Sunday, December 27, 2009

Predictions about the Future

Yogi Berra is reputed to have said that it is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. yes, this is the time of year that we do just that, especially where this is the end of a decade - a most remarkable decade.

Ten years ago, the iMac had 64 mg of RAM and a 10 gig memory. Most people did not have broadband internet. Smartphones with built-in cameras had not yet been invented.

In ten years time, powerful personal computers will be unnecessary because computing will be done in the cloud. Data will be freely available in many forms. Probably raw data with some context built into it. Data that people will be able to analyze and make their own conclusions. Analysts and investors will be a good example, where they will have the use of tools like XBRL which allow customized data to be transpoorted across platforms and analyzed without the benefit of standard reports like balance sheets and income statements. It will be a new era in ten years time.

At least that's the way it looks now. But then, Yogi Berra had a point.

For some more predictions and ruminations see this article.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Technology Can Bridge Marketing and Sales

Technology can be a major help in marketing campaigns, some would say an indispensable part of modern marketing. However, in order for a marketing program to work well, there must be some conmmmonality of thinking between marketing and sales. Otherwise, the leads and ideas that marketing feeds to sales will be misinterpreted, resented or even ignored. This is an old problem, but technology can help in providing a forum through which marketing and sales can communicate and provide input and feedback on an ongoing basis. It's an element of technology use that makes good sense. For more follow this link.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Facebook's new Privacy Policy

Is Facebook having trouble getting it right? This week, Facebook launched their new privacy policy and procedures. Users were faced with a tool that asked them to choose the levels of privacy they would allow regarding key parts of their information, such as email addresses, phone numbers and addresses.

The new approach is running into some criticism from critics, who say that the defaults on the new policy open up the availability of the information, which means the user needs to take specific action to restrict access. Some feel it should be the other way around.

Others point out that Facebook had touted the new policy as tightening the security around individual privacy, but that the policy tends instead to extend availablility, in some cases to the entire web.

Maybe there is a need for some tweaking. Here's one take on the situation.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

An Open Standard for E-Readers?

E-Readers, such as the kindle are selling like hot cakes, yet the very existence of a proprietary standard for such devices is unsustainable. People don't want to have to buy 5 different e-readers just to read the books they purchase from different suppliers.

In a move that is definitely in the right direction, the top magazine publishers have entered into a deal to support a common open standard platform for their magazines. Clearly, this is to the benefit of the consumers - the magazine readers.

While this new open standard appears to be restricted to magazines, hopefully a similar open standard will emerge for book e-readers as well. Then watch e-reading take off!

For an article on the magazine publishers' initiative, see this article.

Thursday, December 03, 2009

Government Policies and Social Media

It seems the US government and no doubt other governments are using social media as a useful tool to investigate people and capture criminals. This carries some concerns as most people are innocent of any wrongdoing and in the non-cyberworld, long established safeguards are in place to secure the privacy and presume the innocence of ordinary citizens. In the cyberworld, however, such steps are not really in place. Although one would hope that the same safeguards would extend to the cyber-environment, the question is - do they? It would seem that clearer policies would be worth considering.

For more on this issue, check out this article. Also there is a white paper on Government and Social media available for free (for a limited time) download from Information week.