A review of cool and interesting things I discover on my daily sojourn across cyberspace. Stay tuned for the revelation that “Google Buzz is the Soylent Green of Social Media”…

I thought I would commence a regular feature describing some of the cool toys and apps that I’ve discovered over the past days/weeks along with some joyful resources be they blogs, podcasts, videos, or people. So here we go with the inaugural instalment – your report from the Cyberspace Sojourner #1.

iPhone Apps

1. Mobile Mind Maps – I’m loving the uber-new iMindMap application for the iPhone from MindMap aficionado Tony Buzan. It’s a tiny bit fiddly to get used to the interface (although I use a desktop version of the same app, and already had familiarity). I think the ‘same’ app on the iPad would be fantastic. There’s something that really works for me in terms of the touch screen interaction and MindMap creation. The tactile nature seems really intuitive, and I think it will be a very efficient mechanism. The key benefit of the iPhone app is the ability to create “MindMaps on the Move”, these can be saved and emailed so you can easily load them up on your desktop / laptop once you’ve arrived. Here’s a really simple example I made earlier (eyes right)… 
2. Corporate Yammering - I’m using the Yammer app a lot as well, I say more about this under “Corporate Stuff”. Essentially this is a microblogging app which connects to your Corporate (walled-garden) microblogging platform – provided by Yammer.
3. App potential for site promotion – I’m enjoying the apps from Mashable, ReadWriteWeb (in particular), the Telegraph and BuddyFeed. The three former are great for grabbing tech news stories, BuddyFeed hooks into FriendFeed which means I can keep an occasional eye on what’s happening there.
4. iPhone Web Cam, Geolocation, Pic sharing and Scrobbling – I’m sure I’m a latecomer to some of these apps, but I’m also enjoying Qik (a video sharing / streaming utility), TwitPic (well-known photo sharing app for Twitter), FourSquare (mobile / location app), and I’m having a look at AudioBoo which I’m sure has lots of potential. iScrobble Lite is a nice (and free) utility app which scrobbles (to Last.FM ‘in real time’) track plays from the iPod. The Last.FM app is also great if you want to stream Internet radio (but don’t ignore ooTunes). Qik was recently voted fourth in a list of top applications by the Gadget Show. If you’re into Video Blogging, also take a look at 12SecondsTV. It’s been around for ages, but it’s gathering some recent renewed interest.
5. Mobile WordPress Administration – I’ve also been looking at the WordPress app, handy for administering a WordPress blog ‘on the move’. I occasionally check comment moderation queues on this app, but I wouldn’t consider doing any significant updates without being behind my desktop machine.
6. Understanding trends – TwitScoop has been around for quite some time, and I’ve recently started using the iPhone App from Novo. I had a little issue authenticating with Twitter, but the app was very quickly updated to reflect a change in Twitter’s authentication interface. Top marks for being responsive and fixing the app very quickly once reported. TwitScoop is a kind of hypnotic view into trending topics on Twitter. If you want to see what’s trending, buzzing, emerging, and dying – glue your eyes to TwitScoop. With the iPhone app you can do this on the move, and also (with the paid version) Tweet direct from the app. 
7. Augmented Reality, but not yet for iPhone – It’s a real shame that Layar (augmented reality browser) isn’t available again on iPhone. For now you can check it out on Android. Keep an eye on the Layar site for changes, but I will also write a feature once I get to play with this on iPhone. Hopefully this will be soon!!!
8. Another burning topic for iPhone apps is their use (and usefulness) in terms of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I’m trying out a number of apps and intend to write a separate post on this niche topic, so “hit the subscribe” button if you want to come back and have a look at those thoughts and conclusions.
9. Bump, but don’t grind – Bump comes close to realising some of the predictions I made some time ago about blurring the edges between on and off-line networking. Simply Bump to share contact details quickly,  send updates into Facebook (optional) and explore mutual connections. It’s fine to feel excited, but before looking for someone to bump with, please read the rest of this post!

Books

1. #TwitterBook – I recently purchased the #TwitterBook written by Tim O’Reilly @timoreilly and Sarah Milstein @sarahm. It’s a very easy to read guide to using Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for over 2 years, so certainly not a novice, but I genuinely found some great tips and ‘tricks’ which I was either unaware of, under-utilising or worse still using in an unproductive way. Even if you think you are a Twitter guru, I would say check out the book, it will fill in some gaps in almost everyone’s knowledge.
2. Blogging for serious dosh (I paraphrase) – I know it’s been out for ages, but I recently forked out for the ProBlogger book from Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. The problem with good advice isn’t understanding it, it’s following it – even when there seems to be an easier way. If you go to the trouble of buying and reading this book, at least try and put the advice into practice. This requires discipline and realism. I highly recommend it.

Blogs and Resources

1. Catching back chat – I’ve recently added ChatCatcher to this blog. It watches Twitter, Friendfeed etc. for mentions of my articles (looking for backlinks). It is clever enough to unravel link shortening, and it posts back any mentions it finds as trackbacks. This (as the name implies) catches article mentions (chat) on other Social Media sites and funnels the comment back to this blog. Neat!
2. You may also like – LinkWithin which is a service I first spotted on Neville Hobson’s blog. Very simple to install as a WordPress plug-in, it provides “you might also like” links at the bottom of blog posts. This is a great way to cross-promote onsite blog content.
3. Screen new Followers – TwiMailer is a utility worth looking at. I was getting rather tired of the vanilla “person x is following you” on Twitter. TwiMailer pushes out an enriched notification message containing the new followers “following and follower count”, bio and last 10 tweets. The email has a “Follow Back”, or “Block” link which means it’s much easier to screen new followers and decide whether to follow back, ignore or report for spamming. I used my Google Mail account for this, I suggest you look at TwiMailer, but also read this article on how to use TwiMailer securely.
4. Save for later – This is as old as the web browser and bookmarking, but Instapaper and Read it Later are worth looking at. I see a lot of iPhone apps now providing seamless integration (particularly with Instapaper), which is handy for filtering and saving news on the move.

Folks

1. Escaped feline – I let the cat out of the bag in the last section, but take a look at what Neville Hobson is Tweeting, and also check out his blog. The podcasts and content on there is very interesting, as is the use of some interesting widgets. I recommend regularly checking out new and interesting blogs and looking not only at the words, but also how they are presented and using what technical add-ons. Neville’s blog is a great exemplar of what I mean.
2. Fizz and Ginger – Suw (@Suw) Charman-Anderson has brought what I described as needed “fizz and ginger” to Computer Weekly’s blog offerings. She writes The Social Enterprise blog, and other blogs of her own. I like her style, she knows ‘what’s what’ and isn’t afraid to say it (so take care with comments .
3. Warren is more than #DADM – I have to apologise to Warren Whitlock for mentioning, but his #DADM hashtag is hilarious. Warren posts the “Dumbest Auto DM” message he receives on Twitter. For newbies, an auto-DM is spam, pure and simple. If you’re using it, turn it off immediately. If you must DM on making a new connection, make it personal and don’t include a link (especially a “read my blog” or “get rich quick” link). This looks and is anti-social and desperate. I would “forgive” an auto-DM from a charity or philanthropic organisation promoting something of true pro-Social value.
4. The Digital Dutchman – Make sure and look in on Paul Albada Jelgersma a colleague in the Netherlands. Paul was recently kind to mention an article I had written about Social Graph Gaming, he also pointed out the ‘bizarre’ Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – which is quirky, and unsettling but perhaps in a year or two – essential. It reminded me of my 2007 prediction of a “Web Reformation” where digital atonement would be necessary to remove the “sins of old posts”. Paul’s a chap to follow, so check out his musings…
5. Twitter know how with Sarah Milstein – SarahM is a must follow on Twitter. Sarah co-authored #TwitterBook, and you can pick up great ideas from her posts.
6. Balf, the 2012 guy – Alex Balfour (aka @Balf) is in charge of New Media for London 2012. Watching the speed of change of smartphone technologies and availability of new and innovative apps, coupled with the continued explosion of Social Computing, Context Awareness, Augmented Reality and of course end-user expectations make Alex’s challenge immediate and significant. Tune in for his vision of where we will be by London 2012.

Behind the Firewall

1. If I had a Yammer, I’d Yammer in the morning… – I’m a recent convert to Yammer, deriving most utility from it by connecting my Twitter account, and sending targeted updates into the Corporate Yammer microblog using the #yam hashtag from Twitter. If you want an easy jumping in point for corporate microblogging, this is one to look at.
2. Say hello over on CIO – I’m going to give a shameless plug to some corporate blogs, namely the Atos Origin CIO / CTO blog (in the UK) and the Atos Origin Blog in North America. Rachel Macik is doing great work on the latter as well as on Twitter and other Social Media platforms. I’m getting more heavily involved in writing for and technically developing the UK blog, so please drop by and say hello there as well.
3. Spigit Collaboration – I’ve been involved with internal pilot evaluation of Spigit’s ideas sharing and corporate collaboration tool. This is a really intuitive, dare we say ‘fun’ application that facilitates simple capturing of ideas. These can be reviewed, voted up an down, connected to points earnings, leader boards, and even speculation markets. I’ve been impressed with Spigit, an “alternative” (although you lose some control of data management) is Google Wave. Would be nice to see an iPhone app for Spigit, but corporate integration with smartphones isn’t always easy.

Boo and Thumbs Down

Let’s have a little grumpy counterpoint…

1. Mavens and stay home Muppets – I’m desperately tired of Twitter spammers. #DADM is keeping me occasionally sane, but I have thought of spearheading an Unfollow Friday campaign #unfollowfriday. Perhaps some clever person will invent “Fly Swat” for Twitter so we can keep these nuisances from stomping around in our sugar bowl. If you are being pestered by Auto DM spammers, reply suggesting they join a CrisisCamp through CrisisCommons.org – get them to do something purposeful!
2. Web 2.0 Suicide and Burglary – I think the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is quirky but also disturbing. They’ve had a “cease and desist” notice from Facebook who don’t seem overly enamoured with the ‘service’. PleaseRobMe is also a ‘weird’ discovery of the week. The makers say they are lampooning location based services to highlight the risk of location and privacy. They post “Please Rob Me” (or opportunity) updates indicating that people aren’t home. An odd thing to create, but perhaps not entirely silly given speculation that insurance premiums could be on the rise for Social Media libertines. Both have originated in Holland, original home of Big Brother and Endemol! Um…
3. Google Buzz = Soylent Green (or FriendlyFire) – I had intended to write some kind of defence of Google Buzz, it seems though that well-founded concerns over privacy and Google’s own admission that change was required makes this practically untenable. I quite like the lifestreaming quality of Google Buzz, it immediately struck me as a Friendfeed competitor. Robert Scoble provided an interesting treatise on why he feels Buzz implemented Friendfeed’s worst features. I think the release / hype we have been through in the past month though needs to be quelled. The iPad was interesting, but when it turned out not to also be a hover-board people sulked with surprising acidity. Google Buzz was over-buzzed. “It’s a thing that does some things that other things do better” is my erudite review. Buzz should be rebranded as “FriendlyFire”, and perhaps a “Buzz This” chicklet would be more popular if it were labelled “Buzz off” or “Buzz kill”. Our friends at Web 2.0 Suicide Machine must be analysing Buzz to see if it could be re-engineered into a fully fledged friend shredder. Let’s put it back on the shelf and classify version 1 as the “Soylent Green of Social Media”. A class action complaint provides great Social Networking potential for the dissatisfied legions. Will Buzz give birth to “Social Based Litigation?” – and is there “an app for that?”

One to Watch

I wasn’t at MWC (Mobile World Congress in Barcelona) 2010, so I’m not going to write with too much excitement about new HTC or Windows Phone 7 Series.

The Israeli designed Else is one to watch, the principle being single click access to “all” features on the device. Watch a demo video. I think this is really interesting!

And finally – something gratuitously weird

I wouldn’t entirely like to admit how I discovered this iPhone app. Weighing in at a snip (merely 59 of the Queen’s new pence), you can amuse and amaze your friend(s) by superimposing their eyes over burkhas or visage over hijabs. You might wonder – why? I also wonder why…

To refrains of a singing fat lady…

Well, that’s about it for this instalment. If there’s something out there on which I should focus my “Social-Eyes” please let me know. If I like it I will feature it in a future post. Post up any comments, or drop by and say hello on Twitter. For now I remain yours, the Social-eye-ser…

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Recommendations I made for FollowFriday this week. In case you missed them over on Twitter, here they are again, with categorisation.

1. [Commentary and News] Is it a #Buzz kill? #FF @stopgooglebuzz to find out.
2. [Applied Genius] #FF @WarrenWhitlock for many reasons including amusing highlights of dumb auto DM’s he receives. It keeps me smiling.
3. [Personal Branding] #FF @DanSchawbel expert opinion on Personal Branding. Well worth reading his blog and tweets.
4. [Politics] #FF @markdurkan MP MLA – posting interesting material on Presbyterian Mutual Society right now #FollowFriday tune in…
5. [Public Affairs] #FF @iwhitten nice chap with great insight into N. Ireland public affairs and political lobbying.
6. [Corporate] #FF @AtosOriginBlog http://bit.ly/57uW6r – a blog I am writing for increasingly and enjoying #AtosOrigin
7. [Politics and Life] Dear Christine @brit_battleaxe makes me smile #FF #FollowFriday – because she’s a treasure… [pic top]
8. [Politics] Providing great political theatre, and coming out swinging – stalwart of the left @johnprescott #FF #FollowFriday – ps. and I’m a Tory!
9. [Social Media] I really enjoy what @jangles tweets and writes. Also recommend his blog and podcasts at http://www.nevillehobson.com/ #FF
10. [Social Media] Ok so everyone’s already following @mashable? If not do so now. Top Social Media resource #FF
11. [Social Media] @SarahM – Sarah is co-author of the excellent #TwitterBook which I recommend with enthusiasm #FF
12. [Corporate / Social Media] @atosRachel – Rachel is spearheading Social Media use within #AtosOrigin in North America. #FF
13. [Enterprise Social Computing] Wanted to mention @suw today #FF – bringing welcome “fizz and ginger” to Computer Weekly’s blogs: http://bit.ly/rWZjd
14. [Corporate] Rob Price @robross67 #FF has an interesting article on #Cloud Philosophy on the #AtosOrigin blog @AtosOriginBlog http://bit.ly/agdx75

There we are, another heady mix of politics, Social Media, corporate life, and the trans-mundane.

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The “Elemental Web” was a connection of machines, then a connection of sites, now it is a complex amalgam awash with traditional links and millions of ‘inter-personal’ connections defined by the Social Graph. But what exactly is the Social Graph, is it open to manipulation and how might this affect experimentation in Social Search? How shall we seek to vanquish the Social Chimera?…

Read the full article on the Atos Origin CIO / CTO Blog…

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“Privacy is an onion” (patent pending maxim); it is situational, temporal and multi-dimensional. Perhaps said axiom should be recast as a ‘genetically modified onion’.

Perusing articles on Facebook privacy control changes from a well-known security company, there is the revelation that “no private information should be on the Internet”. A wise statement for an information security purist, but what constitutes ‘private information’, to what degree is it fluid and are the controls within Social Networks sufficient to allow us to restrict access in the ways we demand / require? What are the ’sociological norms’, and what of ’super-social’ libertines (such as I) that have exceeded Dunbar’s Number by a magnitude of 700%?…

Read the full article on the Atos Origin CIO / CTO Blog

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Star gazing with a Social Nostradamus

I was thinking this week about Social Networks and how I saw their potential development over the next few years. As wonderful as they are, we must remember that sites such as Facebook are only really 5 years old, and they have had to spend time defining a business model, growing awareness and user bases and of course dealing with horrible scalability issues (when a site has 200 million users the industrialisation and volumetric management becomes a ‘tad tricky’).

So let’s assume the last 5 years have been all about understanding the market, users and fundamental sizing problems. What will (or should) the next 5 years deliver?

I see this question in the context of some interesting statistics:

1. The amount of time people are spending on Social Networks has trebled

2. Revenue from online advertising now outstrips offline

3. The rise of the smartphone, advances in mobile networks, and importantly price reduction in handsets and mobile Internet usage opens up some really exciting new potential

So let’s get to some predictions…

Prediction One – “The Ubiquitous Portal”

Remember the Yahoo! Portal of the mid to late 1990’s? It was pretty horrible for a number of reasons:

1. Too much content on a single page (and very distracting layouts)

2. Dreadful load speed over dial up connections

3. Difficult to personalise

4. Completely untargeted advertising (i.e. nothing was personal)

The reaction to that was the ‘lean and mean’ interface of Google. The battle between search engines and those that attempted to wrap search into a commercialised portal was an easy victory. Google dominated due to a) good presentation b) good search results.

With developments in User Interface technologies (which has permeated Web 2.0’s look and feel) we can provide many more personalisation options. Broadband uptake is widespread, so the world-wide-wait is significantly improved. As I mentioned, the amount of time people spend on Social Networks is rocketing and I see the Facebook’s of this world becoming the de facto landing page and personalised portal from where we consume the Internet and interact with our friends and contacts. The huge rise in Social Media and related innovation of course led to great fragmentation (hundreds if not thousands of Social Media sites and companies ‘sprung up’), so we need ‘different thinking’ to make this a reality. Applications that plug-in to the Social Network are already popular and these provide an initial solution along with aggregators and services like Google Friend Connect, Facebook Friend Connect etc. Some sites will need to ‘let go’ of their independence and realise that their future lies as a component within the Social Network rather than a stand-alone service. This will be disruptive to some as it will involve a radical change in their business models.

But in all seriousness if I have my Social Network, search engine, email, entertainment and other communication services in one central portal then why would I ‘go’ anywhere else? The Social Networking platform could therefore evolve into my ‘Internet Command Console’, or as I term it “The Ubiquitous Portal”.

The issue of course with ‘single point’ is that it leads to ‘single point of failure’. At what point does the Social Network you build become so central to your business or life that to lose it (through a site closure or terms of use infringement) means ‘catastrophe’? I wonder if we will reach a view that the Social Network becomes so critical to the lives of ‘citizens’ that we need a National Networking Service. That again could be abused, but it would be a fascinating discussion!

Prediction Two – “Mashing up with Virtual Worlds”

I quite like Second Life, but honestly I’ve never really got into it beyond “well that’s pretty interesting”. Time is limited, and having the Virtual World applications separate is in my mind a mistake. I predict a rise of usage of this technology within mainstream Social Networks. If you think about it, Social Networks (in terms of presentation and networking methods are really quite dull). I sign up, describe myself in some text boxes, join a bunch of groups, invite people to connect. That’s great as far as it goes, but in 5 years it will be a ‘big yawn’. I want to see attempts to build more innovative User Interfaces, I want to be able to traverse virtual worlds within sites like Facebook where I can visualise the network and links within the Social Graph clearly. This does not exist today, and to be honest the type of networking we do on today’s Social Networks is very unsophisticated compared to what we do in real life social situations. I want to get people thinking about how this might be made real.

Speed networking inside a virtual world in Facebook anyone?

Prediction Three – “The ‘Social Boost”

Not sure if this is a prediction, a wish or an idea for a business! Here’s what I want to be able to do in Social Networks

1. Describe myself in a mind map (or a similar drawing)

2. Translate the mind map into a meta model (this will describe what’s centrally important to me, localise that importance (e.g. capture that I am interested in technology start-ups and want to make new connections in the South East of England / London)

3. I want to be able to describe networking goals in the Social Network to augment the ‘meta model’

So, now I’ve described myself in a much more sophisticated way than just boring old words, I express some networking goals, others have done similar. I now “deploy” these definitions into the network itself. Where matches are found for those with similar interests, locations etc., the network will ‘build itself’. So the Social Boost is a concept of a self-generating (personal) Social Network. I deploy myself into the network, the network builds around me – not the other way!

I would pay for a service that found influencers in certain markets / locations profiled their goals against mine and built a network around those willing to participate. Friend suggestions in current Social Networks are useful, but could be infinitely more useful. If you build a network proactively for business but switch market focus, you could easily and quickly realign. Move from London to Manchester and rebuild your network in seconds. Now this only augments real life, it doesn’t replace it, but it could be a genuine Social Boost for nomadic and entrepreneurial souls.

I’m sure this suggestion has many challenging sociological implications!

We’re currently awash with talk of collaboration and Google Wave, and I predict greater use of collaboration tools inside the Social Network. Again this comes back to my view that the Social Networking platforms have the potential to mature into true Web Portals.

Prediction Four – “Marketing & Increased Acceptance of Profiling”

I once described the Internet as the ‘last bastion of escapism’, but I think the Social Networking phenomenon is changing how we view our Web interaction. It is no longer (and indeed hasn’t been for some time) a passive interaction. Opinions and ideas flow freely and increasingly people embrace an online persona with attributable commentary.

As much more of this interaction is centralised, again reinforcing the point that the Social Network is morphing into the ultimate Web Portal, it provides a very rich seam of information which can be used for profiling and delivery of targeted advertising.

I would definitely concede that some of this targeted advertising remains pretty dumb and annoying. For example, set your status to Single on Facebook and your advertising displays will be full of helpful links like “meet cute girls” (ironically that does seem to be a good suggestion!). I also wrote (about 18 months ago) in some length about online advertising models and my strong view is that advertising must become part of the overall entertainment experience. Make it interactive, targeted and non-interruptive and people will have greater acceptance. Better still, make it truly useful and people will soon ‘love’ it.

The Social Network is driving so much discussion, ideas, opinion, sentiment capture that I believe if the advertising models can be suitably constrained and tweaked, that people will accept (even support) online profiling and targeted advertising (within boundaries of course, and ideally under legislative control).

Prediction Five – “Location, Location, Location”

This prediction comes off the back of smartphone uptake and context aware services (which are currently really just based on location). The phone knows where you are, the applications and software on the phone delivers the Social Network to the mobile device, and with some decent visualisation tools we can visualise the network within the physical context of ‘where you are’ (as well as where others are).

I think this is an important vision, as there is a difference between online and offline networking, and I am somewhat frustrated that technology is not doing more to breakdown barriers and enrich both networking paradigms through cross-population. This might be a little tricky to grasp, so let’s take a simple example:

1. I go to an industry event with my Apple iPhone in hand

2. I walk and talk and exchange cards

3. I head for home or the office, and send out connection invites to folks that I met and found interesting

That’s really the ‘as is’ world. You can see the iPhone didn’t really lose much battery power.

In the ‘to be world’ let’s consider a better approach:

1. I go to an industry event with my Apple iPhone in hand

2. I can visualise based on applications on the device (and devices carried by others), my network and their networks.

3. I could see for example that someone at the event is a friend of a friend. I / they make an approach, we click some magic buttons (on the smartphone) and bingo we are instantly connected on the Social Network. Time, date, event, context could all be captured – e.g. we met at a security event, in 2009, we were introduced by ‘Bob’ or we had a common connection ‘Fred’.

The ‘to be’ world will begin to remove the disconnect between offline and online networking. Innovators – please take note! Visualisation of the network should collide with visualisation of context and the idea of cross-fertilising online and offline network building.

Prediction Six – “Worlds within worlds”

I’m currently writing two articles about onions: 1) “The Privacy Onion” 2) “The Trust Onion”. I may have a hidden fixation with the “literature of vegetables”, but this is a confession – not a prediction. The Social Network ‘as is’ is a big ‘walled garden’. Mostly (networking libertines aside) people set privacy so only friends can see their activities / posts / pictures and friend links. But start thinking about what you consider to be a friend in a Social Network, then think about how you consider privacy and trust and you have a big headache. Trust and privacy take on interesting connotations in work and private life. You may trust someone implicitly in the office, but don’t want to entrust them with private information in a personal Social Network. The Internet of today (the mobile phone catalysed the problem) presents challenges in terms of understanding where work ends and private life begins. People get sacked for things they say on Facebook, recruiters check up on online profiles of potential candidates. This is a reality.

So we see that trust and privacy are really multi-dimensional and situation dependent concepts. There are also gradations of trust. For example I might trust someone based on their profession (doctor, airline pilot), but there is a limitation in the trust. I might trust someone with another career background differently, or the trust may be quite neutral.

Trying to manage a network of contacts in a Social Network is therefore difficult, or really not flexible enough to mimic modern real-world requirements. Facebook added friends lists so that different controls could be applied to groups of people. Good start! But try and visualise who can and cannot see different content and you soon realise this is is very far from being a useful and sophisticated solution.

I predict a huge leap in Social Network visualisation and control tools. What I really want is a three dimensional model of the network, with visual overlays for controlling privacy and trust relationships, really by ‘dragging’ people in and out of of different areas on the visualised model. The “Onion Model” that I will describe in a forthcoming post shows the layers of trust and privacy really as ‘rings within rings’. I see the use of control tools that allow me to drag and drop / move different people into different zones of that model easily and with clearly understood results (i.e. only folks in this layer can see this content).

Where this will lead will be the possibility to create and control Social Networks within your own Social Network, and to be satisfied that information doesn’t leak between them (I mean of course from a technological basis).

As the technologies mature, the best advice is of course “keep truly private information off the Internet”. It’s really fascinating though to ponder how people view privacy and what information they classify as private. Others might consider the same information to be ‘not private’ in the context of how they ‘understand the world’.

My main point on this prediction is that the sophistication and controls inside Social Networks today do not (at least in an easily useable form) support the nuances of trust and privacy which differs across people and cultures. Worlds within worlds combined with virtual world technology within the Social Network would be really exciting and interesting.

I think this is an idea for another start-up company!

Prediction Seven – “Application Mashups”

Applications for Social Networks are written and maintained by geeks. Clever geeks, but still geeks. Geeks are useful, but applications which might be popular in a niche might disappear or become unsupported (this is an issue for both smartphone applications and the applications we add to enrich / augment sites like Facebook). The worst possible joke I could make at this point is “beware geeks baring gifts”, but they are a flighty bunch driven by fast moving trends.

What I want / predict here is two-fold:

1. Application Development Kits for non-geeks [a genuine “do it yourself” model for non-techie users]

2. An Application Mashup Kit.

Let me expand on point 2. Applications are built from components parts. Useful, reusable units of ‘stuff’. I foresee libraries of these components which can be assembled (possibly using the tools I mention in point 1) to build completely personalised applications. We’re currently consuming application content (on smartphones and Social Networks) written by others and therefore defined by others. This is “old thinking”. Personalisation is king, but the control and freedom of application development and application assembly seems a bit ‘stuck’.

It wouldn’t hurt to get lots of these applications into the Open Source Community, so they can (at least) be maintained, understood and developed for the common good.

Comments / Other Predictions?

I’d love to hear comments, and other predictions. I doubt if I am the only “Nostradamus of Social Theory”, so please do share your opinions / thoughts / insight – or even Social Networking wishes…

Also feel free to drop me a note on any of the Social Sites listed above. Happy to meet, and happy to connect…

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A bear with a sore head!

I’ve been using and very much enjoying LastFM for just over a year. Recently I noticed play back cutting out after an hour or so, and this silly graphic appearing to punctuate the irritating silence.

I thought the designers had gone insane, radio is generally a passively consumed media so the idea of wandering off, and LastFM demanding some kind of ongoing attention seemed incredibly poorly though out (dare I say vacuous).

Now take a look at that “Subscribe” link. Well, I thought I was a subscriber, perhaps not a paying subscriber, but certainly a loyal site member and consumer none the less.

Follow that link, we arrive at the page below and the “real intention is revealed”. Uninterrupted radio now costs three quid (vernacular for Pounds Sterling) a month. So, look again at the picture above. Are people concerned that I’ve been eaten by said famed bear, am listening to Internet radio whilst dusting the cat, or in reality are the site providers using “nuisance tactics” to drive fee paying subscriptions?

It makes me think seriously about purchasing one of the many dedicated Internet radio appliances (from about 40 manufactures last time I counted). Some even integrate playback with Pandora, so I could easily retain the ‘played track history’ elsewhere, all with no interruption and no recurring fees (beyond the initial outlay on the physical device itself).

I think it’s really interesting that LastFM are broadcasting over CBS networks in New York, San Francisco, LA and Chicago (as announced earlier in the week). That’s great, a fascinating ‘cross over’ story from Internet radio to traditional broadcasting (of course CBS own LastFM). However, I’m ‘dismayed’ at the decision to implement interruptive ‘tactics’ that make no sense in such a delivery model on the Web. And seriously guys, when did a certain type of icon become prestigious (bullet 4 below)?

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Centre for Secure Information Technologies

I was having a peruse of the latest (1oth – 23rd October) edition of Engineering and Technology magazine from the IET this morning. Contained therein is an interesting announcement from Queen’s University in Belfast of the opening of a new research centre for IT Security. The investment in the £30m establishment is part-funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Technology Strategy Board and a collection of industry ’sponsors’ such as BAE, Thales et al.

Interestingly the centre is researching intelligent CCTV systems that seek to filter and prioritise video, highlighting what it detects to be ‘incidents of note’ to human operators.

Other technologies being explored seek to improve router security, making them more resilient to Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and seeking to prevent the propagation of DoS attacks through “IP networks”.

The diagram below illustrates the areas of application and technology focus for CSIT. Their view is that “one of the key differentiators for CSIT is the multi-disciplinary and system integration aspect of the centre. It is only by integrating some of the different technology ‘pillars’ outlined below, that creative and appropriate solutions to complex real world problems can be delivered.”

You can read more at the CSIT Website. CSIT is part of the campus of the Northern Ireland Science Park.

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Rules, guidelines, laws and judgement

A few weeks back I attended an interesting debate and presentation about Business Process Management (BPM) in the Public Sector. In fact this was a Government Panel discussion led by a consultant who was ‘much singing’ the praises of BPM backed by enterprise rule systems (ERMS). If you’re not familiar with such patterns, the basic premise is the process is separated from the business logic which is crafted and maintained in a separate, dedicated system and ‘consulted’ as necessary in key decision steps in the business process.

It was a solid pitch, I certainly bought into most if not all of the approach (as long as we don’t go crazy with rule specification in the ERMS). My rule of thumb is put things in there that are a) volatile and/or b) complex. Legislation is often complex and volatile, so many aspects of decision making in Public Sector processes fit the mould nicely.

What surprised me was the Q&A session that followed. We were (you see) in a room full of community leaders, many of them Justices of the Peace. Think ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ meets immovable ‘binary’ automated decision making.

The mathematician / engineer in me took the view that ‘the rule is the rule’,  a guiding truth by which the decision is made based on real-time inputs. The ‘interpretation of the Magistrate’ however was much different. The ‘rule’ is the questionable mandate, the hand tying aspect that removes judgement from human aspects of the process. Is the rule ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘well-intentioned’, ‘lawful’, ‘open to interpretation’, ‘backed by precedent’ all tumbled out as arguments against stringent rule driven process definition.

I was bemused. Surely the rule(s) brought order to chaos, uniformity to individualism, defensibility and intrinsic fairness. Judgement should ‘overrule the rule’ was the basic counterpoint. This principle has worked (with life-saving grace) during a number of aircraft emergencies when the pilot switches off auto-pilot, so I do not readily dismiss.

But at the heart of this is a personal feeling of control and influence. If there are human factors in the decision process, we must define the boundaries of constraints. Law, best practices, company goals and values, regulation all set the parameters. The nature of rules define their ‘elasticity’. Some are naturally more ‘bendable’ than others. Some tasks and job functions require more elasticity, while others are easily more ‘binary’. This brings me to the point, rules are themselves often of quite an organic nature. Fear of uptake might be borne in a misconception of system rigidity, a loss of control, contribution, judgement, experience. As ‘propeller heads’ of the rules world, we need to exercise caution in describing their flexibility to business users, and maybe even ‘the general public’. Rules can be soft, although some must be ‘hard’. It’s important however to represent diversity and be cognisant of perception when explaining the operational aspects of these systems to potential users.

The Business Change folks should be astute at handling ‘emotional uptake and acceptance’, but let’s not make their lives harder by speaking too much as ‘purists and absolutists’. Some see such rule driven systems as a form of intellectual castration. Judgement, knowledge, experience, gut feel, intuition, innovation might be hampered by a lack of elasticity.  As the presenter found, there is a time to appeal to human psychology and its inherent resistance when faced with a perceived loss of control.

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What’s important, and where are your spending time?

I’ve written in the past about the dangers of outposts in terms of wasting effort and creating endless repetitive noise. I recently watched this nice little video from Darren Rowse over at Problogger and I want to highlight a very key observation “people sometimes give up on their Home Base and spend all of their time on outposts”. Don’t let that apply to you!

Are you feeling guilty? Well first, let’s watch the video…

Ok, so you should now understand:

Home Base = blog, web site, central presence – i.e. whatever is centrally important to you. It might well be a Social Networking site, but in my case it is the Technology Mashup blog.

Outpost = satellite presence, somewhere you hang out perhaps merely for fun or networking, but perhaps also with a wish to generate traffic back to your Home Base. Are you appraising effort v’s reward on this basis?

Now Darren explained his strategy with a ’satellite’ style diagram, but I’m all Mind Maps at the minute, so here’s a little sketch of my world (somewhat simplified). As I mentioned, Home Base is in the centre, my Core Outposts branch off towards the top of the map. This doesn’t really make transparent the amount of time I spend on each outpost, and I may attempt another map labelled with time spent per week on each site (that would no doubt scare me!).

LinkedIn is important to me, but I spend almost no time there. I spend ‘way too much’ time on Facebook and Twitter, in fact I recognise a danger that Facebook is becoming a surrogate Home Base.

Outposting Mind Map (click thumbnail to see full-size version)

I also label a Core Participation branch, as Darren mentions in his video this is where you meet, greet, share and comment on the established Home Bases of others. This is important, as blogs, sites, forums etc. are really just Social Networks ‘in disguise’.

My final branch I describe as Helpful. I spend much less time on these, but they are still part of my regular Social Media experience. To others in my many intertwined networks these ‘less important’ presences might be their ‘most important’, and hence the complexity of understanding and leveraging such is ’significant and multi-dimensional’.

So why is this interesting?

1. Understanding what is central to your goals is key to success

2. Understanding your outposting activity (it may not even be strategic) will expose any time wasting or developing tendency to abandon your Home Base in favour of satellite outposts

3. Thinking about your Core Participation is important as this will bring targeted traffic to your Home Base and help you share and discuss ideas with closely aligned people

4. Maps (such as above) for each person will vary wildly. My Home Base is a blog, someone else’s might be a Facebook Group or a Flickr Group, or any manner of other presence. Connecting is about understanding the goals and motivations of others, but this is not readily apparent across such a disparate sprawl of Social presence

5. In terms of the ‘Social Graph’ I can annotate links from my Home Base to my outposts with the “Me” attribute. This means I am defining that the outpost is one of my other presences. This is useful, but it doesn’t capture anything about the relative importance of each outpost to my ‘Social Web presence’. Presences on my Helpful branch cannot therefore be easily distinguished from presences on my Core Outposts (unless of course you see my Mind Map!).

So what does that mean?

1. Understand and sketch out your approach. There is wisdom in the adage, “there’s no point trying to grow the same crop in a bigger field.” In other words, endless outposts add more work and you expend energy for little benefit. Recognise the time you have available and tune your approach to fit. If you cant resist joining every Web 2.0 site, at least recognise your ‘core set’. Until we get true identity federation you really cant be ‘everywhere at once’. This will be Omnipresence 2.0, and I’m working on a theory

2. It is really difficult to see what outposts are important to others without expending some research effort. The easy answer is their Home Base is important and you should ’share some love there’. Remember, blogs, forums, sites etc. are really Social Networks (or have many such qualities)

3. We need to meet in the hub! Remember those Core Participation sites. They (for now at least) give us all a central lobby in which to rub shoulders. Chasing each other around outposts (of varying importance to each of us) is inefficient and liable to fail. Always come back to the Home Base and the hubs!

4. Take care on ‘fad outposts’. People ask me for opinions on ‘what next after Twitter’. Well I say “something for sure!”. Star gazing aside, before coming back into retro-chic, the skateboard languished in ‘un-coolness’ for the best part of a decade. If you get tempted into an outpost that ‘goes pop’ there may be tears before bedtime. Also remember, on an outpost you might be one click from a ‘violation of terms and conditions’ that could seriously ‘precipitate on your picnic’. If you’re ’spit balling’ for the sake of it on the microblogs this might seem irrelevant, but if you’re a serious blogger or site admin this might be a serious knock. If you understand what’s important and spread your time accordingly then all should be well (or at the very least, resilient).

Was that an idea?

I’m sure there’s an idea here to build an automatic visualisation of outpost importance for individuals. It would work by exploring “Me” links (as I mentioned above in point 5), and then deducing through number of friends, updates, comments, posts etc. the amount of time and ‘conversation’ they were having. Given all the aggregation that’s going on this would be a neat little addition to Social Graph visualisation. Hint, hint Google!

Let me close again by recapping on Darren’s words and take care not to “abandon your Home Base” to what may in effect be a transient outpost.

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Another cool way to enrich and contribute

Conceptually brilliant, an interesting way to expand and enrich page content on behalf of ‘other users’. I can immediately see parallel enterprise side implementations to enrich corporate Intranet and Knowledge Management tools.

Watch the video, install the necessary and give it a try…You can share entries through Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles.

Very smart!

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