I have a chat with a IT infrastructure vendor on outcome-based contract. His view is that:
The biggest problem there is that it is difficult to build trust with a company but a lot easier with individuals.
Outcome based contract because of the ambiguity will lead to the perception that for it to work well it depends on trust. And if contracts cannot capture the essense of the outcome-based features, then there will be push back for people to do this on a formal basis.
My take is that [....]
What do you think? Leave a comment, please, and let us know.
Google search just launched search on public data (LINK) after they have acquired a trend analyzer company. For a start, they can search Unemployment data from US gov (e.g. US Bureau of Labor Statistics). I browsed the data in US Bureau of Labor Statistics and found the data is in text format, not in XML, which is ok because the text is still parse-able (space deliminated) by machine fairly easily.
I went to Singapore Department of Statistics website for unemployment data and found them in HTML table and PDF. There are links to external source in Ministry of Manpower and it is in Excel spreadsheet format. Now suppose I want to read the data and produce charts (like what google did above) and embeddable widget as dashboard, it would take some additional effort to screen scrap HTML table or parse the spreadsheet.
With the potential outbreak of H1N1 virus, how to publish public data quickly in open and machine readable format for fast dissemination will be a more pressing issue.
My colleague told me about a (future) trend in using blog as company website, and here I found an example.
From a book review on 16-Feb Sunday Times to googleing, I found this online bookstore GerakBudaya in Malaysia.
It is WordPress customized to have online shopping cart, product catalog, etc., so definitely they have link to corporate DB server, not just the DB to store WordPress blog data.
Blog is used to announce event/seminar.
On the top right side, there is RSS.
On the middle right side, there is Search and Category. Notice they use Category not only for blog post, but also for their product (i.e. book category: Biography, Business, Politics…)
On the bottom right side, there is link to Facebook and Myspace.
Does it look like a normal WordPress blog? Nope. And not all of the SLATES mnemonic in Enterprise 2.0 definition are found in the website. But for the purpose of selling books online and announcing event, it serves the purpose quite well, from I see.
Many of of blog posts there have zero comment, so it is hard to gauge the readership. If there is much readership, perhaps a reader comment section and an intelligent book suggestion below each book information page would be nice to engage readers in reviewing or discussing the book (ala Amazon).
What do you think about this trend (blog as website)? Any example? Leave a comment, please.
What is your view on using open source for in-house application development? Well, here are my 2 cents on the reasons and challenges.
Reasons for using open source
Choices & avoid lock-in – From CRM to business intelligence application to reporting tool, there are open source solution that can compete with commercial packages. If you prefer to build it yourself, individual open source software development components, from language, API, IDE, source control to issue tracker, are available for you to mix and match. Instead of buying in a gigantic application developement suite from a vendor and get locked in subsequently, you have the freedom to plugin/remove/customize the components from the open source community.
Flexibility in licensing - Many open source platforms for application development now have support from established companies such as IBM, Sun and Redhat, with a business model that charges only for support, not the products. This means you can install and use the software for free and only pay for the support license. If you don’t need the support, save the bucks and continue to use the software free of charge. For example, Glassfish from Sun is free and you can opt to buy the support license.
Cost – Whether or not you use open source or proprietary tools, you pay for the effort to build your in-house application. What open source knocks down is the cost to acquire such tools for building applications.
Challenges
Choices – This is a feature as well as a bug of open source. There are so many choices for each application development tools and business will have to make an effort to sift through them. Online forums, blogs and mailing list are good source to help you to narrow down your choices.
Processes – Whether open source or proprietary apps development, a sound process (from coding to testing to build to handling changes) reduces the maintenance cost and increase the response time to changes. When you need to integrate different open source software components, the process becomes even more critical. To get started, learn from the processes practiced by the open source communities, who have successfully built and released large scale application. For example, Java, Plone, Linux.
Culture – Be prepared to adapt to the way open source communities build and release software – “release early, release often”. As anyone can scrutinize and improve an open source software, the pace that the software gets updated and improved might be overwhelming for some. Have a process on when and how to integrate such changes. Also learn the way the communities collaborate and communicate – forum, blog, instant messaging, chat room, mailing list.
I really enjoyed this conversation among Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.), Padmasree Warrior (Cisco Systems, Inc.) and Shane Robison (HP), particularly towards the end where the speakers share their views on the possibility of cloud computing.
By Ms. Padmasree Warrior , at 28:30, we have three big changes as follow:
At 28:33 “We don’t go to work anymore, we just work” — the nature of work is changing, with collaboration by web 2.0.
At 29:48, cloud computing — the nature of computing is changing.
At 30:06, leverage technology and network to monitor energy and resource utilization — focus on Green.
Mr. Shane Robison followed up, at 31:19, although there are a lot of noise on Green IT, data centers contributes only 2% of the overall carbon footprint. But if we utilize “a network of sensors to manage our environment, and use that through cloud based service interfaces”, we can have big impact on our environmental footprint.
Think of aircon monitors in a building and expose the interface to your building managment company to pin point waste and to shutdown aircon in empty rooms, or to government agency to monitor the nation’s carbon emission. Any other ideas?
We all have heard the Web 2.0 that is changing the way organizations do business. At 15:05 of this video, Dion hits the most important message: “The biggest challenge, however, is in changing our thinking.”, In his word, “this is not a techlonogy problem, it is a mindset problem.” I once said email attachment is the old paradigm of collaboration by quoting a Web 2.0 researcher, and my friends looked slightly offended.
At 7:28, “owning your classes of data online” is interesting and I am trying to make sense of it. Well, Dion spoke, “Most people don’t yet quite understand that the world largest and most successful companies are data companies now.” Data has become the competitive advantage.
It is fun to see what other people on this planet twit about. Head to TwittEarth and see the 3D globe turn round and round showing twits from all corners of the world, 24/7, in all languages. The world never sleeps
If you are following a twitter, you might be interested to know what are the current popular words of that twitter. Go to Twitter StreamGraph, which displays “the usage over time for the words most highly associated with the search word”.Then, enter the twitter’s name prefixed with ‘@’.
Web 2.0 summit is being held in San Fran. I got to know about it from Dion Hinchcliffe’s twitter (starting to see the benefit of twitter).
Dion is contantly twitting about lines of speech in the summit (form his mobile I think), even twit the photos he took to the net. So I get a feel of the summit. This is really exciting, make me want to get a Wi-Fi phone
I am waiting for videos of speeches to be released from the summit official website. (you can see the summit provides multiple channel for staying in touch — twitter, facebook, RSS, Dopplr.)
A while ago, I posted the video Google Docs in Plain English in my Facebook, with the comment quoted from the video that says, “Google Docs — Rocks!“. I really like the animation style the video and I think it rocks.
Later, I found out that the video is one of the many in the Explanations in Plain English series, produced by The Common Craft. There are lots of Plain English videos on social media. I compile a few of them into my YouTube playlist to cover topics like blog, wiki, RSS, social bookmark and more. You can visit my playlist or choose the videos below to play directly. Enjoy!
Move your mouse cursor over the left or right edge of the screen to select a video to play.
I use this guide to embed this slide into this test wiki page. For the slide URL, I got it from the embed lin as shown below, which is quite tedious. First, I need to copy and paste it to notepad. Then extract the http://… part from the embed link to use it in the wiki. Also, the wiki displays the slide in thumbnail size.
Is there a better way to embed a flash into wiki?
How to show the slide in normal size in wiki?
Appreciate any help to the questions above. Thanks.
