Interesting development in internet content

ISPs Can't Be Forced to Filter Web Content

A European court has found that content holders cannot require Internet service providers to filter out pirated material.

Copyright holders can ask ISPs to block specific Web sites that include links to illegal content, but those ISPs cannot be required to troll the Web and sniff out pirated files themselves, according to a Thursday ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The Strategy of Being Lucky

from Arrington Tells Entrepreneurs To Make Their Own Luck, Then Get Lucky

1. Luck plays a huge factor in everything in life.
2. You make your own luck ... you got to be in a position to be there when it happens
3. You make your own luck, but it’s still luck.
4. You put yourself in a position where something’s going to happen and if it didn’t work out you try again
5. If you fail it doesn’t mean you suck, it means the luck didn’t go your way and then you keep trying.
6. We shouldn’t pat ourselves on the back too much when we’re successful, because a lot of it is luck.

6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997

from 6 Things Jeff Bezos Knew Back in 1997 That Made Amazon a Gorilla

1. When you have a window of opportunity, go for the jugular – even if you have to exhaust a huge number of resources.
2. Think long-term meaning 5 – 7 years, not 5 – 7 months
3. Long-term market share is more important than short-term profits because without long-term market share there will be no long-term profits.
4. It’s ok to make mistakes but it’s not ok to be timid.
5. Obsess over Customers
6. Be first in a big market

Facebook as leading indicator for Enterprise Apps?!

Haven't posted for awhile. But this is something worth noting in the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff seems to have big crush on Facebook and how that is the future for even Enterprise Apps!

Salesforce CEO: Facebook Is Leading The Direction For Where ‘We’re Going As An Industry’

“I really think that Facebook is becoming a vision of what the consumer operating system is”, he said. “Everything I want, I’m beginning to see on Facebook”.

Memory and Magnets in our future

Some glimpses of future tech that will again change our computing usage patterns:

IBM develops 'instantaneous' memory, 100x faster than flash "a new kind of phase change memory (PCM) that reads and writes 100 times faster than flash, stays reliable for millions of write-cycles (as opposed to just thousands with flash), and is cheap enough to be used in anything from enterprise-level servers all the way down to mobile phones."

Future Magnetic Computers Could Consume Only Tiny Amounts Of Energy "Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have discovered that microprocessors using tiny magnets (pictured below) for logic, memory, and switching operations would dissipate just 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature. That's a very small amount of electricity. In fact, it's the smallest amount of electricity possible to transmit information--a number known as the Landauer limit."

Pull, Apple and 10 Reasons You Aren't Rich

The Power Of Pull

"What makes email, Facebook, and Google so valuable? Answer: Visiting them is largely unprompted, "

"Why is Pull so essential for a web company? The intersecting forces of human psychology and economics."

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Apple's 'crazy' retail gamble

"It started with one store at Tysons Corner Center in Virginia, just outside of Washington. Ten years and more than 300 stores later, it's become a retailing venture
unique in the world of consumer electronics."

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10 Reasons You Aren't Rich

"The reason why you aren't a millionaire (or on your way to becoming one) is really quite simple. You probably assume it's because you aren't earning enough money, but the truth is that for most people, whether or not you become a millionaire has very little to do with the amount of money you make. It's the way that you treat money in your daily life.

Here are 10 possible reasons you aren't a millionaire:

10. You Care What Your Neighbors Think
...."

Interesting recent developments from all around.

Microsoft uses Facebook 'likes' to battle Google

To make results more relevant, Microsoft is launching a new feature in Bing search that bakes in recommendations from Facebook friends.

The new feature, making its debut tomorrow, will elevate results that have received a thumbs-up "like" from a friend on Facebook. So if a user is searching for a Thai restaurant in San Francisco, for example, a particular spot that received kudos from that person's Facebook posse will climb in the results.

Read more

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Tricorder coming to life?

A real-life diagnostic device that does something akin to what the tricorder did on "Star Trek" just might earn its developers $10 million prize. And yes, the proposed competition is actually being called the Tricorder X Prize. It's just one more example of life imitating "Trek." In the words of Mr. Spock: Fascinating!

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Video games are art!


The National Endowment for the Arts recently made an announcement that was MIDI music to our ears: It was now considering "interactive games" among the art forms to which it would offer funding.

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This was obvious from the get-go: The iPad Is A $500 Kid's Game



A survey from PBS has revealed something pretty staggering for a $500-plus next-gen computing device: 70% of parents are happy to hand the iPad to their kids, and download child-friendly apps for the rugrats.

Smart Phones and Tablets

Here are a couple of things I have been reading:

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In light of the recent fracas about iPhone and Andriods keeping tabs on users' location and other data, The Really Smart Phone is a really good article on what some researchers are doing (and can do) with your smartphone data. Provides good insight on the possibilities which some might find disconcerting, but I actually see as quite exciting (e.g. for data mining, statistics and human/social interactions).

A related article but this time about your TV tracking you! TV's Next Wave: Tuning In to You

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I've also been looking to get a tablet, so this is part of my research: Barnes & Noble Beats Amazon To The Android App Punch, But Kindle Will Likely Prevail . Actually regardless of the prognostication in the title, I think the Nook is closest to what I need for a tablet - which is primarily for reading e-books and very light web browsing.

Basketball and Project Management?

A big part of Project Management is the management of resources. And the most critical resource is of course human resource. To achieve anything worthwhile it is critical to be able to build an A-Team. Recruiting, however, just the start. Building them into a real team - now that is the key.

This is also true for team based sports. I recently encountered a couple of articles that can serve to provide insights into this area of team management - which can be something of a black art to many people.

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First are some excerpts from - I Can’t Accept Not Trying. Michael Jordan on the Pursuit of Excellence. Here's the main takeaway:

"I’d rather have five guys with less talent who are willing to come together as a team than five guys who consider themselves stars and aren’t willing to sacrifice.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."

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Secondly, there's this more recent article in Fast Company magazine, What LeBron James And The Miami Heat Teach Us About Teamwork, exploring this same concept but in a slightly different context - the experiment by the Miami Heat to create a superstar team with the express goal of winning the NBA Championship. This article investigates the (ongoing) trials, experiences and adventures in gelling together the "Heatles" team of Lebron James, Chris Bosh and Dwayne Wade each of whom were the star player in their teams prior to participating in this adventure/experiment. I found this treatment of the subject very informative and enlightening from the perspective of team and project management - especially the creation of a team to achieve very specific and short term goals.

Imagine building an A-Team for a startup project.

Games and Gamification of Applications

Recently I have been looking at some games related stuff. This is in the context of new genre games that integrate the physical with the digital worlds like Augmented Reality and Exergaming - video games that are also a form of exercise.

I then came across this article in Fast Company - "MIT Creates The One Video Game You'll Be Thrilled To See Your Kid Get Hooked On" - which I found very interesting and has lots of potential. Whilst not directly related to what I was looking for, it nonetheless is definitely a move in the right direction, at least for some kids.

This phrase from the article sounds the clarion:

"In case you didn't get the memo, games are making all kinds of staid or serious things sexy and downright fun now, from business training to dusty libraries to human rights to health care. Gamification is certainly a trend...."

Some stuff I am reading and have been directed to

Think Quarterly - Google's 'magazine'. Has interesting articles and the formatting/fonts are nice on a browser. http://thinkquarterly.co.uk/ (A companion site)

Scaling DotNet - blog post on some techniques for making DotNet sites faster, better. Fairly technical at developer level. And this link also from that page which initiated the post - MySpace’s death spiral

Stack Overflow Architecture Update - A DotNet article on how Stack Overflow makes their site fast and optimized.

Amazon Virtual Private Cloud - Updates on Amazon's VPC service to include virtualizing your entire network in the Cloud.

Oracle Identity Management Deployment Planning - good resource on Identity Management and not just for Oracle

Some Interesting Insights on the new Digital Publishing Paradigm

A friend just sent me this intriguing article on "Best Selling Author Turns Down Half A Million Dollar Publishing Contract To Self-Publish"

It provides a good insight into the minds of authors (especially good ones) in the new digital paradigm. I also got a good view of the traditional financial publishing model (which i assume is similar for other intellectual property like music) from quotes like:

"In paper, with rare exceptions, there's a big upfront sales push, followed by either total evaporation or by years of low backlist sales. Digital isn't like that."

".. getting half a million bucks and 14.9% royalties, forever, isn't as lucrative as no money up front and 70% royalties, forever."

"a publisher's advance represents: a loan, an insurance policy, a bet"

"If the loan is so big that you don't think you'd ever be able to make that much on your own, plus you won't have to pay it back, then sure, take it"

"...getting half a million bucks and 14.9% royalties, forever, isn't as lucrative as no money up front and 70% royalties, forever."


I guess part of the thinking behind this is that both delivery/distribution AND marketing can be achieved effectively online now. With Social Media, the author, especially a good one, can do his own marketing to reach his audience and get feedback. Before these channels became available very few authors will make such a decision.

The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

I just came across this great video of JK Rowling giving the commencement address to the Harvard graduating class in 2008. The impact is of course that it is JK Rowling, but the delivery is quite excellent and the message really gets through.

http://harvardmagazine.com/commencement/the-fringe-benefits-failure-the-importance-imagination

This was a link I found from NTU SIFE

Plus check out this analysis of her talk "Speech Analysis: JK Rowling 2008 Harvard Commencement Speech".

Summary of Sharepoint 2010 Social Features

Sharepoint 2010 has upped the ante on business applications that provide social features. A study of what Sharepoint is doing in this area can give us more insights into the kind of features that might be useful in business software expecially in corporate settings. This is also relevant to developers who aspire to build social features into their offerings or solutions

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Social Media Tools on Sharepoint 2010

1. Managing your content – profile page with personal and work related information, profile management, and managing tags and notes (filtering, sorting, etc.).
   
   
   
   1. Personal Tag Cloud, which surfaces all the tags that user has employed and displays them in a tag cloud.
   
   
   2. Tag Profile feature which aggregates all of the people who have used a given tag within the organization. It's possible to subscribe to a feed of any tag, see who's following a tab, and add a tag to your responsibilities, all of which are options surfaced simply by clicking on a tag.
   
   
   3. "Ask Me About" feature falls under the interests area and allows users to broadcast areas of expertise about which they're open to receiving questions from colleagues.
   
   
   4. Content tab surfaces a user's sites, documents and pictures (shared and personal). Sites include a personal blog by default. Included in the blog is a Ribbon-based contextual editor which "makes it much more natural to do internal blogging." In addition to showing blogs in the browser, authoring on a mobile device is easy.


2. Staying connected (Social Networking)
   
   
   
   1. My Network feature, to track your colleagues and interests, shows a running feed of colleagues' activity (an "analogue to Facebook friends, if you will") and interests
   
   
   2. Overview includes a user's Note Board, "Facebook Wall-style interface”, where you can post a note on a colleague's profile or leave a comment on a team site.


3. Finding expertise (Social Networking) – Finding Expertise – In terms of finding expertise, SharePoint 2010's people search where you can sort by "social distance" and filter results by projects, skills, and responsibilities and an Organization Browser where one can
   
   
   
   1. Organization tab surfaces an org browser in Silverlight, to browse through peers and management chains, which shows an org chart that's far more slick (and interactive) than any org chart you've seen before. An HTML version of the org browser is also available.


4. Finding information (Aggregation, RSS) – For finding information, she showed us an example of a search for content where one can search across sites, filter results by type, author, date, or tag, as well as create an alert or RSS feed on a particular search query.


5. Capturing unstructured content (Social News and Bookmarking) – bookmarking (of both internal and external sites), tagging (sites, profile pages, lists, libraries, or items) and the suggested tag feature. She also briefly touched on blogs, video, an enterprise wiki, and an "office backstage" feature.


6. Working together anywhere (Collaboration) –
   
   
   
   1. co-authoring experience in Microsoft Office through SharePoint 2010 (with featured participants) and mobile collaboration where you can access team sites, office applications, create blog posts and comments and have 1-click access to documents, sites and colleagues
   
   
   2. two varieties of wikis in 2010, team sites and enterprise wikis, with the latter being more of a traditional wiki usage. Both feature Web Edit functionality and built-in workflows (which are also built into blogs in 2010). In 2010 you can insert Web Parts directly into a wiki.
   
   

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