web2

Here's a link to a presentation I gave last week. Forgive me for the "conversation 2.0" moniker but it's a catchy way to pinpoint what's happening right now in the world of marketing. Marketers and brands have always had conversations, but at a much slower pace and mediated by professional parties. That's no longer the case. Conversation 2.0, that is, the Web 2.0-enabled conversation, shifts places and times; it is ubiquitous and doesn't pause--it is, in all senses of the meaning, a "never ending conversation."

Thus, "social … Read more

Software developers, sharpen those No. 2 pencils. A standardized test on your knowledge of secure programming may soon be coming your way.

The Secure Programming Council unveiled Tuesday a proposed standard for companies to test their software developers' knowledge of secure programming. The aim is to create a situation in which companies can ensure that their developers, whether in-house or outsourced, have a base level of knowledge about wrapping security into software applications.

The council is rolling out its "Essential Skills for Secure Programmers Using Java/JavaEE" (PDF), the first of six standards initiatives. It plans to later … Read more

The Participatory Culture Foundation's universal video player has finally left the development world with its first non-beta release, Miro 1.0 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. There are very few changes to distinguish this version from the previous beta versions that have come out in the past two months. Beside the fact that you can now delete a video while it's playing with impunity, all the changes are minor bug fixes to sort out stability concerns and other small tweaks.

… Read more

Nick Carr has a biting post on Facebook's search for monetization. According to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the future of Facebook may well be to monetize social interactions. I can't wait. What could be better than to have my interactions with "friends" I can't be bothered to hang out with in real life bought and sold?

Nick writes:

I like the way that Zuckerberg considers "media" and "advertising" to be synonymous. It cuts through the bull[potty]. It simplifies. Get over your MSM hangups, granddads. Editorial is advertorial. The medium is the message from our sponsor.… Read more

Microsoft's Windows Live services are living up to its name by going live, losing the "beta" label, and becoming available as a free, Windows suite of six Web-connected applications.

The suite includes Windows Live Mail, which integrates with Hotmail and supports POP and IMAP. Among the other complete desktop services are Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Writer for composing blog posts. Windows Live Photo Gallery manages picture albums that can be uploaded to Microsoft Spaces, MSN Soapbox, or Yahoo's Flickr.

Also final are Windows Live Spaces for blogging, the Windows Live Events invitation service, as … Read more

Today we are in the throes of a slow return to a world of more personal connection between companies and their customers. Web 2.0 is allowing it, and for some people perhaps it is a new concept, but in fact it dates back to the beginning of commerce, to individual barter or the local market and the personal connection between those selling or buying the goods. For a long time we have engineered and marketed and grown our way out of this type of connection, and it is still quite startling when you see it happen in a genuine … Read more

As part of some business model research I am doing for a friend, I tried to figure out what model is the most appealing if you have a green field (untapped market opportunity) and you were going to start something from scratch. As an open-source software guy first and a software-as-a-service guy second, I really wanted open source to be the right way to go. And I believe it is for infrastructure software, but not for packaged applications. I still can't figure out how Web 2.0 companies translate into dollars though maybe it's as simple as advertising? … Read more

The TechBizWatch blog has a good article on Web 2.0 and the enterprise. It's easy to gawk at the Web 2.0 consumer revolution, but it has been harder to sort out its near-term influence on enterprise software.

At my own company, Alfresco, we spend a lot of time figuring out the best ways to bring Web 2.0 (architecture of participation, an emphasis on data, etc.) to our enterprise customers. It's not easy.

Forget outsourcing. the real threat to IT pros could be Web 2.0. While there's a lot of hype and hubris surrounding wikis, mashups, and social networking, there's also a lot of real innovation - much of it coming from increasingly tech-savvy business users, not the IT department.… Read more

Glyn Moody is talking about something completely different (people in the digital age still happily paying for vinyl records), but his point is actually directly appropriate for open-source software business models. One way to make money in the recording business is through vinyl records. Analog, in other words, not digital.

This is actually the way Red Hat, MySQL, JBoss, Alfresco, and other open-source companies make money. Analog. People. Real services performed by real people.

The digital bits are easy. Hard to create, yes, but easy to copy, so why bother locking them down? The people behind the bits? Not so … Read more