MiramarMike - Blog

Technology changes have a dramatic affect on people and therefore groups of people be they communes, communities of corporations. Within the workplace the change from the "work place" IT environment to the "consumer" IT environment is one akin to boiling water and the frog. Not heard that analogy, here it is from Wikipedia : The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out. I am trying to get organisations and particularly IT Departments to see the change in "water temperature". Forrester Research have just released a report reaching the same conclusions: "Technology populism is driven by people's needs to interact," says Forrester analyst Matthew Brown. "Today's organisations are increasingly dominated by Generation Xers and Mill

Enterprise 2.0 ... Web 2.0 ... Recruitment 2.0 ... blah blah blah 2.0 ... it's done it's dash and most people have now raised their website expectations to demand that they "do" and not just "be". So, along with Ben , Charles , Josh , Richard (some time ago) and a growing band of merry techies I hearby officially drop the "2.0" moniker.

I'm gonna make three points: SaaS is thin to the max Web 2.0 is SaaS PLUS the Internet Enterprise 2.0 is "Web 2.0" within the organisation SaaS? "Software as a Service" 1 - SaaS is thin to the max. Software as a Service (SaaS) is software delivered via the browser (or some such "online client") following the following basic rules of playing: There is no software to install on the machine you're using There should be no assumptions made about what type of machine you're using There can be no expectation that the machine you're using can store anything more than is required to facilitate the current session I believe this is a return to the 'good' old days of dumb green screen terminals - just quicker, prettier and much glossier. I was gonna say 'easier' and 'friendlier' but hey, you can't compare eras in sport and you probably can't in computing and I remember my terminal doing me just fine at the time. Oh,

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During lunch at the wonderful "Engage Your Community" conference yesterday I sat down next to a lady that had the courage to admit, "I don't really understand what this 'Web 2.0' thing is that people are talking about!". My first reaction to her was that she was not alone (in fact she was one of a vast majority) AND that she shouldn't have to care about it. I then gave her my potted definition: The original Web was like a brochure and a place to go and read. Web2.o was originally a marketting phrase but has now come to describe web sites that let you DO something. A local example is Stuff (an online NZ newspaper site) was generally from the original web era with plenty of articles to read but that's about it. However TradeMe (a very popular New Zealand eBay equivalent) is "Web 2.0" because you can do things on it ... buy stuff. This seemed to make a difference for her and we could then talk about the "new sites" with a lot mo

Enterprise 2.0 To Become a $4.6 Billion Industry By 2013 - thank fvck for that, all I have to do is hang on until then and I'm rolling in it?!? A new report released today by Forrester Research is predicting that enterprise spending on Web 2.0 technologies is going to increase dramatically over the next five years. This increase will include more spending on social networking tools, mashups, and RSS, with the end result being a global enterprise market of $4.6 billion by the year 2013. I do like that they have a whole section of the post dedicated to the loving IT Department: Getting Past the I.T. Gatekeeper One of the main challenges of getting Web 2.0 into the enterprise will be getting past the gatekeepers of traditional I.T. Businesses have been showing interest in these new technologies, but, ironically, the interest comes from departments outside of I.T. Instead, it's the marketing department, R&D, and corporate communications pushing for the adoption of more Web 2

Web office applications: word processing, spreadsheets, email and calendars without installing one bit of software!" Here are the links you'll be looking for from the workshop: Welcome .. . (need to be an attendee with a login) Workshop info ... Microsoft Office v Google Apps - product names Other web services Fundamentals of Office 2.0 Where to get more information PS: Here's where all the workshop login names came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand%27s_Top_100_History_Makers Other stuff from the workshop Basic Information: Size requirements for Docs Google "actresses age" - Functions: Using GoogleLookup

Google Apps ... on-line word processing ... a slightly interesting "battle" between Google and Microsoft ... !? ... who, apart from those with shares or have their status/job entangled to one or the other, gives a stuff really ? If this was about who can make pretty words on a computer then I wouldn't even bother you with it. The writing of words into something that can then be printed or even, heavens above, retrieved later to be changed and then printed again isn't the point. I use a gazzillion 'editors' for doing just that - a list of those I can remember in 30 seconds: GMail (home) / Outlook (clients) email editor for creating my emails Google Calendar (home) / Outlook (clients) editor for editing the description of my events Blogger editor for creating my blog posts just like this Text Editor on my Ubuntu machine for editing little text files I need Notepad on any Windows machine for editing little text files I need Profile editors around the web to up

Will the Google revolution engulf IT departments? is the question posed by Jason Hiner: Gartner has embarked on a wide-reaching new study of Google and its potential impact on IT, enterprise businesses, and society in general in the coming years. On April 10 at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Las Vegas, Gartner Vice President Richard Hunter revealed some of the first data points from this study. The two most interesting points were: 1.) The best way to think of Google is as a disruptive technology. 2.) Disruptive technologies create big losers and big winners, and one of the biggest losers in the Google disruption could be traditional IT departments. My view - no, it won't. And not for the reasons that early commenter's on the article have listed - IP security or sudden application of charging for the services. It won't because it will be a quiet, unassuming and quite natural evolution of IT Departments . Of course there will be those that will be left by the w

The Wiki approach to complimenting other more traditional approaches to consultation with the New Zealand public seems to be gaining momentum within the NZ government. I suspect this is due to three factors: Great publicity that befell the Police Act Wiki (now closed, read all about it ) Work behind the scenes by Laura Sommer and her crew at the Online Participation Project (SSC) Some senior and passionate people advocating within many areas of the public sector This wiki is asking for contributions to the draft of its Digital Strategy 2.0 ( http://www.digitalstrategy.govt.nz/digital-strategy-2/ - as has been noted by some, use of naff Flash is probably not the way to go!) The wiki ( http:// wiki.digitalstrategy.govt.nz ) is good though. Is seeded with just enough information, is easy enough to use and they've allowed for discussions per page ... have at it people! Submissions on the new Digital Strategy close at 5pm, Monday May 12. Note: I signed up, received the email confir

With the Internet fast moving away from being the "the world's library" and towards "the world's information store" there is a new question to be answered - who do you trust? The question should be asked from two, interconnected points of view - trust, what is it from the : readers point of view authors point of view This post looks at the first, trust from the readers point of view, with the second being discussed next week. Let's start with a situation we all have been in - getting a book out of the local library. With a library you implicitly trust the content (books) you read. And by "trust" I do not mean "agree with" - I certainly don't agree with everything on the shelves in my local library :-) But why do we trust that the books are what they claim they are? Probably because the time and effort taken to get the ideas from the authors head and into a book in your local library is quite considerable. The effort, therefore,

The fine folk organising the Internet Identity barcamp and the Mobile barcamp have taken my suggestion on-board of combining them into one and now we have a cracking potential for cross pollination of ideas. But don't think that because you're into shiny hand-held gadgets you can't go because you'll have to listen to boring ID stuff - OR - because you want to understand more about Identity but don't think whizzo tools for mobile phones is your thing you shouldn't go. The two Barcamps are at the same place. They will be using the same facilities. They will be sharing pizza and beer (probably) They WILL NOT be forcing one voice on another. But most of all, remember that Barcamps are about participation and with you, me, everyone designing the conference schedule. Sign-up ( ID / Mobile ), get along and make the two days whatever you want it to be! The details: What: Internet Identity barcamp + Mobile barcamp When: Friday 25th - 1:00pm - 4:00pm Overview pr

Following on from the high intensity of the February event here in Wellington the fabulous Webstock team have decided to share the love and take the event around New Zealand. NOW is the time to sign-up to the following events: April Webstock Mini - Wellington - Tuesday 22 April Town Hall, 4:30pm-8:15pm+ ... BOOK May Andy Budd workshop - Auckland - Monday 5 May - BOOK Tantek Çelik workshop - Auckland - Tuesday 6 May - BOOK Andy Budd workshop - Wellington - Thursday 8 May - BOOK Tantek Çelik workshop - Wellington - Friday 9 May - BOOK Andy Budd workshop - Christchurch - Monday 12 May - BOOK Tantek Çelik workshop - Christchurch - Tuesday 13 May - BOOK Webstock Mini - Christchurch - Tuesday 13 May - BOOK June Garr Reynolds workshop - Auckland - Wednesday 25 June Garr Reynolds workshop - Auckland - Thursday 26 June Webstock Mini - Auckland - Thursday 26 June Garr Reynolds workshop - Wellington - Monday 30 June Garr Reynolds workshop - Wellington -

Internet Identity Barcamp The Internet Identity Barcamp is being held on the Weekend of the 26th April in Wellington, just prior to the Managing Identity in New Zealand conference being held at Te Papa. An OpenID devcamp is played for the Sunday. http://barcamp.org.nz/internet-identity Where: State Services Commission [100 Molesworth Street, Wellington - ZoomIn Map ~ Google Map ] When: Friday 25th April 1:00pm - 4:00 Pm, Overview presentations and session planning plus drinks at a local pub after. Saturday 26th April 9:30am - 6:00pm Open Sessions. Barcamp Auckland 2 Ludwig has just released the dates and sign-up details for the most excellent Auckland Barcamp ... http://bca.geek.nz When: 9am - 5pm, 12th July, 2008 Where: Botany Downs Secondary College [575 Chapel Rd, Auckland - ZoomIn map ~ Google Map ] More (all!) NZ Barcamp details at http://barcamp.org.nz/og

I am running a 75 minute workshop around the use of online document collaboration (using Google Docs as the example) at the conference, " Engage Your Community ": Using Blogs, YouTube and other Cool Tools to achieve your group’s goals The conference details : Waikato 2020 Communications Trust, a voluntary organisation dedicated to helping the community benefit from computer technologies, will hold a one-day conference, Engage Your Community: Using Blogs, YouTube and Other Cool Tools to Achieve Your Group’s Goals , on Tuesday, April 22, 2008. The conference, to be held in the Waikato Management School of the University of Waikato, Hamilton , will include a series of practical workshops led by experts and community group leaders who are currently using these tools. Sign-up online ...

[Updated] The ISO Standardisation of OOXML in 17 Easy Steps seems to be a good "non-Microsoft" view of the proceedings. Matthew (alongside others) also left an excellent counter argument to my views in the comments of this posting ----------- As I have stated previously , file storage standards are becoming a quaint footnote in electronic history. Despite Microsoft seemingly winning the protracted OOXML vs ODF standards war ( a report ) they have definitely lost the war ... and probably quite some time ago. Quiz - In regards to "storage format" - what does YouTube use, what does Yahoo! Mail use, what does Zoho Docs use, what does the Wii use, what does your local satellite provider use? I know, not your typical office applications as we sit here today but really, who believes it's all gonna be stored on each and everyones PC desktop (or, laughingly, on the company's network) in distinct, separate and silo'ed forms like this in, ooooh say 5 years? The

More details on what next once I get back to the PC ... But - I am resigning because of musical differences. What I do and what Fronde's focus is not the same. The going of separate ways is mutual, understood, amicable and for no other reason that that.

ReadWriteWeb's wonderful OpenID Status Check: A Guide to Getting and Using Your OpenID Not on the list (but I have told them) is the New Zealand OpenID provider: http://openid.co.nz

A Zen saying When you consider an object, it is what you see that makes it beautiful and what you don't see that makes it useful. For instance, a wooden bowl. The carved edges, the curved lip and the graceful sweep of the inside make it an object to marvel at. But it's the space it encloses that makes it useful. The same can be said of the Web and even more so Web 2.0 / social network sites. Take a site we've all heard of, Facebook ( huh? ). The ability to list your mates, tell the world your status and play on-line Scrabble may indeed make it something a lot have marvelled at. However it's the coffee with a lost-but-now-found friend, the new job opportunity that came through or meeting new friends at an event that makes it useful. That which we see online generally engages the "logical" side of us - although there is, of course, a lot of "emotion" within how they engage. We look at a website and ask, "What are it's functions, is it easy