIONS SPECIFIED ON THE AMAZON.COM WEBSITE OR THE KINDLE STORE, AND THE AMAZON.COM PRIVACY NOTICE LOCATED AT WWW.AMAZON.COM/PRIVACY (COLLECTIVELY, THIS "AGREEMENT") BEFORE USING THE KINDLE DEVICE. BY USING THE KINDLE DEVICE, YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT. IF YOU DO NOT ACCEPT THE TERMS OF THIS AGREEMENT, YOU MAY RETURN THE KINDLE DEVICE AND ASSOCIATED SOFTWARE (WITH ALL ORIGINAL PACKAGING) WITHIN THIRTY (30) DAYS OF PURCHASE FOR A REFUND OF ITS PURCHASE PRICE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE KINDLE RETURN POLICY.

1. The Device and Related Services
2. Wireless Connectivity
3. Digital Content
4. Software
5. General

1. The Device and Related Services

The Kindle Device (the "Device") is a portable electronic reading device that utilizes wireless connectivity to enable users to shop for, download, browse, and read books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and other materials, all subject to the terms and conditions of this Agreement. The "Service" means the wireless connectivity, provision of digital content, software and support, and other services and support that Amazon provides Device users.

2. Wireless Connectivity

General. Amazon provides wireless connectivity free of charge to you for certain content shopping and downloading services on your Device. You may be charged a fee for wireless connectivity for your use of other wireless services on your Device, such as Web browsing and downloading of personal files, should you elect to use those services. We will maintain a list of current fees for such services in the Kindle Store. Amazon reserves the right to discontinue wireless connectivity at any time or to otherwise change the terms for wireless connectivity at any time, including, but not limited to (a) limiting the number and size of data files that may be transferred using wireless connectivity and (b) changing the amount and terms applicable for wireless connectivity charges.

Coverage and Service Interruptions. You acknowledge that if your Device is located in any area without applicable wireless connectivity, you may not be able to use some or all elements of the wireless services. We are not responsible for the unavailability of wireless service or any interruptions of wireless connectivity.

Your Conduct. You agree you will use the wireless connectivity provided by Amazon only in connection with Services Amazon provides for the Device. You may not use the wireless connectivity for any other purpose.

[Note that Amazon does not say that they will limit themselves to using the wireless connectivity for 'only these purposes'.]

3. Digital Content

The Kindle Store. The Kindle Store enables you to download, display and use on your Device a variety of digitized electronic content, such as books, subscriptions to magazines, newspapers, journals and other periodicals, blogs, RSS feeds, and other digital content, as determined by Amazon from time to time (individually and collectively, "Digital Content").

Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

[Grants the rights to users to have a permanent copy of materials paid for. Hmmm. That seems unequivocal.]

Restrictions. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.

[This is where the materials are clearly not 'owned' in the conventional sense, since anything I own I should be able to sell, rent, trade, etc.]

Subscriptions. The following applies with respect to Digital Content made available to you on a subscription basis, including, but not limited to, electronic newspapers, magazines, journals and other periodicals (collectively, "Periodicals"): (i) you may request cancellation of your subscription by following the cancellation instructions in the Kindle Store; (ii) we may terminate a subscription at our discretion without notice, for example, if a Periodical is no longer available; (iii) if we terminate a subscription in advance of the end of its term, we will give you a prorated refund; (iv) we reserve the right to change subscription terms and fees from time to time, effective as of the beginning of the next term; and (v) taxes may apply to subscription fees and will be added if applicable.

[Hmmm. By one interpretation of events Amazon was treating the books they dekindled as being subscriptions. But this doesn't say anything about deleting old copies.]

4. Software

Definitions. The following terms apply to the Device and to (a) all software (and the media on which such software is distributed) of Amazon or third parties that is pre-installed on the Device at time of purchase or that Amazon provides as updates/upgrades to the pre-installed software (collectively, the "Device Software"), unless you agree to other terms as part of an update/upgrade process; and (b) any printed, on-line or other electronic documentation for such software (the "Documentation"). As used in this Agreement, "Software" means, collectively, the Device Software and Documentation.

Use of the Device Software. You may use the Device Software only on the Device. You may not separate any individual component of the Device Software for use on another device or computer, may not transfer it for use on another device or use it, or any portion of it, over a network and may not sell, rent, lease, lend, distribute or sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Software in whole or in part.

No Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, Disassembly or Circumvention. You may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Device or the Software, whether in whole or in part, create any derivative works from or of the Software, or bypass, modify, defeat or tamper with or circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Device or Software or any mechanisms operatively linked to the Software, including, but not limited to, augmenting or substituting any digital rights management functionality of the Device or Software.

Automatic Updates. In order to keep your Software up-to-date, Amazon may automatically provide your Device with updates/upgrades to the Software.

Export Regulations. You agree to comply with all export and re-export restrictions and regulations of the Department of Commerce and other United States agencies and authorities, and not to transfer, or encourage, assist or authorize the transfer of the Software to a prohibited country or otherwise in violation of any such restrictions or regulations.

Government End Users. The Software is a "Commercial item" as that term is defined at 48 C.F.R. § 2.101, consisting of "Commercial Computer Software" and "Commercial Computer Software Documentation," as such terms are used in 48 C.F.R. §12.212 or 48 C.F.R. § 227.7202, as applicable. Consistent with these provisions, the Software is being licensed to U.S. Government end users (a) only as a Commercial item and (b) with only those rights as are granted to all other end users pursuant to the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

5. General

No Illegal Use and Reservation of Rights. You may not use the Device, the Service or the Digital Content for any illegal purpose. You acknowledge that the sale of the Device to you does not transfer to you title to or ownership of any intellectual property rights of Amazon or its suppliers. All of the Software is licensed, not sold, and such license is non-exclusive.

[They stipulate that the Kindle user does not acquire intellectual property rights of materials they buy, or of the software,and the software is only licensed not sold to the user. In this way Amazon has the right to decommission the software so that a user can't read their books?]

Information Received. The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service. Information we receive is subject to the Amazon.com Privacy Notice.

[They mention 'annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings' that users can make in their materials, and note that they can be backed up. Nowhere do they suggest that such annotations can be deleted by Amazon, as happened with the dekindling incident.]

Patents. The Device and/or methods used in association with the Device may be covered by one or more patents or pending patent applications.

Changes to Service. Amazon reserves the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such right.

[The big squiggle paragragh: they can change anything at any time, and Amazon is not liable to the users if it does so. My sense is that this in unenforceable, since the basic premise of the service is that customers are buying permanent -- although limited -- rights to the enjoyment of the books they purchase and own.]

Termination. Your rights under this Agreement will automatically terminate without notice from Amazon if you fail to comply with any term of this Agreement. In case of such termination, you must cease all use of the Software and Amazon may immediately revoke your access to the Service or to Digital Content without notice to you and without refund of any fees. Amazon's failure to insist upon or enforce your strict compliance with this Agreement will not constitute a waiver of any of its rights.

[Not applicable, since the dekindled users were not failing to comply with the agreement, or at least Amazon has not claimed they have.]

Disclaimer of Warranties. YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT USE OF THE SERVICE, DEVICE, DIGITAL CONTENT AND SOFTWARE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. EXCEPT FOR THE ONE-YEAR LIMITED WARRANTY, THE SERVICE, DEVICE, DIGITAL CONTENT AND SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITH ALL FAULTS AND WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND AND AMAZON AND ITS SUPPLIERS AND LICENSORS DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, QUIET ENJOYMENT AND NON-INFRINGEMENT OF THIRD-PARTY RIGHTS. NO ORAL OR WRITTEN INFORMATION OR ADVICE GIVEN BY AMAZON OR AN AUTHORIZED REPRESENTATIVE OF AMAZON SHALL CREATE A WARRANTY. THE LAWS OF CERTAIN JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE DISCLAIMER OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES. IF THESE LAWS APPLY TO YOU, SOME OR ALL OF THE ABOVE DISCLAIMERS, EXCLUSIONS OR LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU, AND YOU MAY HAVE ADDITIONAL RIGHTS.

Limitation of Liability. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY LAW, NEITHER AMAZON NOR ITS SUPPLIERS OR LICENSORS SHALL BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES FOR BREACH OF ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, BREACH OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR ANY OTHER LEGAL THEORY RELATED TO THE SERVICE, DEVICE, DIGITAL CONTENT OR SOFTWARE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ANY DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA OR USE OF THE DEVICE OR SOFTWARE OR ANY ASSOCIATED PRODUCT, EVEN IF AMAZON HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. IN ANY CASE, AMAZON'S AGGREGATE LIABILITY UNDER THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID FOR THE DEVICE. THE LAWS OF CERTAIN JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES. IF THESE LAWS APPLY TO YOU, SOME OR ALL OF THE ABOVE EXCLUSIONS OR LIMITATIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU, AND YOU MAY HAVE ADDITIONAL RIGHTS.

Washington Law Applies. The laws of the state of Washington, without regard to principles of conflict of laws, will govern this Agreement and any dispute of any sort that might arise between you and Amazon.

Disputes. ANY DISPUTE ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING IN ANYWAY TO THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE SUBMITTED TO CONFIDENTIAL ARBITRATION IN SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, EXCEPT THAT, TO THE EXTENT YOU HAVE IN ANY MANNER VIOLATED OR THREATENED TO VIOLATE AMAZON'S INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS, AMAZON MAY SEEK INJUNCTIVE OR OTHER APPROPRIATE RELIEF IN ANY STATE OR FEDERAL COURT IN THE STATE OF WASHINGTON, AND YOU CONSENT TO EXCLUSIVE JURISDICTION AND VENUE IN SUCH COURTS. The arbitrator's award shall be binding and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent jurisdiction. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, no arbitration under this Agreement shall be joined to an arbitration involving any other party subject to this Agreement, whether through class arbitration proceedings or otherwise.

Severability. If any term or condition of this Agreement shall be deemed invalid, void, or for any reason unenforceable, that part shall be deemed severable and shall not affect the validity and enforceability of any remaining term or condition.

Amendment. Amazon reserves the right to amend any of the terms of this Agreement at its sole discretion by posting the revised terms on the Kindle Store or the Amazon.com website. Your continued use of the Device and Software after the effective date of any such amendment shall be deemed your agreement to be bound by such amendment.

[More weaseling]

Contact Information. For communications concerning this Agreement, you may contact Amazon by writing to Amazon.com, Attn: Legal Department, 1200 12th Avenue South, Suite 1200, Seattle, WA, 98144-2734.

So, a close reading by a law-savvy lay person suggests that Amazon never stated that it had the rights to dekindle books or other materials once legally purchased or acquired through a subscription. In fact, Amazon never mentions that dekindling is possible.

While they do assert the rights to change all the terms of the agreement at will, it is unlikely that a court would support the notion that they could delete legally purchased materials, and especially users' annotations, which are clearly owned freely by the users.

So, the likelihood is that Amazon will offer some settlement to those who were harmed by this. I am betting hundreds of dollars per person. And those who lost extensive notes are likely to be able to claim higher damages.

This is an enormous mess for Bezos and Amazon, and the license agreement is not going to protect them from their misdeeds.

The various folks interviewed by IW writer Thomas Claburn are more measured, and suggest that Amazon may have more rights than I do. We'll see.

Wikinomics The Blog: Social network analysis: Cool tools from cool dudes

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 22:53:28 -0400

Okay, so neither Charles Armstrong nor Vinicius Vacanti are really “dudes” in the Jeff Bridges, “that rug really held the room together” sense of the word – in fact, far from it. Armstrong is the founder and CEO of Trampoline Systems, a respected thought leader, and Cambridge alumni. Vacanti is a former investment banker, Harvard math grad, and serial entrepreneur. We were fortunate to get some time to talk to both Charles and Vincius recently and I though Wikinomics readers might be interested in some of the cool projects they are working on.

SONAR technology from Trampoline systems visually maps out the informal network within an organization and helps people connect to experts and resources on-demand. Personally, I think any company serious about collaboration should have something like this installed. Check out the video for a guided tour from Charles himself:

UnHub is a social network aggregator (inspired by the Skittles social network marketing campaign). The UnHub Personal Profile Bar is a quick easy way for individuals or small businesses to consolidate existing facets of their digital selves or establish a brand online using free social networking tools. The newer edition to UnHub is the Personal Link Shortener – a neat way to stamp your brand on a link and track the social network buzz around links that you share. Given the Twitter-generated surge in link shortening, I think this is an awesome way to add value to traditional link shortening services that typically mask provenance. Check out the preview below:

SocialMedia Talk: First Geocast Using IncaX From Omnia Live. SocialMedia Goodness

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:07:49 -0400

Body:

As I mentioned in my previous post yesterday Verizon released an update to the Samsung Omnia Windows Mobile phone. The update unlocked the GPS in the device and I have been anxious to try a little geocasting using IncaX. Previously I was only able to demonstrate using their Enterprise app for NetBooks or with no audio via my i760. With that in mind I hit the road to get some new tennis shoes with my son and broke out the phone and fired up the IncaX application. It worked great! I had the video settings on my camera at their absolutely lowest resolution and the quality is still really good. The Omnia has a 5 megapixel camera which really makes a difference in media capture scenarios. Well you can check it out for yourself on my geocasting page here on my blog. It is the latest post dated July 18 and is located in the upper left hand side of the choices. Simply click on it and the watch it play. You can also toggle the views between Road and Ariel for the map. Under the video is a clickable element for show/hide of chart. As I drive you will see the tracking taking place.

Well now that I have this working I am super excited about being able to start doing some of those geocasting scenarios I have wanted to do for so long that highlight real world business use of socialmedia technology. Right now though I am off to grab a bite to eat. Have a great rest of the weekend and check out IncaX geocasting in action then load it up on your phone and get started yourself!

Technorati Tags: IncaX,Geocasting,Windows Mobile,Mobility,Microsoft,Samsung,Verizon,GPS,Omnia,Gannotti,SocialMedia,Technology

Published: 7/18/2009 4:07 PM

infoarch: Free, the continuing debate

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:44:51 -0400

Some time ago I pointed to an interesting article in Wired by Chris Anderson titled "Free! Why $0.00 is the future of business". Now Anderson published his book on this subject. And, of course, there's lots of talk about its contents.

I still have to read the book. But I wanted to point to 3 posts about this book that I enjoyed. One is a review by Malcolm Gladwell. Two is Anderson's response to that review. And three, ReadWriteWeb's review.

I still find Anderson's thesis very interesting and thought-provoking. But Gladwell's question is my question too: What about the plants and the power lines? Lots will be free, mainly digital stuff. But all the other stuff, what about that?

UPDATED: Mashable has a great piece on this topic too.

---

If You Read This and Like It, Tweet This to your Followers:

Free, the continuing debate http://twurl.nl/fiuzjf

Tags van Technorati: free,business,business model

Ross Mayfield's Weblog: Enterprise Microblogging Presentation

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:44:57 -0400

A Twitter for your Intranet

View more documents from ross.

SocialMedia Talk: DD Coffee, SocialMedia Samurai Live, Verizon Omnia Update With GPS Unlocking, and Xbox 360 Blogging

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:24:08 -0400

Body:

Morning all. It’s another Saturday here and a few updates I wanted to let you know about before I start my day.

First off, Dunkin Doughnuts coffee made at home does NOT taste like the from the Dunkin Doughnuts store. Bought a bag yesterday, made a fresh pot this morning, and…. those folks work some secret magic over there. I’m just saying…. (BTW I LOVE getting coffee at DD ;-)

Monday night I am going to give a whirl at hosting a Live Samurai session session via UStream. Kickoff time is 5:30pm. I have been asked by a number of folks about hosting a live Q&A session where people can fire off their questions to me so this is it. To make it easier to access I have a UStream page here on my blog site (click here to see). I am going to open up with a short 15 minute minute presentation on Internal Enterprise blogging and then open up the forum to questions. You will notice on the page there is an area for submitting questions via a chat like box. Please be aware that in order to actually submit the questions you will need to register with UStream (it will prompt you for your user name and password first time submitting a question. If there seems to be enough interest in doing these live sessions then I will look at setting up an alternate way of doing the Q&A using custom lists (I have actually helped set this up in the past at several client organizations and it works quite well. As far as topics open for questions I am pretty much open to discussing anything from socialmedia, personal computing, hardware, software, sports, etc. I know that I have a lot of blog readers who are SharePoint proponents and I am certainly willing to discuss SharePoint as well. The only tow areas that really though I wont touch are development (I can discuss conceptually what can be done but I am more on architecture side and not a developer) and deep tech support. I temporarily pulled my Ask A Samurai section as it was becoming a SharePoint tech support forum and that is not what I am looking to provide here. So if you just want to talk tech, tech trends, best practices, etc. then see you here on Monday night at 5:30 pm eastern standard time.

In case you were not aware, and have a Verizon Samsung Omnia phone like myself yesterday Verizon released the official update. The update unlocks the GPS functionality of the phone and allows 3rd party apps to access its functionality without having to pay an additional monthly fee. I installed it on mine and by days end had successfully used it with Bing mobile maps application, IncaX, and Google Maps. If you do run the update please be aware that before using the GPS you will need to go in manually in to Settings > Phone > Services > GPS and in there change it from 911 only to Location On. Once you have set and saved this you will then need to do a soft reset of the phone. This will make the GPS function available to 3rd party applications and you can start experimenting with Geocasting with IncaX, location streaming with Qik, geotagging pictures, and more. Just be sure that you are outside as the GPS does need to have a clear view to the sky to lock in to satellites but it can be a lot of fun. While doing some online reading yesterday I also ran across a number of stories that indicated they would also be doing this for the HTC Diamond pro and several other Windows Mobile models and it should be a recurring theme for Windows Mobile phones moving forward which is great news. I do highly recommend giving Bing Mobile for Windows Mobile a try (its still a great app with info on gas, traffic and more even without GPS). You can learn more about it and grab it here.

Last thing I wanted to pass along is just for fun. Did you know that my Xbox 360 blogs? No, not me blogging about my Xbox, but my Xbox blogging about me and my gaming exploits (okay more it blogging about my son playing on it). Seriously, it seems everyone is blogging including machines. My Xbox has its own blog at http://360voice.gamerdna.com/blog.asp?tag=MasterG and it is pretty active in it’s commentary. On July 17th my Xbox 360 wrote:
“My power supply almost exploded! MasterG turned on the juice and we did some serious gaming! 5,025 points of total gamerscore is pretty good. Admit it. That is an improvement of 20 points over last time! He made some progress on Infinite Undiscovery finishing 2 achievements, and without even blinking! Ok, maybe he blinked once...”
Now how the heck can an Xbox blog? Well it is a pretty neat example of the magic of software couple with web services. Xbox 360 is hooked to Xbox Live. When I, or in this case my son, is logged in and playing, the Xbox supplies the service with raw data that is then exposed by some public APIs and then a service such as this blogging one uses an AI engine to look at the activity, or lack thereof (you should see what it starts saying when no one plays it for a while) and generates auto text complete with links to info. If you are a gamer you can grab one of these yourself and let your own Xbox start telling the world about you and your exploits, or is it Xploits? Check it out at http://360voice.gamerdna.com/

All right, gotta run. Need to try and decipher the magic by which those DD folks make their coffee so good. Either that or jump in the car and head down the street for a cup ;-)

Have a great weekend everyone and hope to see you for Samurai Live Monday night.

Ciao!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,SharePoint,SocialMedia,Gannotti,Samsung,Omnia,Verizon,Geocasting,Xbox,Blog,Technology

Quote of the Day:
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
--George Bernard Shaw

Published: 7/18/2009 8:24 AM

KnowledgeForward: A First Look at SharePoint 2010

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:48:22 -0400

The spigot on the information coming out of Microsoft about SharePoint 2010 was cranked up from a drip to a trickle on July 13th with the debut of the SharePoint 2010 web site. Microsoft has been promising to open it to a full-blown fire hose at the SharePoint Conference in October, but until then it’s worth going through what has been released. (there’s also an invitation-only technical preview).

First, before we get to features, there’s a new conceptual view. The old 2007 “SharePoint donut” got tons of usage since most everyone is at a loss to describe what SharePoint is without it. Sure, it’s a “collaboration server”, but what does it do? Well, let me whip out this diagram and walk through it …

Here’s my best guess so far on how the old donut maps to the new one. “Sites” is the most vague (statements like “Sites allows you to expand across environments” that describe capabilities rather than a definition). I think Sites is just a generic, catch-all bucket for anything involving creation of websites, so it overlaps with all the others.

Here are my takeaways from the main video (with marketing-speak omitted except where I found it interesting or telling). I’ll be clear where I’m injecting my own point of view by using [brackets], although the rest is paraphrased so what you see here is filtered through my own perspective. I encourage you to view the videos yourself as well.

Sharepoint 2010 Overview (Tom Rizzo)

Mentions how they are supporting all browsers (although he tellingly stumbles when trying to say “Safari” … )
Promises great strides in social computing
Went around the SharePoint 2010 donut:
- Sites
  - Sites are all about sharing information
  - Mentions a further push into extranets and internet sites
- Communities
  - Plans to support a hierarchical structure of communities
  - “Regardless of how they come together” [implies to me embracing end user creation and maintenance of their own communities rather than just enabling administrators to create communities]
- Content
  - People-centric, LOB-centric
  - “We’ve been Working hard to manage content from creation to disposition and destruction … ”
  - Will enhance ability of users to discover content
  - [our analysis of SharePoint 2007's enterprise content management showed weakness at the later stages of the process , so beefing up capabilites around disposition and discovery seem to show positive action from Microsoft to close the gap]
- Search
  - FAST will be combined with existing SharePoint search.
  - More investments have been made in uncovering hidden assets
  - People search will be (better) blended with search.
  - At 8:22 he says “You’ll be able to find rich people across your organization”. [I guess that's handy if Bill Gates works at your company and you need to borrow money for lunch]
  - There’s a plug for the business connectivity services (formerly business data catalog) in terms of searching structured data
- Insights
  - Combining the rest of SharePoint with the business intelligence stack. [not really any detail here, or nothing new to talk about]
- Composites
  - “Rapidly create dynamic bus solutions” [At the SharePoint conference in 2006, none other than Bill Gates said building composites is the #1 capability of SharePoint. If they're going to get away from the "portal" word which is increasingly watered down then this is a good choice. Composite applications encompasses portals, but also other important styles of web apps made from piece parts including any type of assembly of web services or RESTful services, mashups, or business process management]
Features shown in the demo
- User interface
  - The Office ribbon now shows up all over SharePoint and is removable, customizable, contextual
  - He showed live editing of text in a website, and as you mouse over different font sizes you get preview of fonts just like in Word 2007
  - He showed a very fat client-like resizing of images, adding a border, etc.
  - You can add Silverlight with an out of box Silverlight web part
  - There’s the ability to apply PowerPoint themes to sites (colors, fonts, etc.)
- Business connectivity
  - You’ll be able to put a Visio diagram directly in SP, and since Visio can have links to get live data from business systems that means live data too [neat!]
  - Forget BDC: it’s now BCS. There’s a new acronym: Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to replace the business data catalog (BDC)
  - Instead of just sites in SP designer 2010, it has lists, workflows, etc.
  - Also has an item in SP designer called “entities” for creating connections to bus data
  - Demoed a SQL connecter that auto-creates CRUD (create, read, update, delete)
  - You cal see a BCS data set in SharePoint and it looks like a list, but it’s a SQL database. Demoed filtering.
  - You can also click “edit item” and update the item. [I hope they improve the interface. It refreshes and fills the whole screen with a data dump of the row. Not at all like editing in a cell]
  - Demoed creating a new doc from SharePoint in Word which has a bunch of fields defined in BCS. You can select a customer name from the list and it fills in all the fields from that record in the document information panel
- Work with data in richer ways
  - Microsoft finally clarified that Groove (new name=SharePoint Workplace) is the rich client for SharePoint. [wow, that took a long time for something we knew was going to happen]
  - Workplace can sync info from a SharePoint site
  - Showed in SP workspace how he can edit info offline, and then synced back up by selecting “Connect to server” and “Sync supplier list”. [Not sure why its so manual. In Notes you don't have to hit "connect" then "sync". Maybe there are automated, scheduled options too that weren't shown. I hope so]
- Tom emphasized that these are just some of the features – not an exhaustive list.

SP 2010 for IT professional video (Richard Riley)

He mentioned on premise or as SaaS
Beta later this year, general availability 1st half of 2010
Goal is to scale up and out with high reliability [just as Bill Pray noted in his thoughts on Exchange 2010, it seems many of the administrative enhancements for SharePoint 2010 are to help it support SaaS rather than to just help current on premises installations]
[bookmark] IT professional productivity
- Central admin: he mentioned “easier to find” and ribbon UI [he didn't mention any actual functionality changes]
- There’s a best practice analyzer
  - It analyzes health, performance, and has reporting
  - Rules can regularly run and send pop ups with issues encountered. Admins can build rules and automatically apply fixes
  - There is a new logging database, extensible with custom data and custom reports
Scalable unified infrastructure
- Large lists will not hang the system anymore [yahoo!]
- The admin can set thresholds for how many rows max will be returned. And there’s a “happy hour” when you can get larger responses from queries.
Unattached content database recovery
- Admins can browse content in repositories, create an export, and upload to list
Flexible deployment
- You can detach a 2007 database and attach it to 2010
- When you migrate to 2010 it keeps UI the same, but you can select an option to switch user experiences

SP 2010 for Developer (Paul Andrew)

Developer productivity
- Paul talked about the Visual Studio 2010 SharePoint tools
- There is a new visual Web Part designer and team foundation server
- You can look at lists and other server items from the server explorer within VS without having to go to SharePoint
- Can specify deployment configuration such as a package WSP file that can include custom installation steps
- Demoed click and drag creation of a Web Part with a button that calls LINQ query
Rich platform
- There is the ability to use LINQ to access SharePoint lists including joins
- The new client object model can be used to run code on the client machine (.NET, Javascript, Silverlight)
- Paul also mentioned the Silverlight Web Part and business connectivity services
Flexible deployment
- Paul talked about solution deployment [but frankly I got distracted at this point and don't have notes here. I believe this is an attempt to address SP2007 weaknesses around staging from test to QA to production]

Data connectivity services

In the demos, DCS still showed as BDC in VS 2010 since it’s not finished yet
Paul showed how it supports creating methods for BCS CRUD
In SharePoint you can create an “external list” now, which means data from the BCS
There are new “list” menus in the ribbon bar in the SharePoint web UI
Demoed using Silverlight to fill a data grid with data from a SharePoint list. With Silverlight, it’s running on the client so things like sorting the list are done without calls back to the server

That’s a summary of what I took away from the latest information on SharePoint. At our SharePoint Workshop (SharePoint 2007: The Current Governance Nightmare—and Will It Get Better?) on July 28th at Catalyst we have added a module on what’s new in SharePoint 2010 that includes our statements on what we thought was missing from 2007. Seeing new stuff is great, but lining it up against the weaknesses in 2007 provides a better view of the progress being made. All said though, it’s still too early to stand up and applaud. There’s a lot more information left in the tank that has to trickle out first.

Posted in Catalyst09, collaboration, Composite Applications, Microsoft, Microsoft SharePoint, Office

Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: The Michael Arrington Matter - Oddly Together

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:16:00 -0400

A timely reality check from Joe Wilcox – read the full post

There has been quite the ethics flap over the last 72 hours or so about TechCrunch’s handling of leaked Twitter documents.

Bottom line: Michael Arrington was wrong to distribute any of the leaked material, which was stolen by a hacker. The posting of the documentation is unconscionable. There is no journalistic excuse, or justification for it. The disclosure:

Likely is legally negligent

Violates journalistic ethics

Discloses Twitter trade secrets

Probably interferes with a criminal investigation

Michael Arrington was a lawyer before becoming a blogger mogul. He should know the law. A lawyer and stolen documents go oddly together in a bad way.

The Michael Arrington Matter - Oddly Together

/Message: How Semantic Tools Fail Us

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:12:13 -0400

I was reading at the Zemanta blog about new ways to use that company's technologies, and I saw the following story:

The story is about Net News Daily's use of Zemanta. Fine. At the bottom the Zemanta guys are using their own technology to search for related stories, which would be fine if they were other stories about Zemanta use, or how Net News Daily and perhaps other media sites are using tools to help them. But instead we see three stories from Net News Daily on unrelated topics. (I thought the one entitled Site Update might have mentioned Zemanta, but it doesn't.)

This is why I am not generally using tools like this: they would have to work to the point where I don't have to monitor if the results are good or not, because otherwise it just creates make work for me.

/Message: Amazon DeKindles Orwell

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:41:44 -0400

In an amazingly Orwellian twist, Amazon has dekindled George Orwell's works -- 1984 and Animal Farm -- from Kindle "owners" worldwide. David Pogue gets the inherent wrongness involved, but doesn't go far enough into this post-industrial accident, perhaps:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned. 1984A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.
But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

But actually its not like that at all, since it would a/ require hundreds of thousands of thieves to break into hundreds of thousands of homes, physically, and then b/ find, and ultimately c/ steal the books. This is logisitically impossible, and even if it were possible, it couldn't be done by one person hitting the delete key on some queen bee server at Amazon. And, of course, d/ this would be a felony, or better, a hundred thousand felonies.

Amazon sort of explains their so-called thinking:

[from Mysterious George Orwell refunds - kindle Discussion Forum]
The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

Since when does pulling a title from a digital store lead to it disappearing from the shelves of those that bought it in the past?

If Amazon markets the Kindle device and the digital content it delivers as a rental service, well, fine. And if the "owners" of these devices go along with it, cool.

But the reality is somewhat more sinister, since the marketing hype is that Kindle is 'your library', which is generally conceived of as comprising the books I possess, not the ones I get from the library:

[from Amazon Website]
Carry Your Library in 10.2 Ounces

Holds Over 1,500 Books

The ultimate travel companion, Kindle weighs 10.2 ounces and holds more than 1,500 books. No longer pick and choose which books fit in your carry-on. Now you can always have your entire library with you.

Automatic Library Backup: Download Your Books Anytime for Free

A copy of every book you purchased from the Kindle Store is backed up online at Amazon.com in case you ever need to download it again. You can wirelessly re-download books for free any time. This allows you to make room for new titles on your Kindle, knowing that Amazon is storing your personal library of Kindle books. We even back up your last page read and annotations, so you'll never lose those, either. Think of it as a bookshelf in your attic--even though you don't see it, you know your books are there.

Unless, of course, Amazon hits the kill switch.

We've known from the start that Amazon's approach to digital books is all about money, not high fidelity allegiance to the nature of books. You can't loan a Kindle book to a friend, for example, or sell one. It interrupts all the wonderful social fabric that surrounds books and reading.

In a way, we shouldn't be too surprised at the newest infraction of our e-dreams about the Kindle. After all, we've known from the start that Amazon's approach to digital books is all about money, not high fidelity allegiance to the nature of books. You can't loan a Kindle book to a friend, for example, or sell one. It interrupts all the wonderful social fabric that surrounds books and reading.

And, this was their choice, of course. No book "buyer" ever said, "Please free me of the distractions of loaning my books to others: what a bother!" No one ever said they'd like to buy a book they cannot sell.

You can make a case that Amazon had no choice, that the publishers wouldn't go along otherwise. This is just digital music and Apple's iTunes all over again. Although I don't recall Apple ever deleting my Massive Attack discography. And, unlike Kindle, iTunes allows me to bring in my own digital content: I can rip music from CDs, and those tracks are unencrypted. And iTunes at least allows me to share even my encrypted music with five computers -- like my family or close friends. Not a great social model there, but it's at least something.

Amazon's world is hermetically sealed by comparison.

What does this say about our rights? Can we sign away implied rights but agreeing to the small print of megacompanies' terms of use agreements? Apparently we can, at least until someone -- please? -- sues Amazon for this action.

And, since they have gone ahead and built this dekindling doomsday device, couldn't a repressive government use it to degauss questionable books? It goes beyond censorship, to the undoing of history. Our past purchases of books are erased.

A Cheney granted the Messianic control that he desires might have deleted every Paul Krugman or John Rawls book in existence. Or the Chinese politburo -- in a future China, bursting with Kindles -- might delete or block the sale of millions of titles. Would Amazon go along with that?

This is mere conjecture, I grant you. But tools like this have a way of being used, just as Google and Yahoo have worked with the Chinese government in the past, to block searches and track keywords.

The brightest light can make the deepest shadow, and just so, the Web and its myriad shiny objects form a Gahan Wilson silhouette, casting a spectre of frightening possibilities. What Pogue and other take as irony -- the dekindling of Orwell -- portends a darker future than they might want to consider.

Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: O'Brien: What Is Google? - San Jose Mercury News

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:16:00 -0400

A timely reality check; read the full article

The homepage aside, though, Google increasingly feels like a company running in a thousand directions at once. Over the past year, it has released a steady stream of high-profile products that seem to have little or no relation to the core identity expressed on its corporate homepage: "Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

The problem is that in expanding into so many different areas — productivity applications, mobile operating system, a Web browser — that the identity of Google itself has become muddled.

No doubt, this all follows some clear logic from inside the Googleplex. But from the outside, it's getting harder every day to articulate what Google is. Is it a Web company? A software company? Something else entirely?

O'Brien: What Is Google? - San Jose Mercury News

Peter O'Kelly's Reality Check: Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle Devices - NYTimes.com

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:10:00 -0400

I suspect Amazon will address the policy and issue refunds, but I also suspect Orwell would have gotten a chuckle from the incident

People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle Devices - NYTimes.com

The FASTForward Blog: E2.0 Blogcast: July 17, 2009

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 22:55:04 -0400

Included in this survey of relevant Enterprise 2.0 posts are a couple of riffs off of recent pieces of mine (title links clickable).

Will Enterprise 2.0 Change Corporate Culture or Reinvent the Silos?

Poul J. Hebsgaard (@hebsgaard) takes a spin on one of my posts to recap his impressions from the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston. I particularly appreciate the facts he summarizes from an AIIM report that takes a hard look at email practices.

I look forward to his next post “about the role of organizational silos”.

For Positive Enterprise 2.0 ROI, Build IT/HR Partnership

Ethan Yarbrough (@ethany) suggests that one way to weave stronger horizontal threads through an organization would be to team up with HR. He backs up the idea with some thoughts from Mike Gotta (@MikeG514). If it weren’t for Mike’s clarifying differentiation between strategic vs. administrative HR’s, I’d have a problem with it. Such distinctions are HUGE.

Ethan says:

“Enterprise 2.0 initiatives must be fully integrated into the company’s strategic goals to succeed — they can’t be add-ons or afterthoughts”

I’d take it a step further to suggest that they have to be ubiquitous: a seamless part of the fabric of doing work.

He also talks about being included in the process. If done right, the whole thing evolves with EVERYONE involved in the process. It just has to start with the right soil and a few good seeds. Which is why it cannot be a classic ‘project’ with an end date.

Unfortunately Ethan, one of the biggest issues that I keep screaming about is that the really necessary skills in human factors and human interaction design are not anywhere to be found in either HR or Marketing (championing the real needs of employees and customers). Those are the real champions needed to head up these efforts, if you can find them (many organizations have none).

Indeed, the main reason I abandoned pursuit of an advanced degree in Organizational Design was that they were all too HR-focused and never had any true focus on Design, or any intent to fundamentally change cultures and operations to focus on the true needs of employees and customers.

Lessons From “Why Software Sucks” About Terminology

Gil Yehuda (@gyehuda) takes issue with the term adoption (which I totally agree with) by saying:

I’ll state boldly: Clients do not want to adopt Enterprise 2.0. They want to succeed with their business goals — which may tangentially include adopting Enterprise 2.0 practices and tools.

Enterprise 2.0…A Revolution of Knowledge in Three Parts

While this is from March (and I’m trying raise awareness of current posts), it was a current post that brought the three phenomenal presentations in this piece to my attention (apologies if this is ‘old’ for you). They visually tell a very compelling story about Enterprise 2.0 in very simple terms.

It’s only because of the quality and clarity of the messages that I’m willing to forgive their use of the phrase of which I dare not speak. So do me a favor, just blank out all the references to KM as you review the pieces — all references to “knowledge”, however are perfectly relevant.

Great job @frankx, @sih, @hut1315. Clearly 3 heads ARE better than one.

The Red Couch

A collection of video interviews from the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference, includes Mike Gotta (@MikeG214), Oliver Marks (@olivermarks), Dion Hinchcliffe (@DHinchcliffe), Gregory Lloyd (@roundtrip), Steve Wylie (@swylie650), Nate Nash (@natenash203), and others.

The video quality is great and the questions help draw out some great answers from the interviewees. This is a great way to get to know some of the best voices contributing to the evolution and growth of the Enterprise 2.0 industry. Each <5min. long.

The Open Road: Open-source legal education comes to OSCON

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:40:00 -0400

If you're an open-source developer, OSCON is the closest you'll come to Mecca, whatever your religious persuasion. But OSCON has been branching out in the past few years, and this year, for the first time, it includes a a one-day, free seminar focusing on significant legal issues, called "Understanding Legal Issues in Open Source."

Given the revived interest in open-source licensing and the impact it can have on one's project or business, this strikes me as a "must attend" event.

The seminar isn't part of the official OSCON proceedings, but is free and open to all, and is right next door at the San Jose Marriott (room Willow Glen 1)on Wednesday, July 22, and is being organized by OSCON chair Allison Randal along with Mark Radcliffe of DLA Piper and the Open Source Initiative.

The sessions include pertinent topics like "Understanding Venture Capital Investments in Open Source Projects," "Choosing a License: Ensuring that Your Intellectual Property Strategy Matches Your Goals," "Basic Legal Issues for Open Source Projects," and "Demystifying GPL Enforcement: Using the Law To Uphold Copyleft."

Speakers include Vicky Lee, DLA Piper; Josh Stein, Draper Fisher & Jurvetson; Mark Gorenberg, Hummer Winblad; Vivek Mehra, August Capital; Larry Rosen, Rosenlaw & Einschlag; Bradley Kuhn, President, Software Freedom Conservancy; Aaron Williamson, Software Freedom Law Center; and Larry Augustin, CEO, SugarCRM.

In my experience negotiating contracts to license open-source software, it's clear to me that more education like this is needed for developers, lawyers, business executives, and others in the wider open-source community. If you're anywhere near San Jose on Wednesday, you really should consider attending this one-day legal seminar.

Collaborative Thinking: Top U.S. CEOs Social Media No-Shows - SmartPlanet

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:43:02 -0400

Thanks to Cydni Tetro via twitter (@cydtetro). A study by web site UberCEO.com reveals that an appalling two out of a hundred of 100 America’s top CEOs have Twitter accounts (Warren Buffet and Proctor & Gamble’s Alan Lafley). Thirteen have... Mike Gotta

Collaborative Thinking: Top U.S. CEOs Social Media No-Shows - SmartPlanet

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:43:02 -0400

Thanks to Cydni Tetro via twitter (@cydtetro).

A study by web site UberCEO.com reveals that an appalling two out of a hundred of 100 America’s top CEOs have Twitter accounts (Warren Buffet and Proctor & Gamble’s Alan Lafley). Thirteen have LinkedIn profiles, but only three of those have 10 or more connections. A mere 19 have Facebook pages. Not one has a blog.
.....

Fortune 100 CEOs and Social Media
View more documents from Sharon Barclay.

Top U.S. CEOs Social Media No-Shows - SmartPlanet

The Noisy Channel: In Defense Of Recall

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:08:12 -0400

It’s not everyday that you see an essay in SIGIR Forum entitled “Against Recall”. Well, to be fair, the full title is “Against Recall: Is it Persistence, Cardinality, Density, Coverage, or Totality?” In it Justin Zobel, Alistair Moffat, and Laurence Park, all researchers at the University of Melbourne, conclude that “the use of recall as a measure of the effectiveness of ranked querying is indefensible.”

It’s a well-written and well-argued essay, and I think the authors at least have it half-right. I agree with their claim that, while precision dominates quantitative analysis of search effectiveness in the research literature, the expressed concerns about recall tend to be more qualitative. Part of the problem, as they note, is that recall is much harder to evaluate than precision (assuming the Cranfield perspective that the relevance of a document to a query is objective).

The authors propose a variety of alternate measures that, in their view, are more useful than recall and are actually what authors really mean when they allude to recall. The most interesting of these, in my view, is what they call “totality”. Indeed, I thought the authors were addressing me personally when they wrote:

It is usual for certain “high recall applications” to be cited to rebut suggestions that recall is of little importance. Examples that are routinely given include searching for precedents in legal cases; searching for medical research papers with results that relate to a particular question arising in clinical practice; and searching to recover a set of previously observed documents.

Yup, I’m listening. They continue:

While we agree that these are plausible search tasks, we dispute that they are ones in which recall provides an appropriate measurement scale. We argue that what distinguishes these scenarios is that the retrieval requirement is binary: the user seeks total recall, and will be (quite probably) equally dissatisfied by any approach that leaves any documents unfound. In such a situation, obtaining (say) 90% recall rather than a mere 80% recall is of no comfort to the searcher, since it is the unretrieved documents that are of greatest concern to them, rather than the retrieved ones.

Whoa there, that’s quite a leap! Like total precision, total recall is certainly an aspiration (and a great Arnie flick), but not a requirement. There are lots of information retreival applications where false negatives matter a lot to us a lot more than false positives–notably in medicine, intelligence, and law. But often what is binary for us is not whether we find all of the “relevant” documents for each individual query–and here I use the scare quotes to assert the subjectivity and malleability of relevance–but rather whether or not we ultimately resolve our overall information need.

Let me use a concrete example from my own personal experience. When my wife was pregnant, she had gestational diabetes. She treated it through diet, and up through week 36 or so things were fine (modulo the trauma of a Halloween without candy). And then one of her doctors made an off-hand allusion to the risk of shoulder dystocia. She came home and told me this, and of course we spent the next several hours online trying to learn more. We had a very specific question: should we opt for a Cesarean section?

I can tell you that no search engine I used was particuarly helpful in making this decision. I was hoping there might be analysis out there comparing the risks of shoulder dystocia with the risks associated with a Cesarean, particularly for women who have gestational diabetes. I couldn’t find any. But worse, I had no idea if there was helpful information out there, and I had no idea when to stop looking. Ultimately we took our chances, and everything turned out great–no shoulder dystocia, no Cesarean, and a beautiful, healthy baby and mother. But it would have been nice to feel that our decision was informed, rather than a nerve-wracking coin toss.

Let’s abstract from this concrete example and consider what I characterize as the information availability problem, where the information seeker faces uncertainty as to whether the information of interest is available at all. The natural evaluation measures associated with information availability are the correctness of the outcome (does the user correctly conclude whether the information of interest is available?); efficiency, i.e., the user’s time or labor expenditure; and the user’s confidence in the outcome.

It’s worth noting that recall is not on the list. But neither is precision. We’re trying to measure the effectiveness of information seeking at a task level, not a query level. But it’s pretty easy to see how precision and recall fit into this scenario. Precision at a query level helps most with improving effeciency at a task level, while recall helps improve correctness of outcome. Finally, perceived recall should help inspire user confidence in the outcome.

To circle back to the essay, I said that the authors were at least half right. They criticize the usefulness of recall for measuring ranked retrieval, and I think they have a point there–ranked retrieval inherently is more about precision than recall. Recall is much more useful as a set retrieval measure. The authors also note that “the idea that a single search will be used to find all relevant documents is simplistic.”

Indeed, I’d go beyond the authors and assert, straight from the HCIR gospel, that the idea that a single search will be used to fully address an information seeking problem is simplistic. But that assumption is the rut where most information retrieval research is stuck. The authors make legitimate points about the problems of recall as a measure, but I think they are missing the big picture. They do cite Tefko Saracevic; perhaps they should look more at his communication-based framework for thinking about relevance in the information seeking process.

Jon Udell: Late July in Toronto: DemoCamp and Science 2.0

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:06:27 -0400

On Tuesday July 28 I’ll be at the Toronto DemoCamp. I’m looking forward to meeting the designers, developers, and developers who’ll be there, seeing what you’re working on, and showing you what I’m working on.

The following day I’ll be speaking at a Science 2.0 event organized by my friend Greg Wilson. Here are the forward-thinking scientists I’ll be joining:

Titus Brown: Choosing Infrastructure and Testing Tools for Scientific Software Projects
Cameron Neylon: A Web Native Research Record: Applying the Best of the Web to the Lab Notebook
Michael Nielsen: Doing Science in the Open: How Online Tools are Changing Scientific Discovery
David Rich: Using “Desktop” Languages for Big Problems
Victoria Stodden: How Computational Science is Changing the Scientific Method

I am not a scientest, nor do I play one on TV, so why me? Because back in 2000, Greg commissioned me to write a report entitled Internet Groupware for Scientific Collaboration. Greg was then working with the Los Alamos National Laboratory on ways to help scientists make better use of the tools of computation as well as the methods of online collaboration. I had recently finished my book Practical Internet Groupware, I was exploring what we would now call the Web 2.0 landscape, and I was thinking and writing a lot about how these open and loosely-coupled modes of communication could enable the sort of collaboration at the core of science (and other kinds of academic endeavors) in powerful new ways.

Nearly a decade later, that vision is becoming a reality. I’m really excited to meet these folks, whose adventures I’ve been following through their blogs, and hear about their experiences at the forefront of what I believe will be a new golden age of science.

In my own talk, I’ll review how own current project tackles the challenge of social information management, and aims to democratize the computational way of thinking that enables us to wire the web.

Blog :: Headshift: links for 2009-07-17

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:03:34 -0400

Wikinomics The Blog: SchoolTube: Kids explain their passion to technology

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:57:53 -0400

Earlier this month, nGenera announced a partnership with the Consortium of School Networking (CoSN) with the goal of researching the strategic use of Web 2.0 in classrooms to improve teaching and learning.

While browsing the CoSN website (which, by the way, is loaded with resources for educators looking to bring technology into their schools), I came across a really great video called “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn“.

The video itself is simple, interviewing a handful of young people about the impact of technology on their lives. What’s amazing is some of the insight in their answers.

Here are some of my favourite quotes:

“If I didn’t have computers, I would say a lot of my hobbies that make up most of my time, I wouldn’t have. Because, well, I learned Japanese, and I learned a lot of that through the Internet.”

“That’s the cool thing about technology. You can change things whenever you want.”

“When you have access to everything, you learn how to know yourself better because you are forced to decide what to use and what not to use.”

“What we’re doing in gaming - coordination and communication - is very similar to what we’re doing at school. In the game, we have to talk to each other, we have to coordinate what we’re going to do in order to make sure that we do it well.”

And my personal favourite:

“I would say that being able to experiment with technology, is really what makes it technology. If people didn’t sit there and experiment with test tubes back in the days of Newton, nothing would have happened. It’s paving the way for us to move forward as a species and a civilization.”

The video can be seen here.

CMS Report: Mailbag: ocPortal

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:36:32 -0400

During the past couple months I've had a number of email exchanges from Chris and Allen regarding their PHP based CMS, ocPortal. Their company recently relaunched ocPortal under an open source license in hopes of growing their user base. Both gentleman are very enthusiastic about ocPortal and have a strong desire to see more community involvement with their CMS.

In one of those emails, Chris had something to say about ocPortal's move to open source.

I've been following you on Twitter for a while and it was good to see you commenting on my blog post recently. I'd like to see if we can work with you to get some more ocPortal coverage on CMS report - we've got a lot to say and offer, and everyone who comments on our product gives really glowing reviews. I really want to get our project out of the obscurity it's always suffered; it's always a downer to read about things other groups do if we've done it already and not had news of it leave our community. From my personal perspective I feel we should really be up with the most popular CMS's, as we are ahead of them in about every category except community size. We started out commercial but are now OSS - I think in our initial years people weren't motivated to advocate us much because of that.

In a few other emails from Chris, he also discussed some of the frustrations with getting open source ocPortal some attention while the IT media is often focused on the bigger open source projects. How does a small project compete against the bigger CMS projects such as Drupal, Joomla!, and Wordpress? I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know ocPortal deserves a chance.

In the coming months we'll focus on ocPortal for some of our stories. The next time our CMS Focus page gets a refresh, you can expect ocPortal to be in our Top 30 list. That also means you can expect a CMS or two that we're less enthusiastic about off the list.

The Open Road: Open by default, but subject to interpretation

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:23:00 -0400

Red Hat marketing guru Chris Grams posits a simple but powerful key to Red Hat's strategy: default to open. It's not new to Red Hat--Tim O'Reilly's analogue is the "architecture of participation"--but it has apparently influenced everything from product design to office layouts at Red Hat.

In a nutshell, it means:

...[R]ather than starting from a point where you choose what to share, you start from a point where you chose what not to share.

You begin sharing by default.

It's a good principle for any company, open or not. It's the same principle I hear from a wide variety of open-source companies today, including those that describe their business models as "Open Core." The first impulse is always to open source: holding anything back must clear a number of hurdles.

It seems to be working in accelerating adoption of open source, presumably because open source's transparency and ease of access makes adoption easy. Carol Rizzo, former CTO for Kaiser Permanente, suggests that "average Fortune 500 companies are using more than 100 open-source projects each." And those are just the ones they're tracking.

It also works on the development side, though a debate has resurfaced over the ideal way to encourage openness and adoption. A longtime GPL supporter, I've found myself increasingly in the Apache camp over the past year.

My reason follows Benjamin Black's excellent post on the topic:

...[T]he goal of the GPL and its variants...[is to act] as a virus to force the release of ever more source. The GPL serves to rigidly control what you can and cannot do with software covered by it, and is thus the license equivalent of digital rights management.

This leads to a related problem. The GPL produces, in practice, a two-tiered structure dividing those who control a software project from those who merely contribute to it. Those in the former group are free to create a dual-license: those who want to use the software for non-commercial purposes can do so freely, but those wanting to use the software commercially must pay. The latter group cannot do this, regardless of how much they may have contributed to the project....

When the GPL is abused like this, as it is more and more frequently, the most obvious difference between it and the permissive licenses is a matter of who decides who gets paid. Under the GPL, that control rests only with the project owner, just like content DRM. Under a permissive license, anyone can decide.

The GPL is basically proprietary software with the intent to control through openness rather than opacity. The result is largely the same.

I used to like this because, as I once wrote in Open Sources 2.0 (PDF here), as a vendor I wanted this control:

What we thought was a software development methodology may have far more importance as a business strategy that undercuts competitors while driving down costs and shifting control to buyers. In such a world, those who understand and leverage open source commodification (or escape it) will thrive - everyone else will be marginalized into economic oblivion. Commodification, the highest stage of capitalism; open source, the highest stage of software.

Years later, I'm surprised by how consistent my thinking has been on this (right or wrong - you choose). The GPL is great for control, but if it's community you want, Apache may be the better bet because, following Grams' post, it may be "more open by default."

Glyn Moody offers an excellent defense of the GPL, but the primary thing that Moody misses, and that Richard Stallman and other free-software advocates miss, is Black's critical point about control over who gets paid.

This isn't their concern, and that's fair. But it is the concern of just about everyone else that has to make a living selling software or services around it, which is why you find no businesses of any significant scale that depend upon monetizing GPL software directly. (Even Red Hat doesn't count - it sells a subscription to a closed binary of otherwise open-source software, much of it GPL.)

"Open by default" is absolutely the right strategy for software, in my view. But how different people interpret it will be highly variable. And while I'm leaning toward Apache, I'm grateful that my views can dovetail with the GPL crowd the vast majority of the time. We share a commitment to openness. We just interpret it differently.

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SocialMedia Talk: IncaX Windows Mobile Geocasting Meets Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:05:28 -0400

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Many of you know that I am a huge fan of IncaX and their geocasting technology. The IncaX solution streams video from a Windows Mobile device as well as geolocation information from the devices onboard GPS, then captures and relays that data in real time as well as records it, and mashes it all up in a Silverlight web interface that combines the video, any data as well as Microsoft Virtual Earth. It is just plain flat out cool but with tons of real world business applications around physical location inspection, emergency responder situations, tourism, etc. (don’t even get me started about possible uses for archeological digs, and other expeditions).

Well this past week Microsoft held their worldwide partner conference and it seems that IncaX and the conference had a synergistic moment ;-) Check it out via the link below then Check out the IncaX solution and get the free download for your Windows Mobile device today and start geocasting!!

Technorati Tags: IncaX,Microsoft,Geocasting,Mobility,Windows Mobile,SocialMedia,Gannotti,Technology

Category: Mashups;Mobile;Multimedia Tools;SocialMedia

Published: 7/17/2009 7:55 AM

Attachments: http://socialmedia.mikegannotti.com/Lists/Posts/Attachments/175/IncaXPartner_3_0ADA8D66.jpg