Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

• That Lenovo would launch “an Olympic blogging platform” rather than a community is dumb.
• Lets kill the phrase Social Media! I’ve always hated it. Agree…
• By & For The People… good read… I love that our online design team at Dell gets this not because they tell me it, but because their work shows it:

Design, in its broadest definition, is not just another way to market a product or a new version of advertising. Design is a way to create a more meaningful existence, a way to transform a mundane lifestyle into one that separates one person’s life from another’s. Design can change the way we look at the world as well as the way the world sees us. It’s a way of leading a unique and individualized existence, a better life.

Interesting piece on the value of social networks… The Economist, in short, says…

So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on…

… The problem with today’s social networks is that they are often closed to the outside web. The big networks have decided to be “open” toward independent programmers, to encourage them to write fun new software for them. But they are reluctant to become equally open towards their users, because the networks’ lofty valuations depend on maximising their page views—so they maintain a tight grip on their users’ information, to ensure that they keep coming back. As a result, avid internet users often maintain separate accounts on several social networks, instant-messaging services, photo-sharing and blogging sites, and usually cannot even send simple messages from one to the other. They must invite the same friends to each service separately. It is a drag.

Online social networks | Everywhere and nowhere | Economist.com

If you spend lots of time trying to figure out what time it is somewhere else, you can add multiple clocks to the Vista task bar.  Follow these easy steps.

And, if that doesn’t work for you.  Time and Date probably will.

A post by Ross got me thinking about why the recommendations you see on Dell.com and Amazon.com work… it’s because they are a conversation… He points to an article by Michael Schrage exploring how information informs, in the form of advice, and how it relates to technology:

While technology’s future may not be the future of advice,” says Schrage, “the future of advice can no longer be meaningfully divorced from the media and mechanisms that carry it. There’s never been a time in history when ‘advice’ and ‘device’ have been so intimate, interdependent, and intertwined. Executive advice in the global enterprise is overwhelmingly mediated, automated, or augmented by some sort of technology.” From Blackberrys to iPhones, there’s no shortage of devices to enable streams of advice.

There’s also no stopping the “networkification” of advice, which has prompted new genres of digital counsel. As the variety of blogs expands, so too the number of wikis, shared online spaces that can be either communally or individually edited and updated. Together, they move advice beyond its mere giving and taking-it becomes interactive.

Interactive advice is especially useful to those who need efficient recommendations now. For instance, at several Bangalore call centers, customer-service reps often instant-message each other while chatting with their help-line callers. As more companies adopt such practices, Schrage offers his thoughts on firms that don’t. He ponders: “Perhaps some firms simply aren’t getting good advice about good advice.”

He makes the important distinction between advice and expertise:

Advice, however, is not the same as expertise. Whereas the latter focuses on being right, advice revolves around issues of good judgment. When it comes to advice, “there is no inherently right answer, but there are almost always questions and approaches that might facilitate desirable outcomes,” explains Schrage. “As a result, experts and advisers have different goals and different roles.”

The nice thing about advice in this context, is that because it is a conversation, authority matters less.  With information, authority is the gatekeeper.

(btw… this post is also interesting with a story from baseline)

Jason as an intriguing post on how to run a start-up… I agree with much of what he says, except, “buy Apple, have no IT department”.  Ok – I’m biased – but I’ve also walked both side of this argument many times. 

An Apple will cost you more over the long-run just based on HW costs.  In terms of removing complexity – hyper-proprietary technology won’t get you there.  Moreover, you’ll be FORCED into unnecessary hardware upgrades as they move the OS forward – something Microsoft hasn’t done yet.