tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19972540883124720302009-06-27T19:07:58.170-07:00Short Contemplations on Contemporary CulturePlone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-43329772497596156102009-05-22T15:33:00.000-07:002009-05-22T16:27:30.254-07:00

Twenty years ago, Oxford University graduate Tim Berners-Lee wrote a memo to his boss while he was working at CERN. This memo was an information management proposal for a distributed hypertext system that we now know of as the World Wide Web. Note the major feature that he describes which was not video blogging nor banner ads nor even online chat. The major feature in this proposal was hypertext

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-35401682702077651872009-05-10T09:10:00.000-07:002009-05-10T12:12:36.886-07:00

I occasionally cover stories on enterprise focused virtual worlds technology because I believe that it shows some promise and could, therefore, become a relevant trend. Last week, I attended an event in Second Life hosted by Nokia on this topic.This event had a question oriented talk show format in which representatives from IBM, Linden Labs, Nokia, and Remedy Communications promoted their

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-35494924631519877462009-05-03T16:09:00.000-07:002009-05-03T16:45:05.162-07:00

Just ran across this NY Times article on an emerging trend in social networks where Facebook and Twitter are openly and actively encouraging third parties to consume their services and re-purpose their content. The article then covers several startups who are feeding off of this social knowledge ecosystem.With regards to this ecosystem, what I have seen in the wild are three patterns. A lot of

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-92066164131920293572009-04-27T10:39:00.000-07:002009-04-27T10:51:04.917-07:00

I just ran across this great talk at last year's Web 2.0 conference by Tara Hunt on a knowledge management blog that I frequently visit.She talks about how the leveraging of the feeling of reciprocity and social capital and the nurturing of a gift economy in the design of your product or web site's user experience is the most efficacious way to promote your message. She calls it The Whuffie

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-69827301529631119512009-04-20T08:32:00.000-07:002009-06-27T09:01:17.529-07:00

Sun Microsystems has been on the ropes since the first decade of this millennium when some of the largest Internet properties (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Ebay, Amazon) switched from Sun's Solaris to GNU Linux. That, and the two most recent stock market crashes, have really beaten this server hardware vendor and inventor of the Java programming language and platform down from a share price of $233 to $3.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-39827171082598876012009-04-08T11:11:00.000-07:002009-06-27T19:07:58.191-07:00

I just got back from a two day conference that IBM hosted on Second Life called Beyond Blogging which is a conference billed as by IBMers primarily for IBMers but also open to the public. I believe that this conference was organized by IBM's Seeking Business Value from Investment in Virtual Worlds on the 3D Internet group.The first day of the conference was more about how cool Second Life is for

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-16371224487485486662009-03-30T09:50:00.000-07:002009-03-30T10:13:29.691-07:00

It seems to me that global warming has become as much a hot button topic as Cuba, abortion, evolution or the Holocaust. That is to say, there are people on both sides with apparently deep convictions who make claims that strongly contradict each other. I counted myself on the side of believing that global warming was real and an apparent and compelling danger, that is to say until I read this

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-26833734121926365652009-03-18T10:36:00.000-07:002009-04-06T06:56:07.724-07:00

Whoa! My world was rocked today when I picked up the NY Times and read about yet another decline in the stock market. Even more upsetting is that Sun Microsystems is in talks with IBM to be acquired.This acquisition shouldn't really be all that upsetting. It does make perfect sense for IBM, which has always prided itself on its servers, to want to acquire the other technology company who also

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-43227514470958115802009-03-02T18:18:00.001-08:002009-03-02T20:03:26.594-08:00

If you've spent any time in I.T., then you have most probably heard of Forrester Research, Inc. They are a $391M tech and market research think tank. They are kind of like an upscale Gartner Group. Like the Gartner Group, they release these extremely high priced executive documents. Today, they released a document (hey, it's only $2G so be sure to pick up an extra copy) called Vendor Landscape:

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-90080647948468753632009-02-09T10:35:00.000-08:002009-02-09T11:30:32.174-08:00

These are changing times. When you see the same theme gaining predominance in many different areas, then pay attention because you are at a turning point in history.I believe that we are entering into such a time. I call it the celebration of the collective.This is most obvious in the political arena. Almost completely gone is the Republican mandated rhetoric of trickle down where big government

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-64603373807543237052009-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:002009-02-02T10:47:48.274-08:00

The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article today on The Economics of Giving It Away. The article describes how, in the past, web startups would use an advertising based revenue model and give away their product/service increasing the size of their audience until they were acquired by a bricks and mortar company willing to pay out the cash for mind-share at a premium. The global

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-13293320959875948712009-01-15T22:34:00.000-08:002009-01-15T23:01:55.189-08:00

I've blogged about the current global recession's affect on innovation before. I have blogged many times about the waxing and waning of virtual worlds technology called Second Life. Now, I get to blog about both subjects simultaneously.I recently attended a presentation in Second Life by Gene Leganza of Forrester Research, Inc called Six Trends for Enterprise Architecture Professionals in 2009.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-7235850559847410302009-01-08T11:20:00.001-08:002009-01-08T11:46:49.687-08:00

From the time I first heard it, the acronym PR has always had two different meanings to me. PR could stand for Public Relations or it could stand for Press Release. In what the Cluetrain Manifesto called The Long Silence (a.k.a. the days of the Mad Men), these two meanings weren't all that indistinguishable. In today's Wikinomics world, ruled by the prosumer generation, these two meanings are as

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-3082689245371854052008-12-04T11:46:00.000-08:002008-12-04T12:13:54.020-08:00

I was fortunate enough to attend the 11th Annual Lynford Lecture at the Polytechnic Institute of NYU where GMO co-founder Jeremy Grantham gave an inspirational and thought provoking talk called Career Risks and Breaking Bubbles.The net of his talk is this. The true value of most markets (stock, real estate, you name it) is pretty flat. Every now and then, the market experiences a bubble where

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-24186681000320370532008-11-20T07:56:00.000-08:002009-02-15T08:18:25.977-08:00

I have blogged earlier about the coming of massive, multi-player, virtual on-line worlds before. Permit me to recap here.Think of it as a 3D version of the web where you can see and interact with other viewers on any page/room.Think of it as a cartoonish version of telepresence on a budget.It's a natural fit for an artificial economy or other operant conditioning systems for rewarding desirable

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-23879782919333866152008-11-09T12:37:00.000-08:002008-11-09T13:17:41.058-08:00

I read in the previous Sunday edition of the NY Times an opinion piece called It's No Time To Forget About Innovation.Author Janet Rae-Dupree uses material from the following two books to further her advice not to completely stifle innovation during these economic hard times; Closing the Innovation Gap by Judy Estrin and Strategic Entrepreneurism by Jon Fisher.According to Janet, Judy posits that

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-83675788100132817212008-10-24T10:39:00.000-07:002008-10-24T11:19:19.051-07:00

The stock market continues its downward spiral as fears grow that the U.S. recession is taking on a more global scope. Companies of all sizes hold on to their cash, batten down the hatches, and prepare to ride the storm out as they curtail new growth opportunities and slash costs.That's too bad, really, as this is the best time for opportunity. Ask anyone in finance when is the best time to buy

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-77090872060410246422008-10-07T09:04:00.000-07:002008-10-07T09:44:50.863-07:00

Technology is to software architects what stock is to traders. You are constantly on the lookout for changes in the marketplace to take advantage of an under valued but rising offering. What's that old cliché? Buy on rumor and sell on news.You would had to have been in a coma for the past decade to have missed AJAX which is an approach to writing web applications that mitigates the disorienting

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-30415019482026377342008-09-29T07:35:00.000-07:002008-09-29T07:53:39.984-07:00

I got to see a very interesting film this past weekend at the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. Entitled FLOW: For the Love of Water, this documentary is all about the abuses of drinkable water and the resulting impact on humanity.The film documents how industrialization has increased the amount of pollution in our drinking water. There is a growing trend to privatize the cleaning, storage, and

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-11440921263335230102008-09-26T11:57:00.000-07:002008-09-26T12:09:06.966-07:00

I am an advocate of developer documentation. I understand why smaller, less mature ISVs and IT shops would take the quick and dirty shortcut of forgoing developer documentation. No one wants to do it. It costs money keeping that documentation up to date. Programmers should get paid to write code. Blah, blah, blah.Larger, more mature, shops should know better. They should realize that the total

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-13525030872436588022008-09-08T19:24:00.000-07:002008-09-08T20:10:39.979-07:00

I ran across this puff piece in the Sunday, September 7 edition of the NY Times promoting Facebook and Twitter. It really helped me improve my understanding of the micro-blogging, social networking revolution. Like many people born before the age of the personal computer, I was having a hard time understanding why the new prosumer generation have no problem uploading every single intimate detail

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-16574270386495763112008-08-22T15:25:00.000-07:002008-08-22T15:30:51.906-07:00

I learned something new today. I really thought that the iPhone was a smashing success from both a business and a design perspective. I ran across this blog entry that demonstrates how poor the design of the iPhone really is. Yes, it's sleek. Yes, it's beautiful. But it turns out that the design of the service is pitiful, especially if you travel a lot between countries.

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-72178210149166699232008-08-13T09:57:00.000-07:002008-08-13T17:47:28.388-07:00

I recently attended Start - A Conference for Entrepreneurs held at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco. The conference was sold out and no wonder. Luminaries from Twitter and WordPress were there. Founders from 43 Folders, 500 Hats, and Wesabe had some great advice for young, budding entrepreneurs. You can read more about my take on the speakers here. It's the attendees that I want to point

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-20384488546195375072008-07-15T08:46:00.000-07:002008-07-15T09:13:57.496-07:00

Some recent announcements show movement on the part of Linden Labs to open up their protocols for Second Life such that others can host servers to participate in a federated, 3D version of the world wide web. This is not Linden Labs first journey into open source when they released an open source version of their HUD. What's different this time is that they are taking steps toward releasing

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1997254088312472030.post-53179558224083045702008-06-29T12:13:00.000-07:002008-06-29T13:40:37.909-07:00

While drinking my morning cappuccino, I ran across this opinion piece on page 4 of the business section in the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Basically, the author is asking Microsoft to rewrite their operating system completely from scratch instead of continuing to enhance it as they have done for decades. He uses Apple as an example of this. They did a complete rewrite of their operating

Plone Glennhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09272899150919990489noreply@blogger.com0