Latest News from Web 2.0 Journal

Cloud Computing: Facebook Tickles Its IPO Again

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:50:00 EDT

Facebook Wednesday upped the number of shares that will be sold when it IPOs Friday by almost 25% or 84 million shares to about 421.2 million shares of Class A common stock. The overallotment has also been increased from 50.6 million to 63.2 million. If all 484.4 million shares move, it’d estimated $18.4 billion could change hands, up from $14.7 billion. The added shares will be coming from early investors. The move, which gains Facebook nothing, will also cut CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s dominant voting power from 57.3% to around 55.8%. Pricing remains, at least for the moment, at between $34 and $38 a share. It won’t be locked down until Thursday night when it could be increased again. The range was between $28 and $35 until Tuesday and the stock has traded as high as $44 in the secondary markets recently.

What Is Collaboration Software? Back to the Basics

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:15:00 EDT

Overuse tends to a suck a phrase of meaning, and the same may be said of “collaboration”. As an executive, you’ve probably been inundated with articles on “collaboration software” and its business possibilities. But it seems to mean different things at different times. Sometimes it means email, other times document sharing with Google Drive, and still other times managing projects with Basecamp. And when the social network Google + was launched, you were told enterprise collaboration was forever changed.

TwitPolls: Some Relevance for Enterprise Technologists

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:00:00 EDT

Early adopters have been evaluating TwitPolls for the last several weeks. I’ve tested it out with our @CTOvision account and see great promise for this easy to use engagement tool. TwitPolls is powered by the technologies and leadership team of WayIn, so it is based on a great/scalable cloud and backed by a firm with staying power. TwitPolls is well named. You can tell from the name that it is designed to leverage the power of Twitter to enable polling. Part of the power of TwitPolls is how easy it is to use. If you can use Twitter you can use TwitPolls. Just login, ask a question and tweet it out. The possible answers to your question will be turned into hashtags (pound sign # plus the answer). When a follower replies with the hashtag answer, TwitPolls tracks the answers and reports back to you.

Facebook Ups Its IPO Price

Wed, 16 May 2012 07:00:00 EDT

You knew this was gonna happen, right? Facebook has repriced its IPO upwards from $28-$35 a share to $34-$38 a share giving it a valuation of $92 billion-$104 billion, a neighborhood more to its liking than the original $77 billion-$96 billion. The actual price won’t be set until Thursday night. Bloomberg claimed the company’s IPO roadshow was producing less institutional demand for the stock than expected because of less-than-rosy revenue forecasts last week – though the increase in the price would seem to belie that statement – and the AP and CNBC did a survey that found half the people polled thought the original asking price was too high – more among active investors.

GM to Pull Facebook Advertising: WSJ

Wed, 16 May 2012 06:45:00 EDT

Here we are less than three days before Facebook’s historic $100 billion IPO and General Motors or “people familiar with the matter” let slip to the Wall Street Journal that GM’s going to stop advertising on the social networking site because the paid ads are ineffective. The big American carmaker still reportedly intends to do marketing through Facebook but that’s not going to put any money in Facebook’s pocketbook. The paper says GM started having doubts earlier this year and met with Facebook managers, leaving the meetings “unconvinced advertising on the web site made sense.” GM reportedly spends about $10 million advertising on Facebook and another $30 million on its Facebook promotional content and managing its Facebook pages.

The Advent of Word-of-Mouth Advertising

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:45:00 EDT

As far as we have been able to determine, the phrase “Word-of-Mouth Advertising” was coined by Ernest Dichter who, in 1966, published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled, “How Word-of-Mouth Advertising Works” Dichter was a psychologist by training. His firm focused on consumer behavior and the motivations that drive them, including the role of persuasion in advertising. He is generally considered to be “the father of motivational research,” and the first to coin the term “focus group,” a technique that helped him understand “why,” why people were motivated to buy or do or think something. His work helped advertisers to shift their focus from straightforward product information and statistics, to image and persuasion. Dichter brought this perspective to his HBR article, which began with the observation that whenever his firm would ask consumers “what made you buy this brand or particular product?” the answer invariably came back, a friend, expert or relative who told me about it. To Dichter, this prompted the important question, “Why in a time of increasing advertising volume does Word-of-Mouth recommendation loom so high?”

Facebook Co-Founder Gives Up US Citizenship

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:30:00 EDT

Brazilian-born Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, 30, traded in his American citizenship last September to take up residence in Singapore, a move that will cut his taxes when Facebook IPOs on Friday. He is estimated to own about 4% or 5% of Facebook. The company was valued at $77 billion–$96 billion ahead of the IPO although, according to Bloomberg, its roadshow is producing less institutional demand for the stock than expected since Facebook said last week that advertising revenues weren’t keeping pace with user growth and may not reach its rosier forecasts. It’s supposed to go out at $28–$35 a share and sell 337.4 million shares, 180 million put up by Facebook itself. The rest of the shares are coming from CEO Mark Zuckerberg and selling shareholders like Accel Partners, Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies.

Shelly Palmer Radio Report

Mon, 14 May 2012 03:01:00 EDT

There are some big changes at Yahoo! In what can only be described as a stunning victory for Dan Loeb and his hedge fund Third Point, Scott Johnson will resign as Yahoo’s CEO and three of Mr. Loeb’s hand-picked directors will join Yahoo!’s board. Although the official announcement will say that Mr. Johnson’s is leaving for personal reasons, Loeb has been pressuring Yahoo to fire Johnson for quite some time. Just this past week, Yahoo gave in after Loeb publicized his suspicions that Thompson had fudged his resume by adding a computer science degree that he did not earn. The phony document was filed by Yahoo with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Which is serious stuff. Thompson’s squirrelly explanations of the gaff tied Yahoo’s hands. What will happen now? Ross Levinsohn, Yahoo’s current EVP and head of global media will become interim CEO and Third Point’s new directors will take their seats. How this affect Yahoo? Visit shellypalmer.com to learn more about it.

iOS 6: Apple Drops Google Maps

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:05:00 EDT

According to trusted sources, Apple has an incredible headline feature in development for iOS 6: a completely in-house maps application. Apple will drop the Google Maps program running on iOS since 2007 in favor for a new Maps app with an Apple back end. Read the full story at 9 to 5 Mac.

Social Media Legal Risks

Sun, 13 May 2012 07:00:00 EDT

In October 2009, the Federal Trade Commission released its updated "FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising." The purpose of the update was to address the increasing use of endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations and celebrities in online marketing. The update is particularly relevant to the explosive growth of social media as a marketing tool.

We Are All Direct Marketers Now

Sat, 12 May 2012 05:00:00 EDT

Mass Marketing dominated the last century: You need to reach the masses through as many channels as possible. You need retail stores, fliers, website, PR, Ads, Social Media, and and and and and…until you finally reach critical mass and you succeed. Target is a mass marketer, Huyndai and Delta.

In Case You Missed It: April 2012 Roundup

Thu, 10 May 2012 19:36:00 EDT

In case you missed them, here are some articles from April of particular interest to R users. Information Age published a feature article on R, describing how new graduates are driving adoption of R in industry. Bob Muenchen has updated his list of R package equivalents to SAS and SPSS procedures. A history of Data Science, including Bill Cleveland's 2001 paper. Researchers at SUNY Buffalo are using Revolution R and IBM Netezza with genetic data to research a cure for Multiple Sclerosis, and the story has been reported in Forbes, eWeek and other media. Pairach Piboonrungroj has compiled a list... David Smith

Facebook Announces App Store for iOS, Android and Web Users

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:23:00 EDT

The rumors of a Facebook app store were true, it appears, as the company has announced an app-pushing portal that will be accessible both by mobile users and by those on the web.But earlier talk of Facebook pushing HTML5 apps to Apple’s iOS platform and thereby circumventing the iTunes App Store seem to have been [...]

Facebook IPO Food For Thought

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:05:00 EDT

I have been thinking a great deal about what the Facebook IPO means. While reading many posts up at Hacker News about whether we are in a bubble, lamenting Zynga, or skewering Groupon, I am left wondering what will really become of Facebook.

PowerPoint Tips: What to Learn from Steve Jobs Presentations

Thu, 10 May 2012 04:00:00 EDT

Have you ever felt frustrated when you’re asked to give a PowerPoint presentation in front of your classmates or collogue? Do you want to become a great presenter like Steve Jobs? A lot of people have asked question about how to make a great PowerPoint presentation on the web like Yahoo Answers. One common is [...]

Get Work Done with Sparqlight - Enterprise Social Workflow App

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:24:00 EDT

Sparqlight, the world’s leading Cloud-Based Enterprise Social Workflow Application, enables sharing, tracking, and assigning goals and to-do’s within a single familiar social interface. We eliminate outdated, unorganized collaboration methods like email and endless meetings and allow you to experience the pure joy of simply getting work done. Today's knowledge workers want enterprise social applications to democratize their work just like social networks have done for their personal life. Tools like Sparqlight have emerged that make it easy to discover and collaborate with your peers and colleagues and key component of managing collaboration has to be accountability. It's imperative that organizations track, analyze and constantly improve their collaborations and the work that results from them.

Shelly Palmer Radio Report

Wed, 09 May 2012 03:01:00 EDT

Microsoft confirmed that there will be a $99 xbox. It’s the 4GB model and they will be selling them at 16 of the 21 Microsoft retail stores. What’s the catch. Actually, there are several. First, you will have to agree to a two year $15 per month contract, bringing the price of a normally $299 [...]

Facebook and Instagram – 37c to $19 Billion

Wed, 09 May 2012 03:00:00 EDT

It seems I can’t have any discussions with entrepreneurs without the topic of Instagram coming up. They all think that now is their time to strike the iron since the valuations are going to the stratosphere. I want to be very specific and clear on this point. Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was not sold to [...]

Jennifer Sheahan: Cracking the Facebook Code | Social Media Today

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:24:00 EDT

While more than 900 million people worldwide have active accounts, few businesses take full advantage of this enormous marketplace. For most, this is not due to a lack of desire—it stems from a lack of knowledge. When industry stalwarts such as Anthony Robbins and Frank Kern sought to leverage Facebook’s tremendous reach and recognized their limited ability for effectively making this happen, they turned to Jennifer Sheahan. Jennifer has cracked the Facebook code and created powerful strategies that are neither complex nor expensive. To affect a veritable Facebook frenzy and drive this powerful, captive audience towards your products and services, of her many strategies, Jennifer recommends beginning with these two.

Social Marketing: Past Is Prologue

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:15:00 EDT

On May 22, my new book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace will be published. Coauthored by Brad Fay, it is a book about the hugely important social wave that is rolling across the world of business today. But unlike many books and articles argue that online social networks are creating this social wave, we argue that the largest and most important part of social influence is that which happens when conversations happen in the real world, face to face. There is a vast array of tools and approaches that can be tapped by marketers to drive these real world conversations. You can download a free excerpt from the book here. While researching the book, I reviewed the history of word of mouth and social influence. It was a clear reminder that past is prologue. From a marketing perspective, focus on the role of word of mouth was quite robust in the 1940s, ‘50s and into the ‘60s, before marketing was overtaken by the era of the Mad Men and “the Golden Age of Advertising” and long before the Internet or online social networking.

Y U No Support SPDY Yet?

Tue, 08 May 2012 05:45:00 EDT

Mega-sites like Twitter and popular browsers are all moving to support SPDY – but there’s one small glitch in the game plan…

SPDY is gaining momentum as “big” sites begin to enable support for the would-be HTTP 2.0 protocol of choice.

Most recently Twitter announced its support for SPDY:

Twitter has embraced Google’s vision of a faster web and is now serving webpages over the SPDY protocol to browsers that support it.

SPDY is still only available for about 40 percent of desktop users. But with large services like Twitter throwing their weight behind it, SPDY may well start to take the web by storm — the more websites that embrace SPDY the more likely it is that other browsers will add support for the faster protocol.

-- Twitter Catches the ‘SPDY’ Train

But even with existing support from Google (where the protocol originated) and Amazon, there’s a speed bump on the road to fast for SPDY:

There is not yet any spdy support for the images on the Akamai CDN that twitter uses, and that's obviously a big part of performance. But still real deployed users of this are Twitter, Google Web, Firefox, Chrome, Silk, node etc.. this really has momentum because it solves the right problems.

Big pieces still left are a popular CDN, open standardization, a http<>spdy gateway like nginx, a stable big standalone server like apache, and support in a load balancing appliance like F5 or citrix. And the wind is blowing the right way on all of those things. This is happening very fast.

-- Twitter, SPDY, and Firefox

The “big pieces” missing theme is one that’s familiar at this point; many folks are citing the lack of SPDY support at various infrastructure layers (in particular the application delivery tier and load balancing services) as an impediment embracing what is certainly the early frontrunner in the HTTP 2.0 War. While mod_spdy may address the basic requirement to support SPDY at the web server infrastructure layer, mod_spdy does not (and really can not) address the lack of support in the rest of the infrastructure.

Like the IPv4 to IPv6 transition, the move to support SPDY is transitory in nature and counts on HTTP 2.0 adopting SPDY as part of its overhaul of the aging HTTP protocol. Thus, infrastructure must maintain a dual SPDY-HTTP stack, much in the same way it must support both IPv4 and IPv6 until adoption is complete - or a firm cutover date is arrived at (unlikely).

U No Support SPDY because SPDY Support is No Easy

The use of SPDY is transparent to the user. But for IT the process of supporting SPDY is no simple task. To understand the impact on infrastructure first take a look at the typical steps a browser uses to switch to SPDY from HTTP:

The first request to a server is sent over HTTP
The server-side end-point (server or application delivery service), when it supports SPDY, can reply with an HTTP header 'Alternative-Protocols: 443:npn-spdy/2', indicating that the content can also be retrieved on this server on port 443, and on that port there is a TLS 1.2 endpoint that understands NPN and SPDY can be negotiated
Alternatively the server can just 301 redirect the user to an https end-point.
The client starts a TLS connection to the port described and when the server-side end-point indicates SPDY as part of the TLS NPN extension, it will use SPDY on that connection.

What this means is that infrastructure must be updated not just to handle SPDY – which has some unique behavior in its bi-directional messaging model – but also TLS 1.2 and NPN (Next Protocol Negotiation). This is no trivial task, mind you, and it’s not only relevant to infrastructure, it’s relevant to site administrators who want to enable SPDY support. Doing so has several pre-requisites that will make the task a challenging one, including supporting TLS 1.2 and the NPN extension and careful attention to links served, which must use HTTPS instead of HTTP.

While you technically can force SPDY to be used without TLS, this is not something a typical user will (or in the case of many mobile platforms can) attempt. For testing purposes, running SPDY without TLS can be beneficial, but for general deployment? SSL Everywhere will become a reality. Doing so without negatively impacting performance, however, is going to be a challenge.

Establishing a secure SSL connection requires 15x more processing power on the server than on the client.

-- THC SSL DOS Tool Released

The need to support secure connections becomes a big issue for sites desiring to support both HTTP and HTTPS without forcing SSL everywhere on every user, because there must be a way to rewrite links from HTTP to HTTPS (or vice-versa) without incurring a huge performance penalty. Network-scripting provides a solution to this quandary, with many options available – all carrying varying performance penalties from minimal to unacceptable.

PROS and CONS

Basically, there are a whole lot of pros to SPDY – and a whole lot of cons. Expect to see more sites – particularly social media focused sites like Facebook – continue to jump on the SPDY bandwagon. HTTP was not designed to support the real-time interaction inherent in social media today, and its bursty, synchronous nature often hinders the user-experience. SPDY has shown the highest benefits to just such sites – highly interactive applications with lots of small object transfers – so we anticipate a high rate of early adoption amongst those who depend on such applications to support its business model.

Supporting SPDY will be much easier for organizations that take advantage of an intelligent intermediary. Such solutions will be able to provide support for both HTTP and SPDY simultaneously – including all the pre-requisite capabilities. Using an intermediary application delivery platform further alleviates the need to attempt to deploy pre-production quality modules on critical application server infrastructure, and reduces the burden on operations to manage certificate sprawl (and all the associated costs that go along with that).

SPDY is likely to continue to gain more and more momentum, especially in the mobile device community. Unless Microsoft’s Speed+Mobility offers a compelling reason it should ascend to the top of the HTTP 2.0 stack over SPDY, it’s likely that supporting SPDY will become a “must do” instead of “might do” sooner rather than later.

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Presso – a WebSocket Powered Social HTML5 Presentation Tool

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:35:00 EDT

At DevCon5 in Santa Clara Peter Lubbers, founder of the San Francisco HTML5 User Group, gave a keynote, titled The HTML5 Connectivity Revolution. For his presentation Peter used a WebSocket enabled presentation tool built by Kaazing, called Presso. Presso serves … Continue reading →

Content Strategy Must Reach Beyond Marketing

Mon, 07 May 2012 08:00:00 EDT

Arguably, content strategy is most often thought of as a marketing application. That's a great start, but it doesn't do the practice justice. In fact, that view tends to cause siloed efforts and limit the potential of content strategy. Content is a part of everything a business does in regards to communicating with prospects, customers, and the industries their offerings...

How Media Can Slice Through Always-On

Mon, 07 May 2012 07:30:00 EDT

In my last column, I discussed how Always-On can now be seen for what it is: a potential biological addiction. In a world where we are never far away from an electronic, online screen, we increasingly feel an inner urge to check our emails, social media pages and IM in every circumstance, despite how inappropriate that situation may be. The internal impulse to check our messages at such challenging times is fostered by the brain. By checking our messages in such circumstances, the brain rewards our apparent furtiveness with a minute release of dopamine. Dopamine is a hormone and neurotransmitter related to the pleasure system of the brain. In large doses, it can provide a real high.

Facebook’s Pied Piper IPO Supposedly Priced at $28-$35

Mon, 07 May 2012 07:15:00 EDT

The great Facebook IPO is supposed to happen on Friday May 18. The company's big investor-pitching pre-IPO roadshow is supposed to kick off this Monday and only see some appearances by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, according to the Wall Street Journal. CFO David Ebersman and COO Sheryl Sandberg will reportedly handle the bulk of the meetings. Initial East Coast meetings are supposed to be stuffed to the gills. But you can see the video now (http://facebook.retailroadshow.com/launch.html). Real pricing never happens until the night before an IPO. But it claimed in a regulatory filing late Thursday that it's shooting for $28-$35 a share, a relatively broad range that values the joint at $96 billion under the magical $100 billion, leading the smart money to think it and its underwriters are aiming for a pop. There'll be at least 337.4 million shares on offer. And there might be an overallotment. There will be class A and B stock after the IPO.

Open Letter to Tom Scott at Klouchebag

Mon, 07 May 2012 05:15:00 EDT

It's been four years since our last economic bubble and eleven since our last technology bubble, so it's possible that another one is coming soon. Or not. Your guess is as good as mine. I suppose I could pontificate about why one is coming (hint:

Post-Facebook – Micro Social Networks

Mon, 07 May 2012 02:00:00 EDT

I am on Facebook, but not an active user at all. Also I am reluctant to share too much personal stuff with friends. Then there are long-lost friends and family members popping up with Facebook requests to connect. I do … Continue reading →

Google Plus for Business?

Sat, 05 May 2012 10:45:00 EDT

I can barely control my indignation when I read articles about Google Plus as a tool for “social collaboration”. These articles sometimes come from writers I respect. I guess we have a difference of opinion on this. Here are my reasons why I think Google Plus is not a tool for social collaboration (even remotely).

Accessing Databases with HTML5 WebSockets and Apache Camel

Sat, 05 May 2012 01:45:00 EDT

Kaazing’s own Marcelo Jabali posted a nice write-up on accessing a MySQL database directly from the browser using WebSockets. Marcelo describes the building blocks and the config changes he had to make. Sample code is coming soon too.

LinkedIn To Acquire SlideShare for $118.75M

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:45:00 EDT

"We built SlideShare to help professionals share presentations and connect people through content," commented Rashmi Sinha, CEO of SlideShare, as LinkedIn announced Thursday its agreement to acquire SlideShare. "What we can build with LinkedIn, the largest professional network on the Internet," he continued, "is the most natural extension of this vision. I am excited about what we can build together."

Responsive Web Design Made Possible by HTML5 and CSS3

Fri, 04 May 2012 05:15:00 EDT

I am in Scotland this week conducting workshops on mobile strategies. I met with a large company with multiple enterprise mobility projects to connect back office ERPs and HR apps to mobile applications. They have already determined they will be using HTML5 as their preferred mobile app development environment. They already have experienced web developers so extending the skills of these developers into mobility makes perfect sense to them.

Facebook IPO Priced at $28 to $35, a Valuation of Around $100 Billion

Thu, 03 May 2012 17:37:00 EDT

Facebook set a proposed price range of $28 to $35 per share for its highly anticipated initial public offering. In an amendment to its IPO filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the social media giant said it will sell 337.4 million shares. Read the full story at Fox Business.

Google Drive with a Mapped Drive Letter

Thu, 03 May 2012 06:45:00 EDT

India 2.0: Innovation in India Happening More Slowly Than Anticipated

Thu, 03 May 2012 05:45:00 EDT

I just spent 3 days in Bangalore for a board meeting. Staying in south Bangalore around JP Nagar and Jayanagar area feels like the old Bangalore of yesteryears – greenery all around, spring flowers, no high rise apartment buildings, and … Continue reading →

The Ventana Group Expands Social Media Services

Wed, 02 May 2012 07:27:00 EDT

The Ventana Group, a provider of integrated public relations, content marketing and social media services, today announced that it has expanded its social media service offering to include vertical market segments, enhanced social acceleration capabilities, and a larger network of new media channels for SEO-optimized content publishing across the web. The company's patent-pending New Media Engine, rapidly increases brand awareness, lead generation and Google ranking authority across horizontal and vertical industries for its' clients.

Twelve New Programming Languages: Is Cloud Responsible?

Wed, 02 May 2012 05:00:00 EDT

Do we need programming languages? You may think that the answer is no. But, if you go by the recent trend you may need to change your mind. Why is Google working two (GO, DART) new programming languages? Why has IBM (X10), Cray (Chapel) and Red Hat (Ceylon) working on creating a new programming language … Read more

A Masterpiece from Mozilla’s Documentation

Wed, 02 May 2012 05:00:00 EDT

While preparing the courseware for my upcoming JavaScript workshop I ran into the following definition in the Mozilla’s online documentation: “callee is a property of the arguments object. It can be used to refer to the currently executing function inside the function body of that function.” Love it! I’ll never be out of work, as [...]

Gaining Entry to the Enterprise via the Consumer Trojan Horse

Tue, 01 May 2012 06:00:00 EDT

Ok, so you’re selling technology products, solutions or services. You’re looking for the largest buyers and typically look to the enterprise market. You develop the strategy and start going to work. You setup a sales team, check. You setup a channel and partner program, check. Then you start leveraging the relationships, check. But how do [...]

Kaazing WebSocket Gateway HTML5 Edition - Quick Start

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:45:00 EDT

The newly released 3.3 version of the HTML5 Edition of the Kaazing WebSocket Gateway comes with a Quick Start Guide: pdf | video. The Quick Start Guide walks you through the simple steps of downloading, installing, and starting up the … Continue reading →

Facebook IPO May Be Delayed

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 15:00:00 EDT

The great mid-May Facebook IPO has reportedly been delayed maybe until mid-June waiting on Mark Zuckerberg to wrap up whatever else is distracting him right now besides his billion-dollar Instagram acquisition or the $550 million patent deal with Microsoft, which also mean the company needs to make more financial disclosures. According to CNBC the pre-IPO roadshow may have slipped from May 7 to May 14 or even the end of May when the Memorial weekend then becomes a problem.

Google Drive: Business with a Single Point of Failure

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:15:00 EDT

You could think of Google Drive as Google’s answer to Dropbox or Microsoft’s SkyDrive or any one of a dozen cloud storage systems, but it’s not. Google Drive is so integrated with Google Apps for Business, Google Docs and Google that it is destined to become the seminal point of “the” paradigm shift to business [...]

Seven Gadgets – Lavish, Amazing, and Ridiculous

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 02:47:00 EDT

A speaker for $80,000, a motorcycle for $500,000, a mobile for $13,800, a watch for $260,000, a PC workstation for $45,000 or a knife with 1TB thumb drive for $3,000. Which of these do you find most Lavish, Amazing, and Ridiculous? Anyway if you want to check these products out then here are the links. BTW: I could not find the Victorinox 1TB Swiss Army Knife. Speaker from Transmission Audio “If there was a better way to build speakers, we would do it”

Two Competing Approaches to Small Business Software

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:41:00 EDT

I speak with small business owners every day. Most of the time, we’re speaking because they have problems – workflow problems, software problems, scaling problems. Solutions aren’t obvious. If they were, we wouldn’t be in business. Thing is, it’s not just that solutions aren’t obvious – it’s that solutions may solve the same problems (inventory, for example, or CRM), but their approach can be crazily dissimilar.

WayIn – Not Just for Fun or Entertainment

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:00:00 EDT

If you have not yet checked out WayIn, you might want to head over there right now. WayIn allows you to post quick polls and quickly crowd source opinion. While it is still a small service, they have big goals (and the back-end to accomplish them).

Skype is Coming to a Browser Near You

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 05:00:00 EDT

Microsoft is about to change the way you access Skype, the once PC based program to reach out to your friends and relatives across the lands and oceans will now be on a browser.
Previously you needed to download and install Skype on your PC which became easier and easier as it gained popularity. Then came video; group chat and skype on mobile phone and at around that time it was absorbed by Microsoft. Well, the question on every one's mind was what Microsoft was going to do with skype. Of course one way was to make it a part of its browser software. Now with this new move, you do not need to download and install, it's a part of your browser.
Is it going to beat up Google? Even if it does not, it is going to make it more even interesting to its investors. Microsoft has started seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Hope Nokia picks itself up and make Windows 7 (or 8) phone more and more popular.

I do not own stocks of MSFT but a few of Nokia.

Small Business Guide to Twitter

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 15:38:00 EDT

Everyone’s heard of Twitter, the social network that allows you share short messages. With over 140 million users sharing over 340 million tweets each day, Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool. If you’re not tweeting now you should consider it. In a nutshell here’s how it works: Establish an account: Go to twitter.com and [...]

Nine Years Ago On the Web

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 10:28:00 EDT

Last week I read with interest Richard MacManus’ story about nine years of history with ReadWriteWeb and I am glad to see that the site has continued to evolve over the times. But let’s look at where the Web was … Continue reading →

Exploring the Trends in Global Business Communications

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 07:45:00 EDT

Today, most important executive relationships are globally distributed, but many business leaders still say that they want more collaboration in person. Particularly during activities such as brainstorming for new ideas, managing a specific crisis or making presentations. This is among the key findings from a new Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) survey.

While the primary function of meetings is to build relationships with customers, some 89 percent of EIU survey respondents say communications where the parties can see and respond to each other benefit internal business functions such as employee coaching and training as well as communications with partners and customers.

An additional 43 percent of respondents use meetings to discuss and resolve major issues with customers such as a service or product failure or dissatisfaction with the partnership. Motivations for expanding these meetings also include contract renewals, brainstorming sessions and being introduced to other clients or customers within the organization.

This EIU survey, sponsored by Cisco, explores the challenges of global enterprise collaboration and the perceived value of different types of business communications -- including telephone, instant messaging, email and conferencing.

Survey respondents were also asked their views on what business processes can be most impacted through in-person interaction as well as on potential productivity gains through these efforts.

The 862 global senior executives surveyed identified a number of key trends in business communications. These insightful findings include:

Face time is a priority -- When it comes to different stakeholders, business leaders attach greater importance to in-person meetings with customers than with colleagues, partners or suppliers. More than half (54%) of respondents to an Economist Intelligence Unit survey said they see meetings with customers as having the greatest impact on their business. This need for face time relates to how most respondents (56%) ranked the most important aspect of business collaboration: determining audience engagement and focus.

Email is getting in the way -- Business leaders in all categories cite email as the primary tool used in collaborating with colleagues, partners and customers (as much as 66% for senior managers) with the telephone identified as the second most-used business communication tool (25%). However, neither text nor voice alone was cited as the best option in communicating critical information in a global business.

Motivations for more meetings differ regionally -- Asked to pick their strongest motivation for meetings with colleagues outside of their own office, respondents from Asia-Pacific and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are most interested in resolving a problem quickly. However, U.S. business leaders are motivated more by cost reductions in meetings with colleagues. Non-U.S. respondents are also more interested in generating better long-term relationships during their meetings with partners and customers.

Industry dictates motivations as well -- In meeting with business partners or suppliers, respondents in the consumer goods industry are most likely to meet face to face to give or receive direction, while business leaders in energy/transportation, technology and services are most likely to meet to generate better long-term relationships. Respondents in other industries are most likely to meet with partners to be motivated or inspired.

To supplement the survey, the EIU hosted a roundtable discussion with two industry leaders, Joan Parsons, head of U.S. banking for Silicon Valley Bank, and Morten Hansen, a management professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Information and co-author of the book, Great by Choice, about their perspectives on business communications.

An analysis of the findings will be included as part of a EIU video webcast on April 24th, sponsored by Cisco Systems, Inc.

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