EnterpriseBlend

Via the WSJ: Sniffly Surfing: Google Unveils Flu-Bug Tracker

This is a sweet use of search to develop a search driven application.  Like some other Google apps, this is a glimpse of how search combined with Web 2.0 technology can provide powerful new ways to analyze and visualize data. 

It’s also a powerful way to scare the heck out of your inner hypochondriac.  Good luck with that. 

My friend Jeff Potts announced today that his book, “Alfresco Developer Guide”, has been released.   Jeff’s been working on the book for quite a while, and it looks to be packed with great examples and information about the ins and outs of the Alfresco content management system.

I’ve ordered my copy.

Tags: ecm

I have spent the last hour playing with Flock. Flock is a web browser based on Firefox that has many built in features for taking advantage of social sites and services.  In fact, the team is calling Flock “The Social Web Browser”. 

I immediately like Flock because it is based on my favorite browser - Firefox 3.  When you first launch Flock, it offers to import all your bookmarks and account/password information from Firefox.  Very nice and allows you to get up and running with traditional browsing features very quickly.

Once you get into Flock, you’ll find that it knows how to talk to MANY MANY social services.  I was able to quickly configure Facebook, Gmail, Delicious, Blogger, Picasa, and both of my blogs.   There are many other service providers to choose from in the categories of social networking, media sharing, blogging, online favorites, and webmail.  In addition, Flock includes built-in blog posting and feed reading capabilities.  (In fact, I’m posting this from Flock.)

There are some other nifty things about Flock like the Web Clipboard where you can drag and drop text and images for later use.  There’s also the favorites sidebar that gives you a view of not only your local favorites, but also your del.icio.us favorites as well.  Finally, there’s a very cool photo uploader that allows you to upload to various services that provide photo sharing.

Flock is definitely not without its warts.  I found a few in the first hour I’ve spent with it.  Things like the blog post editor not always showing the caret or allowing it to move and not auto-suggesting tags when typing in the favorites editor (or blog posts for that matter) are a bit annoying.  But, they seem minor and may be worth the trade off for having so much functionality in a single application.

I’m going to play with Flock for a few days before I render a final verdict.  For now, I’m another user who rocks Flock. 

Tags: browser, flock

Last Thursday, I attended Refresh Dallas to watch my good friend Aaron Hursman present “Effective Dashboard Design”. I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation, and I love that people like Aaron care about making corporate dashboards more effective and sexy.  You can watch a video of his presentation via Ustream or check out the slides via Slideshare.

Tags: bi, ux

My friend Jeff Potts recently presented at a local AIIM luncheon.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it.  However, Jeff has posted his slides on SlideShare and made his links available via del.icio.us.  Very nice – check it out!

Tags: ecm, oss

I’ve been fairly active in Twitter for several months. I’ve noticed a new trend that is gaining some momentum in Twitter - SPAM! It’s quite ingenious and annoying.

The technique is drop dead simple. Here are the steps:

1. Set up a web site for your cause/product/lifestyle/ego
2. Set up a Twitter account with an alluring name (i.e. “sexylauraoh”)
3. Post a single update to your account with your advertisement (e.g. “Hi, I just got my latest tattoo from the hottest database on the net: http://hottattoospam.com”)
4. Start following some randoms
5. Chortle in glee or work on your muhahaha

This technique banks on the fact that most people have set Twitter to notify them when a new person starts following them. This notification includes a note that says the person is now a follower and provides a link to their profile. Once you click on the profile, you will see their timeline.  Since the timeline contains their  advertisement from step 3 above as their only tweet, the target is instantly spammed.

To Twitter’s credit, they are trying their best to suspend suspected accounts and prevent this from getting completely out of control. But, I believe the war has started. Pretty soon the spambots will start exploiting the Twitter API to mass subscribe, follow, and harass.

So, what now?  Are we going to have to enter a captcha to post a tweet? Ugh. I shudder.

Regardless of what happens, I think we should make it a priority to coin a term for Twitter spam. I’m thinking of something like “droppings”. Or, maybe we should stick closer to something spam-like.  Spam is pork shoulder and ham, right?  Maybe we should go with Turduckens.

I would love to hear your thoughts. What do we do about spam on Twitter?

Tags: spam, twitter

Sorry all.  I’ve been missing in action for a couple of weeks.  I have been pretty busy with activities around finishing up one client and starting another.  I hope to get back in the saddle this week and start posting again.

I’m not really going to comment on how Web 2.0 is going to affect this election.  However, I do want to point out something I ran across today.  Check out Google’s “Power Readers in Politics” page.  It has items that McCain, Obama, and certain political journalists are sharing in Google Reader and commenting on.  Fascinating.  And, I subscribed.

• Mitre released a paper back in 2006 about their experimental implementation of social bookmarking on their intranet called Onomi. I just came across it this week. Interesting.
• Dr. Stephens points out some interesting business and technology trends he found in a deck from an Open Group conference.
• I continue to be enthralled with Chuck Hollis’s posts about EMC putting their Enterprise 2.0 strategies and tooling in place. The latest is about moving outside the firewall to external communities.
• Andrew McAfee has released a video via SAP that gives a briefing of his research examining the linkage between IT investment and competition in the US. It’s really interesting research, and I look forward to reading the Harvard Business Review article.

Photo courtesy of jlunar via flickr.

Tags: blend