On a day like today...



On a day like today, it seems only fitting to quote the great P.G. Woodehouse from "The Mysterious Stranger":

Reginald Jeeves: Foreign travel often liberates emotions best kept in check, sir, and the air of North America is notoriously stimulating in this regard, as witness the regrettable behaviour of its inhabitants in 1776.
Bertie Wooster: What happened in 1776, Jeeves?
Reginald Jeeves: I prefer not to dwell on it if it's convenient to you, sir.

Well quite!

        

   
    "You want the Stereo Network - we're MONO!"

    


All inventions (implied or otherwise) in this post are patent pending

Every day I get invited to increasingly arcane networks - granularity is becoming 'powdery' as the sub-division and mutations explode in exponential chaos.

My reaction so far has been resistance. I stick with the 32 networks I'm currently in (I know my limits!), but as band-wagons are fun modes of transport, I float a few ideas for social networks of my own.

First up is a network for lovers of Marmite. This will be called Marmilites (patent pending). I will create groups to facilitate all forms of Marmilite activities. I predict the major communities will be:

• Uber-Marmilites
• Marmilite Revivalists
• Marmilite Separatists
• Marmilite Libertarians (they also do marmalade!)
• Conservative Marmilites
• Evolutionary Marmilites (the smuggest by miles!)
• Orthodox Marmilites (no Marmite on the Sabbath)
  
• Post-Marmilites (you know the type!)
  
• Anti-Marmilites
• Marmilite Conspiracy Theorists
• Barack Obama hates/loves Marmite (delete according to political affiliation and propaganda agenda)

I see syndication opportunities around Marmite books, memorabilia (an eBay shop), videos, collectibles, endorsements and of course advertising.

Idea#2 - I want to create a Mashup application that links to National DNA Databases. This will only allow social networking connections to others with similar or identical genetic markers. The ultimate network is the "network of identical DNA".

Increasing networks and smaller levels of granularity are providing some interesting social side-effects. It seems one of the potential benefits is the opportunity for girlfriend virtualisation. This introduces interesting opportunities for redundancy and load balancing and insulates you from 'mean time between failures'.

Of course as with any other resilient configuration only buy this if you have bandwidth, deep pockets and a genuine need for failover. If it goes wrong you could permanently find yourself in cold-standby! Outsourcing will ultimately spoil your fun, but you could go for selective BPO and retain the core parts you are good at.

Let's show some restraint out there people!

        

    "No kidding - I'm getting Radio 4!"

    

A recent report (abstract here) from the American Medical Association points to some rather worrying issues with the coexistence of emerging RFID solutions with sensitive equipment that can be affected by Electromagnetic Interference. The conclusion of the tests was "In a controlled nonclinical setting, RFID induced potentially hazardous incidents in medical devices. Implementation of RFID in the critical care environment should require on-site EMI tests and updates of international standards."

That is a serious finding, and one I certainly hope will stimulate debate, further research and 'tuning' of the relevant standards.

One area that particularly interests me is Real Time Location Systems and I read about wonderful developments in tracking and itinerary systems that have been trialled in these environments.

A really interesting one I was looking into a short while ago is from Centrak. Simply hailed as RFID "virtual walls", the system enables hospitals to track tagged mobile medical equipment down to a portion of a single room.

The differentiating feature of this system, and indeed what marks it for particular interest is the combination of Infrared (IR) and RF technologies (including RF triangulation) for improved location tracking. This has been done by combining Gen2IR and active RFID, providing for ‘room level’ accuracy, previously the ‘preserve’ of higher cost ultra band implementations (in dense indoor environments).

Virtual walls are essentially created to subdivide areas into logical compartments that can then be used to track tagged items against an ‘active itinerary’. Where this becomes most useful is in larger and generally more ‘open’ areas such as emergency rooms and intensive care. The system is battery operated which reduces installation cost and complexity. Some of the traditional problems with RF tuning and signal leakage (RF travels through walls, floors and ceilings) is avoided by using IR bands to pinpoint room level location, further refining the in-room locations using active RFID. The system uses IR ‘flooding’ inside rooms to prevent line of sight issues.

Of course the safety issue is paramount, but RFID is such an obvious fit for managing the 'medical environment'. I have thought for a long time as well that 'off the ground' aviation could benefit from RFID. Most systems today are 'on the ground' supply chain / parts tracking, but any EMI issues in aircraft would also be a significant concern.

        

   
   Rabbit, gun, dog
    Rabid gun-dog
       Rabid dog shooter
         Hare implants!

   What are we really looking for?


For a few years now people have been talking about semantic search, a technology that takes advantage of long-awaited and much-hyped semantic technologies. As Microsoft announce today the purchase of PowerSet, I thought I would jot down some thoughts...
 
There are many things to consider when comparing search technologies. The brand base and enormous information index, funding and years of experience put Google well and truly in front. Most users are unaware of the frequency of Google ranking algorithm changes, in fact unless you run a website and dabble in search engine optimisation (and subsequently agonise about result placement) you will usually accept the first '20' results as being 'the best 20'. Of course this stems from many years of trusted use and fulfilled searches. The power of semantic web and semantic search is largely untapped as end users have little motivation to 'move across' (although I think a key driver will be searches across unstructured enterprise information where current ranking algorithms are less than ideal). Semantic analysis is also complex and semantic indexes must build in a similar algorithmic ranking to filter duplicate content and spam.

Powerset which (currently restricts) its searches to Wikipedia is quite clever as this allows focus on semantic research over a set of well-maintained and largely spam free data (I do not speak of accuracy!). I would also predict that social search will come to fruition ahead of semantic search as this has a more natural fit with Web2.0 and current usage patterns. Socio-semantic web would seem to be the next logical step and would bring along a ready made audience. I'm still of the view that Web3.0 will draw heavily on semantic search technology. Just how this will evolve is a little unclear, but it seems to me to be a 'golden egg' for marketing and online advertising. As click through rates fall off from traditional online adverts we may well see a concerted push into more innovative search technologies by more of the big names - today's announcement seems to be confirmation of this.

I will end with a glib and hopefully controversial remark - "If you really want pure-play semantic search today, my advice is call 118-118!"

        

Mashup Confessions

              


Following on from the wonderful 'Just Mash It' video from Serena, a series of 'mashup confessions' have recently been released. These are on Mr Mashups channel on YouTube. I like James' confession best, perhaps it's becoming all a bit of a pastiche of The Office, but it is still quite innovative.

Tim's Mashup Confession

Susan's Mashup Confession

James' Mashup Confession

Rob's Mashup Confession

        

         Collaborative Bookmarking



I've been playing around recently with bkkeepr which was launched in May by BookTwo. The basic idea of the service is to provide a mechanism for 'electronic bookmarking' (in the traditional sense of bookmarks) and can be used 'on the hop', so you don't lose your place in the novel you are reading on the move.

As things stand, I would describe bkkeepr as an "interesting idea" - the interface is provided by Twitter - you Tweet updates to the bkkeepr 'user' on Twitter using a "command line like" messaging format. This is obviously being consumed and parsed to provide the updates on the bkkeepr website itself (clever idea, if a little clunky to use). This does not detract from the usefulness of the service, and part of the current appeal is simplicity.

You can send notifications of starting and finishing books, bookmarking at specific pages and sending reader notes for specific sections.

I think where this service could become really interesting is to provide forums for books where collective knowledge and criticism is amassed, per section, per page, per book. In other words community authored 'readers' notes'. It would be really interesting to see this develop into virtual book circles and guided eLearning.

Of course this also adds (along with LibraryThing and others) literary-centric social networking. Mashups could be really interesting as well slicing and dicing the knowledge collected over time into additional value added services.

        

Some video footage I took yesterday at Salute to Israel in London.

Music from Yoni Shlomo - an acclaimed charade singer who has sung for audiences all around the world including Europe, America, Africa and even the Congo and Liel who is an 18-year-old international artist, song-writer and peace symbol.

This clip ends with an amazing rendition of "Oseh Shalom" - which was a poignant moment.

More footage from the Salute to Israel celebrations in London, June 29th 2008. Features some amazing violin playing by Miri Ben-Aria "Grammy Award-Winning violinist originally from Israel, who created her own unique sound by a revolutionary fusion of classical style with jazz, R&B and hip hop."

        

I was invited to attend the Salute to Israel event in London this afternoon (thanks to Anglican Friends of Israel) and I have to say I enjoyed the proceedings immensely. I somewhat unexpectedly found myself walking the route in the main parade from Green Park to Trafalgar Square. The welcome and hospitality from the organisers and participants was humbling and inspiring.

Lunch consisted of my first Kosher burger and hotdog (I am an immediate fan!), although the queues were somewhat lengthy (said with characteristic understatement). I took quite a few photos which I have added to my Flickr account, and I also took some video footage which I hope to transform into something "Youtube-able" in the next few days.

I think I also have mild sunburn, which for a technologist and blogger is somewhat unusual as the outdoors is generally something to have a passing relationship with via Google Earth!




Salute to Israel, Trafalgar Square London (29th June 2008).

        

Cellular Social - or Socially Cellular?



The mobile market is going through some interesting times. I noticed earlier in the week that Nokia had bought Plazes (the web-2-go provider) with the prospect of bringing additional locational based services into the social networking domain. Presumably the plan is to offer value added (Social Media) applications that would help differentiate offerings in a heavily saturated handset market. A day or two later I also noticed Nokia's purchase of Symbian (the OS provider). This seems to tie up nicely in an end to end stack from OS, to handset to application.

In the meantime of course Apple continues to create a storm with new features on the iPhone, and Google Android (according to recent press) is having a bit of 'bumpy ride'.

I think it will be really interesting to see where Nokia take the Plazes acquisition and this will definitely be one to watch through the second half of this year.

        

"It's dangerous out there!"



In many ways I feel very buoyant about the technology ‘state of the art’ and how limitations that were previously imposed by communications and technology infrastructure are dissolving and disappearing and giving us the opportunity to collaborate within the Enterprise and of course out in the amorphous goo of Web 2.0.

I think technology has facilitated some amazing things, but the more I see and think about what changes we have really precipitated it makes me realise that one of the huge barriers to the ultimate success of Web 2.0 and collaboration is - Human Nature! I wonder how much of this will transfer and eat away at the ultimate success of Enterprise 2.0.

Let's take a look at some of our collective failings. Yes, we are social animals and we must take trust on face value in many circumstances, but what hides beneath the smiles and facades of the social profiles? How many times across Web 2.0 have any or all of the following occurred to you? Have any of them actively prevented or minimised your participation in a collaborative situation?

I will provide a brief (and non-exhaustive list) for rumination:

• Mistrust
• Misunderstanding
• Bigotry
• Manipulation
• Predation
• Egotism
• Xenophobia
• Propaganda
• Misrepresentation
• Elitism (social and intellectual)
  
• Social Engineering
• Social Climbing
  
• Information Protectionism (surprisingly nefarious and something that needs to be tackled in Enterprise 2.0!)

When there is no established relationship and trust in an electronic world, any sense of 'not sure' generally ends in a 'no thanks' reply - and that is certainly wise. I am not arguing for reckless libertarianism. On the contrary I want to see all of the issues above tackled in Social Evolution, much of which I think needs to happen offline.

Technology is bringing us to a point where it highlights some of the worst attributes of modern society. I think it is beginning to amplify this and provide greater awareness of it, rather than diluting it.

I also wonder if we will see the emergence of (and excuse the use of the vernacular) "virtual brown-nosing" as Social and Corporate climbers feign interest in the groups, topics and hobbies of those they wish to influence and connect with. I'm confident this already happens on traditional Social Networks, and it seems highly plausible that this will bleed into the Enterprise 2.0 world.

We are really just odd little beings with many sociological hang-ups in need of a (purely analogue) social revolution.  I think technology has out-paced us and will force the sociologists, psychologists, journalists, politicians, philosophers, great thinkers and of course 'the people' to turn their minds to the next stages in the collaborative journey - Humanity 2.0!

Technology is simply holding up a mirror and saying - "look guys - you haven't really moved forward in thousands of years!"

        

Ok, so I guess it's a sad indictment of my sense of humour, after all at what point does it just become 'plain sad' to have Mashup comedy? I think this video really gets across the 'just do it' ethos of Enterprise Mashup. In a nutshell this will facilitate composite application assembly by 'any' end user (a developer in every seat!). Ok, so we need to provide some degree of governance and a decent underlying SOA and there will probably be tonnes of junk mashups developed and their quality will need to be somewhat policed in a highly collaborative world. But for now, let's forget those potential woes and enjoy this "bleep-fest" from Serena!

        

Harvard Business School Professor Andrew McAfee is interviewed at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Tokyo Japan.

        

I decided to indulge some of my Linnean tendencies at lunchtime and spent half an hour looking around the Queen Mary and Avenue Gardens at Regents Park. They are being kept in absolutely magnificent condition (hopefully some of the following pictures will testify to that) and with the welcome (if unexpected) majesty of June sunshine in London it made for a very pleasant diversion from the technical business of the morning and later afternoon.

It may be a little tenuous to draw in technical references, but in a philosophical moment I was reminded how difficult it is to understand the simplest of biological systems and indeed how difficult it can be to 'improve on nature'.

I guess my message for the day is "look around and remind yourself of the context in which we do everything."

You can see the full set of pictures on my Flickr Photostream.



I thought this was an unusual view of BT Tower, which is taken from Queen Mary's garden in Regents Pk.



Not much to say about that except "Wow!" - an amazing display of roses.



White roses dappled with the sunshine.



Let's end with a fountain. It was looking surprisingly inviting in the midday heat (of course we know it is mad dogs, Englishmen and Bloggers who go out in the midday sun!).

        

         Flying my kite as usual!



I was out and about today with a sojourn to the south coast of England to speak about SOA and Enterprise Architecture. What strikes me more and more these days is the paramount importance of SOA in providing (arguably) the de-facto future state architecture for modern business (hopefully no surprises there), and with a particular bent on today’s discussion its centrality in smoothing the technical and business disruption associated with merger and acquisition.

There are a number of verticals that are experiencing strong M&A activity – this is for a number of reasons some of which are clearly linked to the credit crunch. Find a CIO that has been through an expensive and complex M&A trying to unpick and simultaneously weave systems spaghetti into some tangible integrated fabric. Demonstrate the ‘art’ of turning ‘spaghetti into lasagne’ (a culinary metaphor for layered architecture!) and very soon the ‘nods of agreement’ take on a pleasing unanimous synchronicity.

Depending on past experiences and growth potential there is an opportunity to offer ‘the wine list’, recommended accompaniments including re-platforming, legacy modernisation and added ‘garnish’ such as enterprise rules and BI.

Of course, add ‘salt and pepper to taste’…

        

A great interview with Josh Bernoff, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research on "How to be a Social Media Change Agent"...

        

Be yourself!


I've been Tweeting this week quite a bit about Enterprise 2.0 and how Social Media and Social Networks inside the enterprise will help foster self-expression and hopefully lead to a more 'multi-dimensional' workforce. I see this being a positive force for building stronger inter-personal relations,  increased collaboration and innovation and (of course) improved internal communications (and all of the benefits that go 'hand in hand').

Isn't it odd how people leave home in the morning to spend their lives in jobs where they almost pretend to be someone else, and act in a very guarded way about expressing their personalities and interests (well at least some do!)? Enterprise 2.0 has the ability to help us re-humanise our workforces and increase job satisfaction, pride and hopefully corporate loyalty. I also think that Enterprise 2.0 will help remove some of the 'boring!' perceptions that younger generations have of the current IT job market. I worry about the falling skills rates, and falling levels in IT graduates in the UK (in fact this was the topic of discussion at the Conservative Technology Forum last week). The answer is not as simple as putting Enterprise 2.0 technologies in place, but it will play its part in the long run (along with radical changes in the education curriculum).

I think another driver for Enterprise 2.0 is the potential to get some of the information leakage of uncontrolled Web 2.0 usage back behind the firewall. I'm not advocating the stifling of self-expression, quite the opposite in fact. I think if we supply useful Enterprise 2.0 apps in our enterprise environments we will yield lots of the benefits of online Web 2.0 communities at a reduced risk from social engineers.

        

Mash and blend - what joy!




I read a great research paper from Forrester over the weekend entitled "The Mashup Opportunity" [G. Oliver Young]. The paper discusses the constituent parts of mashup platforms, the 3 primary mashup approaches (presentational, data layer and process) and describes the main players in each.

This is a great briefing document to get started with understanding the mashup market and the emerging opportunities for mashups inside the enterprise.

Personally I have been looking a lot at mashup technologies such as Microsoft's Popfly, IBM's Mashup Centre and more recently Serena.

It is very interesting to consider the direction mashups will take us in relation to BPM. I also feel that mashup technologies will provide a very useful tool in service prototyping on top of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). We will need to be a little careful though that we manage service layer access properly (and have scalable service architectures) as well as providing adequate service governance for any mashups that are harvested from the 'extreme edge' back into the core enterprise fabric.

        

I've got my iTunes channel up and running and all of the podcasts from Circumference of a Moose are now available in the iTunes store (they are all free). I will be adding to this significantly over the next few months, with a particular focus on Social Media, Enterprise 2.0 and Mashups.

        

The uptake of Web 2.0 poses a serious threat to a company's privacy and reputation, warns Steve Nimmons of Atos Origin, so ignore it at your peril...

read more | digg story

        

We had a special treat on Monday when Sir Trevor McDonald OBE spoke to our Rotary Club. Sir Trevor, a legendary broadcaster and journalist spoke of the responsibilities of the media and of his experiences in some of the pivotal world events of the past 3 decades.



Sir Trevor McDonald addressing the Rotary Club of London