Portals and KM

SnapMyLife Partners with Travel Channel to Offer Innovative TV and Web Site Combination

There is an increasing web and television interaction (see Twitter and TV – a Good Combination – Making TV More Social, as well as all the TV related blogs lists and review sites in the side bars on our Tvissimo blog). Here is another creative example, SnapMyLife, a Newton MA based mobile photo-sharing site, and The Travel Channel have a partnership giving viewers early access to content from the popular No Reservations program. I have enjoyed this show a number of times.

No Reservations features host Anthony Bourdain and his culinary and cultural adventures around the world. It is now in its second season with SnapMyLife. Before new episodes air on Mondays at 10:00 p.m. ET on the Travel Channel, SnapMyLife will post ‘sneak peek’ photos and content at their SnapMyLife site. Their SnapMyLife users are able to comment on the photos.

The sneak peek photos are taken by Anthony and his crew as they are shooting episodes on location. The photos capture behind-the-scenes footage of the show’s production, giving millions of SnapMyLife users a unique look into the life of a traveling television crew. Thus far this season, a loyal following of SnapMyLife users and No Reservations fans have subscribed to receive No Reservations photo alerts in the form of MMS and emails when new content is available.

SnapMyLife was launched in April 2008 and has quickly grown to more than 1.5 million unique visitors per month and more than 600,000 registered users. Mobile phone users from every country in the world use SnapMyLife to share pictures, make friends, see location-tagged pictures on interactive maps, add favorites, comment, and chat.

Concluding Twitter Week: Predictions on How Twitter Will Change Blogs in 2009

To conclude Twitter week on Portals and KM, I want to share 10 Ways Twitter Will Change Blog Design in 2009 by Rachel Cunliffe on Mashable. I am reorganizing her content to reflect its availability and then providing my thoughts in most cases.

Can Do It Now

TwitterRolls - In addition to blog rolls, bloggers will list their favorite tweeters and optionally a short note on why they’re worth following to help others discover new tweeters. I find that many people already list their twitter feed – I do. On the Tvissimo blog we list all feeds by TVissimo people as well as the company feed. I am suggesting to my blog clients to list all the active twitters in their firm on their blog in this manner.

Blog design influenced by Twitter themes - While many bloggers change their Twitter theme to match their blog’s themes as closely as possible, this will also work in reverse. Perhaps – but I chose a very different background for my Twitter page because I could select a photo.

Tweets move out of the sidebar - More bloggers will mix blog posts and tweets into a single column together a la Tumblr, rather than keeping them in the sidebar. More new themes will have a built-in style for displaying tweets in an elegant way amongst blog posts. I think this might get confusing.

BlogTweet combined feeds - Blog feeds will have the option of including or excluding tweets - made simple thanks to Yahoo pipes. Follow this video tutorial to see how to do it. I would rather keep them separate. They are different channels with different capabilities.

Current Word Press Plug-ins

TweetThis - Some bloggers will ditch catch-all social networking plugins such as AddThis and ShareThis and just use TweetThis, finding this to be the most effective way of sharing new links online. Watch Twitter move up into the first tab of the ShareThis plugin. I hope Typepad moves in this direction

Tweet comment - Blog visitors will be able to comment on tweets displayed within a blog - whether they are a Twitter user or not. Wordpress users will find the Twitter tools plugin useful. I do not like the Tweets within a bog concept but do like the tweet about a blog post idea above.

Blog comment form changes - Some bloggers will add a form field for people to fill in their Twitter account name when adding comments on blogs. Others will change the common “website” label to “website/Twitter page.” Useful for visitors without their own blog or website but who use Twitter. See the WP-Twitip-ID Plugin Wordpress plugin. This is good as there are Twitter users who do not blog.

New sidebar widgets Favorites widget - display recent favorite tweets. This is another good idea, listen up Typepad.

Not Yet Available

Tweetbacks - Bloggers will start to add “Tweetbacks” to their blog posts. The simplest version will show the number of people who have tweeted this post (including all reverse engineered tinyurls). Another good idea.

Tweetstats - in addition to “most read,” “most commented” type sections in blog sidebars, bloggers will add “most tweeted” and “recently tweeted” blog posts sections. Again, another good idea.

Thanks to Rachel for these. I do think that blogs and Twitter are different and should not be confused or merged. They have different capabilities and can be used to compliment each other. Fusing them makes these differences murky and dilutes each one. However, cross-reporting is good.

What are you ideas? What do you think of the above? Hope you enjoyed Twitter Week. More to come.

You can also take a picture of your Twitter followers combined profiles via Twittersheep. Thanks to Jack Vinson (@jackvinson) for this. BTW - Twitter will not replace blogs - only complement them and let them better focus on what they are good at - moving beyond sound bytes.

Filtrbox Monitors Twitter with it Own Tool Set

I have written about Filtrbox before on this blog (see Create Web Monitoring Filters with Filtrbox) and more recently on AppGap (see Filtrbox Provides Market Intelligence for the Rest of Us). I want to share the Twitter part of that conversation with Ari Newman, their CEO. He said they are using Twitter in three ways and they use Fltrbox to better filter the tweets for their areas of interest. First, they look for conversations around issues that they can address. Then they send out @ messages to those who seem like they would be receptive to engaging in conversations about these issues. If tweets are directed at Filtrbox, they use the company Twitter account to respond. If it is indirect, Ari will use his own Twitter account to engage. Second, they use Twitter for customer support. People can send public @ or private DMs to the company Twitter feed to ask for help. Third, they use it to communicate what is happening at Filtrbox, announcing new features, blog posts, tips, and other information that might be useful to their followers.

StumbleUpon Tops Twitter in Users and Perhaps Holds Its Own in Buzz

ReadWriteWeb reports that StumbleUpon, with 7 million users, has 50% more users than Twitter with a lot less buzz. I tried StumbleUpon once at the suggestion of a friend but did not continue. It seemed tedious. I am now hooked, for the moment at least, on Twitter after an earlier false start. Twitter seems much more immediate and fast paced. I have been reading about Twitter everywhere and have started to write about it in mostly positive tones after an early skepticism.

I see stories about Twitter everywhere and almost nothing on StumbleUpon. So I tried one buzz metric and typed twitter in the Google search bar and it returned 44,400,000 results. I was impressed and said to myself that StumbleUpon will be well below this. Well I was wrong. I typed in stumbleupon and got 439,000,000 results, ten times as many as twitter.

I tried to figure out if there was a trick here and if there might be other sources for the results. If anything there might be some non-twitter software results as it is a real word but stumbleupon as one word is not a real word so those 439,000,000 should be about the software tool. Of course, you never see pass a few hundred real results on Google so there is no way to really check this out.

Next, I turned to Google news and got 29,068 for twitter and only 127 for stumbleupon. The ReadWriteWeb post was number 4. So the 4,500 sources on Google news are much more interested in Twitter but perhaps the broader base of “real people” are talking more about StumbleUpon. I tried one last type of search. What are the bloggers saying? Technorati returned 103,831 results for stumbleupon and 188,403 results for twitter. Advantage Twitter here but StumbleUpon certainly has a respectable showing and the difference is much closer than the more selective Google news.

Then I put in stumbelupon into Google blog search and got 21,041,970 results and twitter came in with 45,572,207 results. This is about the same ratio as Technorati and helps to perhaps validate that bloggers are talking about Twitter more but StumbleUpon is getting a healthy buzz. It does seem however, that bloggers are using StumbleUpon more. Which do you like better? Which do you use more? I know this is, in part, an apples to oranges comparison but which could you more easily live without? I wonder how many little used StumbleUpon accounts there are versus little used Twitter accounts? I have a little used one for the former and a much used one for the latter but I may not be typical.

Oh well, enough day dreaming and back to the “real” world. I need to walk the dogs. You can find me at https://twitter.com/BillIves and please StumbleUpon this blog with a thumbs up.

Humana Demonstrates Good Transparency Through Twitter and Techrigy Mines IT

I have now written about both good and bad (see yesterday and Monday) transparency vs Twitter. Here is another example of good transparency. Humana recently held a meeting bringing together leaders from around the company to determine how best to shape their own social media policy. They decided to host the high points of the meeting on Twitter - essentially creating a digital archive of the minutes - that anyone in or outside of Humana could read and comment upon. They did set some basic rules on what could be revealed, a good idea. The SEC might even agree (if there is anyone left there). Here is their public statement about the move (thanks to PSFK – Twitter Building a Bigger Boardroom).

“The idea behind the Humana Social Media Chamber of Commerce is that no one organization will own “Social Media” for all of Humana. We are a large organization made up of individual departments with separate customers/demographics, individual social media needs, and budgets. We want to use the Chamber of Commerce and Electronic Commons areas that we are creating as an extension of the Web 2.0 world that we all live in today on the internet. The need to share and exchange best practices will replace the need to control.”

These guys have gotten it right. You can follow their Humana Social Media Chamber of Commerce at #hcoc.

One of their employees wrote in a post, Meeting of the Minds:

“An amazing thing happened to me at work the other day... I got to sit in a large board-room with leaders from around our little Fortune 100 company to take part in a discussion about shaping the social media policy for Humana, and a record of the event can be found on Twitter. That's right; it’s been captured in the public domain. Seriously. Now, as a project manager I've facilitated and sat in my share of project kick-off meetings. Most of them have been tremendous wastes of time…

… When the meeting got under way, everyone was expecting more of the same and that's when one of the team members threw the room a giant curve ball: Let's do a live tweet stream of the meeting's high points and use this record for our meeting minutes. My hand was giddy at the thought of not having to feverishly scribble down notes, so I was obviously in favor of the Twitter option. We went around the room to get consensus, and there were some legitimate concerns about being too transparent, but we ended up agreeing to a basic KISS guideline: when in doubt, don't tweet it…

… After sitting through this particular kick-off meeting, I think that we're on the right track. There was a genuine exchange of ideas. Viewpoints were clarified and understood with the high points going out on Twitter. People were smiling. It was amazing.”

I like this type of excitement that engagement generates. Here is another good example from Techrigy. A recent post on their blog, Twitter lead generation workflow with SM2 Alerts, discussed how Techrigy, itself, uses use Twitter in conjunction with SM2’s Alerts function to generate interest, book demos and communicate with people in the social media marketing community. They are able to set up the SM2 search filters to only look at people who are likely to be interested and then get real time alerts. Techrigy finds that they are now booking many sales meetings daily via Twitter. Here is another sales example like Central Desktop.

Twitter Takes the Airport Waiting Area Syndrome Global

This is Twitter week. Yesterday was a good Twitter story, now here is a cautionary one. Back when I worked for a large consulting firm I would go to work on airplanes. On a number of assignments I would go to a large firm located in small places. This meant that many of the people in the airport waiting area were consultants from a variety of firms. I was always amazed that many of our competitors would openly discuss their client experiences and their sales approach to the client in the airport waiting area in a loud or, at least normal voice. Without trying, we could hear what they were doing. Now they could have been supplying misinformation but I doubt this was the case.

This also happens on occasion on cell phones in the airport and even on the plane itself. Now Twitter opens up a whole new way to give away your company secrets to anyone anywhere who wants to listen. I was talking with a marketing person who subscribes to his competitors Twitter feeds. He finds that they often discuss recent sales calls on Twitter. He can then forward the competitive intelligence on to the appropriate people in his sales force. Again, misinformation could be supplied but I think this would be counterproductive for a number of obvious reasons. This is the same type of blindness that the Ketchum PR guy demonstrated. However, it is magnified as there are even more audiences that you do not want with this type of information.

Now I am not against Twitter. I am actually using it more now and seeing its value. Among other things, I learn about a lot of interesting things to write about on my various blogs and stay more current in my field. I also keep up with many people I am interested in. BTW - check out Twitter Sheep - Here is the profile of my followers. Thanks to @jackvinson. However, I am just amazed how some people do not understand its power but then I guess it should not surprise me based on my airport waiting area experience.

Post script - The Economist recently wrote on How Twitter stopped a coup. One of the losing side said, "Be authentic on Twitter...But still keep a frickin' secret when you need to."

I could not resist doing this cross post from the FastForward blog. What has been your experience with Twitter? What do you learn? Do you learn anything that the sender might not want you to know?

Central Desktop Using Twitter for Sales, Service, and Brand Monitoring Conversations

There has been a lot of discussion about Twitter on this blog. This entire week will now be devoted to Twitter stories. Here is one example of how a company is using Twitter for a variety of customer facing activities. I have written about Central Desktop several times (e.g., Central Desktop Moves Up with Enterprise Edition and How Barack Obama is Using Web and Enterprise 2.0 in the US Primary Campaign Through Central Desktop). They provide a comprehensive SaaS based social technology platform used by business teams to interact, share and manage their daily work activities. Unfortunately for me I have no other connection with them (disclosure).

I recently spoke with Isaac Garcia, their co-founder and CEO, on another matter, how they are using Twitter. Isaac said that they first started experimenting with Twitter more as an interesting toy. They established a company account and Isaac and few others also started their own accounts. This was last March. They would point to selected blog posts, company news, as well as comment on more issues within their market niche. If they saw conversations about Central Desktop or relevant social media issues, they would join the conversation. This latter move was when it began to get exciting.

Isaac said they were able to respond to questions about Central Desktop, as well as both positive and negative issues. In the later case, they could often correct wrong impressions such as a Tweet hoping for the addition of a feature that they actually provided. People would often be amazed after simply Twitting to the general world about an issue connected to Central Desktop, that the CEO himself would provide a personal response, answering their question. It has become a great listening device for them and a way to engage in conversations with client and prospects.

Then it went beyond customer connection and service to become a sales channel. Prospects have been contacting them to learn about features. In one case, a marketing firm contacted them through Twitter and they began a Twitter exchange addressing their questions and concerns. The firm was considering whether to expand their current on-premise solution or move to a SaaS offering. This conversation went back and forth between public replies and some private direct messages. Finally, the firm called Central Desktop and signed up. Soon the story spread throughout Central Desktop about a 27 Tweet and one phone call sales close. People were amazed that they had closed a sale on Twitter and more people became engaged with the channel. Many other sales have now involved Twitter in the process.

I asked Isaac for his advice to others who want to use Twitter to better engage with customers and prospects. He said to not be too aggressive on the promotional side. It can compromise the authenticity that people expect with Twitter. He feels that because of the chatty nature of Twitter, authenticity is even more important than with blogs. Just engage in conversations. Look for people talking about your product and provide answers. Do not avoid negative discussions as you can often turn these around with honest answers. People have been amazed that they get instant responses at the moment of frustration. Central Desktop is now asking questions on Twitter such as “has anyone in a (certain industry) used Central Desktop for (a certain purpose)” and they are getting responses. It is a great tool to listen to whatt customers want. Prompt them with questions rather that start with your answers and then answer their questions.

Impressed with Twitter’s capabilities, Central Desktop is now evaluating approaches to implementing micro-messaging capabilities into their platform for secure use by teams within an enterprise.

I asked Isaac how they were doing in the down economy. It was good to learn that, like others in the enterprise 2.0 space, they're doing very well. The fourth quarter of 2008 provided record sales and profits. Isaac attributed this, in part, to the SaaS nature of their offering. People are increasingly seeing the low cost of entry that cloud solutions offer. You can try an application on a small scale without upfront software and systems integration costs. He also said their focus on the mid-tier enterprise market has helped. I am pleased at the continued growth in this sector. I do not think it is simply counter-cyclical, it will only expand as we move out of the downturn.

The New Yorker’s Guide to the Universe

On the left is the famous Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover via Wikipedia. Here is the real New York Times ad produced in parody by 92YTribeca. As PSFK says, “Satire always reveals so many social truths.” Enjoy. Now that the New Yorkers bought out the Boston Globe, it is no longer what it used to be. Thanks goodness they no longer own the Celtics.

TVissimo Now Integrates Online Video Search with Its Broadcast TV Search

We have now integrated online video search through three of the major sites with our brodcast TV search. You are looking for the newest episode of your favorite TV show and just missed it, but you suspect that it is available somewhere online. You love to watch reruns of your favorite TV series, but are not sure if and on which channel they may be airing again or if they are available on an online video site.

No problem, as TVissimo now combines broadcast TV search with online video. Enter a single search on TVissimo.com, and you can see the results for both broadcast TV and online TV, a two-week TV schedule as well as the available online videos from Joost, Hulu and TidalTV right now (more online sites are being added). (The Hulu indexing is in progress will be added within a few days.)

As far as we know. we are the only search provider that integrates broadcast TV and online TV. The way it works is when someone does a TVissimo search, based on the results, we also search the Hulu, Joost and TidalTV online video sites for matching entries and show them on the Video tab. When the user clicks on the online video provider icon, a new window opens up and streams the selected video from the providers site.

Each of these online video sources has a blog to follow their stores: Hulu blog, Joost blog, and TidalTV blog.

We are very pleased to add online video to provide a more comprehensive set of television resources for you. Let us know what you think. Here are two mentions, Digital Digest and Home Media Magazine. Thanks.

Attivio’s Thoughts on Improving the User Experience for Online Media Sites

Here is a comprehensive white paper on improving the user experience for online media sites from Sarah Meyer at Attivio. It offers this quote near the beginning:

“2009 PREDICTION(S): Five out of every 10 magazines and newspapers will go out of business, scale down their frequency or move entirely to the Web. This will not just be survival of the fittest, rather survival of the most willing and able to adapt to the changing media paradigm, and throw all of the old rules out the window.” - Andy Cohn, VP and group publisher, Fader Media

I have seen the same predictions for a number of sources so be warned that if you are a media company you need to get your web site in order to survive. This paper offers some excellent suggestions. Some apply to blogs, as well. In this era of user involvement, they rightly point out that you need both compelling content and an engaging user experience. They break their suggestions into three categories: focus on readers’ goals in the way you present content, address advertisers’ expectations, and optimize operations around innovation and cost control.

First, the readers view is covered. Sarah writes that most media company sites have a static design of site, low relevancy of search results, few services for building online communities, and limited access to historical content. As someone who frequently goes to media sites to track down stories I would agree with all these points.

Sarah then writes that advertisers are looking for significant page views to expose their ads, detailed reporting, ability to deliver ads to their specifically targeted audiences, and finally proof that you can offer something more compelling than the many alternative channels they have.

Operations need to be able to meet the needs of readers and advertisers in a cost effective and rapid manner. The paper goes on to offer suggestions for how to do this. These include adding opportunities for readers to contribute and explore (e.g., interactive charts that allow readers to change factors and see how those changes might deliver different results). Other suggestions include (in Sarah’s words):

“Aggregating content dynamically to meet reader and community interests.

Allowing more user-generated content that’s easier to read and interact with than a long list of user comments that are appended to a story.

Incorporating all relevant information in the content, opening up information resources – including all historical content – for content producers and readers. This will also provide incentive for syndication of your content.

Automatically generating links to relevant articles as new content is added to your site.

Replacing the simple search box with a more contextual exploration interface that iteratively helps readers find what they want, suggesting matches as they type. This ensures faster results and avoids the lost feeling users get when they have wandered through a series of pages without getting what they want.“

There is much more as the paper gets into specifics on how you can use technology to support these goals. However, Sarah also points out that is not simply technology. In addition to changes to your website, you need to look for enhancements to the way your staff works. This type of web site requires greater engagement by staff, as well as readers. Not all of the interactivity can be handled by software. This certainly applies to all the monitoring, analysis, adjustments, and responses. Excited engagement needs to occur on both sides of the site. It can be contagious. Getting the internal troops engaged can sometimes be the harder part for company sites, as well as company blogs.

I have written about Attivio before and they can provide the technology side to this equation (see Attivio Tightly Integrates Structured Data and Unstructured Content for a New Approach to Information Access). Be sure to also create a set of policies, practices, and governance for the people side. I recommend taking a look at the paper. It goes beyond simply pushing Attivio to offer general and useful suggestions.

QuickBase Offers Help to Coghead Customers, Partners and Employees

As TechCrunch reported, Coghead Grinds To A Halt, Heads To The Deadpool. Coghead was a visual web-based application editor that allowed users to develop enterprise applications. This is too bad as most vendors in this sector that I have been speaking to have reported increasing revenues and, in some cases, record profits.

Intuit QuickBase operates in this same space. It provides an Enterprise 2.0 shareable database that lets you select ready-made online workgroup applications or templates designed to solve common business problems, customize them to suit individual processes, and share within a team or an enterprise. I recently wrote about them (see - Shareable Databases: Intuit QuickBase Bringing Desktop Database Users into Enterprise 2.0).

Quickbase has posted a series of offers to Coghead customers, business partners and employees (see Bill Lucchini’s post - Offer to Coghead’s users, partners and employees from Intuit QuickBase for details.) They are offering six months of free service with Quickbase to Coghead customers, along with support and training. They are also welcoming Coghead business partners into their partner program. In addition, they are welcoming resumes from former Coghead employees and commit to processing them as fast as possible.

This seems like a good and wise move on the QuickBase part. As a disclaimer, I am paid to write on the AppGap blog sponsored by QuickBase. However, we have complete editorial freedom and I am not paid to promote QuickBase nor do I have any other connection with QuickBase. I am also not paid to post on this blog. I am simply posting this as a favor to all parties.

iQuest: Putting Greater Transparency into the Enterprise

While a theme of the enterprise 2.0 is transparency, often the maze of different platforms, repositories, and metadata structures makes finding the information you need difficult, if not impossible. I recently spoke with Josh Rosenthal, founder and CEO at iQuest, about his experience with one of the top 5 international pharma companies that was struggling with enterprise search and had found it easier to re-invent a needed compound that try to find the existing one somewhere within their terabytes of data.

I have written about iQuest before (most recently - Extending Google Enterprise Search Through iQuest) and want to disclosure that I am a shareholder, but not an employee. It is a company that I have long believed in. Since that post, iQuest has completely revamped their product line to significantly improve its capabilities. Their reengineered software suite builds on the prior capabilities and extends them through a new software platform.

The phrama company we talked about had given up hope of being able to search their multiple terabytes of data in multiple repositories, diverse platforms, and different metadata structures with one tool until they ran a proof-of-concept trial with iQuest. iQuest gave them the capability to better employee a “find within” strategy rather than the ‘build all over again” strategy they had previously used.

Here’s what the company’s Associate Director for Worldwide Document and Collaborations Solutions said about the results of the trial. “I firmly feel iQuest has unique value, and takes an approach to enterprise search that is both novel and truly helpful in improving knowledge worker productivity. I sense that in less than 12 months your flagship product will be truly a breakout and market-changing event.”

iQuest now enables users to discover hidden patterns and relationships within and across large sets of data. In the past, discovering patterns in unstructured data was extremely difficult. iQuest’s approach to pattern recognition and matching combines a propriety data ingestion process with natural language processing, grammatical network analysis and Social Network statistical algorithms to create an accurate and fast data analysis process that delivers strong results across structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data.

iQuest greatly reduces the amount on manual management than is often found in enterprise search engines. You do not need to set up taxonomies or other data architectures. iQuest now provide a hardware/software solution that allows you to plug and play. Its “Contextual Search” semantic analysis then automatically generates connections and interrelationships across enterprise data repositories. It enables you to leverage the index of your enterprise information without having to build and maintain knowledge models using controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, and ontologies. 


iQuest leverages existing information repositories (DMS, ECM, CRM, ERP, etc.). It will sit on top of Sharepoint, for example, and find relationship across and within the documents and other data that shows up in a Sharepoint search. It will allow you to connect people and ideas within the documents through its text analytics. iQuest will do the same thing within any enterprise content management system. 


iQuest is designed to help your find what is missing or even did not know existed within your enterprise data. Its Intelligent Discovery™ uncovers thematic contextual links to content or raw information that's typically hidden or unknown, which results in actionable insights. Indexing content to better find information is a core function of search and content management systems. 
Content is ingested “as is.” It will look at dynamic social software content in wiki’s, RSS feeds, and chat. Though iQuest is largely targeted for use within the enterprise, it will also go out on the web and look at relationships between internal and web-based content.

iQuest is also designed for ease of use. It employs a Smart Architecture™ to eliminate the need to modify or add additional layers to the ECMS or existing index structures. This can save resources – people, time. and money. 



Josh writes Patterns, the iQuest blog where discusses the relationships between and among people, ideas, thoughts and words. It has some useful conceptual pieces that go beyond what is happening at iQuest.

Social Computing Magazine – Great Enterprise 2.0 Content Source

Here is a very useful source for new on enterprise 2.0, Social Computing Magazine. They have been re-syndicating a few of the posts from the this blog recently so they must have good judgment, right? The online magazine covers a wide variety of topics related to enterprise 2.0. There are book reviews, a who’s who section and a useful lexicon. Their event calendar includes the upcoming Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 22 – 25. There is also a news desk, community forums, and hot stories this week. When you are looking for good stuff to blog about, here is one good choice. They have a Twitter feed -- https://twitter.com/soccompmag

Here are the three articles they recently covered. There have been some others in the past.

Deloitte Survey Finds We Are in a 'Media Democracy'

iTKO Expands the Agility of Enterprise 2.0 Application Development with New Service Virtualization and SOA Governance Offerings

Unexpected Benefits of Phonetic Alphabet Keep Appearing – they add nice graphics. Here is what they did for this one.

Facebook's Terms of Service (TOS) Claims they can Do Whatever They Want with Your Content Forever

Have you seen the revised Facebook terms of service? Here it is thanks to the Consumerist:

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

Their rights now no longer expire when you leave Facebook, as was the case before.

I wonder if that applies to things you link to such as your blog posts?

I also wonder if that applies if you blog posts are re-posted on Facebook through apps such as Networked Blogs or other means on your profile?

What if the material is copyrighted by you or others?

I guess they can take your picture and draw mustaches and beards on it also.

Most content that is placed on the Web is tossed into the public domain but this might be a bit different. Facebook says we should trust them to not abuse this. I understand the logic of what Zuckerberg wrote but I still am not sure that they need to go as far as they did. I certainly assume no privacy about anything I place on the Web, ownership seems a different issue. What do you think?

Post Script: As you may know Facebook changed its mind in the face of opposition and returned to the old TOS. Perhaps it was this blog that served as the tipping point :)

FastForward 09 Video Interviews

I greatly enjoyed the FastForward 09 conference. A series of video interviews were conducted which I have found quite useful. They can be found at FASTforward’09 Interviews: Search, Social Computing and People.

The conference presentations are also now available at the FastForward 09 site.

Blogs on Individual Television Shows

While doing some research for the TVissimo TV Schedule Blog I was struck by the number of blogs focused on a single television show. Here are a dozen examples. Do you have a blog on a specific TV show? Please feel free to add it in the comment field.

Watching Ugly Betty - contains in depth information from the hit ABC TV show. Episode: Quotes, Recaps, Spoilers and Ratings. Actor Profiles, Breaking News, Fashions, Sightings, Trivia, Awards and much more!

Jericho~On~CBS - Fan Blog for the CBS Show Jericho, now also mainly concerning the effort the fans put forth to save the show, and how they are promoting the show now.

Heroes Blog - Heroes Blog provides you with all the Heroes episodes, News, Gossip, pictures, Articles, opinions, polls and lets you leave your own opinion! Updated daily.

Heroes Among Us - Heroes Among Us examines the hit television show "Heroes", providing recaps, theories, speculations and news/commentary on its characters, storylines and other concepts.

Gossip Girl Chat - Gossip Girl TV show blog with spoilers, episode recaps, discussion, previews, downloads, also lots of Gossip Girl fashion.

Gossip Girl Report - everything about CW's new Gossip Girl, the “best show this Fall.”

Boston Legal Blog - Blog dedicated to the television show Bostpn Legal. Episode guide videos, cast list and pictures, online polls, classic quotes

Big Brother 10 Insider - Big Brother 10 spoilers, news, gossip,, rumors and live feed updates.

Watching The Office - Blog fan site of the TV show The Office

Watching CSI - follows the ins and outs of all three CSIs. They cover everything from CSI contract negotiation to light spoilers.

Not Confused Just Lost - Overanalyzing Lost one episode at a time.

Bionic Woman blog offers all the episodes of Bionic Woman, pictures, news and more! watch Bionic Woman here in streaming video!

Los Angeles Dining Update – February 2009

I last covered LA restaurants in 2006 see - Los Angeles Restaurants: A Local’s Favorites. Here is an update based on my recent trip guided again by a friend in the movie business that knows good LA spots.

Cube provided our lunch and was good that we had to go back for dinner. They have a regular style menu and then a large selection of cheese and ham tastings that you order sushi or tapas style. There are 85 cheeses and several dozen meats. At the first lunch I had fresh burrata. It is a byproduct of mozzarella production that is flown three times a week from Italy. I saw the next table going through it and could not resist. It is like super intense mozzarella that they served with a roast tomato focaccia. My wife had the duck confit and roasted pear salad. Then at dinner we went to work on the tasting menu of cheese and meats, along with a very moist truffled chicken. City Serach said, “the interior's deep-red tones and gleaming cheese bar--surrounded by artful retail shelves lined with fresh pastas and gourmet items--lend the small space a surprisingly lively feel. Eastland's menu straddles Old-World Italian comfort food and Molto-Mario style haute cuisine.” It is located at 615 N. La Brea Avenue
 Los Angeles, CA 90036 
(323) 939.1148.

For dinner we went to Girasole. It provides upscale Italian at mid-market prices so there is value for money here. I had one of the best wild mushroom raviolis I have ever had. There is no wine but a good wine shop next door that closes at 8. We got an excellent Terrabianca Campaccio Selezione 2003 to go with our meal. My wife had a great lamb stew. It is located in Hancock Village at 225 ½ Larchmont Blvd. on the main shopping street of the area. As City Search writes, “a high ceiling and cascading lights enlarge the room. The menu of remarkably authentic Venetian trattoria..” (323) 464-6978.

Square One provided our first breakfast. This place also offered some of the best photo ops such as my meal shown here. I had a variation on eggs benedict with salmon on a potato pancake and grits on the side. How could I resist this? Fortunately my cholesterol runs low. It is located at 4854 Fountain Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90029 (323) 661.1109.

After all the intense food so far we wanted a change a pace and asked for a burger place. But then this is LA so it was the 8 Oz Burger Bar in West Hollywood where I had an estancia grass fed beef burger with arugula and fried green tomatoes along with some of the best onion rings I have tasted outside of Woodman’s. It is located at 7661 Melrose Ave, (323) 782.8258.

Our Sunday lunch was at the Loteria Grill, an excellent Mexican place located in the Farmer’s Market at 3rd and Fairfax, very close to where we stayed. I had three kinds of soft tacos: chicken mole, pumpkin and chicken and a mushroom. You can see them on the left. It was all very fresh and very good as was the guacamole and chips. It is located at the Farmers Market, Stall 322 6333 West 3rd St. West Hollywood. (323) 930-2211.

Anissette in Santa Monica provided our last dinner. The food was great but their web site needs work, as we had to go to CitySearch to see a proper menu. CitySearch also offered this accurate description. “Former four-star chef Alain Giraud … open a quintessential French brasserie with a Santa Monica Farmer's Market-driven twist. Parisian-born Giraud traveled through France for design ideas and furnishings including antique mirrors, mosaic tiled floors, aged wood fixtures, and a zinc bar, which springboards aesthetically off the building's historic architecture. Dinner menu highlights include classic dishes…” It is located at 225 Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90401 (310) 395-3200

Chambers Brothers Limited Editions on YouTube

Happy Valentine's Day. I was surfing my Facebook friends feed and found this great video on one of my favorite bands from the 60s – the Chambers brothers through Frederica-Azania Clare. They were doing People Get Ready live. So I naturally explored a bit and also found the following. YouTube is so seductive. I can never watch just one video, especially when it comes to music. I found it hard to find live performances, as most of the videos were their sound over some other visual. Does any one know of other Chambers Brothers live videos?

The Chambers Brothers - Time Has Come Today – perhaps their most famous song. This is a live but short version.

have a little faith - the chamber brothers – just audio over a graphic

There were a lot of covers. She also mentioned that Al Green has some great stuff on YouTube and here is Al doing People Get Ready.

Here is Curtis Mayfield’s take on People Get Ready.

Here is the nine minute version of Time has Come Today.

Here is the Ramores cover of Time has Come Today.

Sadly, time has come to stop this exploration.

Post Script: First be sure to check out the link John Maloney sent me to Canned Heat at Woodstock in the comments. Then Stan Garfield sent me this link to a great cover of Let's Stay Together produced by his brother David , featuring Michael McDonald and other vocalists. It was on his CD "Tribute to Jeff." His brother is currently collaborating with Smokey Robinson on a new recording. Thanks. Any more links music links?

Five Twitter Business Tips from Customer Collective

Niall Cook gave us some useful advice on business uses of Twitter. He states with this advice, “As Twitter gathers pace, we are seeing more use of the micro-blogging community by companies and brands. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but like blogging that went before they will come unstuck if they don't take the time to understand the platform before just wading in.” I could not agree more - see for a "what was he thinking" example ..

Here are his guidelines for the business use of twitter:

Listen. Niall points out that it is easy to set up and subscribe to a search of your brand or company name. I am now using TweetDeck for this.

Add value. Provide useful content for those that choose to follow you.

Only follow when followed or mentioned. Having an anonymous entity follow you is a bit like receiving spam. On the other hand, be careful who you follow. Niall says that if your following:followers ratio is more than 2:1 then you are probably being a bit desperate. I saw this with Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social tools. I have also now seem a number of 1:5-10 people. But do not be a snob. When someone follows me, I look at the profile to see if there is relevance. Then I look at their recent tweets to see if there is value to me. This is not a judgment of their absolute value just if there is stuff I want to see.

Reply. Respond to every tweet directed at you. Be sure to say current. Tweetdeck helps on this.

Use replies rather than direct messages. Be transparent about what you're saying to others on Twitter. True, but sometimes the reply is personal and/or you do not want to spam the others. Use DM when it is relevant.

Thanks to Niall for these. Some tips are similar to blogs and other social media and some are particular to Twitter. One thing that seems clear to me that doing Twitter right takes time, just like blogging. Do not start unless you are willing to put in the time. I am just experimenting with twitter. I leaned a lot from my fellow FastForward bloggers. Any reader of this blog is welcome to follow me at https://twitter.com/BillIves. But I will warn you in advance, that unlike the blog, my Twitter use may be inconsistent. Especially since advance Twittering is an oxymoron. However, I am seeing the value more and more.

Twitter Takes on Television Making It More Social

Smart Mobs posted on, Twitter helps TV viewing become social, picked up a BBC blog post, TV becomes social again, by Darren Waters. He wrote, “Last night I was watching Eurovision with Twitter running on my
laptop. In real time, my Twitter friends and I shared comments and made observations about the event as it was happening. Twitter was being used to extend the experience of watching the event together, but also for people to share links to sites with backstory, or explainers etc.”

This is happening ion the US as well as Mashable wrote about how Current TV to Make Election Night a Social Experience With Twitter and Digg. Current TV also did it during the primary debates. This raises a lot of interesting possibilities. I am involved in the web start up, TVissimo. We set up a TVissimo twitter feed (http://twitter.com/TVissimo) see the post - What Are We Doing Now? – We Joined Twitter!).

We have also planning to provide a feature to our TVissimo users that allows them to send a Twitter alert to themselves or others when a show (or show with a certain actor, etc.) they selected comes into the two week advance time window.

Who is the Smartest or Dumbest Generation? - Follow on to Tapscott at Fast Forward 09

Yesterday I posted my first impressions on The Don Tapscott Show at FastFoward 09. Here are some more thoughts. I said that rather that trying to figure out which generation is smarter or dumber, it is more useful to say that the definition of intelligence is changing. Prior generations were smarter than ours on many skills that were important to them. My grandfather was a college professor but he also worked his way through school by building houses, a skill he got form his father. So when he obtained his first teaching job on a low salary, he built his own house for his young family. Now people are more specialized. Some of this broader range of practical skills in the real world may become useful again in today╒s down-turning economy. I am sure you can think of examples with your own grandparents.

So if we look at new skills in the virtual world, it also allows us look at the specific skills needed in our changing world and what skills may be enhanced by use of these media. Each medium is not a complete representation of reality. Each represents a different look at reality and each requires different skills. My grad school advisor, David Olson, said that if you read a book on skiing you enhance your information on skiing and enhance your skills in reading, not skiing. Among other things, he looked at what skills we gained as a byproduct of reading.

Each new medium brings us new skills as byproducts that are not always apparent. For example, researchers in the 70s showed film with zooming in to one group and similar film without zooming in to others. Then the two groups were given unrelated tasks and the people who saw the zooming in film paid more attention to details. Of course, whether this lasted more requires long-term research. Understanding the real impact of our new media also requires long-term research (see What Does Computer Use Really Do to Our Minds?)

Since each medium draws on different skills and supports different cognitive processes, we want to properly map media to tasks once we better understand their characteristics. For example, in some cases a picture is worth a thousand words, but in other cases a few words can be worth a thousand pictures. I did research in the 70s that showed that words were much better for certain spatial tasks that required location definition because they provided a way to codify the spatial environment to pinpoint locations and describe them. In other cases, with tasks that involved the mental manipulation of images, words did not help in the same way.

With the Web, text is still king for many purposes. It allows us to better codify information than images for certain tasks and in this way allows search to more easily find this information. Generally, we have to add text to images through tags to allow today?s search engines to find the images. Text also allows us to process information silently. The younger generation understands this since they can text message each other in the presence of their parents without their parents listening in.

This silent processing also makes text better than videos for sharing information in certain other environments. I often get videos sent to me when I am surrounded by others and have to save them for later. Then I never get around to looking at them. Text based messages allow instant processing in more environments like the conference session I am sitting through right now. As I wrote before, it took almost a thousand years for people to realize that you could process text in silence (see Phonetic Alphabet: the Information Technology That Keeps On Giving). I am sure it will take a while for us to better understand how to use the new digital media.

However, text is not always the right answer, as I found before. For example, the combination of audio and images can work better, in some cases, than the combination of text and images. You can only process one visual channel at a time but you can dual process an audio and visual channel. So you cannot read a text caption and look at the image at the same time. You have to go back and forth. However, you can listen to an audio description and process the image simultaneously. There is much research work to be done here. Getting back to the beginning in this post, the research is better focused on what are the skills and requirements that the new media bring and not which generation is smarter. I think the generally more inclusive younger generation would agree.

If you want the video version of this text message, here is the conference interview I did on it.

Other conference posts include:

Charlene Li on Social Technologies

Orion Corporation’s One Search Experience

TVissimo Relaunches Today with New Interface

Today, we have re-launched TVissimo™ with an improved interface. I am pleased to be part of this effort and continue to be the main author on our TVissimio - TV Schedule and Online Video Blog. Visit our blog for tips and techniques on using TVissimo. We also cover the television and movie industry and industry bloggers.

TVissimo.com is a free television schedule and online video search engine to help you find TV programs and movies you want to watch, quickly, easily and free. Whether you’re at home or away, you can instantly find the precise TV show schedules and your exact channel numbers. With hundreds of channels delivering thousands of programs daily, printed TV schedules have become pretty useless, while on-screen cable or satellite schedules are slow, difficult to use, and offer only limited details and functionality. Finding online (streaming or download) content requires searching many websites in different formats. TVissimo provides a single entry point for finding content everywhere.

TVissimo.com is doing for TV what Google™ has done for the web. Rather than focus on channels, TVissimo is designed around the concept that people have TV-Show-Type favorites, regardless of what channel the show is on. To see differences between various TV show search providers, go to TV-Show-Schedule.com. If the show you’re looking for exists, you’ll find it, unlike other top-ranked services that often come up empty.

Search any way you prefer, using Google-type keywords or phrases, for Categories such as adventures, football, children’s cartoons — or by any criteria, such as description or actor/star/show-type. You can even specify prime or rerun, length, or time slot, and display the schedule sorted by program name or start time. For example, you can browse through a list of comedy movies that are on tonight between 8:00 and 11:00 p.m., or check if a Nicholas Cage movie is on. And you can print out your own customized TV schedule, sequenced by start-time or program name.

TV show listings are available for the next 14 days, refreshed nightly, all year round. Online video availabilities are refreshed daily for the currently indexed sites (TidalTV), with more added in the near future.

Go to TVissimo.com, enter your zip code, and pick your TV service provider (cable, satellite or fiber). You can also save multiple locations (e.g. grandmother’s house or hotel during a business trip).

TVissimo.com’s innovation is based on searching the available TV show details using a patent pending database search technology developed over a decade and applied to meet the challenges faced today by people trying to find their favorite television shows quickly and easily.

You can readily send TV program alerts to yourself or to friends by email or Twitter message. TVissimo friends’ lists are created by entering your contacts’ email addresses or Twitter IDs and specifying which of your favorite programs to send to any person or group. You can send business related shows to co-workers, entertainment programs to friends, religious programs to religious group members, etc.

Once your Favorites are stored, future searches will bring up only the shows matching your preferences, which can easily be modified later. For the first time in the new TV world of hundreds of channels and dozens of online video sites, finding your favorite TV programs can be easy by putting an end to channel surfing, never again missing your favorite shows or starting half way through them.

Catch the Introductory video on TVissimo and watch “The Life of Remo”, the abused remote control through YouTube.

Enterprise 2.0 Twitter List

In case you have not heard, here is a list of enterprise 2.0 Twitterers maintained by Susan Scrupski (twitter.com/ITSinsider). it includes many types of enterprise 2.0 twitterers. You can add yourself and classify the type of Twitterer you are. Susan asked us to Tweet or Blog this list so here is my message. I joined the list and my Twitter feed is https://twitter.com/BillIves I also found some new people to follow, as well as the feeds of friends in this space.

I am coming into Vegas today for the FastForward 09 conference. Hope to see you here. Let me know on Twiiter. The Twitter tag for this event is #FFC09.

Photographs from the Obama Inauguration

The New York Times provided a nice collection of photographs from the inauguration. I taped a lot of the events, as I was unable to attend in person. But this collection of photographs makes a welcomed documentary of the event. Here is a personal set of impressions of the Obama inauguration by Tim Rosa. Here are more Obama inauguration photos from Flickr.

Here is the last in a series of posts I did during the campaign, Update from the Obama Answer Center - Web 2.0 and US Elections.

National Geographic Provides “Visions of Paradise” Photo Contest Winners

I did a review of the book Visions of Paradise from National Geographic on this blog. There was a related photo contest. Now the 20 winning images in National Geographic’s “Visions of Paradise” photography contest have been selected. Photographers were asked to submit images that best represented their unique vision of heaven on Earth. The winners will each receive a customized edition of the National Geographic book “Visions of Paradise,” with their winning photograph as the cover image.

The winners are: John Hart of Oconomowoc, Wisc., for two entries: a photo of a frost-covered horse and an image of a child in a fountain.

Mai Le Trinh of Las Vegas for her photo of a sunset on Corona del Mar Beach, California.

Kelsey Hargrove of Orlando, Fla., for an image of a pizza deliveryman in New York’s Times Square.

Jorge Fajl of Agoura Hills, Calif., for his image of children on a beach at sunset.

Damien Murphy of Redmond, Wash., for an image of a snowy hill.

Suzanne Mathia of Scottsdale, Ariz., for her photo of Havasu Falls in Arizona.

Mitch Dobrowner of Studio City, Calif., for his photo of Shiprock in New Mexico.

Thomas Prezkop of Scottsdale, Ariz., for an image of Slide Rock in Arizona.

Sarah Le of Alexandria, Va., for her photo of a couple on a bench.

Harry Ogloff of Salmon Arm, British Columbia, Canada, for his photo of a reflection of the Rocky Mountains.

David Pincus of Fayetteville, Ark., for an image of the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Greg Clark of Redding, Calif., for his photo of a sunrise.

Gemm Ferrane of Harwich, Essex, U.K., for his image of an Essex lighthouse.

Sarah Condon of Skaneateles, N.Y., for her photo of a horse rolling in dirt.

Dena Bowman of Amherst, N.Y., for an image of a rock formation in Page, Arizona.

Dieter Turk of Glasgow, Scotland, for his picture of a sailboat.

Joseph Romeo of Lorton, Va., for an image of a red barn.

Andrea Robinson of Santa Cruz, Calif., for a photo of waves on a beach.

Louis Decarlo of Edinburgh, Scotland, for his photo of the ocean off the Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides.

The photographers were asked to provide images that reflected what they considered as perfect, spellbinding or most divine in the world. There is quite a diversity here as there is in the book.

My Fast Forward Posts for January 2008

Here is the monthly listing of my Fast Forward blog posts. I find it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries in my right side column on this blog. There will be more in February.

Bears and Bulls Ride Social Media into 2009

Deloitte Declares We Are in a Media Democracy?

Did You Vote in the Shorty Awards

Enterprise 2.0 2009 Planning Considerations from Mike Gotta via George Dearing via Twitter

What to do When You Approach 5,000 Facebook Friends.

This YouTube Guide is Not for Dummies

New White House Blog Published First Post

MeasuredUp Enables Company to Customer Conversations

There are many rating sites on the Web for both general audiences and all kinds of niches (food, movies, doctors, lawyers, teachers, consumer goods, etc.) and I have discussed many on this blog (e.g. Rise of Rating Sites). Usually, you rate something along with a lot of others and then other people go there to see how everyone felt before they make a decision to engage with or purchase whatever was rated. With the urge to rate, I am surprised that no one has added this to dating services, and then perhaps they have.

Marc Karasu, founder of MeasuredUp, was frustrated by an increase in poor treatment by businesses both large and small. So he designed a platform where consumers could share their experiences, vent or praise as appropriate and, ultimately, effect change. It is this last factor that makes it different from most other rating sites that I have seen so far. While it is a customer-service driven social networking site, it also helps companies make things right when consumers feel wronged. Marc has introduced the possibility of conversation between customer and company. MeasuredUp both gives customers a platform to express their views and it provides companies with tools to reach out to customers to solve problems and, in the process, have the opportunity to build trust, loyalty and satisfaction.

I have spent a lot of time in the customer service space in a former professional life. It takes around five times as much effort to get a new customer than to keep an existing one. If a customer gets bad service they will much more likely tell many others than the offending company. However, if the company takes the extra effort to fix the problem, the customer is usually much more loyal than before the transgression. The Web only amplifies this.

Marc explained to me how MeasuredUp works. The focus is more on customer service than product reviews. They do not want to simply provide a place for rants, but also try to obtain positive reviews when they are deserved. Anyone can set a page for a company. A consumer can write a customer service review or question and open up a support ticket requesting direct help from a company. This is all free and everyone can see what is said and any responses. Here is the MeasuredUp home page where you can see some of the features.

Companies can “claim their company name” through a new product called MeasuredUp Direct Connect for free. This gives a company access to a private turnkey dashboard to see aggregated company results and a history of support ticket actions. It does not give them opportunity to take down complaints. Only MeasuredUp can do this if they feel the complaint is unwarranted or not authentic. Here is the company claim form.

I asked Marc how MeasuredUp handles the possibility of unwarranted trashing by a competitor or other party with bad intentions. He said they have several approaches to this. First, they do IP filtering so if one IP address is putting up lots of reviews they look closely at what is being said. If it seems inauthentic they contact the reviewer. While reviews can be done anonymously, the reviewer must supply their email address that is not displayed. This is a common practice on many sites. If the reviewer fails to response to the MeasuredUp inquiry, they take the review down.

They also give the company a chance to respond to the review. If they feel the company has acted in good faith to address the problem and the reviewer does not respond, they also take the review down. They also do not allow bad or inappropriate language. However, if this occurs, they point out the terms of use and give the reviewer a chance to rewrite the review. Marc said with practice it becomes fairly easy to spot the fake reviews, both good and bad.

Small companies that cannot afford a customer service function can use MeasuredUp in this capacity. They just have to dedicate an employee or employees to keep up with the support tickets. These employees will receive email notification whenever a customer creates a support ticket. This service also gives small companies a chance to build brand presence in their category, as they will be operating from this aggregated site. Here is sample company page.

For large companies they can offer an independent third party review and support channel. Brands that are interested in their customer service image should welcome the openness and feel comfortable giving up control over what stays up on the site.

I asked Marc about the business model. He said that a company can claim their page for a fee which allows them marketing access to an identified space at the top of their company page where they can place messages, ads or speak to their customers as they choose. They also have access to aggregated results, as I mentioned. A company can also “sponsor a category” and have targeted banner ads and a stronger presence within that category.

Like Marc, I have been frustrated by poor customer service. It is an area that I have long had a passion about. I used to write the president of the company. Now I can still do that but through a site that allows others to see what I say and yet allows the company a chance to respond. I like the two-way nature of MeasuredUp and the efforts they are taking to have fair content. In this way it goes beyond what I have seen on many rating sites.

Marc also writes the MeasuredUp blog that covers both general customer service issues and what is going on at MeasuredUp. The key for the site will be volume and I wish them luck as I think they have a good set of features and business model.

Are There Medium-Specific Cognitive Effects from the Web?

There has been a bit of speculation about the effect of web on our minds (e.g., Gord Hotchkiss on: Are Our Brains Becoming “Googlized?” and Nicholas Carr on: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”). As a cognitive psychologist who once studied the effects of media on cognition, I am confident that something is happening here. But I am not sure we know yet.

One study, sited in the Gord Hotchkiss post, was conducted at UCLA by Gary Small and some colleagues (see UCLA study finds that searching the Internet increases brain function). In this work, participants, ages 55 – 76, performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, that records the subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced during these activities.

The report states, “All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, demonstrating use of the regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities, which are located in the temporal, parietal, occipital and other areas of the brain.”

It went on, “Internet searches revealed a major difference between the two groups. While all participants demonstrated the same brain activity that was seen during the book-reading task, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain, which control decision-making and complex reasoning…In fact, researchers found that during Web searching, volunteers with prior experience registered a twofold increase in brain activation when compared with those with little Internet experience.”

The researches thought this was striking. So I asked a leading neuropsychologist what she thought. She said well actually, it just showed that those who already knew how to do web searches could move more quickly to performing higher levels tasks that involved decision making because they knew what they were doing. The others were likely spending more time reading to try to understand what to do, which is more likely similar to the reading tasks.

In fact, the researches acknowledged this, as “Small added that the minimal brain activation found in the less experienced Internet group may be due to participants not quite grasping the strategies needed to successfully engage in an Internet search, which is common while learning a new activity.” The report went on to quote Small, "With more time on the Internet, they may demonstrate the same brain activation patterns as the more experienced group.”

I would suggest that the title of the article should be “UCLA study finds that knowing what you are doing increases brain function.” However, I would question the conclusion that the findings, “demonstrate that Web search activity may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.” That is, it does not seem to indicate that web work helps any more than engaging in any other complex, problem solving task that you have gained some level of proficiency. Now I do think there is something here worth looking at and I really wanted to find more conclusive results related to the specifics of web work. Media can affect cognition. For example, I remember work in the 70s that showed that seeing film with zooming in features, helped people focus on the details in subsequent unrelated tasks compared to a control group. There is much more in this area.

In the UCLA report, Small indicates that, “pursuing activities that keep the mind engaged may help preserve brain health and cognitive ability.” This sounds right but longitudinal studies are required to be conclusive. In the meanwhile, I do feel that writing a blog helps me to better understand the content since I have to try to communicate it to others but there is nothing unique about the web here, except that it offers more of these opportunities to communicate to more people.

I hope more research is done here and I am sure it is going on now. I would be very pleased to help about more work in this area that demonstrated medium-specific effects.

My App Gap Posts for January 2009

Here are my App Gap posts for January. In addition to the Fast Forward blog (see side bar for links), I am writing in another Corante blog, the App Gap, sponsored by QuickBase, The posts began toward the end of January 2008. In this case, I am primarily doing product commentaries with a few other things thrown in. Below are the ones for January. There will be more in February.

Sonoa ServiceNet Supports Enterprise Cloud Computing

cyn.in - Open Source Enterprise Collaboration Software

Top Web Reputation Tracking Providers from Mashable

Enterprise 2.0 Task Management and More from Manymoon

iTKO Expands the Agility of Enterprise 2.0 with New Service Virtualization and SOA Governance Offerings

CircleUp Provides Group Message Management Platform and Service

IDNTITI Provides Democratic Reputation Management

MeasuredUp Opens Up Customer to Company Conversations

Unexpected Benefits of Phonetic Alphabet Keep Appearing

I have written a number of times on this blog and elsewhere that the phonetic alphabet was the greatest ever breakthrough in information technology. Here is a great blog post, Why Text Remains King of the Web, by Steve Rubel that documents some more reasons.

Steve writes: “I am starting to believe that despite all the hype around online video, text remains King of the Web. Why text? There are at least five reasons...

It's scannable - according to Jakob Nielsen users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average site visit and 20% is more likely

Three letters: SEO - For all that Google Universal Search has done to elevate video, search results are still largely made up of text and everyone wants better SEO

The workplace - It's much easier for cube-based workers to read text on the screen and get away with it vs. watching long videos. Watching videos (even work related vids) screams "slacker"

Mobile Devices - Yes, of course you can put a video on an iPhone. But it's work and requires planning. Text is easier to pull up in a nanosecond

Distribution - Nothing flies like text. It's so easy to cut and paste it and send it somewhere or to clip and re-syndicate it via email, RSS or social networks

I don't know about you but I love text.” Thanks Steve. I do too. I agree with all his points. I often get links to videos but I do not play them because the audio would bother others around me so I save them for later, and sometimes forget about them. However, I can silently read text as soon as I get it. This possibility was not always considered, as we shall see below.

Now the ancient Greeks who came up with the phonetic alphabet probably did not think about these implications. It is the invention that keeps on giving. As I wrote in Deloitte Declares We Are in a “Media Democracy,” the concept of an original version that could be preserved did not evolve until after written text. This was critical to the development of modern science among other things. In many ways, the epic poets, chief knowledge distributors of their day, made up the details as they went along. Text made available a visual record of thought, abolishing the need for an acoustic record and hence the need for rhythms. The first thing put into text was an epic poem but soon text inspired documents appeared. But there is more.

Like many great inventions, the uses of text slowly evolved. In fact, it appears that reading was often done aloud until after the 6th century. Ivan Illich relates that St. Augustine refrained from reading after his brothers went to sleep for fear of waking them. After the 6th century, silent reading became more commonplace, and such techniques such as tables of contents and indexes first appeared. These new devices allowed for random access to text information, a concept we take for granted now. Now people were free to read their emails and blog posts without disturbing their neighbors. What will be next for text?

DylanTube – Great Blog

I wrote a post, Dylan on YouTube, that was the sixth most visited post in 2008. Here I described how I set up a Dylan video anthology through YouTube in under an hour and offered the links. Well, I recently got a comment from Josh Lobley, who mentioned his blog, DylanTube. This is a great resource for Dylan fans.

There are numerous posts with Dylan videos and Josh’s observations. Examples include; Bob Dylan and Paul Simon - Sound of Silence 1999, Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (Rolling Thunder Revue, 1975) - excerpt from Renaldo and Clara, and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez performing With God On Our Side on Peace Sunday, June the 6th, 1982. There is much more. Check it out.