Graham's site of the week is http://myparentsjoinedfacebook.com or 'Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook'. Very funny and well worth a look !
I suppose somewhere there is a site saying something like - www.omgwhatismychildupto.com
Recently in Social Networking Category
The BBC is trailing an article on the take up of cloud computing with a more than passing reference to our Office 2010 launch next week.
I think the closing quote from Gartner is the most interesting:
"All business computing will be more web-enabled," predicts Mr Dreyfuss at Gartner. "For some [companies] it will reach the point where it will be totally web centric."
We are now entering the age of the 'hybrid business computing' model, but then again maybe we are already leaving it.
With (as I write this) a little over 24 hours until the UK General Election results start coming through, I have been caused to wonder about a number of things;
a) Will the pundits and pollsters be accurate? - I just can't make up my mind - I am sort of excited to see how close or how far they are from reality
b) If they are close then the politcal wrangling will be of a level not seen before in the the UK, I suspect the 'net will go into melt down
c) If they are wide of the mark we will have endless analysis of either why they are so innacuate or why the British public is so fickle
d) If polls are close and we do end up with a 'hung' / 'balanced' / 'dysfunctional' (delete as applicable) parliament then he tffect will br that the drive towards some form of PR becomes unstoppable.
And if (d) comes true it will be like living in Belgium - without the beer and chips
Is this an Internet election?
I am not sure ... yes there is a huge amount of blogging, social networking and tweeting from all corners of the political diaspora but it was a good old fashioned television event that has truly galvanised the politically aware public.
I must admit reading and posting tweets is most enjoyable - but in the sort of way that it feels a bit like evesdropping on other peoples conversations or gossiping in the office kitchen.
The more advanced website are making good use of Web 2.0 technoigy (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/default.stm ) for a great example but will this affect the 'X's on the ballot - well lets see what happens on May 7th.
Of course the real thing may be something like this:
I just spotted this on Youtube and very touching it is too
Just a quick blog post to recommend two apps I am runing on my iPhone:
a) Blogpress - a useful mobile blog applet suppoting a number of well know engines (including MovableType which hosts the CW blogs) and
b) WhatsApp - a push IM tool for iPhone and Blackberry that uses IP and therefore no incremental charges ( except when roaming) other than your data plan and can be much faster than erratic SMS
Enjoy
-- Post From My iPhone
I am a bit of a follower of the Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 5 Live (twitter.com/wittertainment) mostly on my iPod. Earlier this month the afternoon program was used as a test bed for 'radio visualisation' - radio with a high quality video feed and a dashboard with associated content, feedback and other consumers content.
This is a very interesting development leveraging web 2.0 and fatter network pipes and my feeling is that it is the emergence of a new broadcast medium. Well they have moved on from Simon to Chris Moyles so you can check it out via the press release or by visit Moyles' site in the morning.
Hybrid radiovision is here to stay
Jim Moffat has led me to the next to the next 'little thing' on the internet. Released about 7 days ago this video, about a new Twitter wanabee, really hits the mark.
Check out the YouTube video below to see how we can now engage with the attention span of a typcial 14 year old.
Go on then get Fluttering
Last week a combination of Twitter and YouTube launched a minor British politician from the backwater of Brussels and Strasbourg. Daniel Hannan, Consevative MEP, on to the world stage.
If you are not one of the 1,600,000 million who have already seen it you can check it out here.
Two aspects of this are quite revealing. Firstly even in the political duck pond that the European parliament normally represents, the power of social technologies can deliver exceptional oratory to an audience that has normally been completely 'out of the loop'. Secondly, and a bit worryingly, when I went to get the embed code to post into this blog I found my page search sponsored by the BNP (a british fascist-lite party).
The power for good of the web is equally capable of delivering bad, we have always to both listen to powerful messages clearly and fairly delivered by what ever means but at the same time guard ourselves from extremism especially when it is insidious.
I have been drummed out of the 'Scouts'. Well the collaborative equivalent of it, for some time this blog had been aggregated as part of PlanetLotus.org.The owner of the site felt I had been overly critical of Lotus, however in my defence I have always had a jaundiced eye towards the way the IBM runs the brand but my recent employment by Microsoft has, I suspect tipped the balance.
It was a bit sad not being given any 'notice to quit', but it was their game and they simply took the ball away, c'est la vie
Like everything else it started me considering some of the consequences of these type of communities. These sort of public open, heavily aligned sites (similar lists have been on Usenet for years) are great to feel the pulse of the central topic, connect with like minded souls and generally get information, but without critical input they can become self-delusional if only politically acceptable views are acceptable, I would argue there has to be room for the 'not we's'..
I suspect there is the equivalent of planetgroupwise somewhere on the net and I would guess according to them everything in the garden is rosy and the world is there oyster.
It sort of reminds me of Zaphod Beelbebox's peril sensitive sunglasses.
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