One of the interesting trends to watch unfold in 2010 is the release of the US centric controlling interests in ICANN with the late 2009 Management changes and the acceptance of non-latin characters for internet addresses.

When you think about it, this has the potential (and inevitable) eventuality of strongly changing the character of the predominantly english content of the web over time, and the knock-on effects that brings… How do you enter the website address for an arabic website in farsi? or a doublebyte website address for a japanese site in kanji?

How will an english speaking user even find such a site? (watch the power of Google Translate come to the fore)

Have a look at this article in today’s Australian by Mahesh Sharma…

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/innovations-to-spread-as-us-cedes-internet-control/story-e6frg8zx-1225814235591

He has an interesting outlook on the effects this may bring about, including the World shift of innovation, commercialisation and educational excellence as the US cedes control of this space.

With the emerging giants in China and India, this may very well take an interesting turn…

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

A great Analyst piece was released by ComputerWorld today outlining the outlook (no pun intended) for the battle between Google and Microsoft in 2010.

Have a look at the article by Sharon Gaudin in the US that was released this morning:

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/330795/news_analysis_google_microsoft_escalate_war_2010/

This snippet from the article is a good  summary:

["These two companies really squared off this year," said Jim McGregor, an analyst with In-Stat. "Both are looking for dominant positions in the Internet. For Google to increase its business, it needs to move into other territory. For Microsoft to have significant growth opportunities, it needs to become an Internet powerhouse, and they know it. This is not a war that is going to be won by one or two battles. This is going to be a prolonged activity."

He added that the battle isn't simply over which can be called top dog, because the fight is critical to both companies. "For Google, it's about expanding, and for Microsoft, it's about a life-or-death challenge," McGregor said.]

I noticed with amounts paid for both Google’s ($15M) and Microsoft’s ($10M) ability to search the Twitter stream this week, we have a fairly healthy indicator of the battle between the two over online search.

http://www.itproportal.com/portal/news/article/2009/12/22/twitter-set-make-profit-2009-thanks-bing-google/

Another article this week alluded to Google’s current research (some 25 odd projects) into increasing internet speeds.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/185239/google_races_to_speed_up_the_web.html

I think 2010 is going to be an interesting year in this space as we see the battle for domination of the web pan out.

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

Had a look at the images that have been leaking via Twitter of the proposed new Google Phone – or Nexus…

Looks awfully like the HTC Dragon to me… From what I have seen so far… only two of the navigation icons are different.

It will be interesting to see what finally comes out though, and whether Google Voice will be available on it when it does.

One step closer to true unified Comms!

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

Have a look at this very interesting and thought provoking presentation on Social Media.

The evidence is mounting!

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

Wacom has quietly announced the launch of a new range of Bamboo Tablet devices, introducing the Multi-Touch capability with the popular Bamboo look and feel, this should prove popular.

Available in the following models:

1. Bamboo (Pen & Touch)
2. Bamboo Touch
3. Bamboo Pen
4. Bamboo Fun
5. Bamboo Craft

There is a version now suitable for just about any popular use.

I am quite impressed with the Pen & Multi-touch aspects of the complete Bamboo offering.

Bamboo Pen & Touch

Have a look at the use of the Multi-touch capability in a video on the Wacom site:

Multi-Touch Video

I’ll be watching to see the uptake, as I expect this will be popular.

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

Two announcements in the last week from Google focusing on the Public Sector.

The first being that Google is engaged with the US Federal Government to create a secure Government Cloud. That is, all the Google services, but secured out to the Federal Government alone.

At a recent Longhaus Hypothetical “Government with its Head in the Cloud“, Local (Australian) Government organisations have said that a similar approach would be needed for any significant uptake by Australian Government bodies. I’m sure they will be watching the US Feds closely as they delve into this initiative.

And also last week, but noticed by me today on Twitter, Senator Conroy launched Google for Public Sector.

Both a serious play at the, Federal in particular, Governments in the US and Australia, and I assume other countries as well.

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

It was great to see that one (actually 3) of the stand-out ideas in the recent Lotus IdeaJam was centred around winning the hearts and minds of tertiary students.

This has been one of my hobby-horses for a number of years, and really is a bit of a no-brainer. Tomorrow’s business people are today’s students, and providing them with the collaborative technologies and capabilities early in their life will establish appropriate and emerging practices that they will carry into their business lives.

Let’s hope something meaningful is taken up from the IdeaJam around this very important issue, and that our Universities will reap the reward sooner rather than later.

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

You have to laugh at the litigious nature of our American cousins at times. On the same day that I receive this year’s email about the “Stella Awards” outlining the outrageous successful lawsuits of 2009, I also see an article in the press about a class action against Facebook for essentially being too popular.

Among the plaintiffs are the following:

1. A woman who joined Facebook in the very early days when it was largely confined to the college campus at Berkley who has a problem with everyone in the rest of the World seeing her information.
2. A photographer and an actress who argue that Facebook shouldn’t be sharing photos they uploaded to their profiles.
3. An underage boy (11 years old – requirement is 13) being able to signup to the service.

I have some simple solutions for all of them and will hopefully save the US court system (and Facebook) several millions.

1. Unsubscribe
2. Unsubscribe
3. Parents supervise & unsubscribe

Is that all just a little too simple, or am I missing something?

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

Just discovered a wonderful program on CNBC called “Collaboration Now“.

It has an obvious Business/Finance bent, but that’s just the people that we need on board to see the value of collaboration technologies and processes.

They have a great lineup of guests as follows:

Dr. Peter Diamandis
Chairman & CEO, X Prize and Co-Founder, Space Adventures

Anousheh Ansari
First Woman Private Space Exporer

Brian Mulroney
Former Canadian Prime Minister

Evan Rosen
Author of “The Culture of Collaboration”

Miles Everson
Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers

Paul Otellini
CEO, Intel

Don Proctor
Senior VP, Voice Technology, Cisco

Johan Hoegstedt
VP, Strategic Planning and Development, AstraZeneca

Dr. Ranjay Gulati
Harvard Business School

You can see the first episode here:

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com

The following Article has a great list of Social Media tools used as influencers by organisations at the cutting edge of the Social technology phenomenon .

http://www.briansolis.com/2009/06/unveiling-the-new-influencers/

Any student of Social technologies, media and networks would do well to give the article a thorough read. For that matter, the PR2.0 blog by Brian Solis is very informative in general.

Included are the following:

Searching the Social Web

• Collecta

Microblogs

• PeopleBrowsr
• FriendFeed
• OneRiot
• Google Query (Coming soon)
• Twitter Search
• Twitority
• Tweefind
• Twazzup
• Twingly

Blogsearch

• Technorati
• Blogsearch.google.com
• Blogged.com
• Twingly
• BackType

Forums/Usergroups

• BoardReader
• BoardTracker
• Google Groups
• Yahoo Groups
• Ning
• Meetup

Listening & Conversation Management Systems

• BuzzGain
• HowSociable
• WhosTalking
• FiltrBox
• Radian6
• Buzzmetrics
• Trackur
• Visible Technologies
• Sentiment Metrics
• TNS Cymfony
• BrandsEye
• Cision Social Media
• Techrigy
• Trendrr
• SocialMention

All worth looking at and the article is well written and very enlightening.

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com