What is Enterprise 2.0?

Just when you think the coining of Tech terms might have finally ebbed away, here comes another one! Enterprise 2.0. The question then is - What is Enterprise 2.0? As Andrew McAfee put it, it is "the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers". A better definition is from AIIM which defines it as "a system of web based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise". It involves utilizing collaborative, social media and networking, and productivity tools in a business setting.

What is Enterprise 2.0?

Examples of Enterprise 2.0 tools are blogs, twitter, mini wikis, mashups. Some examples utilized in class were twitter, blogging, YouTube, Google Wave, aggregation tools such as - Yahoo Pipes - (I so miss Microsoft Popfly though.....)and iphone apps that we learned how to develop (some...).

While this field is still in the early stages of development and growth, some benefits of Enteprise 2.0 include:

1. Employees have tools that enable the free flow of communication/information. This might in turn encourage participation and foster a creative environment where ideas that help boost productivity can be born.
2. Greater knowledge capture and retention.
3. Transparency of information.
4. Better collaboration of information.

Cons
Social media tools e.g. blogs can be valuable when it comes to sharing knowledge, better agility and more fluid dissemination of information, but the issue then arises - how does an enterprise control access and dissemination of information, ensure information integrity, organize information gathered and realize any ROI with these tools?

Impact on ROI of these technological applications is another concern.

Another issue is that businesses are always continually in the process of adapting technologies as the technological landscape evolves. With that said, I believe it is safe to assume that businesses will organically evolve, progress, and adapt to technology as it changes and in ways that will add to their business value - social media platforms or otherwise. Which begs the question is Enterprise 2.0 a fad or a trend? The jury is out on this one and only time will tell if Enterprise 2.0 will be a 'one-hit wonder' or if it is here to stay.

Net Neutrality & Building a Business Model (11/05/2009)

For class this week, we had a debate on whether Net Neutrality regulation is necessary. As passionate as one may be (in this case me) about the issue, we had to leave our opinions aside and focus on the resolution that "Net Neutrality Regulation was unnecessary". I was on the pro side (and we won!). The debate not only added to my know-what of the whole issue, but also from the dangers of letting govt. get involved. Some dangers include infringing on people's access to information, interfering with free market, hindering innovation, management costs that would be borne by the taxpayers,and the how-what-why-where-when regulation would be carried out. The biggest question I guess is CAN GOVERNMENT BE TRUSTED TO REGULATE INFORMATION CONTENT ON THE INTERNET? Given their inefficienty in times past with use management of the ARPANET, the far from below expectations from recent examples (SEC vs. BOA), and the fact that rules to protect the consumer are already in place, I personally arrived at the conclusion to best let the internet be and engage the powers of demand and supply.

How To Develop a Business Plan

The prof introduced us to a very relevant topic. For any business to be successful, one has to draw up a business plan/model as to how Goals and objectives will be met. He broke the up into the following categories:

• Value Proposition
• Marketing Strategy
• Management Team
• Competitive Strategy
• Competitive Environment
• Revenue Model
• Market Opportunity

Sherpa Studios Dude (10/29/2009)

Search Engine Optimization:

Organic:SEO

Organic SEO is based on the site content and structure who links to it and who does not which is 70% of traffic to most websites.

Sponsored Clicks:

Every time someone clicks on your add, kaching! Every time does a query, there is a micro auction. Pay-per-click means "you pay to play".

There is a high correlation btwn sponsored clicks and organic searches. Drop positions in search results when cpc is turned off despite Google's denial that any correlation exists.

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella for both SEO and PPC. Sometimes used to interchangeably mean PPC by amateurs.

Two things that control pages - on & off page trackers(everything you do not have much control over e.g. linking to your website). On page trackers are things you have control on: e.g code, org, structure, server of the website.

They matter because of :

Deployment ease:

iterative: manipulate factors and quickly see the effect: e.g. changing texts and Urls within web page to have as much keywords as possible. e.g small tortoise.

control: all within your control.

weighted: top ranking influencers in non competitive environment.

Keyword Density:

Assumption is that the higher the ranking the better the quality and that is not necessarily true.

Google is great target market. Bing and Yahoo less frequent in updating their search engines. When doing SEM, design for both Search Engines & Humans. e.g. Tankless Water Heaters page: The design is appealing to the eye and is structured and designed to draw in customers but the source code is optimized for search engines. Some text appears bold when in actual fact is composed of headers.

Important Factors for SEO

1. Title Tag: In SEO its all about key phrases.
Best practice - Use few but exact keywords.

2. Body Tag:
Better practice: frequent use (keyword density)

Best practice: withing first 200 words (keyword placement)

3. H1 H2 H3: It is better to use the entire Hx family.

4. <'bold/strong'>:emphasizing keyword with <'strong'> links

5. Domain/URL: include keyword in URL keyword.com
Homepage has most weight

6. Filename - including keyword in page name.

Best practice - keep files near root directory

7. img ALT-including keyword image alt tags
Best practice - use short, brief descriptions.

8. Inbound link anchor text: include keywords in internal links
Best practice: avoid superfluous words

9. Inbound link popularity: increasing number of links to an internal page
Best practice: use the to superfluous pages - "link sculpting"

10. Use clean, lightweight markup: separating presentation (formatting)
from data (content, images).

Best practice: separate css file

4 Negative Factors:

1. server often inaccessible to robots: cannot crawl a website that is
not up.

2. content similar/duplicate: splits the power of links and serves penalty

3. External link quality - not all external links equal;

bad links are harmful

4. META keywords - does not hurt to use them, but its best to avoid doing
keyword research for competition.

5. Stop using plural as much as possible.
Research has shown volume of traffic/conversion were much lower.

6. Find out how consumers type searches.

e.g. tankless water heater gas vs tankless gas water heater. Research
has shown that consumers searching for tankless water heaters type
"tankless water heater gas" versus "tankless gas water heaters".

Find out what consumers type in from resources such as
"Google Adwords traffic estimation"

Some useful links:

1. The Web's Best SEO Resources

2. Search Engine Marketing Blog

3. Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist

4. Search Engine Journal

5. Internet Marketing Services

Find·a·bil·i·ty as defined by Peter Morville is:

a. The quality of being locatable or navigable.
b. The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate.
c. The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation
and retrieval.

It is the ability to direct one's target audience to their website.

In his book, "Building Findable Websites", Aarron Walter lists the disciplines of findability as:

• SEO
Search Engine Optimization helps a website become findable. Implementation of SEO techniques help in page rank, relevancy and search visibility.
• Accessibility
• Us·a·bil·i·ty
Usability refers to the ease with which a User Interface can be used by its intended audience to achieve defined goals. Usability incorporates many factors: design, functionality, structure, information architecture, and more. (sitepoint.com)
• In•for•ma•tion ar•chi•tec•ture
In their book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Peter Morville & Louis Rosenfeld define it as:
1. The structural design of shared information environments
2. The combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within web sites and intranets
3. The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape
• Development
• Marketing
• Copyrighting
• Design

General Iphone Web Pages Best Practices:

• Make your web page unique but user friendly e.g. using accelerometer features for tapping, shaking, etc
• Test, test and then re-test again!
• Provide adequate support
• Make sure you are current with SDK updates
• Ensure that image resolution is not too big

Here is a good link with information on ViewPort & CSS for the Iphone => Iphone Tips

When Posting an Online Video...............

Best practices for producing and distributing video on the Web:

Say there is a company that has produced a great how-to-video on making widgets. The next thing they need to think about is how they are going to publish or distribute this video on the web. When posting videos online there are a couple of things to consider. First what is the goal of posting it? Is it to start a viral marketing campaign about a social issue or is it to provide a service on the company's website to draw more people in? And secondly, what kind of web server does the company have and how knowledgeable is the webmaster? The answers to those questions can help the company decide whether to host the video on their on server or post your video to a sharing site such as YouTube.

Benefits and concerns of a company hosting its own videos:

Hosting your own video can draw more visitors to your site, enable you to customize how everything on the page looks, and one can choose to sell ads or not. There are a few things that need to be in place before this is a viable option. First, you have to know how to work with the video files if you are going to host your own videos. The webmaster will have to encode the video into a different format to incorporate it into the website. For example a lot of videos are edited using mpeg or avi but to put them on the web in an easily usable form they need to be in Flash (by Adobe) or Quicktime (by Apple). Most web videos are streamed using Flash. The second thing to consider is can I afford the bandwidth? Video files are large and require a lot of bandwidth to host.

Search Engine Optimizations tips:

Limit each page to one video, allow the URL to be specific to a video, place all videos in a central folder/directory, use an embedded player in the page instead of a popup, use text on the page to describe the video, use tags and meta tags to help search engines, submit the video to Google sitemaps to help speed up the indexing of the video for search, and allow users to share the video with friends by providing the url or providing social networking links.

Benefits and concerns of a company posting videos:

Unlike a hosted solution that requires video conversion, the posted solution takes care of converting the video files, and they pay for the bandwidth. Also, most of these sites, like YouTube, MetaCafe, or GoogleVideo, have a good reputation and a large user base that is constantly watching videos and sharing the videos with friends. This is a great solution for any type of viral marketing campaign. Popular YouTube videos are tied into universal search (incorporated into Google "web search", people don't have to be specifically searching for videos to be shown videos on that topic ) in Google which is a great way to publicize a video. Going with a posted solution however, you lose the full customization over the look of the page and whether ads are shown. In most video sharing sites, ads are displayed. Some ads maybe images or text but some maybe videos that play before your video is shown. In some cases this could be an ad for a competitor.

Search Engine Optimization tips:

Post your website URL in the description of the video, create your own account/channel/brand to allow people to follow all of your videos and any future updates, use your url in a watermark in the video because these might be copied and posted elsewhere (it is viral), allow comments and ratings to generate user excitement and discussion, and use tubemogul.com to upload the video to all major sharing sites and see analytics on those videos. TubeMogul looks like a very powerful tool for businesses or individuals to track videos all over the web.

Information from http://www.reelseo.com/seo-best-practices/

Web Analytics

Just finished submitting my term paper on Scribd. I actually enjoyed doing the research. I am intrigued by the fact that data on a website can be mined and the depth to which it can be drilled down to. The more I learn about web development, the more appealing a career choice it appears. On another note, makes you wonder what else goes on behind the scenes as you crawl about the internet.

Here is the link: Web Analytics Term Paper

Rich Internet Applications (09-24-2009)

Tried out some cool websites that demonstrate how information can be made rich. A quick glance at a few examples in the books by Edward Tufte effectively showed how to go about making your data visual, meaningful and appealing. I was going back and forth on whether to buy the Adobe suite for my new laptop. The class demonstrated the importance of learning how to incorporate flash objects in internet applications and therefore, I am sold!

HULU watch free movies online!

Tried to watch Dr Horrible but two flu-sniffling boys clawing for mommy made me change to watching Veggie Tales which they absolutely love. The movie was High Quality which I appreciated. The bar even showed where commercials would pop up and I have to admit:- I am not a fan of commercials and surprisingly, they were not as many and as long as I thought they would be......switching from one show to another....... different story.

Technologies required to create Hulu include Adobe flash technologies. Research shows that Hulu is working on a subscription based model where users will be able to pay for premium content and possibly cable/satellite shows. By making it possible to watch shows online and for free, the need to buy a pirated copy is reduced. Licensing and royalty fees are a major factor when it comes to growth in this sector.

Competition is on the rise. Cable TV owners such as Comcast are developing their own online video streaming website, as well as other TV companies such as CBS. This limits the amount of portfolio available on Hulu and also hinders their power to gain market share. All in all, the future of streaming video seems very bright. Hulu has set the example of how it should be done and as advancements continue to be made, the richer the content will be, which will make a more pleasant online-video-viewing experience for the consumers.

BUZZWORD by Adobe

Buzzword is an online word processor which acts like a normal word processor. It is an collaborative tool in that various users can work on the same document. Users are able to share and store files.Buzzword contains many great tools such as fonts, colors,comments, word count, version history, lists, just to name a few. One can import any .doc or .odt files.

I believe Buzzword is better than Google Docs as they provide a more richer customer experience. Despite the fact that it is still in beta mode, the promise of what the future holds is very promising and as functionality and applications are added I believe it will be give Google Docs a run for its money.

Compared to Google Docs:

	Buzzword	Google Docs
Layout	X
Collaboration	X	X
Cost	Free	Free

Twitter (09-17-2009)

I have as yet to ascribe to the idea of social networking so this was a first for me. I also doubt I will be following anybody much less be followed but here is what I came up with.

Thou Shall Nots:
Impersonate, use violent language, copyright infringe, have serial accounts, spam other "tweeple" send tweets greater than 140 characters, post pornographic material, voice your opinions (twitter is about what you're doing not what you think), have ads designed to generate revenue on their micro blogging site, perform illegal activities, follow over 2,000 people.

Business uses:
Real time Customer Support:
Twitter can be used as a notification agent to address customer concerns and problems.

Promotion & Marketing Strategies:
Twitter can help a company generate buzz, collect statistics, provide coupons, e.t.c. Collecting customer feedback is also a twitter feature that business can implement.

Twitter helps companies be 'more human' through interaction of the customer/client.

Notification Agent:
Enables companies to disseminate information quickly and provide updates to customers faster. Updates and product launch information can also be posted much faster.

Companies can monitor what customers are saying about them, which enables them to react quickly to situations.

Some tools I found that business use include tweekdeck, tweetie, twellow, and tweety.

Opera Browser

Age: 15 years & Counting

What it is: Web browser & Internet suite.

Market share: 2.4% according to W3C.

However, has stronger market share among mobile devices and is being utilized in games such as Nintendo DS & the Wii.

Cost: Free for PCs and Mobile phones. Not free for Enterprise use.

Surprise fact: Opera integrated Bit Torrent in their browser.

THE MOLLY HOLZSCHLAG VISIT

Interesting lady to say the least. Now I get why she is called a web evangelist. Very passionate about what she believes in. Dare I say tenacious too? I believe so. A "bit" too winded on the Microsoft angle but so would anyone with an agenda. I have yet to read on the IE support issues as per her claims, but recent articles on the internet show that Google & Digg will stop supporting IE6. A quick glance at source code from various websites includes the meta tag for IE8 so there may be some merit to her claims. Did not quite get what she does for the Opera people and did not leave the room knowing anything more than I had previously about the browser. Being a creature of habit, Firefox/IE it is for me. All in all, a good presentation....and oh...she is Definetely a name dropper!

Food for thought: America, like many other nations is a capitalistic society. With all the hype being generated about web standards and all, my question is - who stands to make money in all of this? Hmmmmm......

Samosa Anyone? (The Wikipedia Edit)

Being a self proclaimed foodie, I searched for a food I loved and one where the wiki police were not making constant patrols. I searched for Samboosas a.k.a samosas. There were a couple of changes that I felt the article lacked and amazingly making changes was pretty easy. I did not have to create an account or log in and the changes appeared instantly. Ofcourse, there is the usual disclaimer that changes can be removed.... but for the most part, a very fluid process. If you like trying out new foods, I promise you this one will not disappoint - trick is to get it from the right place where it's done right!

09-10-2009 (Chuck Hudson Drop In)

And the caffeine came crushing down.....after a long night of HTML coding and operating on a few hours sleep, Colombian cafe kept me going for most of the class but then came the crash and man was it fast and hard...i.e. until Chuck Hudson walked in.

Very interesting topic and his delivery of "you can do it if you put your mind to it" presentation was really good. I got to learn that apps can be developed on other phones - Crackberries & Nokia's. I also love the cautionary tales of Apple Inc's adoption of applications - just cause you can build an app don't mean it will go live. Last but not least, two words that really WoWeD! me Augmented Reality. Really cool stuff.

Dr. Piercy's list of popular languages out there was also a great jump off point for anyone thinking of learning a new language.

09-08-2009 ("Six" Forces Porter Model)

Porter's 5 Forces Analysis was interesting to learn.  The validity of the sixth model makes sense and should be mentioned.  Also, the websites Dr. Piercy shared in class along with the Mozilla add-ons were an added bonus. Brad's in class example further demonstrated just how valuable the tools are. 

I do have to agree with the prof's view on the Blue Ocean Strategy.  I read and analyzed it for a marketing class in days past (o.k. years past) and the consensus was that book was more about differentiation through innovation as opposed to the way to gain competitive strategy.

Long weekend...Starting on the h/w today....what can I say, I love working under pressure....

08-28-2009 (I Phone Apps)

Last week's class was interesting. Got to try out a new Iphone app - Ocarina. Creatively, it was undeniably great work. For apple, a gold mine was born - thanks to the Stanford group that worked so hard on it. However, being somewhat of a non-conformist, I still don't buy the apps angle as a reason to purchase an Iphone. The data fees notwithstanding, and even despite the fact that the Iphone will be available through multiple carriers in 2010, I still believe that as a consumer, my adoption of technology should arise from a functional deficit and utility should be high - not so much the existence of it. From an educational standpoint though - I am looking forward to finding out how to build an app and from a business perspective, an ingenious effort on Apple's part to not only increase their financial bottom line, but also gain market share as well as increase the loyal 'mac-head count' tremendously.

"Neither an early adopter nor a laggard be" (Roy Tennant)

While doing the h/w I learnt so much about html - the big one that comes to mind is how to use CSS on the head & title elements.  The HTML validator was also a new tool I discovered last class that I will definetely put to good use.

08-20-2009 (Networking)

Welcome! My name is Betty. I am taking my masters in IT because after my undergrad, I still felt the need to learn more about IT. Also, my husband travels a lot and I did not want to start working and have both of us traveling out of town at the same time (two kids at home)... so presently, pursuing my masters is the best fit for me.

I am looking forward to learning a lot more about IT. The OSI model discussion in class sparked an interest in learning about networking and I hope to enroll in a class in the Spring. Who'd have thunk??!! I still feel like a greenhorn and any boost to geekdom I can get, I will take.

After many an unsuccessful attempts at selling my husband's TCP-IP books online, not to mention the cursory 'you-are-taking-up-too-much-space-in-my-home-office' looks at the huge collection, I am excited to have failed at selling them and look forward to learning something about networking.

This quote nails it!

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. ~Clay P. Bedford

HTML.01 vs HTML 5

Been staring at the screen for a while....wondering how to come with an interesting way to write down the differences between HTML 4 & 5. As of now, I am still blank! It would have been nice to have a test run and get a feel of it, but my online research thus far has led me to the conclusion that it is yet to become mainstream.....so after scouring through the internet here is what I came up with....

The new changes incorporated in HTML5 will facilitate interoperability, sharing and integration. Also, efficiencies of HTML will make web applications richer, and faster helping web developers create web pages that incorporate many tools that are all integrated in one program.

HTML5 differs from HTML4.01 in that;

• It consists of both HTML & XML.
• Has new elements such as dialog, video, section, footer, e.t.c.
• Elements do not have to be closed.
• Has new attributes. Some attributes and elements have also changed.
• HTML5 introduces APIs to help with web apps.
• Has extensions.
• Has new parsing rules that aid in compatibility.
• Has done away with deprecated elements.
• Includes global attributes
• Has audio & Video embedding.
• Has pre-defined class names.
• Can support new media, drawings & images.
• Will make it possible to make animated pages and games.

I am sure there is a lot more stuff that I have not included. Most of the documentation on the W3C link was very technical. A visit to W3C provides a more in depth analysis of changes.