Oracle Big Data trends 2014

Oracle has released an insight into the top trends for 2014 in relation to Big Data and Analytics. As can be seen from the 10 points that Oracle sees as trends for 2014 there is a clear focus on big data, predictive analytics and integrating this into existing solutions and processes within an enterprise.


1) Mobile Analytics are on the rise; plans for mobile BI initiatives will double this year.
2) ½ of organizations will move analytics to the cloud for easier reporting
3) ¼ of organizations will unite Hadoop-based data reservoirs with data warehouses as a cost-effective method for long-term storage and in place analysis
4) Organizations will double the number of people with advanced skills in Hadoop and predictive analysis in the coming year
5) 33% of human capital management professionals will use big data discovery tools to explore data from performance reviews, internal surveys, professional profiles and insider workplace websites such as Glassdoor.
6) 40% will prioritize predictive analysis to gain insight into big data strategies
7) 52% will use predictive analytics to gain insight into old business processes
8) 59% will use decision optimization technologies to provide a more personalized and more effective experience for customer interaction.
9) 44% of decision makers will embrace packaged analytics to integrate with existing ERP systems.
10) Organizations still feel their analytics skills are on a beginner level. To keep up they will focus on developing analytic competences.

Enterprise cloud spending $235B

Companies are moving to the cloud. The trend is more and more to move business functions to cloud based solutions. A couple of years ago companies where not including cloud in the main consideration when thinking about new or improved IT solutions. Currently on almost every shortlist we do see cloud based solutions as a viable option. This is showing in the forecasts and the history of spendings on cloud technology and cloud based architectures where companies are deploying  enterprise functionality on.

Ryan Huang reports on the ZDnet page the growth of cloud based spending and the forecast voor 2017. Below you can see the graph showing the rise of cloud spending in the upcoming years as predicted.

This prediction shows that all companies who are currently investing in building cloud based platforms are making a solid investment as the trend is that the cloud based solutions, and associated customer investment, will continue to grow, for all good reasons. 

Big-data for the internet of things

If you look at the future outlook of the technology industry you will notice that more and more analyst firms are talking about "the Internet of things". The Internet of things is the conceptual believe that in the future more and more devices will be connected to the Internet. This will include not only the devices that we currently connect to the Internet like workstations, smartphones, tablets and even audio equipment and television sets. In the conceptual idea of the "Internet of things" the idea is that we connect all electronic devices to the Internet. This will include your fridge, your washing machine, your lawn mower and even your light bulbs in your house.

The idea is that all devices should be able to communicate back in a calling-home principle and that you interact with them remotely. This is providing some great new opportunities for both the consumer as well as the producer of the equipment and others. Consumers will be able to interact differently with there equipment and will be more informed about things without the need to actively gather the information.  Producers will be receiving feeds of information about the use, mis-use and malfunctioning of the equipment they have sold and can use this to tweak new products more on real usage.

Some people will be in favor of such a "Internet if things" some will be against it. We will see legal battles on who is the owner of the data you send out via your device, questions around privacy and questions around liability. Whatever the outcome of those legal discussions we will see the "Internet of things" coming to out houses and we will start using it at some point.

The interesting part in the concept of the Internet of things is not purely the new products that will be developed and the new business opportunities that will arise from it. It will be for a large part about the new technologies that need to be developed to make the Internet of things work. If you keep a close watch on what is happening within the technology field you already see some things happening. Some of them are prerequisites for the Internet of things some are enablers and some are direct part of the concept.

One of the prerequisites for example is IPv6 a new version of the IP protocol. This is a new version of the protocol which allows more addresses to be assigned. For many Internet users this will be something they are not aware of however it is one of the prerequisites for the Internet of things.

A second movement in the technology industry is the rise of big-data. Not so much the rise of data itself however more the new way of how we handle the massive amounts of data. As we will be adding more and more devices to the Internet and they will be sending out data to consumers and to producers there will be the need of handling this vast amount of data in way that we can make sense of it. Having the option to handle vast amounts of data will be a key factor to success for businesses.

In the "past" big-data was the field of technology driven companies, companies like google, yahoo, Facebook and twitter where the early adopters and inventors of how to handle massive amounts of data. The new players in this field who need to beta grip on how the need to handle vast amounts of data will be companies who are not considered high-tech companies in the IT field. This will be for example companies who produce washing machines. Where in the past they needed to be experts in mostly mechanical and electric engineering ow they need to play there part in data handling.

If for example your washing machine starts calling back home to the producing company about all the sensor data it can produce this will be enormous. Think about sensor data of temperature, rounds per minute, water used, amount of clothing, menu selection by the user. All this data is of great importance to the producing company as they can turn the real world into a testing lab.

This provides a couple of challenges for such a company. How are they going to receive this information which is coming to them in a high velocity, how to store it, how to do analysis on the stored data and how are they going to get value out of it for both the company and the consumer.

Understanding how to handle big data coming for sensors and devices developed companies who normally are not into high-tech will be a key to success for those companies. The rise of the "Internet of things" will bring a rise in new technologies around data and within the need for experts in this field.

Understanding Gartner research methodologies

Gartner is one of the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Commonly Gartner reports are read by CxO level executives and decision makers and they provide a good view of what is happening in the world of technology at this moment and what the upcoming trends are. The current Gartner market research is focussed around a number of methodologies. Understanding the methodologies can be important. It can be important if you are a technology vendor and Gartner is conducting research in your field. Due to the common audience of Gartner reports it can be a game changer if Gartner positions you favourable.

Next to this understanding the Gartner methodologies can be important if you are a CxO executive and want to make a decision and would like to make use of the reports from Gartner. Understanding the reports correctly and interpreting them correctly is in this case of vital importance.

A third group of people reading the Gartner reports are market analysts, technology analysts and entrepreneurs. Gartner reports are helping you to understand the current technology market and the way emerging technologies are heading.

Gartner describes it's methodologies as follows;
Our proprietary research processes allow us to see IT as it pertains to the evolving business landscape. Our research methodologies are based on our years of experience observing trends and scientifically mapping technology's progress against true delivery. 

 The success of our proprietary methodologies lies in distilling large volumes of data into clear, precise, actionable insight and advice so our clients can formulate plans or make difficult business decisions. 
The observations and recommendations delivered through our proven methodologies ensure that you make decisions about the business applications of IT with higher levels of confidence. 

Our clients make important multi-year technology investments in the face of uncertainty and risk. Our methodologies help our clients reduce and manage that risk, and enable them to succeed in their roles as they mobilize IT to contribute to their organization's business objectives.

The main research methodologies used by Gartner are; Hype Cycles, Magic Quadrant, MarketScopes, ITScores, Vendor Ratings, Market Forecasts, Market Share Analysis and IT Market Clocks. All are proprieatary to Gartner.

Hype cycles:
When new technologies make bold promises, how do you discern the hype from what’s commercially viable? And when will such claims pay off, if at all? Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities. Gartner Hype Cycle methodology gives you a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time, providing a sound source of insight to manage its deployment within the context of your specific business goals.

Magic Quadrant:
Who are the competing players in the major technology markets? How are they positioned to help you over the long haul? Gartner Magic Quadrants are a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market's competitors. By applying a graphical treat­ment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, a Gartner Magic Quadrant quickly helps you digest how well technology providers are executing against their stated vision.

MarketScopes:
When markets are growing and IT solutions are stable, Magic Quadrants provide the best tool for understanding how the players are competitively positioned. But when new markets emerge and user requirements are in flux, solutions are often approached in wildly different ways, making a competitive positioning less useful. Mature markets present a similar challenge, as the differentiators among consolidating technology providers and solutions grow more difficult to discern.

ITScores:
Gartner ITScores are holistic sets of interactive maturity assessments designed to help CIOs and IT leaders evaluate the maturity of both the IT organization as a provider of IT services, and the enterprise as a consumer of information technology. Unlike other IT maturity assessments, a Gartner IT Score measures your organization's capabilities within the context of an enterprise culture, behaviors and capacity for leadership - factors that dramatically impact IT's effectiveness and it's ability to contribute real business value.

Vendor Ratings:
Clients use our well-defined methodology to rate IT technology providers—large, small, public or private. Gartner Vendor Ratings assess all the different aspects of a technology provider, such as its strategy, organization, products, technology, marketing, financials and support. These ratings are periodically revised to reflect changes in assessment when a significant internal or external event directly affects the provider.

Market Forecast:
How do you quantify the impact of a market’s business drivers? Is a market growing, retreating or flat? The best answers come from an analysis of both supply and demand, comparing technology investment trends in the provider community with the spending trends of end users. It’s a unique picture you get from Gartner, based on our relationships with thousands of end users and providers. And it’s a view you can’t get anywhere else.

Market Share Analysis:
Understanding market share is one of the most important metrics used by executives in any business. Through our Market Share Analysis methodology, clients see how share is allocated among 400 technology providers in 37 key markets. Our detailed analysis of how provider revenue is allocated reveals what types of solutions are succeeding, which are trailing and where opportunities exist for providers to take additional share.

Market Clocks:
The useful life of every technology product or service has an end, beyond which it will be more cost-effective to retire and replace the asset than to continue maintaining it. Gartner IT Market Clocks are decision frameworks that provide a full life cycle view of technology assets - whether capabilities, products or services. They help you better evaluate the technology assets you are responsible for, so you can prioritize IT investments and build technology road maps that support business plans.

The new social media is 3D

Do you think social media is cool, you think you know all about the ways to interact with social media platforms like facebook, google+, twitter and Weibo. Most likely you do if you are a frequent user of social media platforms. However, do you also know how the future of presenting the social media networks might look like. And it is good to know that a lot of people are already interacting on social media platforms and the number of them is still rising. Upcoming generations will see it as one the normal ways of interacting. Where we now have a large set of people who will never join a social network online in the future the adoption (in online countries) will be coming to a almost 100% in my personal opinion. Below infographic is showing the usage of social networks in 2011.

Source: marketing-online.co.uk

You can see some concepts online of how the future might look like. For example brandrepublic.com is showing a new way of interacting with facebook in a 3D setting. Just watch the video below which is made together with LG and is making use of a LG screen.

Now mix this thought with Google glasses (watch the movie below) and it will not come as a surprise that in the near future you might see people standing in the street making strange gestures. They might just be rearranging some topics in their 3D social media feed or responding to a message.

Upcoming market for indoor navigation

Nokia research labs recently launched a promotion video for a indoor navigation system. To be honest, even do the spread of blogposts and news items, this is not new. indoor navigation systems have been around for some time in both good and bad implementations. Some do work some do unfortunately work not so good. So what the big fuzz should be about is not the fact that Nokia is working on it, which is obviously and would be a suppress if they where not, the fuzz should be about that it is Nokia who is working on it and hopefully will make it to a product.

Reason that it is important that a company like Nokia is working on it is that it will be integrated in the new mobile products and that it most likely will trigger the competitors to also speedup the research on indoor navigation.



The next big thing could be indoor navigation. We have seen a giant step forward in outdoor navigation the past couple of years meanly due to the work done by TomTom, Garmin and Google. Google specially for creating Google maps and the integration into mobile phones and services. Applications, devices and all other kind of stuff is now location aware. Pictures taken with a mobile phone or a camera are now location aware and when you need to find your way around a city you can always rely on the navigation systems you carry in your pocket or which are integrated in your car.

Still a open field for improvement is when you are getting into a building a out of the reach of the GPS satellites. When you walk in an airport and need to find the way to, your gate, the toilet, a coffee corner, a shop, you have to turn to the old fashion of reading signs. When you are in a office you do normally not visit you have to find your way to the restaurant, the printer, the coffee corner, the desk of someone, a specific meeting room. When in a conference center you are always struggling to find your location.

Indoor navigation can make that a lot more easy. Imagine visiting the office of a customer for a project. In the beginning every consultant is struggling to find all kind of information to get started. Where do I find the printer room, where is this person located (and who is it), where can I find that conference room and where to grab a cup of coffee and a snack. This could all be resolved with indoor navigation. However this is also putting some stress on people maintaining the building. They will have to provide this information and specially in environments where people do not own their own desk it can be hard to keep track of who is sitting where.

For all those problems a solution can (and will) be provided in time and I strongly feel that indoor navigation will be the next big thing coming to the market. First as standalone apps created for airports and conference centers at a later stage for office buildings and shopping malls. At some point it will connect with social media networks to be able to share great indoor locations in somewhat the same way as you now see for outdoor locations with services like foursquare and similar services.

One big issue is that for indoor navigation you currently need a infrastructure to be able to do locate your position. You will need points in the building broadcasting a anchor point where for GPS you can make use of the satellites around the planet. This will slowdown the growth however it might be integrated with wifi spots. It would not come as a suppress to me if indoor navigation base stations will be in the future also broadcasting free (or commercial) WiFi.

TEDx in Amsterdam

TEDx is coming to Amsterdam. Very exciting to have a TEDx event in Amsterdam. TED is a small nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

Read the complete story on terminalcult.org >>

Starbucks Iphone

Starbucks is launching a new app for the iPhone. It will be launched on the US version of AppStore first. As we all know strabucks is already a very internet friendly company and me included a lot of people have spend some time with a laptop in a Starbucks to get some work done.

Now Starbucks has launched which can help you enjoy it even more. It can help you locate a starbucks close to you so you will never spend to much time looking for a place to get coffee. You can also give credit points to coffee and in this was indicate what your favorite is. This will help starbucks to do some marketing I guess…..

A second part of the application can be used only in a couple of test starbucks in the US. You can place a amount on your iPhone app and use it to pay for your coffee. It works in the same way as yur starbucks card would do. Only difference is that it is now on your iPhone.

I am really wondering how this will fly. If this is a success and I guess it will be we will see a lot of those applications coming in the upcoming time for other companies. Gas stations for example can come to mind. So you phone will become more and more your wallet. Eventually someone will start to build a new app which is capable of holding all the custom apps. Years ago people where already talking about pay with your phone. Well I guess this is one of the best steps towards that goal. Some pilots and options with SMS pay are already tried and on the run at the moment however I feel personally that this is he first attempt in a way that it can be accepted by the public.

However, security comes to mind. I would love to dive into this to find out what the security is on this thing.

Nomee ..... NO!

Just been reading a item about Nomee on mashable.com by christina warren, nomee is a new tool where you can monitor and follow people on all kind of different social networks and channels.

A great app, and something that can help you, however,.... why a app? It is a application I have to download and install on my computer. I can not download it on my phone and why is it not just a web application.

Nomee, it looks great, it looks like fun however for me it is not a usable thing at this moment. Why not, I am on the move most of the time I have time to follow people, read stuff and such. So it has to be mobile. More mobile than Nomee is at the moment. A mashup for social networks is great however not in the form as Nomee envisions.

Twestival in Amsterdam

Looking for a party, hoping to meet all the people you know from twitter? Go and have fun at Twestival. Twestival is a festival which is organized and promoted using twitter. Between 10 and 13 September you will be able to find Twestival’s all over the world.

Twestival is not only about having fun, it is also about helping. The way it is done is you have to pay a small amount when you want to join a party and by this you give the money to a charity of your choice. For example in Amsterdam a party will be held in Odeon which is promoted and organized by @AncillaTilia.

So if you are looking for a great party, like to meet your twitter friends and help a good cause… go and find a local Twestival event and have a great party.

Twitter Spam Trust Model

Some time ago I signed up for a twitter account as you could been reading on my weblog some time ago. I started using twitter just for fun and try to find out what everyone is talking about on twitter. After some time I became quite happy with the service and the information which can be found on twitter and the way you can interact with people you never have spoken to before and who might be unavailable to reach if it was not for twitter.

However, as with every good service after some time it will also be used to promote goods and services you might not want. You will be contacted by people in such a way that you can consider it spam. Twitter spam is currently in my opinion the biggest problem and threat to twitter and its growth. If people are using it they do not want to be annoyed with all kinds of spam messages. Some time ago I posted a tweet stating that twitter spam will be the next big fight. On this tweet I got some reactions via twitter and also offline. Some people stated that if this was the next fight in my opinion I should make a point by thinking about the subject and creating some kind of approach on how Twitter should fight this fight.

As twitter is just a message service from a person to one or more other persons some of the approaches designed for fighting email spam can be applied. Even some in a more effective way as all communication is happening inside the twitter.com domain. For example a trust model can be very easily applied, already used for email it can be used to fight twitter spam.

Trust model:
A trust model against twitter spam should find the relationship you as a sender is having with the person you are sending the tweet to. A Tweet Spam Rank (TSR) could be calculated for the tweet and the higher the TSP the lower the trust between the sender and the receiver. You can send a message to someone you do not have a relation with, this will provide you a high TSR however will not make you a spammer. To prevent the effect that you will be banned as a spammer due to the fact you send a single message to someone you have no relation with you should have a average TSR over time which is below the threshold of being identified as a spammer. However, the TSR calculation will have a big role in the spam fighting. Before explaining the TSR calculation first some basics on the twitter relation model and the components inside this model.

You, or the sending part, will be represented in the model with as the green dot, as you can see you can have several relations (or non relations) with other hops. Hops are other twitter users you send a message to or who are a bridge to other hops. The model in its current version will only go for two hops. So max a connection hop and a destination hop. To be sure if this is “deep” enough one should run some calculations on the twitter data.

As can been seen in the picture above there are four types of connections that can be made:

- T1, a connection with a hop and a connection back. You follow the tweets of this person and this person on his turn is following your tweet. As you both follow the other you most likely will have a strong connection so sending a message over this connection will result in a low TSR.

- T2, a connection from a remote hop to you. This person is following you and you do not follow him. So for some reason this person is interested in you so if you send a direct tweet to this person he or she will most likely be wiling to accept this. It is not as strong as a double connection however still a low TSR.

- T3, a non connection. You have no connection whatsoever to this person, not even via a connection hop so this will result in a high TSR score.

- T4, you follow a person however this person is not following you. So for some reason you have interest in the tweets from this person however this person is not following you. So a direct tweet to this person will result in a higher TSR.

Now we have to connect some values to the parts of the trust model so we can calculate the TSR of a message. For this we refer to the model as it is shown below. As you can see all possible relations within the trust model are represented in this diagram.


We start with the sending party, a sending party will have for calculation reasons the value 2. T1 connections will have a value of 5, T2 has a value of 10, T3 has a value of 100 and T4 a value 15. A connection hub will have a value of 5.

Now lets say you want to send a message to the user in hop B we can calculate the TSR like {you * T1} which will be {2*5} so this message will have a TSR of 10 which is the lowest TSR you can get. Meaning you just sent a message with a very low Twitter Spam Rank. However, sending a message to B1 will have a calculation like {you * T1 * connection-hub * T4} which is {2*5*5*15} meaning you will have a TSR of 750 for this message.

For example you can be sending a message to C1. You have a very weak connection with D2 so you should get a high TSR. {you * T4 * connection-hub * T4}, this results in {2*15*5*15} which results in a TSR of 900. This is the most weak connection you can have with a connection hop and two times a T4 connection. However, one exception on the rule is a T3 connection which will result in TSR of 1000 without any calculation needed to be done.

The entire model would make sense if people would behave and only play by the rules of the model above. However in a normal world you will see that multiple routes to a person are possible and we have to take this into account. You can see a example of this below.

In this example you see two possible routes to hop B3. You can take the route to B3 via connection hub B or via D. Based upon the model we can not state if B3 will appreciate your message because if he is willing to follow you he could have made a direct relation. So to get a correct TSR we have to calculate the average TSR of both connections, meaning you will have to calculate {(you * T1 * 2 * T1) + (you * T4 * 2 * T1) / 2 } This will give you the correct TSR for this message. We only do a average TSR calculation in case there is no direct connection, so even if there are multiple paths and a direct connection we will ingnore the other paths and only use the direct connection to calculate the TSR.

Now we have a good way model of calculation the value of relations within the model, however scoring a high TSR every now and then is not making you a spammer on Twitter. Every now and then you like to contact people you do not know and maybe build a stronger relation later in time. So we have to measure the TSR score within a time and tweet frame. Based upon the number of tweets, the time and the TSR you can start to determine if a person if a spammer. In a normal world you will see that a spammer will hit a lot of high TSR scores and a lot of the same scores on arrow while a normal human user will hit mostly low scores and the TSR scores differ a lot. This is a way how you can identify a spammer.

This model and the calculations are raw and not based on actual research on the twitter data, however, if access to Twitter data could be granted someone could complete this model and do some test drives on this and see what the exact behavior of a spammer is. The model can be tuned and perfected. Also I would like to point out that for example the growth of connections can be used in combination with TSR to determine the intentions of a Twitter user. To be precise, a spammer would like to have a large network very quickly so he most likely will add hundreds of connections within a short periode of time while this is not the case for most human users. So this also can be used in combination with TSR to identify spammers. I hope this blogpost will come to the attention of some people at twitter and that they are willing to give this a thought because I would be very disappointed if Twitter collapses under its own success and the spammers it attracts with this success.

Instant messaging in 2011

We all use instant messaging nowadays, I have resisted against it for a long time and was a true believer that UNIX talk and IRC where more than enough to communicate with the outside world. However I also have now a skype account, a MSN messenger account and a corporate Microsoft Office communicator account.

All needed to keep in contact with people. The downside of this all is that you get more and more differentiation between the user communities. Some of use MSN others use Google Talk. Some make the decision because of what their friend’s use, some because of what is installed on the PC. Now if I wanted to talk to someone who is using for example MXit I have to create a account and I have to install a client to be able to communicate with this person.

Creating a account is already a hassle and then I have to hope I can install the software on the PC I am currently using. In some cases I do not have the rights to install the software so in that case I am blocked and cannot come into contact with this person unless he or she is willing to register to the same network and install the client I am using.

If we look at Wikipedia the number if instant messaging platforms is enormous and growing. Just to name some names; AIM, eBuddy, IBM Lotus Sametime, ICQ, IMVU,… the list can continue for some time.

What do we need in 2011?
What we need in 2011 as a new killer app for instant messaging is a instant messaging mashup in the form of a website. Think of it as a single location where you can login once and activate all your instant messaging channels. When you need an extra platform, like for example you need to talk to someone who has only MXit you now can register for MXit and assign it to your mashup profile and will be able to chat with them via the webinterface.

Next step is that you will be able to create a account with only a couple of steps using for example a OpenID. If you have a instant messaging mashup and are able to connect and create accounts using a OpenID you no longer have the need to do all the painfull registration steps, within a minute you will be able to connect to the person you want to talk to as long as his network can connect to the instant messaging mashup.

Another benefit of this is that you can manage your contacts within the mashup and will be able to add them or remove them from all your instant messaging networks. For example if I want to add my friend Tom to be able to talk to him via Skype and MSN I currently have to know what his username is to be able to add him. I also have to add him in both services. In case of a mashup he has registered his name in the mashup and set that he is using Skype and MSN. Now I want to add him I do not add his Skype and MSN account to my account, just add his mashup account to my mashup account. The moment he agrees the mashup application adds his name to my MSN and Skype network.

What will be the downside?
The downside will be that not all networks shall be willing to corporate with this. They will no longer be in the picture and they will become more of a network than a tool. Now they are a tool a application that is on your desktop. It is spreading the marketing for the company who developed it. When it is incorporated in a mashup they will not have the advantage of a dominant position on your desktop.

You will see that they will make it harder to communicate with the messaging servers without using the official client. So this can be a downside. Also some will quite the market and be pushed out of it by this. So you will have less to pick from. Even do I started this topic with the problem of having too many different instant messaging networks it is good that you have a choice. By improving the interoperability of the networks you will see that some will quit. Having a choice is always important so I see this as a real downside.

Mashup network?
Should it be a good plan to also have a mashup network like we have for google talk and MSN for example? Yes, this should be a part of the solution. The ideal situation is that we have a opensource mashup server who is able to also run its own instant messaging service network and connect to other mashup servers. So if you think you do not have to join a existing network you can just make use of the mashup network. If it is propperly designed you can even use it on websites as a sort of makeshift instant messaging chatroom which enables you to talk to people in this specific room and if you like them invite them to become part of your mashup network.

Privacy and security?
Privacy and security, beside the obvious that the security of the mashup has to be really really tight there are more things to consider. However, on the topic of the mashup security. As not all networks will work with OpenID you will have to store some of your passwords in the mashup to be able to a sort of single sing-on. So if the mashup server is compromised all your passwords will be compromised. There are ways and encryption algorithms that can be preventing this however they person developing the mashup server should be aware of this.

Privacy, you should be able to set your own security and privacy in such a mashup as fine-grained as possible. For example, if I get a invitation from Carla and I have a MSN, Yahoo!Messenger and skype account I want to be able to only grant here access to for example MSN because I know that if she gets my Skype account I will have to talk to here every night. Also I want to be able to say I am available on all networks however not on MSN for person X, Y and Z. even do I might be available for person Y on Skype. All these small fine-grained settings you should be able to to define.

Where are we?
Somewhere in the middle I think. What we currently see is that instant messaging networks are opening up. You already have desktop clients that allow you to interact with a number of networks from a single client.

We do have API’s for quite a lot of networks. For example for MSN Messenger we have a Python library; msnlib - a Python MSN messenger protocol library and client.

For Google Talk we can also use Python and as Google talk is based upon a jabber server we can talk to most of the networks which uses a Jabber server; Google Talk, Live Journal Talk, Nimbuzz, Ovi….. jabber is a XMPP server, you can even start your own server quite easily, just have a look at xmpp.org.

So we can have some bits and pieces now we have to create a mashup for it. Well there is work been done on this subject also. If we check the WSO2.org we can already find some interesting things. So as you can see some people are working on parts that can be used. Now all we need is a person who will be putting the pieces together and create this mashup which can make all of our lives a lot easier. Never install a client again, always be able to quickly add all your new friends to all your instant messaging networks….. sounds like a good build for 2011.

Is it already their? Yes in some form, if you have a look at ebuddy you will see that something like the above is already available. So why still request a build2011? It is not completly the product as described above. Some of the real ebnifits are missing in my opinion and their is not a strong user communcity. Maybe some people will disagree with me and state that their is already a good working mashup. Well, that is great. however I find it still to little and I would like to opt for a build for 2011 which is also preferably aopensource project so you can download it and create your own spinoff of a mashup. Maybe even connect that mashup to some central mashups. So eBuddy is a great tool it is not (yet) what I am intending.

What about Google Wave?
When I was talking to some people about writing this post Google wave came up. What about Google wave. Well as Google wave is quite new and it still needs to get a good user community I am not sure. Also Google Wave is not a instant messaging client as such. However as from what I have been reading and from what I have seen I would say that also Google Wave should be incorporated to this mashup. Or…… Google Wave should become this instant messaging mashup. As Google wave and the wave protocol are opensource it might be that the community will be building a mashup around Wave or that Google itself will create the interoperability between the different networks. Might be a good hint to the guys over at Google labs. Please do forward a link to them so they might have a peak at this post.

How social media can make history

Somehow I have missed the talk by Clay Shirky which he gave for TED.com, however now it is on my weblog.

"While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics."



Clay Shirky also maintains a great website shirky.com which I can advise to read from time to time.

mobile social networks unype.com

unype.com , a new name for me on the block. unype.com is a mobile social network which uses geographical information to create the social network. You can meet with friends and leave messages while maintaining a list of friends and a online profile. It also allows you to direclty see what and where your friends, or total stranger find some interesting things.

Walking on a street and see a new restaurant, you can send a tweet via twitter however you can also geo-tag it on unype.com so everyone can see it directly when they browse the map of the city.

unype.com is quite a new kid on the block and not fully came to a complete product in my opinion. It needs a lot of tweaking still and a lot more users to create a good community. However, I am very anxious to see how this will go in the upcoming time.

Social networking more populair

Luis Benitez is blogging about the fact that by 2011 social networking will be More Popular than Face-to-Face Collaboration. At least that is what IBM is stating in one of the youtube movies they posted.





I am not sure if IBm is correct however I think that social networking will create not only new friends online, it will also create new friends offline. If you look for example at the opencoffee meetings you see happening around the world I think that social online networks are making the offline connections stronger instead of weaker. That social networks will start playing a bigger role is without any doubt however it will not have much negative impact on real-life meetings in my opinion.

Twitter for small business

Ralph Wilson has posted a new video on his website where he is having a talk with Avinash Kaushik. They are discussing how to use Twitter as a small business and how it can help you start your business.

Problem for startups is getting in touch with the right people and groups to promote your product and keep your 'followers' informed. You do not have a huge marketing budget so all solutions to promote your product or service are very welcome. Twitter is one of them, not only small companies are using it also large companies are using twitter and you can make use of the same facility.

With twitter you can very simply start promoting and try to start a viral marketing campain. If you do it in the correct way you send out a message and it will be re-tweeded from person to person via twitter. With a very small action you might be able to get your company at the peoples attention. Besides looking at the video which is below you might also want to look at the smallbiztrends.com website.



In the video Avinash Kaushik is talking about tweet-rank.de, I have been looking into it and I have to say I do not really see the benifits of this service. I have been playing arround a bit however it is less than I expected. However, if you feel you want to give it a try, just visit the website and make sure you start following @tweet_rank via twitter because this is needed before you can use it. They use it to do some measuring.

Web Trend Map 4 2009

Here you can find as a reference the web trends 4 map for 2009. This map is made by informationarchitects.jp and more information can be found at their website. However, the map can also be found here.. and it is real fun to have a look at it and you might even stumble upon some unknown stations.

Google culture

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google is interviewed by Steve Pearlstein for the Washington Post Website. They discuss subjects like "Googzilla" and the Google culture and how this influences the way Google employees and managers work. Within Google it is sometimes seen that managers work for employees and not employees working for the manager. Because of the highly driven workforce they simply need managers to plan, take care of budgets and be some sort of firewall for internal politics while the employees can spend all the time on developing new systems and maintaing existing systems. A great way of working in my opinion which could very well be mixed with the new way of working you see on a rollout in for example the Netherlands at Microsoft and Capgemini for example.

twitter account

Today I created a twitter account. I have been reading about twitter and hearing stories of people on the subject however never created a account. Someone I know has started to use twitter recently and because of this I wanted to give it a go. Looking into the way twitter works it looks like a blog only for very small messages.

it is not my intention to "twitter" everything like, getting coffee for the colleagues, getting lunch or things like that. It will be more like, working on ..... and stuff like that. Also new blogposts I have posted or working on will be twitterd. So if you follow my blog and do have a twitter account just add my twitter stream to it.

In the beginning I will be using twitter very often because it is new you will most likely however see that it will become less after some time and the messages might start to have more 'body'. Because I have installed twitter on my iPhone I will also be able to react and twitter on the go. I am really interested to see how this will go. For the couple of hours I am using twitter now I already learned that it can be very well used to expand you social network and it is a lot of fun.

here is a link to my twitter page.

Hope to see all of you on twitter.com

CapGemini, Gartner Magic Quadrants

A couple of posts ago I wrote about Gartner's Magic Quadrant and how Oracle placed itself in CPM, just read this blogpost to see what I am referring to.

It is nice to know that the model for offshoring done by CapGemini is working and is recognized by Gartner in such in way that it is deserving a place in the Magic Quadrant.

"In the report, Gartner uses its unique Magic Quadrant to evaluate the strengths of IT solutions providers operating in the European Offshore Application Services market. Providers are placed within the quadrant based on their ratings along two axes: their ability to execute and the completeness of their vision."

CapGemini is using a Rightshore model where not everything is moved over to India but when a customer decides that he want to outsource some or all its IT activities we will not move it to India directly. We will look at the location and requests of customer and find a country to 'outsource' to. For France this could be somewhere in Africa because the french language is spoken in large parts of Africa as a second language. South America and Spain and Portugal are a good mix. India is not ruled out but also other options are possible and Gartner is recognizing this and is sharing the vision that this is a great way to go.

"Gartner said: “Although some traditional providers are still trying to build critical mass in India, all providers must invest further in nearshore or possibly low-cost onshore European delivery centers. India is no longer the only delivery source.”

Therefore, in this regard, our pan-European presence and growing visibility in Latin America and Africa - which exemplifies our Rightshore model - are among our strongest differentiators."