Futurity Media

Generally these days, when we think of virtualisation, we think of it in the context of IT infrastructure. But the notion of virtualisation goes far beyond servers and storage, and has profound cultural and economic ramifications. We’re becoming increasingly disassociated from our physical environments, and in many cases, I don’t think we realise it.

The symptoms of this disassociation can be very explicit. Most recently, two Korean parents were sentenced after letting their baby daughter starve to death while they busied themselves playing online games. They neglected the real world, while immersing themselves in a virtual one.

Most discussions of those who live too much online focus on the obvious issues: gaming addition, a preoccupation with cybersex, or an unhealthy obsession with Facebook. It’s easy to point out that many of us speak to more people on Facebook in a day than we speak to in real life. All of these are well-made points, but they’re only part of a broader issue.

The pervasive nature of virtualisation also affects our economy and society in broader ways. Our supply chains are so virtual that we can switch suppliers thousands of milles away in an instant. The virtualisation of our housing by interpreting it in terms of credit default swaps led us to forget how much they were really worth, and when someone realised that, it tanked the economy.

Tech can bring us wonderful benefits. It enables me to speak to my children and see and hear them, even when I am in a different city. I can pick the brains of a large community of extremely smart people, without leaving my chair. And every time I turn on my Mac, I’m bathed in new ideas. It’s the most intellectually stimulating place on the planet.

But in acknowledging all that, we must also acknowledge the downsides. Virtualisation involves the abstraction of the logical from the physical. In that sense, it naturally tends to alienate us from our physical environments, and with that, comes a sense that we have forgotten how to live in the moment. I worry that younger generations in particular, as plugged-in as they are, will lose this.

Eventually I think the pendulum will swing back to a point where we rediscover the value of the physical. But in the meantime, I hope that in the meantime, an over-reliance on technology at the expense of engagement with our environment won’t leave us spiritually bankrupt.

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Carrier Ethernet is a continuing hot topic in networks as it sweeps all before it. However, there is often some confusion about what it all means and how it is distinguished from traditional Ethernet. This article from Jim Theodoras, Chair of the Carrier Ethernet Subcommittee, Ethernet Alliance explains the some of the key issues about the Carrier Ethernet. His key points include:

• Carrier Ethernet has evolved to specifically carry disparate traffic from different subscribers. Each subscriber’s particular packets are therefore packaged up and transported undisturbed from one location to another, this provides traffic segregation and security;
• The first attempts to combine multiple subscribers Ethernet packets ran into all sorts of trouble because of inconsistent use of LAN addressing between different subscribers, in other words it was hard to identify who was what;
• Standardisation of hierarchical MAC addressing was required so that carriers could have their own addressing schemes, which were separate from their subscribers’
• Virtual LAN (VLAN) tagging allowed carriers to identify and separate traffic from different LANs. This has now expanded to allow double tagging to meet the needs of carriers for video traffic, etc.;
• Quality of service (QoS) is a key area of development. Simply marking a packet as a priority is not enough and Hierarchical QOS is helping carriers identify latency-sensitive traffic amongst a deluge of non-critical packets.

We’ve just finished a interesting assignment covering Orange Business Services’ annual customer event Orange Business Live! as part of a team of internal and external bloggers from France, UK and Belgium. The idea of the coverage was to show that interesting things happen at shows like this by publicising it to the outside world in real time. Stories,photos and videos were published to the Orange Business Live! blog and to the Orange Business posterous page. I wrote a round up of some of the stories that the bloggers wrote in this post and the social media presence was so successful that the new Orange Business Services CEO Vivek Badrinath came and checked us out himself.

Should CIOs blog? Should they tweet, or otherwise engage with social media? It is a question that IT executives should increasingly ask themselves, as they attempt to fight their corner within organisations that can be sceptical about IT as a function.

Blogging, once a pastime for celebrity followers, cookery buffs, and movie fans, has increasingly become a corporate activity as companies understand and embrace the appeal of social media. It can be used as a way to encourage conversations between executives and others in the industry, and with customers. It can be used as a platform to hammer home a particular message, or to promote a particular category of product. For CIOs, who in many cases are managing a transition for the IT function within their companies, it can be a useful way to make themselves heard. It is a pursuit followed by several high-profile CIOs, including Vivek Kundra, the CIO for the US Federal government.

For years now, IT departments have been considered a cost centre within organisations. IT executives constantly have had to battle boards that are unwilling to spend money on what they see as a cash drain on the organisation. However, in the last couple of years, some companies have begun maturing to the point where they see IT as a potential centre for revenue. The savvy CIO understands this transition, and the associated requirement for a more strategic conversation between the IT function and others in the business. If organisations can be persuaded to view IT strategically – as a business partner which can help to drive growth in new and interesting directions – then CIOs can manoeuvre themselves and their departments into a more advantageous position.

A blog is one way to help demonstrate thought leadership both within an organisation and further afield. It also helps to promote a CIO personally as a strategic thinker who can be relied upon for a visionary approach. Here are our top tips to help new CIO bloggers to make their mark:

Break new ground

There are plenty of blogs that say nothing. An online platform for discussion that simply spouts conventional wisdom is almost worse than no blog at all, because it casts the author in the role of follower, rather than leader. Find something new to say, and say it in an engaging and entertaining way.

Find a cause

One way to demonstrate a visionary approach and develop a distinct personal voice is by embracing a subject as yours, and using your blog as online platform to help win over others in the industry. Think about broad topics, such as accountability, service culture, or operational security – something that will identify you as a pioneer with a passion.

Market your blog

Develop reciprocal links. Twitter your blog, and use the blog to expand on some of your Tweets. Comment on other peoples’ blogs and add value to the conversation, rather than blatantly using others’ comment sections as a means of promoting your own outlet. It is also a good idea to promote your blog in areas that will attract like-minded people. User group web sites and discussion boards might be a good example. Measuring and monitoring is part of a good marketing strategy. Services such as PostRank Analytics provide analytics services that can help you to monitor the coverage that your blog posts are getting across various social media services.

Blog short, and blog often

Short, snappy posts of a few paragraphs are better than infrequent, longer posts. Busy readers like smart, informative content that they can digest easily, but they also like to keep coming back for more. Infrequent blogs make you seem inconsistent, and will discourage people from subscribing.

Check in with HR

You don’t need to rock the boat to make some interesting waves. Even bloggers that do not promote themselves as employees of their particular company can be subject to disciplinary action if they overstep the mark and say things that may bring their employer into disrepute. It is therefore imperative that bloggers capitalising on their executive position within a particular company should ensure that what they are saying does not cause any conflict with that company’s message. It would be wise to check in with human resources and with other board members to get the go-ahead to blog as an executive within your organisation

Make your blog last longer than your job

Your vision should outlast your tenure at any one company, and so should your blog. Use a personal URL wherever possible, so that you can take your online location and your blogging history with you where ever you end up. Phil Windley started blogging when he was the CIO for the State of Utah, for example, but has since maintained it while in multiple positions and roles in the tech industry.

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It isn’t often that a technology company breathes out the anger and breathes in the love, but that’s exactly what Adobe did – at least on the surface – with Apple the other week. The firm ran an ad on the popular online blog Engadget, along with a statement [PDF] in the Wall Street Journal, telling the world just how much it ‘hearts’ those piloting the Cupertino Death Star. What on earth inspired it to do that?

 The underlying text gives us some insights.

What we don’t love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it and what you experience on the web.

Oh dear.

In case you haven’t been following, Adobe is upset at Apple for not supporting its Flash multimedia technology on its latest device, the iPad.

 The iPad is the most sought-after tablet since Moses came down the mountain with a present from the Big Guy.

Actually, we could run for quite a while with this analogy. Steve Jobs is something of a god-like figure at Apple. Back in 1985, Jobs resigned in what amounted to a corporate crucifixion, after the board ousted him from the company. 

Then, in 1997, in a kind of second coming, Apple bought him back to revitalise the company, and he did it in style. He resurrected Apple from a firm with a confusing plethora of mediocre products to one with a pure, piercing design vision. He took the firm from losses of roughly $1bn in 1997 to profits of over $8bn on revenues of $43bn last year. No wonder the world listens to him, especially when he makes the odd infrequent posting on the Apple web site, such us his Thoughts on Flash (aka the Book of Jobs, chapter 1, verse 1).

Jobs explains in that post why Apple won’t allow Flash on the iPad or the iPhone. In short, he says that it isn’t open, that HTML 5 (the alternative, as-yet unratified standard that Apple has adopted) supports the majority of web-based video, that Flash is woefully insecure, that it drains battery life, and that it doesn’t support the touch-based interface of which Apple has become so proud. All of this is true. In particular, the reliability and security issues of the Flash player are well documented, and there have been several zero-day security flaws within Adobe’s Flash player in the past year.

The problem for Adobe is that the iPad is a very significant product. We were sceptical when it first appeared. It didn’t support Flash, which still litters large numbers of web sites. It didn’t have a camera. There was no multi-tasking. It seemed, in short, like an iPod Touch on steroids. Then, we got to play with one. 

It’s a more significant product than we thought. The large format screen, combined with the instant-on functionality, and the ability to point and swipe using the multi-touch interface, creates a new computing experience. It separates the productive mode of computing – the mode where you write, as I am now, or create a spreadsheet, or design a graphic – from the consumptive mode. The latter is the mode where you absorb information from the web and interact with applications and web sites without trying to crank out work.

 The iPad recasts this consumptive model of interacting with the web and with local applications as a ’sit back’ experience, rather than a ’sit forward’ one.

The difference between the two shouldn’t be underestimated. Until now, we have consumed content online in a ’sit forward’ model that puts us at odds with the device we’re using. Perching ourselves on a chair, or balancing a notebook on our lap on the sofa and fumbling with a mouse or trackpad isn’t the ideal way to surf the web and watch video. But holding something like an electronic notepad in the crook of your arm while lounging in an armchair and pointing directly at the screen with your finger is very conducive.

 Marry that experience with the native Cocoa software framework in OS X, and you get some stunning results, particularly when creating applications to present magazines and newspapers.

Publications such as Time, Vanity Fair, the Financial Times and Wired are already offering their publications as Cocoa-based applications for the iPad, and they change the reading experience dramatically enough to make the hardware platform an important development.

The iPad isn’t perfect, but it’s a stunning start, especially considering the largely ineffectual attempt that Microsoft made with tablet computing in 2002. And it’s the start of a new model for consuming content that could represent a ray of hope for the ailing print publishing sector. For publishers, the chance to redefine interfaces for the consumption of information from the ground up is a liberating experience. It could represent the beginning a swing back toward quality in content that the online world has needed for a while. Citizen journalism and crowdsourcing most definitely have their place, but since Web 2.0 first appeared, we have largely ignored the curatorial element that used to define quality in information. The iPad and other products that will undoubtedly follow might just kindle its resurgence.

That’s why Adobe should be worried. Flash was supposed to be the presentation technology that allowed content publishers to communicate with audiences in new and exciting ways. The problem is that the hardware and operating system platform is an intimate part of that communication. Unluckily for Adobe, the hardware and operating system company that finally got it right is an old partner that grew away from it over the years, to the point where it doesn’t respect Adobe’s key web multimedia product and doesn’t want the code in its back yard.

For all these reasons, Adobe stands at a crucial juncture in its history. Fanboy adulation aside, the iPad is hugely significant. And with Apple not on its side, Adobe will need all the friends that it can get.

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It’s the London Marathon this weekend, which will see over 30,000 people run or struggle through the heat for 26.2 miles. Good luck to them all. One part where technology will help them is in the timing systems which rely on RFID. Virgin, which sponsors the London Marathon has just got a new timing ship supplier, and all marathon runners will be wearing one of these on their trainers.

So when the runners go through the start a timing pad will pick up the fact that they have passed that point and will record their times. There will be pads positioned throughout the course that will give the runners their split times – i.e. how fast they have gone through each checkpoint – and at the finish. As well as offering vital information to the runner in their post race analysis, the chips also allow organisers to eliminate cheating as anyone who doesn’t have a chip spilt time has not gone over the pad and may have taken a short cut. Of course for runners whose chip breaks or gets lost, it is rather unfortunate as they will probably be disqualified and won’t get an official time.

All this info from the chips can also be used for real-time information as well. I ran the Paris Marathon two weeks ago and my split times were sent automatically by SMS to my supporters’ mobile phones, so that they could keep track of where I was during the race – and when I finished.

There’s a great article on Silicon.com about the dwindling interest in Twitter, and why companies should stay committed to social media. I say “great” because it’s by me :)

To read the full article, go to: http://www.silicon.com/management/sales-and-marketing/2010/03/22/is-twitter-on-the-wane-39745616/ and add your two bits to the comments.

Here’s the article….

While activity on Twitter continues to increase – the number of tweets per day is now approaching 50 million – this is largely due to an active core of one-in-five registered users who are becoming more and more engaged. According to marketing software company Hubspot, the average Twitter user in January 2010 had 300 followers compared to around 60 last July.

Twitter’s problem is adding to its 75 million users. Yes, it’s a considerable number, but in social media, scale is everything.

A report from research firm Barracuda Labs found that the number of new Twitter users grew just 0.34 per cent in December 2009, down from a peak of 20 per cent new users joining in April 2009. Hubspot’s figures show that the peak of new users was in March 2009 (13 per cent) and fell to four per cent in October 2009.

And these are not the first reports to identify the problem. A report in September last year from research firm Hitwise found that in 2008, Twitter accounted for 0.01 per cent of visits to all websites. By June 2009, this had climbed to 0.20 per cent before falling to 0.17 per cent in September.

I realise it’s pretty hard to get accurate stats on Twitter use because so many access the service via desktop software, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the number of people who want to use this social networking tool based solely on status updates which are broadcasted (i.e. you don’t really have control who follows you), has reached its limit.

Can you hear me?

Twitter users may have already noticed that it’s getting harder to be heard. Some highly engaged social media practitioners I know, tweeting many times per day, are reporting that it’s getting more and more difficult to grow their followers organically, especially with people who are genuinely interested in what they have to say. Instead, they are being followed indiscriminately by people who want to gain social capital, with a trigger-happy ‘retweet’ finger.

The problem may be that the noise has reached a threshold. The cacophony created by status updates from hundreds or thousands of people, proffering links to interesting articles, dipping into conversations half-way through and dull missives about lunchtime sandwiches, is obviously getting too much for some folk.

To filter out the noise, Twitter users tend to engage or converse with a smaller number of people than their following count would imply. There’s some science behind this – it’s called Dunbar’s Number, a concept coined by cognitive anthropologist Adrian Dunbar who posits that the average person cannot sustain more than 150 friendships. His work correlates with animal studies showing that this magic number crops up all over the animal world too.

Twitter: Not just for status updates anymore

So what should we read in to this? Is Twitter really on the wane?…

It’s hard to say just yet but one good sign for Twitter’s long-term health is that Twitter itself seems to recognise that being a tool that only distributes status updates is a one-trick pony. All kinds of social media from Facebook and LinkedIn to web giants like Yahoo! and Google are homing in on status and buzz. And they have a lot more to offer than Twitter.

This is probably why Twitter recently announced @Anywhere, which will allow Twitter feeds to be linked into other websites using a common API. These sites include AdAge, Amazon, Bing, Citysearch, Digg, eBay, The Huffington Post, Meebo, MSNBC.com, The New York Times, Salesforce.com, Yahoo! and YouTube.

And if you are a LinkedIn user, you’ll know that you can already get your Twitter feed on your LinkedIn profile.

Ultimately what is happening is status updates are being commoditised, which I wrote about in more detail in a recent blog post about the future of social media.

Now I don’t think Twitter is necessarily a lost cause and will go the way of Friends Reunited. It is still a very powerful tool, and one that should not be ignored by anyone working in sales, marketing, PR, customer service or product development.

More importantly, status updates are here to stay, whichever the social network they originate from.

Keep listening and reacting

So businesses still need a Twitter strategy. But really what they need is a strategy for listening and reacting to all the social media conversations about you – whether they are on Twitter, blogs, Facebook Groups, forums, Posterous and so on.

Status updates are a revelation: you can hear what people say about you and your competitors, you can discovers flaws in your products that you didn’t realise were there, and you can find out exactly where and when customers are disgruntled.

And you can act on what you hear: change the product, contact the customer, warn the helpdesk and so on. (Marketing guru Olivier Blanchard has some interesting advice on how to turn social media listening into pan-organisational acting.)

But let’s remember the Dunbar Number and ultimately, that social media is a personal media, and companies are not individuals. You can listen, you can broadcast offers, you can respond to complaints, but don’t expect social media users to want to be your friend. They can only engage with a few people at a time, and unless you have the resources to develop a one to one relationship with your thousands/millions of customers, you will end up disappointed.

You can find other Silicon articles by myself here: http://www.silicon.com/search/stewart+baines.htm and by Anthony here: http://www.silicon.com/search/anthony+plewes.htm

Sometimes we get the opportunity to stand back from our most pressing work commitments, and gaze across the technology landscape at the changing Internet. We are frequently told that social media is a work in progress, and is still its infant phase. So let us ponder where it may go in the coming years. What follows is idle future pondering, scenarios almost. Please do not take the following as a forecast.

Twitter will not last without a radical reinvention

The increasing openness between networks – LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter – will increase. Status updates on one will be seamlessly available to all, and also embedded in Microsoft Office applications, in collaboration tools, with SMS and so on. Status will be your thoughts, your retweets and @’s and also your car’s GPS location, and your appliances’ status (you’re washing machine will let you know when the cycle is complete). In fact the ability to display status updates will be as common a function as voice: completely commoditised.

Imagine a future Facebook interface which selects your real friends, the people you have interacted with on Twitter (or the like), or that have used common hashtags. Powerful algorithms will serve up only the status and conversations you are likely to find interesting. So what value in having an army of followers that is not listening to you? Will those that are currently trying to greedily acquire social capital now find their efforts were in vain?

I believe the effect of this evolution in social media interfaces (not the networks behind them) will help to cut down a lot of the noise.  In terms of which social media applications will dominate, the winning environment will be the one with the best usability and the best distribution because being a walled garden isn’t going to last.

Junk content will get worse before it gets better

Ever wonder what happens when you pay “writers” $1 for a 1000 word? It ends up as a How-To article on websites funded by Google Adsense revenues.  Many (not all) of these sites operate without any accountability whatsoever. What’s wrong with this? People are paid a pittance to plagiarise, cut corners or simply write with fake authority about subjects they know absolutely nothing about. Hundreds of millions of pages of junk content is clogging up Google. While bedroom publishers can build an economic model based on Adsense, don’t expect any self restraint.

This is not to say that How-To sites are the only ones manipulating or exploiting dubious online content to gain Adsense revenue. There are many technology sites doing this also, grabbing articles about popular brands and scurrilously twisting the meaning into something sensational. The best of the Adsense-funded sites are enthusiasts with not enough time to check facts; the worst simply don’t care at all about veracity. Their only interest is traffic because now they have a direct correlation between views and cents.

Eventually we will stop reading and the noise will quieten down

Looking further ahead – 10 years for instance – and the verbal diarrhoea generated by UGC and copy factories will be on the wane. As more and more of the content we will view becomes video, audio and spoken-word menus, our reliance on scanning stories for what we want to know will dissipate. Natural language-based search (sometimes called the semantic web) will make it easier for us to go direct to the information we want. Intelligent agents will learn our habits and interests and will interoperate with these search tools to ensure that each search is really, really targeted. And the widespread deployment of touchscreen interfaces – in work PCs, the living room TV, in-car computer and the home control panel – will gradually break our century-old connection to the keyboard. Intelligent speech, search, profiling and interfaces could combine to end the rule of the Word on the Internet

So which of these scenarios could come true? What other futures for media/social media can you envision?

Ever wondered how Google search has joined up all bits of your life that you previously needed a secretary, PA and office assistant to accomplish? Well check out this 1 min ad – featuring the awesome band The National. Watch, learn the lyrics, buy gig tickets and plan your journey within a minute. In truth, think I need at least a whole album to plan that much, a lot of procrastinating along the way….

Google says “Every search is a quest. Every quest is a story. These videos show that anyone can do anything when paired with the power of search.” They’ve showcased some other amusing ads here. Not sure about Kerouac’s On The Road powered by search. It would kind of undermine it wouldn’t it?