FourSquare for the Enterprise: Give it 2 Years, Max

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/zwUSSq4VwW8/foursquare-for-the-enterprise.php

hutchcarpenter.jpegIn the past few weeks we've seen more references to FourSquare as a potential enterprise tool. The discussion represents an emerging law of Enterprise 2.0 Inevitably, a consumer trend in the social technology space will start to seep into the business world.

Hutch Carpenter of Spigit says it is a two-year lag before the enterprise adopts a social computing trend. He writes that wikis emerged in 2002 as a consumer tool and by 2004 came into the enterprise. Social networking emerged in 2006 and by 2008 had made its way into a business context. Microblogging hit in 2007 and by 2009 it became a central part of the Enteprise 2.0 suite.

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And so as the social concept of location based networks emerges in 2010, Carpenter's bet is that we will see location based networks arrive into the enterprise by 2012. For reference, Spigit is an idea management platform. It is referenced by Dennis Howlett ">Dennis Howlett in the comments of Mark Fidelman's CloudAve post as a company that could potentially enable this capability.

"If i've understood you correctly what you are suggesting sounds fine in theory but i'd prefer solutions like Spigit which do a very good job of surfacing peer reviewed ideas but using algorithms that avoid the inevitable gaming problem."

Using Carpenter's theory, here are some additional possibilities we can think of:


  • IT Admins may have control over who is able to post to their location and in what context.

  • Location-based systems will be required for some jobs. Permissions will be controlled by a business manager or IT administrator.

  • A new generation of location-based applications will integrate with microblogging platforms.

  • Web-oriented dashboard environments will provide live updates for managers to get an immediate view of their team with updates that are filtered to different communities based on the employee's work role.

  • Foursquare and Gowalla will be important for adoption but the first dominant player will probably be a new company or a company with an understanding of the importance of location-based systems.

  • These outcomes do seem plausible. In the current generation of Enterprise 2.0 applications, we see the emergence of similar trends. IT Admin is becoming a basic requirement for cloud-based, collaborative applications that serve the enterprise. We could name everyone here but just look at the latest crop of new arrivals. Both Novell's Pulse and Status.net make this requirement standard in its microblogging applications.

    How location based networks affects the way we view employees will become one of the most important issues in this brave, new world.

    Enterprise data, bound together by data analysis, may become such a tightly woven fabric that recommendations can be made at each check-in. Suggestions about work habits may become part of the network. How we view our basic civil liberties will be challenged. But in the end, we'll keep looking out two years, waiting for the next consumer wave while managing the reality of working in a transparent universe.

    Discuss

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Suppliers Expect to Ship 8-10 Million iPads in 2010 [REPORT]

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/n0QgpN-XH98/


The first batch of iPads is in the mail, and everyone is wondering how many of them Apple will manage to sell in the upcoming months. There is reason to believe that Apple has sold out all the iPads it had in stock – some estimate the number to be around half a million.

Now, there’s more reasons to believe iPad sales so far have been phenomenal. According to Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty, Asian suppliers have revised their shipping forecasts for the iPad, and they now expect to ship 8-10 million devices by the end of 2010.

Furthermore, they expect to ship 2.5 million in the first three months of sales (March to May); however Huberty still predicts that Apple will sell (as opposed to ship) 6+ million iPads in 2010, while other analysts expect the number to be even lover, around 3-4 million.

These are all just estimates, and we’ll have to wait for some real sales data to get a better idea of how well the iPad is doing, but from what we can see now, it has exceeded almost all expectations.

Tags: apple, Apple Tablet, ipad

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How the iPad Is Already Reshaping the Internet (Without Flash) [Apple]

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/I8J9dNrHE80/how-the-ipad-is-already-reshaping-the-internet-without-flash

The iPad doesn't run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won't play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad. So the internet's already starting to look different. More »


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Internet-KGB -> Warner Bros. Looks for Anti-Piracy Interns

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/69RKjRTr-6A/

The UK arm of Warner Bros Entertainment is looking for students to spy on digital pirates.

It seems logical: Students know about piracy, many of them have committed acts that would be considered digital piracy, so why not hire them as counterintelligence? The actual description of the job has, according to TorrentFreak, been taken from the vacancy at The University of Manchester. It sounds rather ominous. Here’s an excerpt:

“During the 12 month internship, duties will include: monitoring local Internet forums and IRC for pirated WB and NBCU content and in order to gather information on pirate sites, pirate groups and other pirate activities; finding new and maintaining existing accounts on private sites; scanning for links to hosted pirated WB and NBCU content and using tools to issue takedown requests; maintaining and developing bots for Internet link scanning system (training provided); preparing sending of infringement notices and logging feedback; performing trap purchases of pirated product and logging results; inputting pirate hard goods data and other intelligence into the forensics database; selecting local keywords and submitting local filenames for monitoring and countermeasure campaigns and periodically producing research documents on piracy related technological developments. Various training will be provided.”

The salary is quite good for a student: £17,500 salary for a year’s work. However, you might experience backlash from, well, many corners of the Internet.

Furthermore, as suggested by TorrrentFreak, we’re sure that some devious students will become double agents: accept the job, feed only very minor things to Warner Brothers, but track their anti-piracy activities from the inside. It’s only natural in the world of spies.

Tags: piracy, Spy, warner brothers


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YouTube Steps Up Facebook Integration, Shows Shared Videos

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/sM9C00jP74Y/youtube_steps_up_facebook_integration_shows_shared.php

On the one hand, when we hear about Facebook making Facebook Connect an opt-out experience, we feel a little chill run through our bones and we want to commit Facebook suicide. And then again, every time we hear about another big player on the web implementing Facebook Connect, we smile, because for us and so many others, our Facebook friend list is our de facto representation of our real-life friends on the Web.

YouTube this weekend announced that it would be stepping up its Facebook integration, allowing you to see what YouTube videos all of your friends are sharing on Facebook.

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It's only been since last December that the video-sharing site has had Facebook Connect capabilities, but now, as YouTube says in its blog, "when you log in to your YouTube account, you'll get a prominent invitation in the Recent Activity module (see below) to connect to Facebook, which we highly recommend that you do. In fact, we hope to integrate more social networks with YouTube going forward".

youtube-fbconnect-sharebar.jpg

The blog also highlights "real-time sharing", saying that now, when you share YouTube videos on other social networks, it happens immediately and not 10 minutes later. We have to imagine that this has lowered the number of exasperated support requests from impatient users, as we've all come to expect things to happen instantaneously and not when the server feels like getting around to it.

As for sharing, users can automatically share videos they post on YouTube to Facebook, Twitter and Google Reader. This new feature twists around the usual, making it possible for users to see what their friends are sharing on Facebook. In this case, it does not mean that they have to create the video for you to see it - if they share it, you can see that.

Discuss


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Violent Flash Mobs Becoming a Problem in Philly

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/o40tXlNouBY/

Flash mobs are usually associated with randomized fun (or pantlessness), but in Philly, they’re basically akin to randomized violence. Last night, Mayor Michael Nutter and District Attorney Seth Williams took to the streets to spread a message to the city’s young, social media-savvy inhabitants: Flash mobs will not be tolerated.

According to the AP, Philadelphia has been a hotspot of flash mob-inspired havoc of late — there have been five such occurrences this past year, all organized by hundreds of high schoolers and middle schoolers taking to MySpace, Twitter and other sites to organize the meetups.

Unlike other flash mobs, where participants break out in song or pillow fights (as pictured above), these teens merely show up, block traffic, harass bystanders and wreck public property. Last week, 2,000 teenagers turned out for such a flash mob, resulting in three arrests and multiple assaults.

No one is really sure why kids are getting violent via flash mob, but Frank Farley, a psychologist and professor at Temple University, told the AP, “It’s easy to do; it’s thrilling, it’s fun, and they can turn on the TV the next day and say, ‘I was there.’”

Regardless of reason, incidents like this are becoming a serious problem in Philly — 28 teens have been found guilty of felony so far.

Why do you think flash mobs have come to equate the old ultra violence in the City of Brotherly Love?

[img credit: mattwi1s0n]



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Tags: flash mob, legal, myspace, social media, twitter

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First Run of iPads Sold Out, Ship Date For New Orders Pushed To April 12 [Apple]

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/NP8LtN8_V24/first-run-of-ipads-sold-out-ship-date-for-new-orders-pushed-to-april-12

Ooh, looks like somebody's popular. If you tried to order a Wi-Fi iPad this morning, you might have noticed that the expected ship date has been bumped a week to April 12 and in-store pick-up has been nixed as an option. Seems like the first pack o' Pads have all been spoken for. Just how many is that? There's no way to be sure, but some of the most recent estimates put the number somewhere near a half a million. Yow. [9to5 Mac] More »


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Foursquare Shows Why You Should Be Excited About Windows Phone 7 Apps [Windows Phone 7]

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/opMef8yAacM/foursquare-shows-why-you-should-be-excited-about-windows-phone-7-apps

Foursquare's Windows Phone 7 app blows away their implementations on any other platform with a totally redefined aesthetic, and new features, like a heat map. Which makes us pretty hopeful about what devs can really do. [Artificial Ignorance via TechCrunch] More »


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Are You Ready for the New, Easier Wikipedia?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~3/ZMLJb1VNEHU/are_you_ready_for_the_new_easier_wikipedia.php

Wikipedia, the online user-created encyclopedia and currently the number six website on the Internet today, is about to get a makeover. And it's a big one. According to a blog post from the Wikimedia Foundation User Experience team detailing the changes, the upcoming Wikipedia redesign, due to launch April 5th, aims to make the site easier to navigate, easier to search and, perhaps most importantly, easier to edit.

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Easier is Better

The upcoming design, code-named "Vector," has been in use over the past six months by a group of 500,000 beta testers. Included in the update are changes like simplified navigation, a relocated search box, clutter reduction and even an updated Wikipedia logo. Also, all English Wikipedia users will soon be able to create PDFs and printed books from Wikipedia articles, a service previously only available to logged-in users.

However, the most interesting change is how Wikipedia is making the page edit functions easier. A new toolbar will be provided which lets editors more easily insert links and table and an included cheatsheet will help users access the most commonly used functions.

These editing changes launching next month are only the beginning, notes Naoko Komura on the Wikimedia blog. Later this year, the site will see even more radical revamps to the editing process. This includes the following:

  • Reducing the amount of wiki code users see in the edit system and making it possible to change data in tables and information boxes through simple forms.
  • Cleaning up the edit page itself, to use more understandable language and get rid of confusing clutter.
  • Providing a new outline tool to navigate a long article while you're editing it.

Wikipedia Needs More Editors

The question now is whether or not these changes will encourage more people to actually edit the online encyclopedia because, these days, few users actually do.

Wikipedia is often heralded as a shining example of how there's power in the "wisdom of the crowds," a phrase which implies how a diverse collection of individuals makes can be more accurate than individuals or even experts. However, the dirty little secret about the supposedly "crowd-edited" online encyclopedia is that, even though anyone and everyone can edit it, few actually do. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site's edits. Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has even been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, "a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers."

Given these statistics, it's no surprise that Wikipedia wants to make some changes. Recent reports point to slowed growth, a downward trend that may be partly to blame on the increasingly complex editing process, according to some experts.

Dr. Ed H Chi, a scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center in California, told the Telegraph that the site had become a "more exclusive place", where only a handful of the most experienced editors were responsible for editing and maintaining the site.

In other words, Wikipedia became a site that wasn't representing the "wisdom of the crowds" anymore, but "wisdom of an elite group." That in, turn, may have caused the slowdown. Over the past several years, the number of new articles per day has dropped from 2200 in July of 2007 to 1300.

Is It Too Late? Or Just in Time?

By simplifying the editing process, Wikipedia could potentially reverse this trend -  at least, that's likely what they're hoping will occur. According to the Q&A on the changes, the organization is aware of these very issues:

When knowledgeable people cannot participate in editing Wikipedia because they find it too confusing or difficult to edit articles, it is a serious problem that undermines the potential quality, breadth and depth of the content that we can offer to you...When it was first developed, the software running Wikipedia was considered reasonably user-friendly. By today's standards, it is not as streamlined nor user-friendly as other software.  

But has the organization waited too long? Have mainstream Internet users already given up on being a part of the editing process and are now happy just to read? We'll know soon enough. Rollouts begin in April, starting first with media repository Wikimedia Commons and then followed by Wikipedia itself later that month.

Discuss


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