For those brought up on Microsoft, with what seems like unlimited (if somewhat daunting) functionality in the Office suite, it always seems that the Google Apps suite is ‘dumbed down’ – you are required to give up some functionality.   On the other hand it may seem like nearly everything you actually  need to do can be done in Google Apps – and there’s less to learn.

The cloud seems to have caught fire.  Microsoft has been pushing aggressively on its BPOS offering and the pricing has become a lot sharper.  Meanwhile Google has been busily beefing up its sales and support resources around Google Apps.

Either way both offerings have many attractions for the CIO – in terms of taking away headaches around upgrades, storage, support, etc.

And both offer lots of functionality in the collaboration type space – wikis, blogs, etc.

Side by side with this there are all the other players e.g. zoho with a very comprehensive offering for the information worker – also priced on a subscription basis.  And for project management basecamp seems to be getting a great deal of traction.  And one goes back to the previous thought – are some of these simpler, built for the cloud, product offerings easier to use, if somewhat ‘dumbed down’?

Interesting piece in Forbes re Google, ‘When Google runs your life’.  Seems to me that no more than Microsoft pushing wall-to-wall MS, Google is inevitably pushing google wall-to-wall.  Apologies for unfortunate use of outdated imagery – probably should be cloud-2-cloud.

I think much of the elegance of the web 2.0 applications has been their simplicity and ease of use.  That has driven initial uptake. Products such as googlewave, in trying to deliver a very rich solution, risk contradicting some of this.  There are similar risks in any vendor looking to achieve cloud-2-cloud dominance.

Seems to me that what the internet and the cloud  should be offering – as they evolve – are  easier and more effective ways to access resources (people, knowledge) – both inside and outside the organisation in which you work/ study/ volunteer.  Cloud based computing is part of this.  I think as such the winning solutions may be ones built from scratch for the cloud, expecting to coexist in the cloud, not expecting to dominate.

Share on Facebook

The presentation addressed, inter alia, the lack of excitement about semantic web.  My key takeaway from his talk was that semantic web is about networking knowledge for the benefit of PEOPLE.  I think in getting caught up describing things in terms of computers being able to process information on sites thought use of various standards (not of interest to anyone except the technical community) etc we have lost the focus on the fact that what we really want is more collaboration, more productivity, more discoveries.  Semantic web initiatives have an end game of helping people make more use of the information.

Just looked at a nice 3 minute video from Binaryplex – promoting their beta product Hivemind.  I do not know what the underlying technologies are.  They do not even mention the worked ‘semantics’ in their three minutes.  But what it is about is helping people to find expertise and, more importantly, experts in an organisation.  Recognising that people, for any number of reasons, may not update their profiles within an organisation the product seeks to address this gap, in the background.

Share on Facebook

Stefan Mazzocchi’s recent post, Data Smoke and Mirrors, speaks to some of the issues associated with publishing lots of linked data using RDF.  Stefan has reviewed a triplification of all the data from data.gov – and has been left somewhat bemused.  The posting itself provides some examples.

The point here is that we want to see the data published, we want to see the standards used – but it’s far from simple and publishing for the sake of publishing or triplifying for the sake of triplifying may be self defeating.  As a community we need to focus on quality and the end user of the data.

Share on Facebook

I am very much a fan of the semantic web and indeed of the movement towards linked open data.  However it is interesting to read reports of Tim Berners Lee’s own frustrations wrt advances in linked open data e.g. the fact that data is being published on data.gov in non RDF formats (thereby limiting the ability of people to browse from this data to other RDF marked up data).

I think Michael Cataldo, in looking to demonstrate potential benefits of semantic web, may be stretching things a little far wrt the subprime crisis – were people motivated to make the data easily understood or was obfuscation not part of the intent?

Share on Facebook

Would recommend the summary paper to anyone looking to gain an insight into the semantic web 3.0 and its potential.

Share on Facebook

I was lucky enough to spend four great years in Trinity College Dublin – way back when (1980-1984) – studying for an engineering degree.  A combination of study, growing up, socialising, forming many friendships which survive to now, playing lots of sport.

We did not have lap tops, we did not have mobile phones, we did not have social networks.

In truth much of what we were taught as undergraduates was as well, if not better covered, in various text books.  There were limited opportunities for practicals, tutorials, projects, opportunities to interact with lecturers and/or Phd dtudents.  These opportunities were actually the potential added value over and above the text books.

As I work and live in a web 2.0 and, increasingly, a web 3.0 world I wonder how my children will participate in 3rd level education – should they choose to do so.

The real opportunity I see for current and future undergraduates is collaboration.   It seems to me that undergraduates attending TCD should be involved in online collaboration with undergraduates and people in industry – based across the world.  The technology allows for this.  The challenge is for the universities to become more open and collaborative.

An interesting piece this week by Kevin Maney in Business Week: Next, An internet revolution in higher education. Kevin, with a slightly different perspective, seems to point to a lot of the same ideas and challenges for third level insitutions.

I think the opportunities in education and ‘global development’ for young people now are greater than ever.  I hope that universities can continue to provide a great experience to be shared by people (predominantly young – but with much more integration with ‘mature’ students) – while exploiting the news technologies to broaden the horizons for all.

Share on Facebook

Real difference was not interacting with twitter and other social networks on a regular basis throughout the day.  Also – listened to the radio for news and read a few newspapers.

Just watched Kevin Kelly video/ presentation on future of the web.  KK (of Wired) sees the internet as one computer.  We use various devices to access the one computer.  ‘Things’ e.g. cars, clothes, devices which incorporate chips (e.g. RFID) are effectively part of the one computer.  And, indeed, we are in many respects sensors for this one computer – as more and more information ends up in the one computer.

This is enough to scare off a lot of people.  In the Q&A session KK fields a number of interesting questions, including what are the opt out options, is the one computer and the human race in conflict?  Interestingly seems that most people are happy to go along with what’s happening.  He has a great line ‘No personalisation without transparency’.  Effectively you have to open up, provide information about yourself, your business, whatever, if you want a personalised experience.

This morning read a posting about Gordon Bell – a Microsoft researcher who is attempting to record everything in his life digitally.

Interesting line in this from GB: ‘By using e-memory as a surrogate for meat-based memory, he argues, we free our minds to engage in more creativity, learning, and innovation (sort of like Getting Things Done without all those darn Post-its)’.

I have often thought that this is the case.  An example being that sometimes overprep for a meeting (reading all the material, anticipating the questions, etc) results in a less creative, open discussion.  Another example would be whether examinations are still bogged down in being largely tests of memory rather than tests of reasoning.

All of this relates closely to one of my own areas of primary interest – linked data and the semantic web.  Linked data requires entities to share more data – for the benefit of being able to correlate this with other shared data.  The semantic web aims to enable ‘intelligent’ processing of data by computers – ie the one computer referenced by KK.

I think KK is right.  The one computer is more and more a fact of life.  There are many benefits – and a number of threats.  While there are opt outs – and ways to escape e.g. go and live on a deserted island off the west coast of Ireland – inevitably the internet continues to be more pervasive (and invasive).

Looking forward to another few days of restricted broadband access.  And then back to life interacting with the one computer.

Share on Facebook

This is an example of the web adding significantly to the the user experience ie to the TV golf spectator or the golf newspaper article reader.  Anyone who takes the time to play 18 virtual holes at Bethpage (not having playing the real course) will have a greater understanding of the challenge to be faced by Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, etc.

And then there’s the traffic, the advertising potential, etc.

Good luck to all of you who try.  I hope you have more skill at virtual golf than this blogger.

Share on Facebook

I was listening to and interacting with Liam Moran, business development manager, Digitial Enterprise Reseach Institute (Galway, Ireland).  DERI (www.deri.com) is the type of thing this country needs (‘The vision of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute is to be recognised as the leading international web science research institute interlinking technologies, information and people to advance business and benefit society’).  Set up with some real foresight, backed by the Irish government and Europe, real leadership (including Tim Berners Lee) and lots of brilliant minds.

Very exciting applications emerging from the research – the latest being SIOC to be adotped by the US government.  Visit the site (www.deri.com) for a better insight.

Liam gave a comprehensive review of Web o, 1, 2 & 3 and painted some great images of what could happen.

One particular observation caught my attention – how do we avoid getting bogged down in simply copying (even plagiarising) others to the exclusion of original, creative, thought?  Not being a music composer I often wonder where song writers continue to come up with new ideas?  Reminds me in some wasy of being back in school – when you were studying Shakepeare did you try to understand Hamlet for yourself and provide your own analysis/ commentary or did you simply buy ‘Coles Notes’ and regurgitate the standard bumph?

Share on Facebook

Perhaps this is a good thing – and will increase global learning?

Seems to me that this is destined to change, forever, the book and publishing industry.  Online book shops – e.g. Amazon – have already had a major impact on the industry e.g. on local bookshops.

I have commented previously on the challenges faced by the newspaper industry.  This is going to drive more change in the book industry -regardless of any revenue sharing models.

Share on Facebook