The Dogs of War: Apple vs. Google vs. Microsoft

All three of these companies are worth billion sof dollars and are without a doubt the biggest companies on the internet. Whats the most astonishing though is how fast Google how risen among the rank sof Apple and Microsoft which are both companies decades old. Google at the moment is the most important company on the web.
What's at stake? Nothing less than the future. Microsoft wants computing to continue to be tied to the desktop—three screens and a cloud, as Ballmer is fond of saying. For Apple, it's all about closed information appliances with lots of third-party apps, computers anybody can use. And for Google, all roads lead to the internet, and the internet is synonymous with Google.

Red Herrings

Red herring is a term used by business leaders to describe concerns that he or she has when implementing ESSP's like I described in my last post. These leaders usually have a consistsnet set of concerns about the negative things that could happen with this implementation. Two ceoncerns are: fears that people won't use the newly available ESSP's and the fear that they will. The latter eventually will trump the first and take precedence. The business leader asks questions like: What if employees use their internal blogs to post hate speech or pornography, or to harass a coworker? What if blogs are used to denigrate the company itself, air dirty laundry, or talk how misguided its leadership and strategy are?
If the information on these platforms really is valuable, won’t it be harvested by spies and sold to the highest bidder?
Don’t these technologies make it easier to leak secrets to the outside world?
What if unhappy customers use our community site to air grievances, and to talk loudly and often about our lousy products or Kafkaesque customer service?
What if a supplier uses our site to complain about how we never pay on time?
These are very common questions as to why ESSP's for most company's never get off the ground.

Emergent Social Software Platforms (ESSP)

Emergent Social Software Platforms are social sites like facebook, myspace, blogs, and discussion forums where people come to shares comments and ideas about many different things. Millions of people use these sites everyday. I am one of these people as I am writing this blog post right now. ESSP's can be great for business' to get in touch with it's customers. The company can use a discussion forum to talk about products or services that the company provides. The business will be able to gain valuable feedback on improvements or likes.

Neural-Network Technology Moves into the Mainstream

Just as I described in my previous post. The brain learns from experience, and that is the general goal of neural-network technology, which is generally thought to be the next major advancement in the computing industry.

Neural Networks

Whats that?!?! A neural network can be described as a system kind of like the inner workings of a humna body. Just like a human brain, a neural network processes information and learns by examples. Neural networks are configured for specific applications such as pattern recognition and data classification through a learning process.

Bandwidth is the new black gold

In a time where everyone has a iPhone, Blackberry or some other kind of smart phone we all take the simple commodity of bandwidth for granted. Bandwidth is the capacity to move information through a channel. The more information you move through the channel, the more bandwidth you use; hence video uses much more bandwidth than, say, e-mail. A bandwidth shortage occurs at any point when the demand to move information exceeds the capacity of the channel. When everyone at your school or surrounding area tries to view a video or check email online it will clog the channel and make service very slow.
At this time service from carrier AT&T for a iPhone runs around $100 a month. I should know because I regretfully pay for it every month. As more and more people jump on the smart phone bandwagon and gobble up more and more bandwidth the more this simple commodity becomes a necessity. The more it becomes a necessity the the higher it becomes in the supply and demand chain. This results from carriers like AT& T and Verizon being able to justify higher charges for service.

Things are to the point now where the government has even stepped in to regulate. Under the Obama Administration, the FCC regards bandwidth supply as an issue meriting national attention, and it has been formulating a plan to encourage home bandwidth. So many people are taking up so much bandwidth that carriers cannot keep up. We as customers are seeing the negative side with crawling service and dropped calls and in the end it will be use the users who suffer the most.
Someone will need to find a solution the the bandwidth problem before it gets too bad and everyone suffers from bandwidth withdrawal and just like a drug user we will crash and burn.

Groundswell- the power of the people

Technologies and and self expression on the Internet are becoming a force to be reckoned with. Personal blogs, user-generated content and podcasts are a few examples of these. A blog is a online journal with posts containing written thoughts, photos, links and videos just like the one you are reading right now. One in four Americans read blogs and more than half of online users in Japan read them as well. These blogs can be powerful manipulative tools and companies and organization should pay close attention to what these bloggers are saying. Companies should participate, read, and even comment on these blogs and take what people are saying to make improvements. Since there is no regulation on what bloggers can say, one hears the true opinions and feeling of the blogger.

Twitter 101

Twitter has become all the rage with real-time communications. This always up to date way of transferring information via computer or cell phone relays millions of messages of ideas, thoughts and knowledge everyday. Twitter lets you read or write messages up to 140 characters long to people that follow you on the site. Businesses can use this information for people tweeting about their company and use these for the betterment of the company. If its a good idea or you just simply like what someone is saying you can re-tweet the message and extend the message to users who may not be following the original author. You can also post pictures known as twit pics of anything you feel like. Businesses may use this to unveil new ideas or offer coupons or give users a sneak peek at a new product.

fiskateers

Like arts and crafts? So do a lot of other people. Fiskateers.com is a site devoted to craft workers and creative people who can share ideas and projects. On the home page there are links for their blog were you can watch videos, see photos and tread about craft projects from other users. Yo can also find and make friends from here, view a calendar of events, view the message board, join fiskateers, and visit the resource center. This is a very helpful site for all you do it your selfers out there.

Ready for the Internet like never before: About.com

About.com is a online community of knowledge based experts available to share their expertise with anyone who acquires it. These online experts offer answers to questions in the form of articles, recipes, tutorials, lectures and videos all found on the Internet. The experts on About.com are known as 'guides' that exist in what they call a neighborhood and just like a real life neighborhood this one is made of of people like you and me helping one another in our online community.

This is a very helpful with 'guides' having expertise in everything from health and pregnancy to poker and gardening. It boasts since 2000 that 20 Guide-sites have been named Forbes “Best of Web,” with 3 Forbes “Favorites.” Many Guides have been recognized for their outstanding contributions to their industries.

so next time you need help with a crying baby, maybe learning how to bluff in a game of poker or even how to get your tomatoes to grow bigger next season, check out About.com and see what they have to say.

Building a Knowledge Community at Hallmark Cards

In terms of people vs. technology at Hallmark cards. The technology is certainly capable of physically making a Hallmark card, but as far as the content of the card, this is solely left up to the people of Hallmark. No machine or form of technology is capable of extracting emotion and displaying them onto a card.

Knowledge Creation, Distribution and Sharing

How do you compile knowledge?
A stone age way of this is writing ideas and thoughts onto a notepad. Not to say that this is a bad way to create knowledge, but in todays day and age we have the internet and other resources of which to compile knowledge.
First to gain knowledge you must get it from experts. For example, scientists, doctors, lawyers and even ground workers who who can contribute knowledge that he or she has experience with in that particular field. To distribute this knowledge is to spread the knowledge to others via word of mouth through lectures or people contact, books, magazines, medical journals and also through the internet with the use of blogs, journals, and articles. Knowledge is of no use if we don't share it with others. To keep knowledge to oursleves almost makes the knowledge useless unless we plan on being the only ones to use it.

"Knowledge creates value to the extent we can move it around like electricty. "
-Thomas W. Brailford

Data

According to Wikipedia the term data means groups of information that represent the qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. This means that anything taking meaning and being used for purpose can be used as data. As humans we take in millions and millions of peices of data every single day and sometimes without even knowing it. We process this data into information and then turn that information into knowledge which we use for personal gain. Wheither this is for making a good grade on a test or for figuring out which car insurance to purchase. We learn to better things and this all starts with data.

Just-in- Time Delivery Comes to Knwledge Management

In this article Dr. Goldszer is faced with the common problems most physicians have to face around the world. He has a over abundance of knowledge he must retain in such a small ample amount of time and inefficient means of doing it. As a primary care physician, he must know something like a million facts, and those are constantly changing. This problem with having to know thousands of diseases, patient specifics, medications, and laboratory test can mean a matter of life and death if not dealt with properly.

The Partner's Project took a ambitious dive into linking massive amounts of constantly updated clinical knowledge to the IT systems that supported doctor's workplaces.They decided to focus on order entry of for tests and medications because this is where a lot of errors can occur. Developing a system like this is very difficult. There are very few software packages out there now that allow users to input their own knowledge into the system. As hard as developing this system was aeven harder task of convincing knowledge workers to use the system no matter what environment or field they're in.

Knowledge Management's Social Dimension

I recently read a article that takes a look at the company Nucor, a large steel company started in the late 60's when the steel company first started facing tough economic times because of substitution from other materials, foreign competition, and strained labor relations. Despite these obstacles Nucor has risen above the troubled industry and has enjoyed a annual compound sales growth of 17% all generated internally without Nucor making any acquisitions. Nucor acheived its success by excelling at a single task: becoming and remaining the most efficient steel producer in the world. It did so by developing and constantly upgrading competencies that were both strategic and proprietary: plant construction and start up know how, manufacturuing-process expertise and the ability to adopt breakthrough technologies earlier and more effectively than competitors.

The authors in this article talk about building a social ecology - that is, the social environment within which people operate - is a crucial requirement for effective knowledge management. Nucor was and still is a prime example of a compnay that took this to heart and ran with it. Nucor's social ecology was one that can be modeled for any company wanting to reach higher success and a more productive and happier workforce. The determinants of social ecology are culture, structure, information systems, incentives, structure, people, and strong leadership. To gain a sustainable advantage over competition Nucor had a workforce that was very smart at using the technology they were supplied with and all in part of the social ecology of the organization

Network Effect

When talking about business or economics, the term network effect is described as the result or effect of a good such as the Iphone or a service such as Facebook has on the value of that product or service on other people. In other words how that product betters the life and kind of makes them reliant in a way of that good or service.

I just had to get a Iphone when they first came out and was super excited about it and now Im so reliant on it because so many of my friends have one as well and we stay in such close contact with one another with them that we might go crazy without it. The same applies to Facebook. The more people that join the more connections and happenings I get connected to. Its almost a fade in a way that you get sucked in to through popularity of the masses. The more people that join the more valuable this commodity becomes to me.

The Wisdom of Crowds

In this book titled "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki the question is answered of "Why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdoms shapes bussiness, economies, societies, and nations."

The books goes into detail about how group decisions are often always better and more decisive than any decision that could be made by a single member of that entire group. You have to agree and its not rocket science that two heads are better than one so just think about a group of 8, 9, 10 or more heads working as one. For example, think about the popular television show "Who wants to be a Millionare". There comes a point in the game where the sole contestant is unsure of the answer to a question and the rules allow a "lifeline" so they call it for he or she to call on the audience for help. There is usually a overwhelmingly large agreement on one answer and almost always that answer is correct.

The book breaks down crowd wisdom into three different ways: Cognition, coordination and cooperation. These all tie together to make the best of crowd wisdom. Without one or the other the crowd will not make the best of decisions and will suffer to poor results. Who knows? You could be that contestant on Who wants to be a Millionare one day. Wouldn't you want a crowd with the greatest amount of wisdom possible? I sure as hell would.

Knowledge Economy

So are we a economy of knowledge or are we a knowledge-based economy? These sound very similar and one might think they are one in the same but these actually vary slightly in terms of a knowledege economy.

According to Wikipedia a economy of knowledge is focused on the production and management of knowledge in the frame of economic constraints vs. the knowledge based economy where the use of knowledge technologies produce economic benifits as well as job creation. It further states that in knowledge economy, knowledge is a product, in knowledge-based economy, knowledge is a tool.

So which one are we? Well to be honest we are both, evolving more and more each day and swaying back and forth between the two.

I really like how this citing goes on to state that a key concept of the knowledge economy is that education and knowledge can be refered to as "human capital." It makes complete sense in the fact when you scrape everything away from the surface, knowledge and education are two major factors for success and is really what gets you the most out of what you want in life and society.

To better yourself after highschool you go on to college to build-up your "human capital" by gaining knowledge assets with every chapter in a book you read, every exam you take, every powerpoint slide you review, and every class you pass.

Gaining knowledge assets builds your "human capital" and makes you more of a "human commodity."

my first blog and school...

So school is back in session and I'm taking 18 hours this semester. Because of this I will graduate in December so hooray for that but boo on no social life for the year 2010.

I made this blog site for my Knowledge Management Systems class and have always kind of deep down inside wanted a blog but never actually wanted to put forth the effort of doing one so this class made me do it.

I will be posting a lot of happenings of life and school in this blog because for the remainder of this year school will be my life.