An article that talks about wikis as disruptive technology within organizations:
What is clear is organizations continue to spend millions of dollars on content management infrastructure solutions, rather than putting more power in the hands of their users to collaborate effectively together. The wiki paradigm is disruptive because it is a low-cost alternative that brings key editing features into the hands of users. The approach increases the collaborative productivity of an organization or its extended ecosystems.
Overall, wikis increase the socialization process, enabling collaboration to generate at warp speed. Socialization underpins the sharing of ideas, and hence innovation capacity increases from wiki infrastructure.
To date, wikis have largely been a grassroots phenomenon. Few senior executives have used a wiki or are embracing collaboration patterns at the speed required for competitive advantage. Compared with new firms embracing the architecture of participation, that puts them at a disadvantage.
A recent IBM international survey of 765 CEOS confirmed that CEOs will say they are for collaboration and for radically shaking up their business models to increase their innovation speed. However, when asked how their organizations are collaborating in different markets, the results in their ability to collaborate effectively were: in emerging markets, 73 percent; in global markets, 51 percent; and in mature markets, only 47 percent.
This won't be news to everyone, but here are some things that make people hate your web page:
1. Invasive advertising: Cunnington says users widely despise ads that cover content, ads that flash wildly and ads that chew broadband.
2. Re-inventing the wheel: people do not want to have to learn how to use a site before they can browse it, Cunnington said.
3. 'Leap of faith' links: that means disclosing information on content and file size.
4. Attention-deficit Web sites: "Users have a special hatred of flashing icons and banners, because they draw the eye away from what is important and hinder their progress," Cunnington said.
5. War and Peace length: "A common mistake in Web design is to just [convert] a brochure to the Web. But the Web is its own medium, and communication has to change to reach users. Users are known to read 25 percent slower on the screen than on paper, read fewer words and don't like long pages which require scrolling down," she said.
Russell Buckley talks about Real World Wiki, the process of annotating physical objects and accessing the information via mobile phone, and what might be its beginnings in Wikimapia.
...via Carnival of the Mobilists
In case you were thinking about building your own:
...and so much more!
...via Digg
A Boston Globe article on why Google makes everyone else nervous:
Research firms are only now beginning to take the measure of the company's influence. A recent study by Outsell showed that 80 percent of advertisers now use the Internet, with the adoption rate projected to hit 90 percent by 2008. While search engine advertising is expected to increase 26 percent this year, with Google raking in the largest share, spending is projected to grow 2 percent for newspaper and magazine ads and 2.4 percent for radio and television ads.
Research firms are only now beginning to take the measure of the company's influence. A recent study by Outsell showed that 80 percent of advertisers now use the Internet, with the adoption rate projected to hit 90 percent by 2008. While search engine advertising is expected to increase 26 percent this year, with Google raking in the largest share, spending is projected to grow 2 percent for newspaper and magazine ads and 2.4 percent for radio and television ads.
Similarly, the Google effect has reduced Internet service companies -- who'd once hoped to be gateways to the Internet that profited from Internet services -- to ``pipe companies" that build networks and charge businesses and consumers for access.
And, Google's e-mail, calendar, and word-processing products are pioneering an ad-supported Internet delivery model that threatens the desktop licensing model of Microsoft and other proprietary software companies, and could appeal to their ``enterprise" market of businesses and other organizations. Aiding Google's efforts to deliver robust software on the Internet, and faster search results, is a worldwide network of between 300,000 and 1 million servers, according to analysts' estimates; Google itself declines to specify its number of servers.
In addition to some of the issues mentioned in this article one of the big, big issues that companies like Google should be worried about if they seriously want these applications to take off is privacy rights and protecting individuals from unwarranted search and scanning. Trusting the company that's storing your life online is something that we all ought to take very seriously (and really it can't just be based on trust. We need an infrastructure that updates traditional protections in light of electronic storage and guarantees them as we are guaranteed protections in our homes and other properties).