Targeted Ads on Facebook

What better place for targeted advertising than Facebook, where people voluntarily disclose their personal information. While such voluntary disclosure does not remove the strictures of the Privacy Act, nevertheless, there is some ambiguity about this, and Facebook has implemented a system of advertising based on the information that people have disclosed, such as their gender, age, etc. Recently, Facebook has revealed that these targeted ads have become their largest source of revenue. This article explains.

Cloud Computing - SAAS and PAAS

Many companies continue to move to cloud computing despite the additional risk involved. Vendors are becoming more sophisticated in the area and offering more comprehensive solutions. For example, the original center of the cloud - Software as a Service (SAAS) has now evolved into Platform as a Service (PAAS). With integrated platforms available in the cloud, it makes it more feasible for companies to move their ERP, CRM and BI systems there.

Microsoft has declared that they are fully into the cloud. In a recent interview, Bob Muglia, president of the nearly $15 billion Server and Tools Division of Microsoft, explains the current state of the cloud and offers an insight to Microsoft's strategy in this important area. The interview, complete with videos, can be seen on this site.

IT Careers: Hottest Jobs, Skills in Cloud Computing, Mobile Application Development

The latest IBM Tech Trends survey of IT professionals reveals that cloud computing and mobile application development will provide the most career opportunities, followed by social media and business intelligence. See the article at this site. 

Google - Maker of Fine Automobiles

Google has announced that they are testing a new car that drives itself. There have been predictions for a few years now that the traditional car manufacturers would be moving in that direction, but this is a very tangible and interesting move by a company that has not been involved in any way in the automobile industry. It shows once again how sudden and discontinuous change has become the norm for the information age.

Some of the car makers have been introducing new self driving functionality, such as, for example, the self braking feature of the new Mercedes. However, these initiatives have been sporadic and have not approached the status of a fully self driving car.

Google is investing a lot of money in their new initiative. It will be interesting to see if they succeed. For more on the self driving car, see this website.

E-discovery Goes In-house

As legal issues have moved into the electronic age, so has the discovery process. Discovery is the pre-trial process in legal actions that involve making documents available to the other party so as to improve the fairness and efficiency of the actual proceedings. Since many documents are now electronic, the process of e-discovery was born a few years ago to include the production of electronic documents. E-discovery has grown as a part of the legal process and now has reached the point that companies are bringing it in-house so as to include it in their regular control operations. For a good article on this development, please see this article.

International E-Business

There are many issues that arise in doing international e-business that don't arise in domestic markets. Of course, the obvious ones revolve around culture, but there are very different laws about handling money and making sales as well. An interview published in e-Commerce Times, titled "A World-Wise View of E-Commerce: Q&A With Asknet CEO Michael Scheib," provides an interesting quick overview of some of the issues in various countries. It's worth a look at this link.

Facebook now Meets Canadian Privacy Requirements

Last year, Canada's Privacy Commissioner reported that Facebook fell short of privacy requirements because it was collecting information that was available to others without making this clear to the users. Since then, Facebook has made a number of changes to its privacy procedures, basically providing the users the option to choose who the information can be made available to. last week, the Privacy Commissioner announced that Facebook now meets the requirements. For an outline of the announcement and its background, check out this article.  

Social Media and CRM

A new trend is taking place in the CRM world, in which companies are using social media to augment their CRM systems. It makes a lot of sense, because their customers can discuss issues, new events can be exposed to them, and their support people can participate. Different from the traditional chat rooms, social media facilitates getting to know the customers better and encourages better participation. Some companies are using this approach successfully. For an article on this topic, please see this link.

Online Privacy - Is There Such a Thing?

Many people assume that if they don't explicitly identify themselves on the internet, then their actions on it are anonymous. However, this isn't necessarily so. Standard logins can reveal more information about a person than many realize. For example, everyone has an IP Address, point of entry, domain, etc. and these are not hard to find and to track. Indeed many companies plant cookies to follow the users and determine their interests, desires, and habits.

Of course, many people are aware of the existence of cookies and often/sometimes(?) employ software to disable them. But by then it's too late to stop them from identifying a person, or coming very close. And the sophistication of identification techniques on the internet is growing.

Many business will tell you that they don;t need to identify an individual - that they only want to identify what their commercial interests in order to be able to make product information available to them at timely moments. A lot of research and effort is going into this effort. And that's generally true. But the real danger is that unscrupulous people, such as criminals may indeed want to identify you, and then there is a real problem.

Some safeguards can be taken - cookie software, wiping our browser files after each use, shielding IP addresses, etc. But a lot of people don't do these things, and in any event, the technology for identification is getting more sophisticated. it could mean the end of privacy for good. for more on this theme, see this article.

Android Moving up in the World

Google's Android operating system for smartphones has been one of the major success stories of recent years. Google bought Android Inc, as a start-up, two years ago and since them developers have flocked to it to the extent of hundreds of thousands of new apps, some say as much as a million new apps. Android is based on the Linux system, which makes it pretty much open for developers, something that works in the technology world and that Apple should have learned many years ago when it lost market share to IBM and its clones by keeping their Apples closed.

Now, Android is positioned as the front-runner in the smartphone world, and predictions are that its star will continue to rise. For example, see this article.

Journalism - An Industry in Flux

It is obvious to everyone by now that the world of news and news media is changing rapidly and irrevocably. Digital media is providing new and different channels of distribution, new avenues for reader interaction, and even new types of content.

The industry was the focus of a panel discussion held last week in Toronto, which involved a number of experts from media companies, and some of the digital companies like Facebook. One of the discussions pointed to the advantages of having news comments placed through Facebook, rather than as anonymous comments on news sites. There was the thought that this might raise the level of the online discussions in traditional media sites. Anyone who has read some of the comments one sees in traditional media sites would relate to the need for finding some way to raise the level at least up to kindergarten level!

The advances in mobility were also discussed, with recognition that it is important and will become more so, but that the problem now is that there does not seem to be a good means of providing advertising content, which is necessary from the industry viewpoint.

A summary of the discussion is at this site.

IT Support Needs to Change

The trends in technology over the past few years have highlighted a growing sophistication in the use of technology. At one time, the only experts in the company were the IT support staff. That's still true in some ways but in many ways it isn't. Nevertheless, IT support personnel need to recognize what has changed.

The big thing that has changed is that the employees, especially those coming on stream now, are very used to technology and are good at using it for many purposes in their daily lives. This ranges from social networking to numerous apps to mobile uses like texting. While they may not be cognizant of the risks associated with some of these activities, all that does is tend to make the work of the IS support people harder, because they end up having to say "no" - and it only takes a certain number of "no's" before they are regarded as Neanderthals.

So there is a significant management problem that needs to be addressed. Couple this with the growing trend of companies to adopt a policy of allowing employees to use their own computers, and the whole issue is ramped up into the stratosphere.

It seems clear that what needs to happen is for the IT departments to release a lot of control. To be more responsive to new technologies coming up out of the field, and to support as best they can the employees who way to use their own technology in a way that they are used to doing, which should add efficiency. In the end, the technology will cost the company a lot less and while there might be additional risk, this is something that can be dealt with.

InformationWeek Analytics recently released a survey - End user 2.0 - that bears out these broad conclusions and also brings in some new considerations. Worth thinking about. The long term credibility of IT support functions everywhere is at stake.

Buy Your Starbucks With Blackberry

In an illustration of the growing use of smart phones for purchasing on the road, Blackberry has announced a new application for the Blackberry. Customers can manage their Starbucks points accounts and buy their coffee using their Blackberry at Starbucks stores. there already are similar services for iPhones.

We can expect to see more of this and eventually smart phones may well become the payment method of choice. For a report on the announcement, check out this article.

The Wireless Wars

Wireless broadband capacity has become an important basic resource for our economy and indeed our society. Ultimately it may rank up there almost with water and air. That's because so many of our important communications devices and countless applications in business and government are going wireless.

We are all aware of the growth of mobile phones and other wireless devices. But that's only the tip of the iceburg. The movement of important applications, such as power grid monitoring to wireless platforms adds an important new perspective to the situation.

Presently, broadband access is controlled by the telephone and cable companies. But this arrangement does not take into account the movement of broadband usage from those devices to important applications. It does not take into account the tremendous importance of broadband to our society. In short, the most relevant question is can the control of broadband be left to the phone and cable companies, or should it be placed in broader hands - hands that will need to be more accountable.

There are, of course, regulatory bodies to mitigate said control. In the US its the FCC and in Canada the CRTC. Both agencies have been struggling to keep up with the rapid change taking place in communications technology and its changing role in society. With mixed results. In Canada the very existence and/or structure of the CRTC needs to be rethought. There are other government bodies with powers in this space as well, but then we are into an uncoordinated set of policies and practices. Change is needed.

The FCC, in its efforts to keep up, is currently examining the direction its policies should take with regard to broadband. Needless to say, they are facing extreme lobbying pressure from the cable and telephone companies. It's time for the whole governance structure of broadband policy to be re-thought.

Time Explorer

An interesting new research tool is in prototype state at the Yahoo Barcelona Research Lab. The tool was demonstrated over the weekend at a Human Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval (HCIR) workshop in New Brunswick, NJ.

The tool organizes news stories according to the years they were published and the years they refer to. So if an article refers to 2020, it would appear under that year, extending the timeline into the future. The tool can be used to gain an understanding of thinking at some point in the past, and also what thinking has taken place about some time in the future.

At present, Time Explorer only contains select stories from the New York Times, but one can see that if it is extended to include a variety of sources and writings beyond news stories, it could be a significant aid to researchers doing survey work.

It adds a new dimension to research, essentially enabling the researchers to become virtual time travellers. This article explains in more detail.
  

Data leakage

Panda Security "recently surveyed 10,470 small and midsize companies -- those having up to 1,000 computers -- in 20 countries. Roughly half said that their organization had been infected by malware at least once in the previous year, and in the United States, 27% said the origin was a USB device."

Some firms routinely block the USB ports in their corporate owned PC's, some by inserting epoxy glue into them.

Seems they are onto something.

Here's more on the survey.

Privacy Under Threat

The infrastructure is all there. All we now need is some repressive and subversive government to plug into it and they can track their citizens right down to when the go to the pub and who they meet with there. The privacy of individuals is under threat more than in recent history. Cameras track your moves in city streets, Software in your smart phones tracks your location and transmits it out over the internet. Almost all information about you that used to be private is now out there on the internet somewhere. Seldom in history has the ground been so well laid for total control over the activities and movements of people.

The latest push comes again from Facebook, already the focus of much controversy. their latest product "places" automatically tells "friends" where you are. In order to avoid this happening, you have to go in and refuse the service. In other words, the default in that you are tracked. This has a lot of people up in arms.

And then, there is the latest uprising against Google Earth, in Germany. They are taking issue with the idea that their homes are clearly visible on the internet. That's after extensive controversy about the inclusion of people in street scenes, a matter on which Google had to do some bending.

Some people view those who object to these privacy intrusions as hopelessly outdated - even neanderthal-ish. Instead of condemning, they should study some history, focus particularly on past oppressive governments, and remind themselves that all that could happen again, and now with much more efficiency.

For a summary of the most recent Facebook discussion, see this article. And for a look at the Google issue in Germany see this one.

Is Hulu's IPO supported by its Business Model?

Hulu Inc has announced plans in New York to issue an IPO this fall. For anyone who doesn't know, Hulu is an internet operator that streams TV shows and movies for comsumption on pc's and mobile devices. Consumers can buy subscriptions to its services.

The company reported gross revenues of about $100 million last year, but no significant profits. It's business model is based on streaming content on its site, under agreements with the content owners, such as ABC and NBC. The hitch is that a lot of their content is made available for free on the owners' websites, either in current streams or in archives.

The issue is - will this business model support a $2 billion IPO, especially in today's skittish investment market. It'll be wait and see until the fall. Here's a short article on the announcement.

Outsourcing Undergoing a Sea Change

Although outsourcing has been with us for several years now, and has increased in popularity more recently, it is now changing to the extent that what we used to call outsourcing will no longer exist. The reason goes back to the original purposes of outsourcing, which were heavily centered on saving costs.

Initially, costs were saved by handing over the administrative and infrastructure costs to a specialist group who could look after those areas more efficiently. Now, however, even greater savings can be achieved by handing over processing to the new cloud specialists, like Amazon and Google. No doubt there will be others.

The cloud specialists do not offer to run special or customized applications; rather they offer generic applications and share them among numerous users. That makes it cheaper. As the systems become more mature and developed, it will be feasible for companies to outsource more of their applications to them. Ultimately, the traditional forms of outsourcing will disappear.

For an excellent article on this topic, check out this link.

The Cloud Suits E-Business Needs

Modern e-business applications, like CRM and e-procurement are built on a collaborative model - collaboration with suppliers, customers and others. Even ERP is shifting to a SAAS environment in the cloud, at least partly for collaborative purposes.

The cloud fits well with collaboration, which essentially involves a system of shared processes. What better way to share processes than to place them in the cloud, where access is more open and can be more easily built to recognize the needs of collaborators.

This means that e-business applications are in the forefront of applications moving to the cloud.

This linked article expands on this point and also provides a podcast of a panel discussion among several experts in the field.