Posted on January 19th, 2009 by Steve
Social aggregator site Power.com, which allows users to access multiple social networking sites from one interface, got in trouble recently with Facebook. Facebook sued Power.com for storing Facebook user credentials within their own database and scraping what Facebook called "proprietary data" (i.e. user data). Facebook and Power.com are working towards an agreement to settle the suit, but the issue was certainly not good for Power.com’s public perception.
MySpace is now following Facebook’s example, and has blocked access from Power.com for almost the exact same reasons.
Power.com failed to do a few key things that would’ve saved themselves from this embarrassing situation, both technical and non-technical:
- First, Power.com really should’ve engaged with the social networking sites they wanted to support as business partners first, rather than trying to go the renegade route and writing their own interfaces.
- Assuming that worked, they should’ve worked with those sites to come up with solutions for single sign-on rather than storing user credentials in their own database – storing the user credentials puts undue responsibility on Power.com to keep additional sensitive data secured.
- If the partnering approach didn’t work, and companies like Facebook ignored Power.com’s requests, Power.com could’ve used the opportunity as a way to promote the idea of the "openness of social networks" and pointed out how companies want to monopolize your social data, etc. Instead they’re now going to need to fight the possible misconception that they are just a rogue site that shouldn’t be trusted with user credentials.
As someone that uses a lot of emerging social networking sites, I would love to have something that gives me a single dashboard to all of them. So I would like to see the idea of Power.com succeed. But having them be an aggregator means they must be trusted to perform that function securely.
Filed under: Consumer Web, Privacy, Product Management, Security, Social Computing | Comments Off
Posted on January 16th, 2009 by Steve
Telling everyone what most people who work regularly with computers already know, a study performed by the University of Utah recently found that computer users with two monitors are routinely more productive than those with one.
In an article featured in the New York Times:
[Researchers] found that people who used two 20-inch monitors were 44 percent more productive at certain text-editing operations than people using a single 18-inch monitor.
Although I can personally attest to being more productive with two (or more) monitors, the study was sponsored by NEC, a major manufacturer of LCD computer monitors. So make of it what you will, I suppose.
Nonetheless, that’s all the reason I need to go out and buy myself another 22” LCD monitor.
Filed under: Hardware, Offbeat | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 16th, 2009 by Steve
Looking for a 10 person hosted Atlassian Confluence wiki? Good news: it just got a price cut. Hosted confluence is now $49 / month. According to the official company blog:
Team Hosted combines the enterprise features of Confluence with the convenience and affordability of SaaS. It lets users:
- Edit pages using Microsoft Word
- Utilize free third-party plugins like EditGrid spreadsheets and Gliffy diagrams
- Attach and share documents, photos and video (up to 10GB)
- Start immediately. No installation or payment is required
You can get a free 30 day trial of Atlassian Confluence, which might be a good way to test drive it before you decide to buy into a monthly Enterprise hosted or on-site license for Confluence.
Filed under: Enterprise Web, SaaS, Social Computing, Wikis | Comments Off
Posted on January 15th, 2009 by Steve
Google unveiled their Google Apps Reseller program yesterday. What does it mean? In a nutshell, Google is looking to get more business user traction for their SaaS business office productivity offerings – specifically: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, Google Sites and their security services for on-premise email servers. (I’d include Google Video on that list, but the word on the street is that Google is planning to shut down Google Video).
In order to achieve that, Google wants to hire you to become a reseller of their business applications, and set up small and medium businesses with Google’s SaaS offerings. The premise is simple and brilliant, and it’s the type of thing that Microsoft has been doing for years with their Microsoft Certified Service Professional program.
Sounds great, so what’s the catch?
Read more »
Filed under: Enterprise Web, Google, SaaS | Comments Off
Posted on January 15th, 2009 by Steve
A disclaimer first: I spent 8 years working for ILOG, previously a leading vendor of BRMS (business rules management software), but I spent those years primarily architecting, building and managing IT systems. So although I’m pretty familiar with BRMS and related topics, I’m by no means a BRMS expert. Secondly: if you’re a fellow ex-ILOGer (or current IBMer), or just generally a BRMS expert, please feel free to correct me.
Back in July of 2008, IBM announced their plans to acquire ILOG. Most of the buzz was around IBM integrating ILOG, a Java business rules engine, into their IBM WebSphere J2EE application server. It seemed like maybe IBM’s aim was to improve their BPM offering by extending BPM with a full blown BRMS engine. That would allow for some hyper complex routing rules in BPM, and also strengthen IBM’s position against Oracle’s recently acquired BEA WebLogic Server (now Oracle WebLogic Server).
Around October of 2008, Oracle announced that they were planning to buy Haley. Haley was originally a small US-based BRMS vendor, but was purchased by RuleBurst, an Australian company, back in November of 2007.
Oracle has said publicly that their intentions in buying Haley were to help develop software in a highly regulated financial market, and in fact InformationWeek speculated on that idea just yesterday. They seem to be betting on the notion that the financial markets will become more regulated to prevent the kind of credit default swap madness that we’ve been hearing about over the last few months.
But I believe the real story is a tiny bit different, and it probably goes something like this:
Read more »
Filed under: Enterprise Web, IBM, Product Management | 1 Comment »
Posted on January 15th, 2009 by Steve
CNET News has a long list of Google projects that are getting scrapped or otherwise cut back. In short, here’s the buzz:
Getting shutdown (now or soon):
Rumored to be shut down soon:
I’d add: Google Sites to that list, too. But CNET didn’t call it yet.
I’ve got to say: I’m not surprised to see any of these get the ax. Google Video was replaced by YouTube. Google Catalog Search turned useless as most companies now offer their catalogs online, and besides there’s Google Book Search still. Dodgeball — I’d never even heard of it, unfortunately. Jaiku was similar to Pownce (which is now gone), Twitter, FriendFeed, and many others, but not quite as powerful. And Google Mashup Editor… Well… Mashups are just a bad idea. I think it’s time we finally just all admit that real application integration shouldn’t happen on the glass. It should happen behind the scenes through SOA or even REST.
As for the others: Grand Central: never heard of it. Knol: why compete with Wikipedia or Yahoo Answers? And Google Base: I think Craigslist works better.
It’s sad to see these projects go, since it’s a sign of the economic times.
[More details at CNET News]
Filed under: Consumer Web, Google, Mobile Web, Social Computing | Comments Off
Posted on January 14th, 2009 by Steve
I’ve been struggling with what to write about the news that Steve Jobs has announced today that he will step down as Apple’s CEO until June, 2009. I wanted to write something thoughtful that didn’t sound like a “me too” post, or write about how it’s plausible that Apple may be fibbing about the real state of Jobs’ health.
The thing that came to mind was pretty short and simple, and that is: Apple will still be the same company it is today without Steve Jobs, perhaps for as long as a decade. Despite investors’ fears that Apple will not succeed without Steve Jobs, I believe Apple will still bring fantastic products to the consumer market and continue to innovate for a long time to come. Why am I so optimistic about this? Well, despite the fact that I am a notorious optimist, the reason is fairly straightforward. Jobs’ significant influence on Apple means he has built a company culture that will survive past his time as CEO. As wise and inspiring of a leader as Jobs’ might be, he is just one person. Apple is a company of thousands of people, all of whom own some responsibility for the success of the company.
It’s true that Jobs helped re-focus and re-vitalize Apple after they strayed from the core principles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it was his influence and direction that helped develop the culture that exists at Apple today. And, perhaps arguably, it wasn’t until recent years that Apple has really perfected their company culture of well thought out, high-quality product designs that have propelled all of their recent ventures, such as the iPhone and iTouch, to such brilliant successes.
There is little question that having strong and outspoken leaders within an organization is one of the single most important factors for success. But great leaders build a culture of success, and dismantling a dynamic and healthy company culture will likely take just as long as it took to build it up. Will the folks at Apple who are equally as influential in creating the environment at Apple that exists today flee the company just because Jobs is stepping down for a short period? It’s unlikely. Even if Jobs’ departure is permanent, the best and brightest at Apple will likely stick around to keep doing what they have already been doing for the last 5-10 years. Those most influential people in the company are likely to be fans of their workplace, and abandoning ship is not an option for them.
Any of us who have worked for great company environments (or even bad ones) know how hard it is to shift the working environment in either direction. Changes in company culture don’t happen overnight, although an organization can eventually collapse when enough of the key people leave at the same time. But, at least for the time being, it would appear that Apple is in no risk of that happening. For that reason, Apple will likely remain successful and innovative.
Filed under: Apple, Consumer Web, Product Management | 2 Comments »
