Its always been a bugbear of mine that the IT industry creates a dependency on upgrades and purchasing new solutions simply to keep the industry turning over.  The concept of Open Source and SaaS in my view helped alleviate the need to upgrade or implement simply to keep up with the churn created by the industry. I have noticed however that certain technologies which say they have an open platform, change it at a pace which means the value add application solutions that integrate with theirs have to be reworked and retested and this costs the smaller operations time and money.

The bottom line is that Standards are still key and changing an (Application programming Interface) API can be a frightening experience for anyone who depends on it for their own application development.

On Friday the 15th August Linkedin decided to reduce the Management rights of its Group managers. Groups are managed on Linkedin either actively or passively. What I mean by that is that if you have a meaningful group such as the one I manage which is the Wikinomics group, which I want to stimulate and add value to I need to have occasional contact with the group members. This is an actively managed group. The majority of groups on Linkedin however are simply maintained by the manager checking the credentials of the applicant and on confirmation of their being alumni of a previous company for which the group was created for example,  are approved and never contacted by the group manager again. There is a place for these groups but the greatest value in group dynamics is set out in the magnificent speech by Clay Shirky http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html . I could not come close to explaining it as well as he does, as to what would make a group successful.

Linkedin have now stopped giving the e-mail address for the list of members which prohibits the fundamental needs of any online group manager. It has also stifled the group managers in many other ways overnight http://gsfn.us/t/kd3 If you do feel the same way as I do then please pass this link on to others.

This is an example of how over time members of groups will gravitate to where they feel most comfortable. My feeling is still that the place for "Collaborative Business Networks" is still not Facebook but hey this may be our only alternative if Linkedin don't get their act together soon.

Thank you to the wonderful people who attended the half day workshop we ran yesterday at the Mecure Harbourside on the Esplanade in Cairns. From the reviews it looked like you all enjoyed it and I already had Gabi calling me this morning using her Mobile phone through her VOIP provider using http://www.fring.com/

Please remember to register on our website if you would like to be notified of such events by Knowledge Solutions.

• Read More »

OOooooooo what a feeling. You get up in the morning after having been up late the night before hard at work creating a Online group in Facebook or Linkedin or after inviting all your contacts to respond to your new Blog and you turn on your computer. Call me sad but it's the same feeling you would have had when you unwrapped the paper on your first bicycle with the anticipation of what it might be. You log in and there it is a shiny new comment and there's another and wow your online community is underway. I'm playing out a scenario here so go easy on me. I know this is not how it typically ends up being but let me just hypothetically or probably more pathetically speaking just wander in my mind for a while. OK it's the end of your first week and you have over a thousand hits and it's picking up. A month later you have had a couple more thousand views and your community is firing on all cylinders and you know full well you are onto something here. Well what do you do with it?

1) There is value in the relationships which are developing between you and certain members.

2) You still have the shiny bicycle feeling which is now motivating you to stay up all night as you watch comments go backwards and forwards.

• Read More »

On the British Computer Society "Count Pixel Game Blog" today http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=ConBlogEntry.574 it mentions how Microsoft is redesigning the XBox360 to play catch-up with the run-away success of the Nintendo Wii.  And just what has been so successful that they are having to enhance the 360 with? - the interactivity, the designing of your own avatar Mii's which has appealed to the online community of "gamers" who have transcended any specific generational demographic.

 I love this story of the success of the Nintendo Wii, (must be something about being British and always supporting the under-dog). During development of this next generation of consoles,  the computing press were extoiling the virtues of the next super-power-house graphics and processing chips being installed in the Sony Playstation and the XBox, Ninetendo was being written off as a has-been, their GameCube hardly seemed in the same league as the all-conquering Playstation 2 and Xbox. But Nintendo was first and foremost a company that made games, and not a behemoth that had its finger in many pies.

So when this underpowered (by comparison), little white box with a funny infra-red control system hit the markets, without Hi-Definition disk, with low resolution graphics,  it was effectively dismissed by the competition,  until it was realised that it was outselling them at least 5 to 1 at some stages, and there are STILL waiting lists for it since Nintendo itself admits it was surprised by its success and can't keep up with demand.

• Read More »