Wan's Blog

Last month, I had the chance to site visit Thomson Reuters office, in Sydney, Australia. It’s an intriguing experience for me as I had the opportunity to see how they harnessed social networking tools and used state-of-an-art technologies in their organisation.  Special thanks to Edward Davies, a specialist editor of Reuters News, who was willing to show me around their work flow process environment. Generally, Thomson Reuters is an information company where it provides world news express services to financial and government sectors including broadcasters like RTB.

A visit to Thomson Reuters from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

Thomson Reuters uses a dynamic mashups referred as “Badges” embedded in their website.  It were developed using the Presto product from vendor JackBe. It includes user’s published research and demographic citation views. In addition, ResearcherID Badges were designed to be easily embedded in a user’s personal blog or Web site and to be emailed to peers. Each Badge, when embedded in a personal blog, provides a dynamic preview of the researcher’s data to the community. Clicking on the Badge takes the visitor directly to that researcher’s page within the ResearcherID site. Thomson Reuters also included two other mashup-based widgets for the members of ResearcherID: the Collaboration Network, a graphical cross-reference of the researcher’s professional collaborators, and the Citing Articles Network, a map-based view of independent references to the researcher’s publications. The mashups were a successful addition to the ResearcherID community. Within weeks and with little direct promotion or advertising to its community, hundreds of independent professional blogs and Web sites had Badges in them, all linking back to ResearcherID. The mashup-driven Badges allowed the community members to become the extended “sales team” that pushed the community’s reach well beyond the formal boundaries of the community portal.  Moreover, Thomson Reuters recently has been using twitter, a micro blogging as part of their social networks tool for posting up-to-date news on the Australian politics agenda. Not to mention others like Skype! (If you manage to hear that oblivious unique melody from the video shown above.)

Some of the benefits gained by Thomson Reuters are such as:

• The mashup-driven “Badges” allowed the community members to become the extended “sales team” that pushed the community’s reach well beyond the formal boundaries of the community portal.  Within weeks and with little direct promotion or advertising to its community, hundreds of independent professional blogs and Web sites had Badges in them, all linking back to ResearcherID.
• The news messages  reach everybody globally. By using social media, it allows addressing those segments that are difficult to reach with traditional media (e.g. the journal), as for the Gen-Y generations.
• Its also allows reaching segmented groups with specific, direct messages (e.g. companies, political leaderships and its followers, etc.)
• Social media brings everyone “where the people are” together. It involves the citizens in the city projects and makes talking to the government less intimidating. Consequently, the public’s interest in politics, making the decision-making process itself a part of the public arena and letting citizens interact.
• Social media such as twitter; costs less. Hence, it can be used to create a good vibe during a specific events.

Despite these findings, there are also some pitfalls that might trigger such as:

• Using social media broadens its communication toolbox. Hence, it requires Thomson Reuters to plan ahead, thinking about its goals, target audience and tone of voice.
• One of its biggest challenges is probably maintaining a consistent online corporate identity as Thomson Reuters is allowed to speak for the city, how and at any given time?
• Lastly, social media is not the only tool use for communication. There are still a lot of people who have no computers and/or internet access, and thus rely on the traditional media to receive information. Consequently, Thomson Reuters needs to consider other kind of platforms to leverage its long tail.

References:

JackBe (2007). Case Studies:Thomson Scientific Expands their Research Community through Mashups. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Spoelders, S. (2010). Government & Social Media : « Government 2.0 ». Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Thomson Reuters (2010). ReutersOz. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Thomson Reuters (2010). Thomson Reuters Australia – Legal, Tax & Accounting – Lawbook Co, cvMail, PowerTax, Sweet & Maxwell, and more… Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Wikipedia (2010). Thomson Reuters. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

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The term “Gov 2.0” is also known as e-Government (Wikipedia, 2010).  According to the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce (2010), “Government 2.0 may be understood as the application of tools and approaches associated with collaborative web or ‘Web 2.0’ as it has been dubbed. These tools are potentially transformative of the way governments operate”.  Meanwhile, Australia’s Google Group states “Government 2.0 is not specifically about social networking or technology.  It represents a fundamental shift in the implementation of government – toward an open, collaborative, cooperative arrangement where there is (wherever possible) open consultation, open data, shared knowledge, mutual acknowledgment of expertise, mutual respect for shared values and an understanding of how to agree to disagree. Technology and social tools are an important part of this change but are essentially [just] an enabler in this process”.  Overall, Gov 2.0 is all about engagement!

Gov 2.0 is the prime mover for Information Communication Technology (ICT) development for government sectors.  It has been realised that providing citizen-centric services means a lot more than just creating a websites.  Simultaneously, improving business process is equally important, if not a pre-requisite before making services online.  Considering the ever increasing dependency of ICT in our daily lives, we believe passionately that citizen-centric services should be a driver of change, not only for the civil service but also for all social community.  That being said, it is imperative for the government to study ways and means of effecting changes in organisational culture and business processes as well as the desired transition of attitude and mindset amongst the community as a whole.  The success of the e-Government initiative is largely dependent on the positive interaction amongst stakeholders, namely Government, industry and people.  Therefore, stakeholders must adopt a forward-looking and problem-solving mindset to achieve the goal of providing meaningful services for all.

Several government departments who have already started adopting social technologies are such as:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) adopted the Geospatial Innovation

A website named recovery.gov, has been supported by USDA aimed at providing information about spending and impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  This demanded thinking that was big and fast as the schedule to deliver a common language for nationwide change within two months.  It was considered critical to build confidence quickly in the economy by tracking spending from the very highest levels of government all they way through to the beneficiary, as well as enabling feedback.

No more than four people from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) of the Geospatial Service and Technology Center in Salt Lake City, looked at source data systems, “geocoded” that data, and used a Web-based mapping application to rapidly deploy base-map-enabled views of recovery spending by geographic locality, right down to the level of individual zip codes.  The Chief Information Officer’s office for the National Information Technology Center partnered with the USFS to host the solution on scalable infrastructure, and to connect different social media tools for constituent crowdsourcing collaboration.

In a shortest reporting period, the recovery.gov website and blog averaged more than 336,000 unique user interactions. This example shows how innovation in government is possible by taking very diverse needs from a variety of different stakeholders and quickly peeling back the layers of bureaucracy to reveal the public value chain — from policy decision, through government organizations to citizens.  After this first phase, an Enterprise Geospatial Management Office (EGMO) was created to extend, expand and enhance the use of geo-enabled business solutions and leverage this new model for place-based policy planning and programming. The EGMO exploits the ability to see the essential connections between policy, data and services and really understanding the relationship between context and problem and the proposed solutions, which is where the geo-dimensionality analysis excels.  The main driver was the urgency created by presidential administration commitments to make federal governance transparent, accountable and participatory to the public.

Natural Resources Canada go for Wiki to success

Natural Resources Canada (NRCan) focuses on forestry, minerals and metals, energy, and earth sciences. These are actually managed by four very different organizations that were given the goal of integrating knowledge and working more collaboratively. There was a strong push for this from a deputy minister as well as a good deal of grassroots activity.  In response, two and a half years ago, NRCan started a wiki for its department internally, which has 5,200 employees across Canada. Today, the Wiki has about 3,000 active contributors and between eight million and nine million page views. It has become a very rich source of knowledge for natural resource information. So far, the wiki is purely internal-facing, and NRCan has not faced the challenge of letting Canadians contribute to it. However, it has become a foundational tool for the department and is used in many different ways, significantly changing the way NRCan works.

During the first year and a half, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) attended a number of meetings and presentations to market the wiki internally and to push people to use it. Shortly, it was recognized that there was no longer a need to push, as a growing internal community took over control of the wiki, ensuring that it would be used further within the department. Now, employees market it to each other and management is standing back and working on implementing additional tools. NRCan also actively uses blogs as a way to share information about ongoing work, and has launched its own version of Facebook and Twitter. It provides an effective knowledge sharing platform for science information and had considerable uptake within the first few days after launch. Employees also use SharePoint quite extensively and are about to extend the reach of an Autonomy search engine to search across the wiki, blogs and SharePoint implementations.

This has been a cultural shift, more than a technology change, to address a critical business. NRCan now uses communities of practice very effectively. For example, there is a Video Community of Practice in which about 60 employees with common interest in all aspects of video technology get together and share their expertise on departmental video initiatives. This is saving considerable money that would otherwise have been spent on contracting for video services.  So far, NRCan has not performed any formal measurements, besides keeping track of statistics.  However, it does not appear that there has been any dramatic decrease of e-mail use. A challenge with measurement is the lack of a baseline for comparison.

References:

Alexander, P. (2009). Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0: Draft report for comment. Retrieved August 30, 2010.

Maio, A. D. (2009). Five cases discussed by government panelists at the Gartner Orlando Symposium shed light on some critical success factors and provide useful hints to implement, develop or sustain innovation in government. Gartner Industry Research.

Wikipedia (2010). e-Government. Retrieved August 31, 2010.

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It’s intriguing to see how organisation of INB(N)346 innovate ways to improve collaboration and information sharing among peers, which differs from traditional approach in the past. They are implementing the “architecture of participation”, where user contribution becomes the platform provider.  Hence, this change things in intuitive way as it provides opportunities for them to participate cum learning anywhere at any time.

However, there are some risks I had found within the INB(N)346 organisation.

Participation inequality in social community environment causes unbalanced participation. With the spread usage of social networking tools like forum, twitter (#346class10, #web2Tutor and #DrJasonWatson) and blogging, which is much more interactive, the 90-9-1 principle still applies across in this organisation.  That means only 1% of users are actual content creators (These people are the information or opinion giver as they provide content for discussion), while 9% are commenters and modifiers, and the remaining 90% are simply readers or  consumers (these people are the information seeker, the opposite of information giver). This can be seen in Enterprise 2.0 Forum, where although there are 11 members who had join this forum, only 1 member is the web master and IT Administrator, 3-4 members are Prosumers; willing to share their thoughts and participate actively in the forum and the rest of the members are simply readers or just consumers. It is hope that more members of INB(N)346 organisation could join this insightful forum. Although it is very important to have the right information for this organisation, it is also important for the community within this organisation to recognise when more content is needed.

(Geek&Poke, 2010)

By having to blog, the organisation can have their say immediately as it provides a platform for everybody. Hence, this might not always a good thing!  Usually, blogs allow expert opinion to be disseminated without the long delays and tedious process of traditional publication methods. The reward comes from recognition.

Most  people blog quite extensively through Twitter or personal blogs.  Contrary to these findings, the INB(N)346 organisation have to be very careful of posting inflammatory information on twitter.  This is because once it is recorded, it goes out immediately in the form of viral network causing difficulties dealing with censorship. Hence, person who have negative roles must be kept at minumum such as:

• Aggressor person who seek to enhance their own status and defame others by criticizing almost everything in the blog’s comment or blaming others when things get rough in the comment discussion or twitter.
• Joker person who characterized by clowning, mimicking or generally disrupting by making a joke of everything posted in the blog.
• Monopolizer person who need to comment all the time in the blog. Usually, they are “Mavens” trying to make the impression that they are well read, knowledgeable and of value to the community of the organisation. They should, of course, be encouraged when their comments are helpful. However, when their comments are not helpful, the organisation need to draw others into the blog discussion.

Nevertheless, with reference to my past research experience in Human-Computer Interface (HCI), I also learned that they are such a group who are Abilene Paradox (the Chameleon effect), the Spiral of Silence and the Core Group Theory (Dix, Finlay, Abowd & Beale, 2004). All these have to be noted and taken into account when conducting in INB(N)346 organisation.

In conclusion, the INB(N)346 organisation must empowered everyone to participate by trusting each other as they are the brand!  They should also learn from their mistakes by experimenting a lot of new social network tools that are available. They need to build culture for participation by implementing community-developed guidelines inside the INB(N)346 organisation.

REFERENCES:

Dix, A., Finlay, J. E., Abowd, G. D., & Beale, R. (2004). Human-Computer Interaction (3rd ed.). London: Pearson, Prentice Hall.

Meredith, J. R., & Samuel J. Mantel, J. (1995). Project Management: A Managerial Approach (3rd ed.). USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

O’Reilly (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software: O’Reilly Media.

Thomas, S. (2006). Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future for Library Systems. Retrieved August 19, 2010.

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What better way for me to start talking about my own REAL organisation! Radio Television Brunei (RTB) was born in 1957. Half a century later it has come a long way from those pioneering days. Of course, back then, RTB was only about Radio, but it was proud of its transmission of TV in full color being added to the organization’s repertoire in 1975.  The arrival of television in 1975 not only provided a wide range of new opportunities for new services, but also related challenges in terms of developing or acquiring technical and production abilities using Information Technology capabilities. As a government owned broadcasting station, Radio Television Brunei is one of the key means of communication between His Majesty’s Government and the people of Brunei Darussalam. Therefore, this media communication is a prime mission of RTB.

Radio Television Brunei from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

The impact of social media in the 21st century has arrived with a need to address the challenges of the globalisation, information and communication technology age. In the era of digitalisation, RTB felt the impact of digital technology in all walks of life. The trends of broadcasting and IT industry are changing very fast due to the development and convergence of digital technology. Consequently, RTB’s mission changed to: “To inform, to entertain, to educate, to inspire and to interact anytime, anywhere and in any way”. Digital television using broadcasting 2.0 technology has transformed television viewing experience from the existing analog TV. It provides a better picture, higher picture resolution and improved sound quality. Thus, RTB offers multiple programming choices, new features and interactive capabilities such as:

• Video on Demand (VoD); new subscribed services on movies for viewers who demand for “What I want to watch, When I want to watch”. RTB delivers true VoD to subscribers by allowing them to watch any pre-loaded program at anytime from anywhere. It also delivers thousands of hours of VOD content to their users.

• By leveraging the software above level of a single device, TV Mobile allows RTB to broadcast contents to hand-sets such as mobile phones, Smartphones, netbooks and other digital devices. This is a natural extension of services on the ubiquitous mobile phones. It is where videos are interactively accessible anywhere. It offers services that build up communities and brand awareness. For instance, users can take part in a community chat with themed rooms. All of this is made possible by implementing Digital Video Broadcasting – Handheld (DVB-H).

In radio stations, IT is widely used by deejays for monitoring and playing music, dedications and greetings. They can now interact with their fans and listeners much more closely through social networking web applications such as Facebook, Twitter, MSN live chat and many others. By listening to live Netradio (audio streaming services), the digital divide is reduced by allowing everyone to listen to radio over the internet. With new technology such as Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) radio, listeners can get more information, record it and playback it as a podcast. With internet, RTBCity brings one step forward the new era of internet broadcasting by providing a superior experience and delivering web information services and new entertainment experiences to audiences. Streaming media across intranet (used by RTB staff as shown in Figure 1) and extranet frameworks is widely used as a mode of ‘Broadcasting 2.0’.

Figure 1: Screenshot of Microsoft Sharepoint being used in RTB

As RTB move towards the future, there are numerous legal risk issues ahead to be solved if it is to remain an important player in the fields of broadcasting in Brunei Darussalam. One good example is the concern on the licensing issues that are associated with the use of social media technologies and these have not yet been resolved due to technological convergence and globalisation. In addition, content protection is also an another important issue. Today, it’s much easier to copy digital content and reproduce several copies without any loss of quality. Hence, content piracy is never been more easier. As a result, most content copyright owners are very reluctant to sell content to RTB who do not have adequate content protection facilities in place. One way to mitigate this risk is by enforcing on copyright laws and intellectual property rights.

The advantages of broadcast 2.0 are massive as it promises many new and exciting opportunities. It will be one result of the transition to Enterprise 2.0; this is in part because of the influence of new media in the lives of all people and following on from an expansion in the range of opportunities for the people to utilize their leisure time. It is, in fact, the changes within society in the more globalised world of the 21st century. The younger generation (Gen-Y) now expects personal and functional IP interactivity for e-mail, social networking, transactions, learning and entertainment. Communication is no longer hard-wired to and from homes, kiosks, businesses, workplaces and institution because communication has become more mobile and personal.  Effective multimedia is dependent on the same core components as broadcasting. Therefore, RTB have a natural and substantial competitive advantage in the production of new interactive media.

Converging media is leaving behind broadcasters. The challenges are how to capitalize on the convergence and integrate the multimedia and interactive capabilities of the internet which has fuelled consumer expectations. The broadcast schedulers and content producers must meet these challenges by adopting and adapting many of the techniques and technologies used in the internet powerhouse through harnessing collective intelligence from the social network community (O’Reilly, 2005). Broadcasting and IT have evolved from totally different approaches. Broadcasters target mass audiences, while IT interacts on a personal basis and requires sophisticated computers. However, the reality is that the internet has combined these two industries and merged them into the telecommunication genre so as to meet consumer demand for creative services and functionality for digital media devices.

References:
Burrows, M. (2010). Understanding and managing legal risks online. [Lecture Notes].

O’Reilly, T. 2005. What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. O’Reilly Media.

Radio Television Brunei. (2010). RTBCity. Retrieved August 16, 2010.

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The best thing with Enterprise 2.0, is about flexibility and collaboration. Collaborators are the one running the show NOT the IT administrators or web masters in organisations. One way of having an Enterprise strategy, is  by having a mashups in our blog or sites.  It is an empowering technology and evolutionary, NOT revolutionary. According to Ogrinz (2009), user demand for web 2.0 technologies within existing corporate infrastructure, which act as a catalyst for Enterprise 2.0. This week, I had discovered two interesting Enteprise organisations, which I considered to be part of my case study – AFNI and DIA.

1st CASE STUDY – AFNI

AFNI is a leading outsourcer of customer service, insurance services, and receivables management operating 12 call centers across USA and employing more than 3,000 call center agents and 500 enterprises, each of which has a unique set of applications and business processes. The risk currently faced is their customer data management, which is scattered across multiple apps. They wasted plenty of times searching through applications and constantly toggle back and forth betweeen it to resolve customer issues. To make matter worst, most apps are owned and control by their clients. Afni’s IT organisation has little or no control over the apps and no access to their source code (AFNI, 2010).

According to Ogrinz (2009), to overcome these risks, they have implement Enterprise 2.0 framework. Their mission is simple yet challenging – to improve productivity, reduce average handling times, increase first call resolution rates, simplify training for agents and finally ensure they comply with customer’s requirements. Afni choose the OpenSpan platform to build a series of mashups for its contact center agents. The mashup auto-populates customer data for each customer support call, thus provides agents with a 360-degree view of the customer and eliminates the need for them to navigate through a series of apps. The user interfaces generated by the systems were constructed to match the business process or specific call flow (OpenSpan, 2010). To demonstrate this, an agent needs to follow the natural flow of the screen from top to bottom. Input fields are colour coordinated to alert agents. If agents require further information not available from their screen, they can click on a link in the mashup and open up the relevant application. Each step of agent activity is being tracked and logged to ensure compliance with client needs and to resolve any traffics that can affect system performances, if found any.

Some of the mashup patterns being implemented are:

• Accessibility. Without it, Afni agents would be forced to learn and interact with a wide range of client
• Content aggregation. Afni agents spend less time navigating and toggling beween apps, thus spending more time serving customers.
• Usability enhancer. The agents simply need to follow the workflow process where fields are colour-coded to notify them which steps need to be completed
• Content migration. The mashups automates this process which is applied to relevant client apps behind the scenes and without any direct involvement by the agent.
• Integration. Call notes are logged automatically to capture agent activities and customer data. The audit trail helps Afni to comply with client requirements and identify traffics if found any by Afni’s quality teams.
• Workflow. Afni is able to modify the mashup’s user interface to support new client policies without affecting client application (Ogrinz, 2009).

The benefits gain after implementing Enterprise 2.0 are:

• Afni can spend more time resolving customer issues as they are able to resolve customer issues more quickly and improved first-call resolution rates.
• Afni has improved customer satisfaction when support call times are reduced with a higher percentage of support cases are resolved on the first call.
• Their client’s customers receive a better overall quality of service because they achieved mandated policy and compliance requirements in a timely and efficient manner.
• Afni has improved its ability to respond quickly to its client’s needs like policy changes (Ogrinz, 2009).

2nd CASE STUDY – DIA (Defense Intelligene Agency)

DIA provides military intelligence to the Department of Defense and the intelligence community in support of U.S. military planning and operations and weapon systems acquisition. Their vision is stated as “integration of highly skilled intelligence professionals with leading edge technology to discover information and create knowledge that provides warning, identifies opportunities, and delivers overwhelming advantage to our warfighters, defense planners, and defense and national security policymakers.” Their major risk is to isolate vital information from a vast array of sources. The video below briefly describes what they do in the real world (DIA, 2010).

By implementing Enterprise 2.0 framework, DIA has applied mashups to the military intelligence gathering as part of their web 2.0 project in a government sector to improve the speed, timeliness and accuracy of the organisation’s situational awareness. They used a mashup called “Overwatch” which is a dashboard app that acts as a “virtual operating center”. It integrates a wide range of intelligence sources into a single browser-based dashboard including DIA’s public-key infrastructure (PKI) framework. To implement it, DIA uses JackBe’s Presto product which connects to several services within DIA’s network and acts as means of communication between analysts and services. Later, the analysts is able to view these data sources regardless of any tools like SOA, SQL, RSS and many others (JackBe, 2007).

Some of the mashup patterns that benefited the analysts are:

• Alerter that provides alerts based on specific conditions being set.
• Filter that can be personalized to extract important information from a vast content.
• Leading Indicator for monitoring multiple message feeds to make situational assessments.
• Reality Mining use to detect common usage patterns based on the analyzers.
• Time Series provides intuitive time-based analysis.
• API Enabler allows sharing mashup data so others can consume and customize the data.
• Super Search using search engines to interact other internal and external data.
• Dashboard that is easy to use.
• Location Mapping for rapid geospatial tagging (Ogrinz, 2009).

The benefits gain after implementing Enterprise 2.0 are:

• The Overwatch program has become an important tool that allows analysts to track information resources around the world in real time.
• DIA win several awards for their project work on Overwatch.
• Overwatch continues its evolution today with continued integration of existing and emerging technologies within the DIA, including the DIA’s security and services infrastructures (Ogrinz, 2009).

References:

AFNI (2010). Contact center solutions and Receivables Management Services. Retrieved August 12, 2010.

D. I. A(2010). Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Retrieved August 12, 2010.

JackBe (2007). Enterprise Mashup Solutions. Retrieved August 12, 2010.

Ogrinz, M. (2009). Mashup Patterns: Designs and Examples for the Modern Enterprise. Indiana: Addison-Wesley Professional.

OpenSpan (2010). User Process Management, Process Improvement. Retrieved August 12, 2010.



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The main use of Enterprise 2.0 within an organization is to improve productivity and efficiency. The ability to unleash mashup capability within an organization can be compelling indeed. The organisational structure of Enterprise 2.0 can help us to provide new views of organization data that we cannot even imagine yet.

It is interesting to see how organisation like Lotus Greenhouse meets the needs of a technology savvy business community in a different approach. By using their mashup strategy called Mashup Center, it combines the power of managing data from across the enterprise with an easy-to-use mashup interface that enables users to drag and drop widgets which uses McAfee’s SLATES concept. These can be connected to RSS feeds, other mashups, wired together and published for future use.  It provides a complete and robust set of tools. The overall strategy is purely based on user-friendly tools that allow users to get started and be productive instanteanously.

Source: Bernal, 2010

In relation to Wikinomics business models, Greenhouse opens a social network for social interaction and collaboration between customers, business partners and IBM. It serves as a focal point for Greenhouse to provide thought and technical leadership in the colloborative space. It enables users to try out available products and features in a live environment as well as inviting peers to collaborate and seek solutions for their business needs.  By being open, they can provide feedback and help drive desired product features. In addition, they can learn new information about interaction, features and opportunities through best practices. By acting global, Greenhouse can engage directly with users and invite them to participate in a community to help provide a vast amount of experience. According to Bernal (2010), it has more than 30,000 registered users, 1,000 blogs with 20,000 customers participating through comments and tagging, nearly 1,000 communities and more than 3,000 average visitors per day.

Source: Bernal, 2010

Also, another excellent example of organisation that uses Enterprise 2.0, is a broadcaster located in Hong Kong called RTHK. They had embedded web 2.0 core tools and technologies into their website. I have site visited their broadcasting complex few years back and I was very impressed with what they have been doing lately. They have setup a podcast station to the community and allows personalised customization for each individual users. Readers can select a list of tags provided in a tag cloud.  With “RTHK on the Go“, it leverages software above level of a single device that allows the community globally to access the content application anywhere at any time from a their phone. Information with voice, pictures, video and text are streamed over any media devices. Viewers can watch prime time news, weather and stock market information. This is a natural extension of services on the ubiquitous mobile phones. It is where videos are interactively accessible anywhere. It offers services that build up communities and brand awareness. For instance, users can take part in a community chat with themed rooms.

For those who prefer to read content in their own language, there is a bilingual language option provided at the site. Also, those who prefer to view in a simple plain interface, they could select it in text mode as well as a site map for being a lightweight application model. RTHK harnesses collective intelligence, which allows user contribution as part of their “architecture of participation”.  This is made possible by participating in their blog where user can have their say immediately on RTHK’s press release.  Anyone who register the site can upload contents for being a citizen journalism. News can be subscribed via email or phone and users can receive latest news headlines in three sessions a day. It can be shared with friends by choosing Facebook, Google, MSN, Delicious or Twitter.

RTHK from Wan Harris on Vimeo.

As part of being perpetual beta, RTHK provides a new platform called “my RTB +Beta“. What’s so cool about this platform, it’s like having your own personalised TV. It offers new subscribed services on TV programmes like drama or documentary for viewers who demand for “What I want to watch, When I want to watch”. RTHK delivers true VoD to subscribers by allowing them to watch any pre-loaded program at anytime from anywhere. By empowering mashups technology, the community can get the latest news report updates, weather information and amazing podcasts using RTHK’s widgets. This micro app brings more convenient and fun to users where it can be downloaded either on a MacOS or Windows platform.

Get ready to blow your mind away! This last example that would mesmerize everyone is an enterprise that uses a 3D suit design. Forget tape measures. The future of tailoring is lasers! A tailor based in london uses revolutionary 3D body scanning to measure their customer in one easy, five-minute visit. According to Jon Buni, managing director of Tailormadelondon, “The company is born out of the idea of bringing elite tailoring back to the masses”. It’s suit scanner is based on Human Solution’s virtual smart LC3D body scanner. The scanner’s optical process is currently the world’s most accurate method of body measurement, capable of calculating over 1,000 body dimensions in a single sitting. The scan takes under ten seconds and produces a 3D image of the subject’s body. According to the Jon Buni, the scanner is about the size of a changing room cubicle and uses eye-safe lasers to create an accurate image of your body. The device and its software cost nearly US$300,000!

The website embeds some web 2.0 technologies, where you could provide feedback by providing ideas, questions, suggestions and many more. By using setster, customers could make appointment with the tailor as this would speed up your suit’s requirements. There are many garments to choose from the web gallery and all are handmade in Germany using cloth from the likes of Zegna, Loro Piana, Holland and Sherry. Existing clients can login their individual usernames, and get all the necessary information they would need from the tailor. I still have yet to see other tailor shops using this kind of technology.

References:

Bernal, J. (2010). Web 2.0 and Social Networking for the Enterprise, IBM Press Pearson plc.
Buni, J. (2010). 3D suit design. Retrieved August 11, 2010.

Greenhouse, L. (2010). Where ideas come to grow. Retrieved August 11, 2010.

Platt, M. (2010). Web 2.0 in the Enterprise: The Architecture Journal. Retrieved August 10, 2010.

Pontefract, D. (2010). The Org Structure of Enterprise 2.0. Trainingwreck  Retrieved August 3, 2010.

RTHK (2010). Radio Television Hong Kong. Retrieved August 11, 2010.

Wikipedia. (2010a). Web Widget. Retrieved August 3, 2010.

Wikipedia (2010b). Video On Demand. Retrieved August 11, 2010.

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What is actually a blog? Basically, it is just a web site, which comes from two common words – “web” and “log”, thus being called a weblog or blog for short. It is a web site that contains new articles or contributions in a primaryly chronological order, listing the latest entry on top. In the past, the web 1.0 has one big disadvantage – it is quite complicated and inconvenient to act as an author to take part in the development of content, although it is easy to get information in it. This is called Web 1.0, that inserts limited content in a web. Now, there is Web 2.0 that deals with user generated content. The content is unlimited as anyone can publish in the web. Web 2.0 is about social, collaborative and interactive. Its main feature is the capability that allows readers to respond to what they comment in a blog – “Comment on this”. Thus, by having audience participation, it adds more value to our blog’s content that allows them to add information and diversity of opinion.

Web 2.0 specific technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts and RSS feeds or discussion forums have been dubbed as social networks because they are perceived as being especially connected and allow users to develop web app collaboratively and publicly. To date, Web 2.0 enables internet users to actively take part in the further development of the web. Every community in the web is able to contribute easily to any web posts. The main focus of Web 2.0 is on the user’s behaviour, which empower people to communicate, collaborate, contribute and participate.

Last week, I attended an Enterprise 2.0 lecture by Jason Watson. He stressed on implementing the new paradigm shift of the web. I feel the concept of Web 1.0 is where there is a strict prosumer (producer/consumer) approach to delivering web content. The web host build and maintain the web for consumption by readers. The relationship is unidirectional approach, rigid and targeted based on assumptions made by web host or content author. In contrast to this approach, in Web 2.0 model, readers actively participate and contribute to a website in a bidirectional approach, which enables them to interact with the website, thus harnessing collective intelligence from the readers. With Web 2.0, I can create, edit, rate and tag content at will, which provides other users with new information and guides the relevance of what is vital to the social community. According to McAfee (2006), there are six components of Enterprise 2.0 technologies: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. Consequently, there is a strong relationship between Web 2.0 with McAfee’s Enterprise 2.0 SLATES paradigm.

Search allows users make use this component to analyse different kind of information that they are looking for. Links allow the blog author guide readers to what is important and provide structure to the content being posted. Authoring allows people to contribute anything relevant to the blog post, whether it is knowledge, insight, personal experience, a comment, a fact, a link and many more.  Comments allow me to understand whether other users have found things useful. Tags allow users to define content. Thus, making it easy for them to identify and categorize content for others to better understand where things might fit or what other users consider important. Tagging and rating allow “better” content to rise to the top of any list. Extensions allow users making connections and communicate with others. This is done by automating some of the work of categorization and pattern matching. Finally, Signals allow users to receive alert when new content of interest appears through RSS technology.

There are many great web 2.0 blogs available. The ones that I would recommend the most are:

• Sacha Chua Blog – This blog tells about her daily life being an Enterprise 2.0 consultant, tech evangelist, storyteller, geek, and more. What makes her blog great, she implements the O’Reilly Web 2.0 core patterns. The blog is a kind of unique, she elucidates her daily life experience in the journals and provides some tips and traps in personal skill development.

• Lotus Greenhouse – “Where ideas come to grow”. The tag line used here intrigues me as it helps customers to grow and learn.  This blog is designed to allow IBM partners and customers to come together to use and evolve the technology that IBM provides. It is designed as a living platform where Lotus collaboration products and tools can be used to help innovate and grow available product features. Greenhouse provides tremendous benefit as organizations look to adopt new technologies and grow their capabilities.

• SEO – This blog deals with everything you need to know in enhancing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in your blog. Jim Stewart, a friend and google guru, has been providing Internet solutions to corporate and government since 1998. What makes his blog great, he has produced more audio and video content for the Internet than ANY other Australian company and are one  of the twelve Australian, Microsoft endorsed, Windows Media Service Providers. This blog will tell you how to achieve top ranking in major search engines. Getting website traffic is exactly what all the fuss is about when marketers are discussing SEO. The higher a site ranks in the search results that search engines provide to those using key words to find products and services, the more visitors will visit. More visitors = more sales = more profits. In Enterprise 2.0, managers consider that vital to organisation’s business growth.

In conclusion, one of my goals that should be set is to fully acknowledge the feedback gathered from my readers as they interact with the tools I provide in my blog. Without a complete feedback loop, much of the effort might be wasted for myself. In order to attract readers, I must ensure my blog is worth reading, worth linking, frequently updated, linked in with other blogs and built a constructive comment. A good example of this would be Sacha Chua’s blog who is living in an awesome life. There is a  saying goes “The pen is mightier than the sword”. Using personalisation as part of her personal branding, I could tell she loves to draw in her blog. There are many drawings that resemble for buttons, links, charts, mind map and many other else. She engages her audience through a variety of social media apps such as Delicious, Digg it, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. To date, she has 2288 subscribers, 3164 comments and 3047 on Twitter from her blog.

One significant benefit of Web 2.0 and Social Networking is that it is now so easy to find content that is interesting, relevant or popular. Consequently, this aspect is changing the way I work with the Web.

Enterprise 2.0 for dummies?

Meet Charlie – what is Enterprise2.0?
View more presentations from Scott Gavin.

References:

Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? Educause Review, 41(2), 32-44.

O’Reilly, Tim (September 30, 2005), What Is Web 2.0, Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. Retrieved July 31, 2010.

Smith, Gene (2008). Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web. New Riders Press.

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Hello, it would be exciting to learn more on what Enterprise 2.0 could offer me.

Perhaps, we should start to evaluate more deeper the effectiveness of Enterprise 2.0 towards the community such as having a community forum. It’s never too late.

What would you think?

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What does it take to have a second chance in improving our lives?  In today’s real world, there might be some limitations to explore oneself’s identity; but not if you have used Second Life (SL). It is a virtual world developed by Philip Linden who formed Linden Lab in 2003.  Here, users are called Residents where they could interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, create and trade virtual property and services with one another or travel throughout the world.  There is also another version called Teen Second Life, which is specifically more used for teenagers.

There is no charge to create a SL for any period of time.  It has an internal currency, the Linden dollar (L$) which can be purchased using US dollars and other currencies on the Lindex exchange.  Users can earn large amounts of money from using it, which is later used to pay their subscription and tier fees.  Its revenue model is based on premium services where members are required to pay US$9.95 per month or US$72 per year.  This will provide access to an increased level of technical support.

The idea of today’s web services became more like a fashion trend that creates a highly reliable programming environments like Second Life. This is made possible by using Linden Scripting Language that is similar to C programming.  It combines with XML-RPC and HTTP requests for adding functionality to objects and textures for clothing.  Animations and gestures can be created using external software.  It uses a 3D modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects.  Its RSS feed is running on a text board within their section of Second Nature Island as part of their continuing work to investigate real time or near real time.

SL has several competitors including Entropia Universe, OpenSim, IMVU, Active Worlds and Kaneva. Each has its pros and cons depending on how users adapt its scalability, simplicity and accessibility.  Nevertheless, SL is still significantly popular for being multi-purpose cultural mediums.  For accessibility, SL can now be used by visually impaired users by using force feedback , Text SL and Screen Reader on their avatar.  The biggest barriers for them are its apparent lack of meta data such as names and descriptions for virtual world objects.

In 2007, Linden Lab announced a ban on in-world gambling, in fear that new regulations on Internet gambling.  Consequently, there were in-world protests especially from virtual banks like Ginko Financial; whom later went bankrupt.  They also ban Woodbury University, a California educational institution for not conforming to their Terms of Service requirements.  Users who use a CopyBot or similar client will also be banned.  The SL Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple digital rights management functions.

In January 2010, 18 million accounts were registered in SL; thus they do not have enough manpower to handle all their customers.  Hence, it suffered from system instability, increased system latency and intermittent client crashes causing inventory loss belongs to their customers.  Furthermore, they were challenged by an open source community.  Consequently, Linden Lab is open sourcing the Second Life server code, dramatically altering the company’s business model.

The future looks bright for SL as to how they control the wisdom of crowd by providing inline help, FAQs for zero training and an ongoing valuable service.  It supports many different written languages and character sets, thus the residents are able to chat in their native language.  It also harnesses network effects as more users using it.

Second Life from BKM Texas on Vimeo.

REFERENCES

37 Signals. (2006). Getting Real: the Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application.

Gardiner B. (2007). Bank Failure in Second Life Leads to Calls for Regulation. Retrieved May 7, 2010.

IBM. (2008). As the (virtual) world turns. Retrieved May 7, 2010.

Linden Lab Inc. (n.d). Virtual Worlds, Avatars, free 3D chat, online meetings – Second Life Official Site.Retrieved May 6, 2010.

Mistral P. (2007). Woodbury University Island Destroyed. Retrieved May 7, 2010.

Reuters. (2007). Rival grids threaten Linden’s monopoly on SL technology. Retrieved May 7, 2010.

Smithee. (2007). RSS in Second Life. Retrieved May 6, 2010.

Wikipedia. (n.d). Second Life. Retrieved May 6, 2010.

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Wow, last week it’s a big handful of experience for me having gone through the Anzac Day. As an international student, i find Anzac Day quite mesmerizing which i would recall as a national day of remembrance for Australian as well as New Zealanders. It is commemorated on 25th April every year to honour members of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps which defines the name ANZAC.

Some intriguing event scenes i encountered during the day of Anzac as the video below tells you the whole story. I even found a dog wearing army clothes!!! The military people boastfully walks around the street displaying their badges on the uniforms, feeling proud being able to serve the communities. What i can’t figure out is, why there is also other family members participating in the parade? Are they representatives of ANZAC members? or is it just for the sake of fun? Furthermore, why there is other member countries participating in this parade like country from Vietnam and Burma – Gurkhas? What happens next once these veterans who fought in wars no longer exist? Will it still be perennial? As the world we are living in is going towards peace and harmony, will there be another Anzac day for the next decade or century? Although, i could hardly conceive how one person is able to contribute to his country for pride and glory. But what about others who are delinquents? Will they be an acknowledgment for them as well? The last part of this video is very entertaining as the 3 ladies grouped together singing some patriotic songs when i was walking along the street obliviously.

One thing for sure, it’s a day for social networking as people gathers around sharing thoughts and ideas through the wisdom of crowd and harnessing the collective intelligence of user’s value somewhere out there!

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Internet Archive is an Internet non-profit library that offers permanent access for researchers, historians and scholars, people with disabilities and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format.  Services offered includes texts, audio, moving images, software as well as archived web pages.  Its largest collection is its web archive which is mirrored at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt. It allows user to both upload and download digital material and provides unrestricted online access for FREE.

Marxists Internet Archive (MIA) is another similar comparison to Internet Archive. It is also a non-profit organisation that provides multi-lingual, more than 40 languages.  Unfortunately, it faced a problem of Denial-of-service attacks from China in January 2007.  The seriousness of attacks coupled with other hosting issues, led to its closure for several weeks, thus making users lose faith using their services.

Internet Archive harnessed the long tail and leverage customer self-service by referring to the vast number of small sites that made up of:

• Wayback Machine, a digital time capsule service that allows users to see archived version of web pages across time.
• Prelinger Archive, a collection of films.
• Open Library, a comprehensive online database of books that is still in beta.
• Live Music Archive, a collection of audio.

They make everything available by embracing the niches. The Open Library has more than 25 millions of books online that oversees one of the world’s largest book digitisation projects whereas, Live Music Archive has over 50,000 audio from independent artists.  Users could buy from Amazon, Abebooks, Alibris, Barnes and Noble, Powells or borrow from the Worldcat library, BookMooch, Title Trader or search through Google Book. This “live web” uses RSS aggregator technology that allows user to link not just to a page but also subscribe to it with notification every time the page changes.

It harness collective intelligence through positive feedback loop and more algorithm-fueled recommendations, where it guides users by following their likes and dislikes, therefore easing their exploration of the unknown to find their requirements using “More like this” statement towards the chosen subjects items.  It leverages the “wisdom of crowd” on the open-source media collections that are contributed implicitly by the public. Recently, the Archive has begun working to provide specialized services relating to the information access needs of the print-disabled. TechRepublic podcast stated that one of best practices in web 2.0 application is ability to provide usability for the disable communities. Hence, it provides specialized services for adaptive reading and information access for the blind and person with disabilities.

The future looks promising for the Internet Archive as it offers more books, free music concerts, TV programs and a “snapshot” of World Wide Web each day capturing many implicit contributions from a large number of users.

The Internet Archive, In Depth

REFERENCES:

Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Retrieved April 28, 2010 from Electronic Book Library database.

Internet Archive. (2001). Retrieved April 28, 2010.

Marxists Internet Archive. (n.d). Retrieved April 28, 2010.

O’Reilly Media. (2010).What is Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Design Patterns. Retrieved April 27, 2010.

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Vimeo do not have a software release cycle. While Vimeo reindexes its link indices every day since it is data plus software. It has to reindex its ‘data’ every day else it loses its value. Thus, operations are critical to Vimeo.  There is no ‘release’ as such. The flip side of this coin is – there are widespread beta releases and users are treated as co-developers by providing Mashup APIs.

Vimeo is a video-centric social networking site owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp. It supports embedding, sharing, video storage and allows user-commenting on each video page. By registering, users could upload content and create a user’s profile using their photos as avatars. It also allows commenting and choosing “like” videos.  Vimeo can also be followed on twitter or tumblr through Smartphones.  It was created by filmmakers and video creators who wanted to share their creative work with intimate friends.

There is no better example than to compare Vimeo Vs YouTube on the table below:

YouTube is still famous to download anything and everything there is to see.  Nevertheless, the advantages of using Vimeo are that there are no low-down, crappy and amateur videos but brilliant rendition. The HD videos have larger screen resolution (1280 x 720) where quality is prioritized and not quantity.  Uploading is much faster and videos can be streamed while being uploaded. If compare that with YouTube, Vimeo is definitely better.  Furthermore, contents should be a personal videos not rip offs from TV or movie.

Vimeo has a respectful social community who are passionate about sharing the videos they make. It provides best tools and highest quality video on the web.  Like-minded people came to the site and built a community of positive, encouraging individuals with a wide range of video interests.  Vimeo is considered to be a viral video where comedians, musicians, celebrities, and even politicians such as Barack Obama himself, uses Vimeo for presidential election purposes.  In addition, recent incident on volcanic eruptions in Iceland causing people to use Vimeo to social networks with their friends, relatives and families.  It is amazing how this tool could help in such a way, allowing them to send their personal video blog, telling others their current situation through this free service.

Vimeo gained a reputation by controlling the wisdom of crowd, as it does not allow commercial videos, gaming videos or anything not created by the user to be uploaded on the site. This is because gaming videos are quite large causing transcoder wait times. Ironically, Machinima videos are still allowed! There is also a video quality issues using Flash with regards to number of frames encoded resulted in bad performance but it has been resolved quickly by reverting to previous configurations.

The future of Vimeo looks promising. With the support of HTML5 Beta, the player do not have to rely on Flash.  There is a new support for Smartphones allowing to be watched in HD. Unfortunately, most of these new features are for members only but what you got to loose for, with 16 cents per day for a year subscription – no ads, advanced statistics, faster uploads, more uploads space, customizable and much more. It’s value for money.

REFERENCES

Allan Tepper. (2010). TechnoTur. Retrieved April 21, 2010.

Honeytechblog. (2009). Advantages of using Vimeo than YouTube. Retrieved April 20, 2010.

Vimeo (2010). Presenting Vimeo Plus. Retrieved April 21, 2010

Wikipedia. (2010).Vimeo. Retrieved April 20, 2010.

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Today, users are demanding for application’s ability to integrate both data and services across several platform devices with internet servers act as a backbone.  Having said this, win your way using Spiceworks.  It provides systems management, inventory and service helpdesk application.  It caters for small and medium enterprises, and use it to monitor, manage, inventory and report on organisation’s software and hardware assets.  The beauty of Spiceworks is not only it supports multi-platform machines but other IP addressable devices as well such as routers, VOIP phones, network printers and many others. Users can manage and respond to service tickets using their mobile phones.

It is easy-to-use with comprehensive, system and network management tools provided for free.  Sounds mesmerising! Spiceworks survive mainly from the sponsor’s advertisement embedded on its application.  They allocated 20% of the display screen on the right hand side for advertisements. Nevertheless, it is related to IT field which might be useful in getting relevant IT stuffs.  Unfortunately, antivirus might trigger this as adware viruses due to displayed advertisements which require disabling some firewall settings for it to run smoothly.

A good comparison to Spiceworks would be Salesforce CRM.  Unfortunately, its services are limited to 30-days trial period which requires payment upon continuing its services. Furthermore, most of the mashup APIs are not provided freely.

Spiceworks scan the entire organisation’s network inventory including remote office locations and standby devices through an agent-less scan approach. It uses protocol like WMI, SSH and SNMP to recall the network and get information from all those devices, hardwares, softwares and other drivers.  This can be set automatically to retrieve up-to-date information.  Interestingly, it could also track non-network devices and generate custom, professional-looking reports on all network assets instantaneously. All the data are securely stored on the local network behind the firewall.  Spiceworks community is a big neighbourhood component of embedded collaboration that helps each other to solve problem.

Spiceworks is known as knowledge user community as it gets better based on user’s feedbacks and allows installation of widgets and plug-ins for customization preferences. Consequently, it would be valuable in future as it allows flexibility, expandability, modularity as well as interoperability. Indeed, the mobile device usage provides potential to act as a significant data reporter rather than just data consumer. This data has implicitly or explicitly impacted to the Spiceworks communities. So, what are you waiting for? Spice up your life with Spiceworks!

REFERENCES:

• Wikipedia. (2010). Spiceworks. Retrieved April 12, 2010.
• Spiceworks Inc. (2010). Spiceworks – Free Network Management Software . Retrieved April 12, 2010.
• YouTube. (2008). Interop 2008 – SpiceWorks. Retrieved April 12, 2010.
• Admin. (2008). Why I gave up on Spiceworks. Retrieved April 12, 2010.

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Anyone for a Dimdim? Dimdim has been existed for more than 15 years and is a powerful tool for collaboration in the web. It lets anyone communicate using rich internet applications in real time. It is an open source that support open source community edition and integrates with CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and LMS (Learning Management System) software so it can be added on easily.  It is easily customizable, extremely flexible and available in hosted and on-site configurations. It comes with many versions. The free version allows anyone to host meetings with up to 20 people simultaneously.  The pro version allows customizable built for small business by making money on the web as return of investment whilst the enterprise version is for big enterprise that has many features such as reporting and analytics tool. It has simple user interface that is easy for anyone to learn.  This is because it does not require to install anything, all that is needed is a very small plug-in.  The meeting could be started with a single click to share slides, PDFs, whiteboards and even the entire desktop.  Teleconference service is also available for larger meetings.  Attendees could also simultaneously annotate a presentation, scribble on a whiteboard, send instant messages and broadcast audio/video if permitted by the host.

Unlike other web conference products such as WebEx and GotoMeeting, Dimdim does not require users to install software on their PCs in order to attend web meeting. It has a fully integrated browser, which allows users to take their audience to various web sites and show them specific features live on the web.  The enterprise edition is available at a cheaper price compared to Cisco WebEx. The free version allows unlimited usage with its features like video and whiteboards as long as you want. Unlike GoToMeeting, it requires an extra fee. Anyone can join via permalink that uses smart URLs without having to remember long and difficult URLs. It is mashable by embedding widgets and allows recordings on user’s site or other web content such as YouTube and Polldaddy into the meeting. Its interoperability provides the same features for all platforms unlike Cisco Webex and GotoMeeting.

Dimdim provides open APIs so that anyone could mash-up it with anything ranging from Twitter and Facebook to Zimbra and YouTube.  The users, developers and partners have access to advanced browser-based collaboration features.  It allows them to easily interact with large or small groups across multiple geographies, while simultaneously recording the activity.  This is made possible using open source connectors such as SugarCRM coupled with Dimdim’s web conferencing tool. Developers could use “Liberty” (Dimdim open source community).  It is for use in noncritical environments and based on open source streaming and media components (Adobe Flash Server) and runs on SynchroLive Communication Platform. Dimdim uses Amazon S3/EC2 that connects over a network to its server, providing reduced maintenance costs and minimal application updates as well as higher levels of security and energy efficient.  This provides opportunities for compelling user experiences with no longer having thick client applications.  Its online support includes a complete collection of tools designed specifically to improve the users experience such as forums discussion group, online knowledge base, an issue tracker to check the status of an issue for all users. In addition, it provides tools for checking user’s PC and bandwidth connection and test webcam before conducting meetings.  In addition, other resources such as API documentation, videos, support policies and open source support links are also available. The major issues with Dimdim would be its high demand for constant internet connection and that does not work well with low-speed connections.

Having said the above, Dimdim is still the best way to work as it makes software and data available transparently and everywhere. It is a good choice for presentations and online sharing.  It is constantly improving by taking suggestions from users to enhance it in future to come. Is it any wonder technology is outpacing our ability to keep up? With their leading global investors like Nexus India Capital, Index Ventures and Draper Richards, it is a perfect match of the alignment of investors’ experience and Dimdim’s vision.  Indeed, Dimdim is no Dumbdumb!

DimDim Web Conferencing

REFERENCES:

1. Bernard L. (April 4, 2008). Dimdim’s No Duh, Recession-Proof Proposition. Retrieved March 25, 2010 from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dimdims_recession-proof_proposition.php
2. Dimdim, Inc.(2010). Live meetings without compare. Retrieved March 25, 2010 from http://www.dimdim.com/products/dimdim_compare.html
3. John W. Rittinghouse, James F.Ransome. (2010). Cloud Computing: Implementation, Management and Security. CRC Press. Taylor & Francis Group.
4. YouTube, Inc.(2010). Dimdim Web Conferencing & Webinars 5.5 Intro. Retrieved March 25, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9BsHHdmnjM

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Zoho is a web 2.0 office application suite from AdventNet Inc., which offers a lot of services to its users especially the small and medium entrepreneurs. It is as popular as Salesforce which does a similar job, which is also web-based CRM solution. Why Zoho? It is supported by over 120 developers and has launched 15 different applications mainly focusing in working office solutions.  Its CRM application is available in 3 different editions: free edition, professional edition and enterprise edition which includes sales & marketing, inventory management, customer support & service as well as reports & dashboards.

Generally speaking, it has almost everything including having a blog and forum site. This is a mashup ecosystem that creates many new services opportunities that uses and combines data or functionality from external sources and provides rich set of features such as email, office applications, wiki, conference meeting and more. Users could share all or part of their data with other users. It can be as granular as an individual page, page object or a web page. It support multiple data formats and delivery where users could built their web sites using PHP, JSP, ASP, Perl or any other programming language. REST allows users to add one record at a time.  Meanwhile, RPC API allows user to add multiple records in multiple forms or applications at a time. Both response formats are supported in XML, CSV, JSON.

Zoho offers a wide selection of APIs to its service strategy.  It was design for remixability where some of its APIs can be used for mobile interface, Facebook, Microsoft applications, hosting back-end databases and many other SaaS (Software as a Service) services. CloudSQL architecture is used in all Zoho services.  It is an extension to the existing web API technology that allows the developers to interact with business data stored across Zoho services using SQL language. The developers could use this service to collect, store and mine their business data. It encourages them to enhance their SQL language skills for faster deployment and easier integration of applications. A good example for this would be Ghost CC and StartForce websites. Both are using Zoho API services. Zoho have partnered with Omnidrive to develop a standard protocol for web applications to allow users read and write data to storage providers, Omnidrive.

In technology gaps, Zoho is using a SSL for all their credit card transactions. It has been approved by W3C and is secure.  Their security and privacy policies are periodically reviewed and enhanced as necessary and only authorized individuals have access to the information. They will post privacy policy changes so users are always aware of what information being collected, used, and under what circumstances they could disclose it. In Terms of Service, it was clearly stated that the services are provided “AS-IS-AND-AS-AVAILABLE” basis for user’s information and personal use only and the use of the service is at user’s sole risk.

Some of the issues encountered in using Zoho are mainly to do with its lacking features and stability issues.  For instant, users experience glitches when importing data where Zoho apologize for this service for a fact it is still in beta version. Meanwhile, Zoho Chat instant messaging does not work with major instant messaging services. Zoho Show provides only basic slides with no tables, transition effects and character creation function. Perhaps another biggest risks for Zoho would be security issues. Is it secure? Web-based applications have long been considered potential security risks. For this reason, many big clients prefer to keep their applications, data, and IT operations under their own control without using an API provider. But that is something for Zoho would try to tackle in future.

The future direction of Zoho is great, as it is a vendor to watch as it grows year by year. Backed by Google, Zoho offers something for everyone. Zoho is catching up with Google in terms of functionality and features.

Zoho takes on Microsoft and Google

References:

1. Ghost Inc. (2010). Ghost Cloud Computing. Retrieved 19 March 2010, from http://ghost.cc
2. John W. Rittinghouse, James F. Ransome. (2010). Cloud Computing Implementation, Management, and Security, CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
3. Michael Miller (2009). Cloud Computing: Web-Based Applications That Change the Way You Work and Collaborate Online, QUE, Indiana.
4. Richard MacManus (2007). Zoho and Omnidrive working on Web App data standards. Retrieved 19 March 2010, from http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zoho_omnidrive_data_standards.php
5. StartForce. (2010). Official provider of Your Desktop on the Web, Web Desktop, Desktop Virtualization and Thin Client Solution. Retrieved 19 March 2010, from http://www.startforce.com
6. Zoho Corp (2010). About Zoho. Retrieved 19 March 2010, from http://www.zoho.com
7. Zoho Corp (2010). Zoho – Terms of Service. Retrieved 19 March 2010, from http://www.zoho.com/terms.html
8. Zoho Corp (2010). Zoho Creator API. Retrieved 19 March 2010, from http://writer.zoho.com/public/help/creator-api-index/fullpage

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