Netizen

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Apex Analytics is an audit software vendor: "The fastest growing provider of accounts payable software for error prevention and fraud detection, recovery audit services, procure-to-pay compliance solutions to the Fortune 500."

Overpayment Recovery
FirstStrike
Continuous Monitoring

Best Buy and Wal-mart are customers of the Apex Analytics audit software.

Dishonesty seems to be statistical. If you run a large game, it is possible there is someone somewhere on your team, some small clique that is engaging in behavior that could get the larger team, and the brand name down the tube. Don't take a chance. Get some audit software.

Tagged: Chugging Along, But What Differentiates?

Let’s Not Put Tagged In The DeadPool Just Yet TechCrunch On the spam issue: Tagged has always been aggressive about “encouraging” users to add their address book and invite new users. It’s sadly a proven way to get lots of new users ..... Tagged has less than 40 employees and has been profitable for more than two years. They’ve raised just $13.5 million in capital and have revenue in the $10 million - $20 million range. ...... nearly 32 million people visited Tagged in April 2009, up from 14 million a year ago. ....... Those visitors racked up over 5 billion page views in April 2009, up from less than a billion/month a year ago

I don't know how exactly I ended up there, but I am on Tagged.com. It has mystified me as to why some social networking sites do well in some cultures rather than others. Why did Orkut take off in Brazil and India more than other places? I used to get a lot of friend requests from brown people - my kind - on Hi5. I still get a few. What gives?

In social networking there are going to be a few big players, and numerous niche players. Just earlier today I signed up for a site called Jhyaap, that has all of 16 members besides me. These are 16 Nepalis in Minnesota. I met the founder on Twitter and went ahead and signed up. I figured, what the heck? I started a discussion and the founder immediately responded.

What I would like as a user is many niche social networking sites that I can all sign into with Facebook Connect. Having to create a username and password for each separately is a hassle. What gives?

What differentiates? Is Tagged a big player or a niche player? Where is it trying to go? What is it trying to be? What can you do on Tagged that you can not do on Facebook? One difference I see is on Tagged many of your photos are right there on your profile page, and your wall is not another click away. Is that enough differentiation?

And if they can do spam marketing, I wonder if the girl/woman who has been poking me at Tagged is a real person or a Tagged marketing technique, you have to wonder.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Opera Unite: New Definition For Client/Server

That Reinvention Of The Web Thing Opera Was Talking About? It's Called Opera Unite TechCrunch

The details are sketchy at this point, but the promise is big. The claim is tall. Opera Unite claims to have reinvented the web. The claim is that Opera turns your web browser into a server. You don't have to go through a larger company's servers to share your stuff with someone. The sharing can be direct.

But isn't this like replicating sharing? Sharing is already happening. And your friend can only access the file on your computer if your computer is connected to the web. Whereas "foreign" servers are always on.

This kind of sharing has its uses, sure. This is innovation. But how is this revolutionary? I actually like not to have to store stuff on my own computer.

Maybe America Does Not Need To Make Things

Does America Need to Make Things? TechCrunch

Farming is still around, but what percentage of Americans are farmers? A small percentage feeds the rest. Used to be most people were farmers. But then productivity started going up. And fewer people could feed the masses.

Maybe productivity levels are similarly going up in the industrial sector as well. Only the entire globe is the stage.

Maybe the future is that

Many traditional industrial jobs will move to countries where labor is cheap.
New green tech industries will come in.
Many workers will be retrained, re-educated for new, better paying jobs.
The new generation will go into the service sector, the knowlegde sector, the web sector of the economy en masse.

The education and health in America have been designed for bygone industrial eras. A country that might send 90% of its college graduates into the service/knowledge sector might want to reinvent the education wheel.

Job Hunting And 2.0
New York City: Transformed Forever?
Reimagining The Office

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

There are many ways to monetize Twitter. I say scale it (Goal: A Billion People On Twitter), monetize it, and then go public. This is a company whose market value will be in the billions. But monetization is key.

(1) Twitter Enterprise

There could be several versions. Companies could pay for premier accounts. Of course they could opt to have free accounts just as well, like many small businesses might. But my idea of Twitter Enterprise sees similarities with Google AdWords. Companies small and big use AdWords.

The first order of business would be help companies make sense of the vast order of data that might accumulate on Twitter around their brand names, mostly real time and near real time, but also digging into the archives. What if I want a snapshot for the past week, the past month?

(2) Twitter Ad Stream

The second order of business would be displaying ads. Use the real estate. My Twitter profile page has space for ads I think. Each tweet has its own unique web address. And each such page is more real estate for ads. Maybe ads on Twitter should be limited to 70 characters. And ad streams would be handled by Twitter Corporate. Catchy text plus tiny URL.

Once you create the concept of the Twitter ad stream, you could put that out many places including in the live streams of individual account holders. If every 30th tweet in my stream is a 70 character, one line ad, so be it. The ads should look like ads.

Just like Facebook's ad space is different, (Facebook's Ad Space Is Different) Twitter's ad space is also different. It has to be to stand out.

(3) Tweet Ads

The concept has to be introduced. And it should perhaps be automated like AdWords. People and businesses sign up online, pay by credit card, design their 70 character tweet ads, and pick the kind of streams they would like to go down in. And of course the tweet ads can be retweeted.

How To Increase Your Following On Twitter
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Real Time Search: Twitter Is Not Doing It
Google Falling Behind Twitter?
Eminem: The Relapse: Twitter
Converting To The Mass Follow Formula On Twitter
NewsDesk: China, Twitter, Hawking, Obama
Digg Button, Twitter Button For Your Blog Posts
My Relationship With Ashton Kutcher
Twitter Is Not Micro
The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter

Image via CrunchBase

I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter

Summer Service

Air Conditioning by Jay's Comfort Team

Summer is here. Summers in Phoenix are hot. In business since 1985, trusted by over 30,000 homes in the valley, AC by Jay might be your choice as well.

Either for installation or repair, call up Jay. This is AC by Jay calling.

AC by Jay is a trusted name in the business.

Emergency Service/Repair

>	Things to Check Before Scheduling Emergency Service
>	Tips For Selecting your Arizona Cooling or Heating Contractor
>	Benefits of Regular Maintenance
>	Manufacturers We Service

Energy Savings

>	Alternative Energy Tax Credits in Arizona!
>	Arizona Geothermal Heating and Air Conditioning
>	Harness the Power of the Sun - Lennox Sun Source
>	Use your Pool to be Cool - Blu eQ
>	Top Tips for Buying Air Conditioning in Arizona

Accessories

>	New Water Heaters
>	Indoor Air Quality
>	Water Safety Protection
>	Carbon Monoxide Detectors
>	Thermostat Options

The service is fast and dependable. AC by Jay has satisfied customers in the tens of thousands. Are you next?

Social Security Disability: Greater Philadelphia

Oxenburg & Franzel, based out of Greater Philadelphia, has been in the business of helping injured and disabled workers going back 25 years. If you are looking for a Philadelphia social security disability attorney/Pennsylvania social security disability attorney call them up for a free consultation. The toll free number is 800.520.3992. They can also be contacted by email. You don't pay until you win or achieve a judgment or settlement. They can show up in your homes/hospitals.

Let them guide you through the "maze of applications, appeals, medical reports, denials, rejections, settlement offers, and court cases." You need for a Pennsylvania disability insurance attorney/Philadelphia disability insurance attorney will be met.

BusinessBroker.net

BusinessBroker.net is a "middle man" site where you can find businesses for sale. You can also use the site if you have a business for sale.

It has been in business for a decade and has over 30,000 listings: shops, businesses, franchises. You can search by location, industry and price range. The site serves the US and Canada.

Entrepreneurship can be a great second career. It can be a great way to restart your life. It might be a better option than looking for a new job.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Five Blind Men And Google Wave

Telecom's Tsunami Blog: Google Wave is a virtual desktop what the future Google PC desktop will look and function like. ....... In sports, coaches tell players that when the umpires negative attention is focused on the other team, do not do anything to draw attention to back to your team. This is the strategy Google has chosen for Google Wave. The EU and SEC are focused on fining Microsoft for every infraction that they can find. Don't draw attention away from Microsoft. ......... If most of the PC applications that you are using today can be utilized from within a web service (GMail), then do you really need a dedicated PC desktop from Microsoft, no! Do you need a PC running an OS from Microsoft, no! What you can use is a netbook PC running Google Android OS and only supports one application, Google Wave which is your Internet based PC Desktop. ..... VoIP services is probably already built into the internal Wave API ...... Google Voice product which is 100% web based ..... a real time speech to text engine ..... Google's stock has only begun to catch that next Wave
Google's Wave an online 'Swiss Army knife' > Personal and Office ...
Google's Wave Consolidates Core Online Features in One Tool Wave has the potential to drive people away from popular Google products like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Talk, Picasa, Blogger and Sites, as well as from similar products from competitors like Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL. ....... Google Maps, a service credited with igniting the mashup frenzy. ...... Wave lets people create a document to which multiple users can add rich text, multimedia, gadget applications and feeds, and do so concurrently in the way in which people interact ....... remains to be seen whether Wave will cannibalize Gmail and other popular Google products, but the culture of innovation at the company trumps those types of concerns. ....... Rasmussen warns that the Wave code will appear rough even to developers, so those interested should be of the adventurous type ...... developers will build integration links for it with social-networking sites
Google Wave: Taking the Enterprise from Microsoft?

It is too early to tell what Google Wave is. Right now what we have is the equivalent of a basic operating system. The programs for it have not been written yet. Once the most ambitious programs have been written, the most dashing gadgets have been put on top of it, many enterprise applications have been put in motion, the Google Wave that we know today will start to look basic, barebones. The promise is immense and unrealized.

I think one big thing about Google Wave is going to be that it will show the thinking that the consumer space and the enterprise space are separate just is not true. There is only one space, the collaboration space. The division always was artificial.

And there is always the money part. How will money be made? I think Google is resigned to making big bucks by simply expanding the web space. The Google search box will be ubiquitous in Wave just like it has been ubiquitous on the web. The AdSense space will expand. Kaching. And there will be money for developers. The top developers will make money like successful startup founders. They could follow the ad model, or the pay per download model, or they could go enterprise with some features. There are several ways, all of them public and not secret at all.

I have no idea what Google Wave will look like in a year. I have some idea, but no specific idea.

A Little Trouble At The Google Wave API Google Group
Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?
The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

From The Google Wave Developer Blog

1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?

From The Official Google Blog

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

A Little Trouble At The Google Wave API Google Group

Needed: A Culture For Wave Developers
By paramendra - 9:25am - 6 authors - 9 replies

Brain. Or maybe you should just go ahead and ban me since looks like you deleted my past three or four posts.

I started this thread that in its title very clearly says this particular thread is about the community aspects, not the code aspects. So those developers who are only interested in the code aspects will not even bother clicking on this thread. I thought t-h-a-t was fair enough.

I have been in the process of establishing the fact that code and community are both important. That has been true for Google Corporate, and the open source communities. That is going to be true for the Google Wave Developer community as well. Google Corporate is 20,000 strong, about 50 out of 20,000 devoted to Wave. The Wave developer community on its own is going to be larger than 20,000. And you are going to tell me talking about code is enough?

I don't know where you stand in the Google Wave Corporate hierarchy, but the official Google Wave Developer Blog has linked to my blog posts on the importance of a culture for the developer community at the bottom of every single of their posts as of now. Go take a look. http://googlewavedev.blogspot.com

And my original Google Corporate Culture blog post that you so derided has been a hit on Twitter, and is at the bottom of all the latest 30 plus of the posts at the official Google Blog itself. http://googleblog.blogspot.com

Now can we please repost my posts at this thread that you went ahead and deleted?

And how primitive is it to suggest you can post words but not links to your blog posts? Links are what the internet is all about. How, Sir, did you miss that part? Links are the center of gravity in Google's PageRank concept. Links are what make Twitter Twitter, it is not the 140 character limit.

I have come to this Google Group with a very clear goal, which is to share in the excitement of Google Wave - the next big thing in web technology - and to help shape its developer community, especially its culture aspects, and to try and spot and popularize trends related to Wave, especially as they might sprout out from the developer community.

Your basic respect for free speech would be much appreciated.

I just went around and looked at the subject titles of many of the other threads at this forum. My thread is more on-topic than most. Most of the threads so far seem to be about wanting in on a Google Wave account. That's code talk? Come on, man.

Paramendra Bhagat
http://technbiz.blogspot.com

Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?
The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

From The Google Wave Developer Blog

1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?

From The Official Google Blog

Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Lessons From The Open Source Community For The Wave Community

Lessons on Community Management from the Open Source World, Angela ... Fostering the Drupal community is actually more important than managing the code base. ........ the success of healthy open source projects defies all logic. Scores of individuals from all over the world, all of whom have different skill levels, use cases, experience, native languages, and time zones, collaborate together in order to help make a project succeed. ........... How is it that all of this chaos comes together and creates something wonderful and useful? ........ a diverse, passionate, and vibrant global community. ......... Create a Great Community and Great Code Will Follow .......... the project's developers, but also to those who report bugs, review fixes, answer support requests, design interfaces, provide translations, help with marketing and evangelism, and write and edit documentation. ............. Many key individuals who are driving forces within open source projects got their start by fixing typos in documentation or answering other users' support questions. ......... A culture that values a well-written tutorial as much as a well-written application programming interface (API) is much more likely to attract and retain newcomers than a culture that values seasoned developers, or the marketing team, at the expense of everyone else. ............... the difficulty in managing a community of strongly independent individuals, each with their own motivations. .......... contributing can directly or indirectly lead to paid work which acts as another long-term retention tool. ............ people won't get the peer reviews they require to accomplish their goals by being arrogant, insulting, and demeaning towards others. ............ The sooner a frustrated user realizes that there is only a collective “we" where each contributes whatever they can to make the project better, the sooner the transformation into contributor can take place. Users then learn to channel their frustration into an effective force for change. ............ The same peer review process that lends itself to building a strong community and great software can be terrifying to newcomers. .......... The natural problem-solving methodology for perfectionists tends to be withdrawal from the community and working quietly in isolation until they believe they've achieved something that is immune to criticism. This brings with it a whole host of problems ........................ their work can get permanently trapped in "analysis paralysis" and never see the light of day. ........... Working in isolation eliminates transparency ........... In a worst-case scenario, the larger community has already developed a solution to a problem in parallel by the time the perfectionist is finished, leading the perfectionist to extreme frustration, particularly if coupled with a deep attachment to their own solution. ........................... vital to establish a strong culture of “release early, release often” ............ a lack of attachment to any one solution so that the best possible solution is found. ...... The key difference that separates healthy perfectionist contributors from unhealthy ones is the participation in a collaborative problem-solving process, rather than an introverted one. ................ Focus on the people, not the product. A team that enjoys working with one another will naturally be more productive. Take a "mental health" check of the people on your team. Is there animosity brewing between two or more groups that could be solved by them working more closely together? Is decision-making in the hands of a single individual, hampering the feeling of ownership by other, capable people? Resolving these kinds of issues should take precedence over anything else. ............. fight red tape in all of its forms. Remember that a frustrated person is often best poised to lead revolutionizing changes for the better as they have the motivation. Get the road blocks out of their way and empower them to get to work. ........... Put processes in place that help prevent perfectionists from getting trapped in their own heads, and get them working with others instead."

I have been part of a conversation at the Google Wave API Google Group where I have been trying to suggest community is as important as code, and so there has to be talk of the culture of the Wave developer community. Many have disagreed saying code is all that matters. Some have said community also matters but maybe you don't know enough to be talking community either. I don't know what I don't know. But vision and group dynamics are specialties all their own.

The last suggestion I made was, let's have 100 threads on purely technical issues, and I hope to develop my technical chops along the way, but let's have one thread where we talk about fluffy issues like vision and community. Code and community do belong at the same forum.

Once it is established that both code and community are important, we can then move on to studying the lessons of the open source communities past so as to distill from their best practices, because the Wave developer community, culturally speaking, has more in common with the open source communities than any of the corporate ones.

Building a community of developers is not just about code.

I am not trying to lead or follow. I am just trying to be part of the conversation, to learn from the conversation, to contribute to the conversation.

Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?
The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

From The Google Blogs

1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?

Google is about to get a vibrant developer community around Wave. This is a first for Google in terms of how big one can expect it to be. I guess the Android developer community also counts. The two can be considered the first among equals. But a mobile operating system was not something fundamentally new, Wave is.

There are about 20,000 people working for Google, many of them coders. Google has some of the smartest coders in the world. But not all of the smartest coders in the world work for Google. Most don't. It is a numbers game. Google is not big enough to house all the smartest coders in the world. Many of the smartest are soloists, or small group types who gutturally abhor anything corporate. The open source community appeals to many of them.

Image via CrunchBase

The Wave community will be a great platform for them. The top developers will make mega bucks. They will make much more than the late coming engineers at Google.

So if the Wave developer community is going to be larger than Google Corporate, and if many members of that developer community will make mega bucks, you have to ask, does that developer community need a culture? A codified value system? Will that evolve on its own? Or will each small group within that community have a slightly distinct culture and value system of its own?

Microsoft has had a developer community around Windows for as long as Windows has been around. The budding Wave community will be similar, only much, much bigger.

I take it for granted that a value system will emerge, just like a market will emerge. It will not be top down. It will not be something dictated by Google Corporate. It will be grassroots. It will likely be diverse. But it will emerge. It will have more in common with the unregulated, uncorporate open source community than Google Corporate. But that is no harbinger of clashes. The two cultures can create a happy symbiosis. That is precisely why just like it has been important to articulate the Google corporate culture, (The Google Corporate Culture) I think it is important to try and articulate the developer community culture.

Members of this developer community are more likely to show up for their local Wave MeetUps than jamborees at Googleplex, if only because the community will be global and scattered. Much of the community action will be online.

The Google Corporate Culture
Google Wave: Organizations Will Go Topsy Turvy
Google Wave: Enormous Buzz
Possible Google Wave Applications And Innovations
Google Wave Architecture: Designed For Mass, Massive, Global Innovation
The Google Wave Architecture
Google Wave Ripples
Is Google Wave Social Enough To Challenge Facebook, Twitter?
Of Waves And Tsunamis
Google Wave: Wave Of The Future?
Google Wave: If Email Were Invented Today

From The Google Blogs

1 Wave Sandbox, 5 Hours, 17 Awesome Demos
The Making of the Sudoku Gadget
Google Wave API Office Hours
Google Wave team heads to Google Developer Days in Asia
Introducing the Google Wave APIs: what can you build?
Went Walkabout. Brought back Google Wave.

Pages

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

7 Ways To Make Money Blogging

Apex Analytix: Audit Software

Tagged: Chugging Along, But What Differentiates?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Opera Unite: New Definition For Client/Server

Maybe America Does Not Need To Make Things

Monetizing Twitter: A Few Ideas

Summer Service

Social Security Disability: Greater Philadelphia

BusinessBroker.net

Monday, June 15, 2009

Five Blind Men And Google Wave

A Little Trouble At The Google Wave API Google Group

Lessons From The Open Source Community For The Wave Community

Google Wave Developer Community: Asking For A Culture?