Behind Glass Walls

I wish IE (and others) would support Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). I really do. And here’s why – it’s just so damn cool. Ever since I saw an SVG image for the first time, and later found Inkscape (an SVG vector drawing program), I just don’t get why SVG hasn’t been eagerly taken up. What could be cooler than an image that has all the benefits of vector graphics, is represented in xml, yet can be treated just like an image?

What does this have to do with Enterprise 2.0? Not a whole lot. If SVG was widespread, it would mean we’d see the end of horribly distorted or pixellated images. We wouldn’t have to deal with patent issues or image compression or codec issues – it’s just text! Any old compression format will do fine. An interesting result of this is that SVG is very well suited to mobile devices.

I’m not sure of how easy it is to edit SVG files, but since it describes vector images and is just modifying text, at least you know you won’t lose data as you manipulate it, whereas dealing with bitmap images can often mean loss of information. Not to mention that all it takes to animate SVG images is JavaScript or SMIL. It can do some really neat things, all in a browser. Without any plugins (for the modern browsers, anyway).

SVG seems to be gaining some traction, and it’s about time.

Wow, is it really week 6 already? This semester is going so quickly. It is certainly a busy one. It’s been quite an experience blogging about Enterprise 2.0. At this point we need to summarise where we think we’re up to with regard to the criteria for this assessment. Here’s where I think I stand:

Practical ability to leverage off web 2.0 to enhance personal branding.

To me, this involves building up profiles on the social networks, web apps and blogs that I use, to allow others to find me. It also let people know who I am, so that there is a person to associate with the articles and comments. I’m an irregular user of a number of social networks – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter; I have a personal blog in addition to this one; and I read and comment on a range of technology and web development websites. These activities establish my web presence, and give me avenues to express my self in different ways: from short, sharp tweets to longer blog posts and comments.

Manner and consistency of participation in weekly workshops activities and your contribution.

Consistently posting blog articles for a uni subject is a bit of a challenge. I’m not used to doing uni tasks so often outside of contact hours. Having said that, it’s not a bad way of doing it. It allows work to be done at any point, which certainly helps. Thus far I feel I’ve been going pretty well, although I probably could do to post a bit more often than the 2-3 times a week I’m doing now.

I hope I have contributed something to the community, as I do have some experience in the area of web applications and development. From the comments, my post about Ways I promote my blogs was well received.

Ability to appraise Web2.0 strategies and solutions for organisational and personal success.

There are a huge number of web apps and tools around, with many of them failing and appearing each day. Picking the ones that are worth investing time in is difficult, let alone picking the ones that will last. It is even more tricky to choose Web 2.0 platforms and applications that will be successful in enterprise situations.

While I haven’t had a large amount of experience in using tools that might be considered Enterprise 2.0, I do tend to think in that mindset, and look to software and strategies that might make tasks simpler or easier. I’m of the opinion that Enterprise 2.0 is about both the software and the attitude, rather than just the software. It is not possible to simply replace a software package and have things work smoothly without some changes in approach.

Ability to engage successfully with the wider community (including people outside of QUT) using Web 2.0 tools and techniques.

Engaging with the wider community can be difficult when you’re just getting into discussing Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0, even though I’ve been using the tools and technologies for quite a long time. In fact, since I’m a web developer, I’ve built some web 20-esque tools. Discussing the issues is a new area, but one I do have some interest in. I’ve commented on a couple of external blogs, on things such as including both software and attitudes in the definition of Enterprise 2.0. My blog as of yet has only received comments from QUT students. I need to be more proactive in not just reading other blogs and articles, but commenting as well. In the area of using Web 2.0 tools to interact with companies, I’ve found getsatisfaction to be quite useful. LinkedIn is also very helpful in researching jobs and engaging with other professionals.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been very busy with my other units – I’ve neglected Enterprise 2.0 somewhat. I hope to mend that in the next week, as I should hopefully have some more time now.

Company blogs seem to fall within one of two broad categories.

1. The companies who have an online or tech product as their main focus.

I’m thinking the big, well known companies, like Google, Twitter or Flickr. They tend to be all about what the company is doing with their product(s). There are also some smaller, more local companies with blogs -

• Kogan, a Melbourne-based tech goods company
• Techdirt, a technology and business analysis company
• Digital Pacific, an australian web host
• even the Australian Government has a number of blogs (the Government 2.0 blog is worth a visit).
• here’s a pretty good list of Aussie companies on Twitter

2. Companies that have a web presence because it is required.

These companies tend to be in a completely non-Internet-related area, and do not have much knowledge about maintaining a web presence. A Web Manager or “new media”specific roles are more likely in these companies.

Increasingly, it is being noticed that blogs are not the only method of interacting with customers. More and more, if you want to go where the people are, it is most useful to be active on a number of social platforms. Some businesses taking this path include:

• Bleeding Heart, which runs public benefit projects
• Good Old Games, offering cheap older games for download
• QPAC, Qld Performing Arts Centre
• Translink uses Twitter for broadcast (but replies occasionally)

This path can be more straight-forward and practical when regular large chunks of information are not really applicable.

No matter where a company falls, there are some common pointers for company blogs, in addition to ideas for personal blogs. The most important thing to remember is that on the Internet, nothing is done in a vacuum. If you want to have some influence on customer sentiment, you need to interact and converse.

I’ve often heard people say that they see a lot of crap on such-and-such a website. Or there’s only very little useful information on the Internet. Or the classic: much of Twitter is ‘pointless babble‘. You know what? They’re probably right. So does that mean we need to do something about all the useless stuff?

Nope.

Here’s what you do: you find communities,  you follow people on Twitter, you read websites that, wait for it… have content you’re interested in. If it’s crap (to you), ignore it.

This idea links back to the Long Tail – when you remove “shelf space” from the equation, everything can be “stocked”, anything can be “sold”. In other words, if there is a market for something, even a market of one, that market is viable. Applying this to Twitter, or any community, the Internet provides a home for any discussion. If the person viewing it does not think it worthwhile, then it probably was not intended for that person. There is someone out there who will appreciate it.

The Internet has made conversations that used to be private into public affairs. So when we come across them, we assume they were meant for us, since they’re public.

Some people who do some very good work in this space are Clay Shirky, Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell.

This is Stephen Dann’s major complaint about the study (and mine is that most mainstream newspapers dutifully reported without any further investigation). As he discusses, depending on the way you name your categories, you’ll end up with 40% pointless babble… but change around the name and

Suddenly Twitter is the most vital thing ever if you want community  since it’s so vibrant if you take Rheingold (1993) “collective goods of value” as the interpretation of the statement about what you’re having for lunch, along with the existing massive conversation structure.

Just like the Long Tail: all you need is a better filter or search. The content is

entirely in the eye of the beholder; there are no absolute measures of content quality. One person’s “good” could easily be another’s “bad”; indeed, it almost always is.

So, next time you think you’re being beset by crap on the Internet, think about this. Was it meant for you? Or do you just need to adjust the filter or search you’re using?

Quite a simple process…

• Sign in or sign up at Technorati
• Go to the claim your blog link
• Post you claim code (which is what I’m doing now: ef7c5k6pt9 )

When businesses are getting into Web 2.0 tools, and looking to adopt some progressive thinking, there is still “an albatross around their neck” in the form of IE6. It’s not like they can miss the fact that IE6 is hated by developers. That message has been around for years. There are so many options for browsers now:

• Mozilla’s Firefox
• Opera Software’s Opera
• Apple’s Safari
• Google’s Chrome

And word is that there will soon be another entrant: RockMelt. All these browsers are in active development, and support a much broader range of technologies. With all these options, you’d think business could find something to use? Apparently, so many businesses have web-based apps that are tied to IE6, that the reason IE6 is still floating around is because users just don’t have a choice. And there’s no solid reason to upgrade (apart from a few security issues). There’s also the issue of management – IE is by far the easiest to deploy to large installations. This begs the question – why not IE8?

This seems to go against the whole idea of implementing and incorporating Enterprise 2.0. How can modern, complex web interfaces that usually use some very advanced JavaScript and styling run on IE6, an eight (yes, count them, 8!) year old browser. In the world of tech, where applications are evolving every few months, if not faster, that seems ludicrous. However, there is not an easy solution. Any further ideas out there for how companies can at least move to IE8?

I thought I might share some of the methods I’ve found for promoting my blog. This was prompted by reading this article by Jason Van Dyke. I’ve had experience in setting up other blogs, and through that I’ve found some useful tools and ways of doing things.One point to make is that promoting yourself and promoting you blog can be two very different things, depending on how you want to promote yourself.

I’ve tried to order these by priority – the number one suggestion below I’ve found to be better at driving traffic than later suggestions.

1. What’s a blog without content? This is the number 1 way to get visitors to your site, and to keep people interested. Without regular, original, interesting/useful (for your audience) content, other suggestions here aren’t going to help much. It also helps to use words that represent what your site is about, and links to other quality websites. This tells search engines (and readers!) that you’re actively involved.
2. Use your site’s URL when you comment, and comment often. I used to just surf around reading things, and never really had the inclination to comment. Now that I know a bit more about my particular areas of interest, I’m more willing to comment. This is also an opportunity to show search engines that your website is actually known/linked by other sites.
3. Use the webmaster tools search engines make available. These tools offer ways to submit you sitemap, so search engines can more easily crawl the entire site. They also let oyu know about any errors encountered on your website. If you are using wordpress, there’s a plugin that can do the work for you.
   • Google
   • Yahoo
   • Bing
4. Link to your website or blog from your accounts on web apps. Many allow you to enter one or two urls as your home pages. Make use of them.
5. When you have a new post, don’t be afraid of letting people know about it. Do this sparingly, as not everyone likes to have individual posts ‘spammed’ at them.

That’s the way I promote my blog. I hope that helps a bit.

Promoting myself is another matter. I prefer to simply put my name to things, and let people find them. I don’t want to force myself onto people – if they like the content, they’ll know who it’s by.

Socialmedia.biz has a summary of a presentation Stephen Jagger gave all about how he’s converted his businesses to use a wide range of web apps and online tools. It is a rather extreme example – hosting everything in the cloud, or removing the need for office space are probably not options for many companies. For small, active businesses though, these are some really useful ideas and discussions.

The base of the services is hosted Google Mail, plus Talk, Voice and Sites.Yammer and Skype are used for internal and client communication. It seems he has quite firm grip on how the services work and what they are best used for. The tools fit well into observations of what gives good results when exploring social tools and collaborative attitudes for business. Andrew McAfee‘s SLATES is the major guide in this area, along with some additions from Dion Hinchcliffe which cover the atmosphere required to allow the tools to function effectively.

I do have some questions about how open and sharing the businesses are. It seems that the tools are viewed more as promotion aids than enabling client feedback. This may not be true, but it is difficult to find a mention of how the Enterprise 2.0 tools and strategy involved the round trip from employee to client and back.

In any case, this case study ties well with this bnet feature: putting Web 2.0 to work. For a more traditional company, the four steps outlined in that article are quite helpful.

1. Begin by using a web 2.0 tool to address a current need. This could involve test-driving a free web-based app or installing an add-on for current software.
2. Any new movement needs support. Many employees just want to do their work and get home, but for those that like to experiment (I’m in this bunch – I always like looking under the hood), this is the perfect opportunity to help shape the direction of a project.
3. Experimentation is the key – many services and software are very cheap or free, so why not test a whole range of offerings.
4. “Decisions about which Web 2.0 tools to use within your company should be made centrally, but the question of how to use them should be left to individuals, says Harvard’s McAfee.”

This feature set is certainly worth a look.

Well, I hate to use a clichéd phrase, but this just fits. Digsby, like the good Web 2.0 company they are, are looking for ways to make money. This is fine. This is good, I like their all-in-one IM, social network and micro-blogging desktop app. They have innovative ideas for making money that don’t just involve “small unintrusive ads”. I like this so far. One of the hardest things for Web 2.0 companies is working out how to monetise it. So coming up with some out-of-the-box busines models is just the ticket.

It appears that the two main ways Digsby is looking to do this – offer what is traditionally known as ‘crapware’ (extra offers for toolbars or other – usually unwanted – services) as part of the installer and a research module that functions just like BIONC. These things can work.

The crapware is annoying, but if it pays the bills, ok. Just be nice, and make sure it’s not too easy to just keep clicking next and end up with a bunch of junk. The research module is an interesting one, which I think could be very useful to the user, Digsby, and a range of companies.

How well these things are received really depends on the how well they are presented. And, I’m sorry to say, Digsby have not learnt from the Facebook Terms of Service PR disaster or the eMusic Sony deal. When you make changes, you need to be upfront, honest, open to comment, and prepared with logical reasons. Digsby has done this only in stages. it’s first mistake was  “Not announcing [changes to how the product functions] before we started testing it”. Then out came the Lifehacker post about Digsby going to the dark side, and the response.

Digsby have responded adequately to the situation. However, I just uninstalled Digsby, and I urge others to either uninstall or turn off the “research module”.  Why? Here is their Terms of Service section:

15. USAGE OF COMPUTER RESOURCES.

You agree to permit the Software to use the processing power of your computer when it is idle to run downloaded algorithms (mathematical equations) and code within a process. You understand that when the Software uses your computer, it likewise uses your CPU, bandwidth, and electrical power. The Software will use your computer to solve distributed computing problems, such as but not limited to, accelerating medical research projects, analyzing the stock market, searching the web, and finding the largest known prime number. This functionality is completely optional and you may disable it at any time.

Did you spot it? It’s easy to miss… “searching the web”. Yes. They are using their software to search the web using your computer. I can handle everything else. Not this. What are they searching the web for? Where does the data from “searching the web” go? Who knows what websites they end up visiting… from *your* computer.

Digsby, give us control, like the good “user-focused company” you say you are. On/Off is not control. Get to it!

Well, I think everything that needs to be said about Twitter has been said.

You’ve got beginner’s guides galore.

Then you have advanced guides coming out of your ears (not literally, I hope).

There’s a bunch of apps for every platform under the sun. And you can make your own using their API.

I find Twitter very useful to keep up to date with friends. It’s kind of a “they use it a lot, so I will too to keep up with what’s going on” thing. It’s also good fun to discuss random things, like TV shows, the weather or copyright. Kind of like being able to text message a whole bunch of people, and never have to worry about the cost!

As to business use of Twitter, I see a few things that need to be addressed.

1. Twitter is not a broadcast medium. It is two-way. If you aren’t going to respond, don’t bother posting.
2. Post useful things. This will depend very much on the business’s audience.
3. Keep it relevant to the business. The personal stuff can go on a personal account.
4. You might not want to use Twitter to troubleshoot, but people will complain, and people will ask questions you can’t answer. Be ready to find out.
5. Investigate the use of complimentary websites (get satisfaction, for example).
6. Finally, treat everyone as your peer. Twitter puts the biggest company and the shyest child on equal footing.

There are many other takes on this.