Are you for real?

For the last couple of weeks, if you ever ran into me, you  would notice that I am usually fidgeting with iPhIone.   Either I must be checking my email, tweeting or simply "four-squaring". Four-squaring?  What is four-squaring?  Well I just coined the term on this blog entry.   If you ever hear the word "four-square" then you can attribute it to this blog entry.  According to "moi", four-squaring is a term that references to a person who is advertising his or her existence on the foursquare mobile app.  Foursquare lets you tell the world that you are in a specific store.  If you use the app alot then you end up earning foursquare badges..  Sounds alot fun right?  Actually I thought I was advertising my shopping trends and my daily routine to the world.  Vendors are now offering special coupons via foursquare to visit their stores.  It sounds like alot fun for the user...BUZZ! You are wrong!  It's sounds like $$$ for the vendor since it is another marketing channel and another data point to consider in their marketing strategy.  In closing I would say,

• 4^2 = $$$$$ for the vendors
• 4^2 = no privacy for the user + meaningless badges.

$ocial Media & Ma$$ Collaboration

Recently Komen Foundation did a 180 when it comes to funding Planned Parenthood.  An organization could be crippled to social pressures. This is the second big story compared to how Google, Wikipedia and other companies and individuals raised their concerns about SOPA.  Some of these individuals worked as contractors for the US government.  I personally did not object to SOPA and frankly I do see merits on how government should control piracy; nevertheless I am impressed by the power and gravitas of social technologies.  They can be used as steroids to gain rapid momentum on decisions on social issues.  There are blogs and social communities galore on issues like abortion, freedom of speech, gay marriage, small government, keeping corporations accountable.  This is a great that folks are exercising their right to express their opinions on various issues.  The reality is that these issues are so complex  and folks have such strong emotional reactions to them that in practicality these issues will remain in the US for a while.

The big question to ask is how folks can make money of these power technologies. I could write about the next big idea which needs seed funding and technologists to make the big idea happen but in reality no one will really know if this idea will take off.  It's like peanut butter slices.  Do you buy them? If so then please comment to this blog entry.  Unlike the next big idea, what I can write about is how we can use existing technologies to make money.  I am big fan of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Four Square, Tumblr, and on and one.  What I have not seen is how businesses are successfully using all of these social technologies to sell their brand and simply market their products.  Online companies still use Adwords (Yes! Hail to the power of Google Gods [I say with sarcasm of course) and spend money on search engine optimization but they are struggling how to harness social computing.  At work, I worked on projects where social media and mass collaboration efforts are promoted however no one knows how these technologies will be used in my employer's enterprise.

The reality is that money can be made using social technologies in smart way.  If folks can persuade the masses on how SOPA is bad for you, your kids and you grandkids then I am sure we can use these technologies to sell a product smarter and more effectively.

Assessing IT Trends via Google Trends

After spending more than eleven years in the Information Technology, it is amazing to see how technologies evolve and trends are created and destroyed. I did a workshop on Thursday March 17,2011 with my colleague, Mr. Giora Hadar, on social media at FAA's IT\ISS conference where I discussed the evolution of social media and how FAA is using it. While preparing for the presentation, I realized how US government information policy is influenced by technology trends. Anyway here are some trends as viewed on Google Trends:

• Query: "cloud computing"
  
• Definition: "Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a network." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "Service oriented architecture"
• Definition: "Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a flexible set of design principles used during the phases of systems development and integration in computing." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "social media"
• Definition: "Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "bpms"
• Definition: "Some define the BPM System or Suite (BPMS) as "the whole of BPM." Others will relate the important concept of information moving between enterprise software packages and immediately think of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:
  

  

• Query: "knowledge management"
• Definition: "Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences." - Wikipedia
• Google Trends:

  

• Query: "enterprise architecture"
• Definition: "An enterprise architecture (EA) is a rigorous description of the structure of an enterprise, which comprises enterprise components (business entities), the externally visible properties of those components, and the relationships (e.g. the behavior) between them. EA describes the terminology, the composition of enterprise components, and their relationships with the external environment, and the guiding principles for the requirement (analysis), design, and evolution of an enterprise.^[1][2][3]" - Wikipedia
  
• Google Trends:

  
  

As you can see, "cloud computing" and "social media" are the hottest IT trends while "service oriented architecture","knowledge management" and "enterprise architecture", are declining. BPMS is also on the rise. What this tells me that CIO will try to align their strategies to the latest trends. These trends correlate to the Gartner Hype Cycle. I wonder if folks are doing any analytical strategic work using a tool like Google Trends.

It's been awhile...now Semantic Web is DOOMED!

It's been awhile since I last wrote my blog. I start off by saying that "Semantic Web" is dead. I don't think it will ever pick up and it's buzz has been replaced by "Social Media" and News Aggregators. Purpose of Semantic Web is to write code so that machines can learn and make inferences. For example I want to fly to Tahiti and I get my information on a web page which is written in OWL* (which includes Lite, DL and Full) and the machine via the internet is going to give me the best flight rates. This approach seemed great in 2004 however with the phenomenons of social networking and graph mining have squashed that fantasy. Don't get me wrong, Ontologies and OWL files are still needed in research oriented labs however they are not for the common users. Semantic Web promised us rich logic in the XML document which is parsed by the machine. Social Networks state that humans can relate to other humans and they are smart enough to make the right choices. I, personally, would rather trust someone in my social network to tell me about the hidden restaurant in Tahiti, where they serve grilled island crab and a glass of coconut milk, rather than an Oracle database churning on a RedHat Linux server somewhere on the cloud. With smart devices like iPads and iPhones, folks would rather view a YouTube video than to have a semantic web enabled application which is hogging up the device resources.

After looking at the trends, I have to say bye to "Semantic Web" and hello to "Social Web". Speaking about "Social Web", what do you guys think of Rock Melt?

Image taken by happy.apple and stored on Flickr