September 17th, 2007

Scaling out like Technorati

Posted by John Newton @ 10:12 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Google Inc., Technorati, Data, Blog, User, JN, DS, John Newton

My fellow World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, David Sifry, the founder of Technorati, was also in Dalian, China for the “Meeting of New Champions” or “Summer Davos” as the Chinese like to call it. During Davos in January, I had the great misfortune of pitching Alfresco against Technorati in a competition between tech pioneer companies. As fantastically well as Alfresco is doing, Technorati has the temerity to compete against Google in blog search and win.

I got the chance to talk to Dave during the conference and ask him some questions on the technology and architecture behind Technorati, the internet blog search site. I thought that someone who could take ordinary computer components and build a huge internet architecture could possibly teach something to people running enterprise architectures that are puny in comparison.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 14th, 2007

Jimmy Wales and Enterprise Wikis

Posted by John Newton @ 9:34 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Difference, Wiki, Wikipedia, Enterprise, Jimmy, MediaWiki, JN, JW, Wikia, John Newton

At the Summer Davos in Dalian, China, I was able to speak to Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, about wikis in the enterprise. Wikipedia has become not only the world’s most popular wiki, but the ninth most popular web site in the world. Jimmy is here as a Young Global Leader with others that are defining where the world is going in the future.

Although wikis have become popular for people to collaborate on alternatives to encyclopedias, wikis can be used as tools to collaborate in the enterprise. Wikis are now being used to define product specifications, user documentation, policies and procedures. In addition, teams are using wikis to share ideas, discuss issues and define strategy. MediaWiki is the engine beneath Wikipedia and thus developed by the Wikipedia Foundation. It is available for anyone to use in their enterprise since it open source, so, I figured that Jimmy was a good person to ask about wikis in the enterprise.

Read the rest of this entry »

September 14th, 2007

Summer Davos in Dalian China

Posted by John Newton @ 9:31 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: China, Venture Capital, Davos, World Economic Forum, Dalian China, John Newton

Last week I was in Dalian, China for the World Economic Forum Inaugural Meeting of the New Champions. That’s a mouthful, so the Chinese simply called it the “Summer Davos”. It makes sense as this feels very much like Davos only a bit smaller and slightly more relaxed and less intimidating. It is still difficult to be really relaxed with some many diverse bright minds, but the scope of topics was more manageable the number of sessions made it easier to choose. There were still the same types of plenaries, panels, board room discussions and collaborative workshops. The focus was global, but the star of the show was China as the world’s manufacturer, major outsource destination, next consumer society, and next world economic power.

Read the rest of this entry »

June 4th, 2007

McKinsey's look into Web 2.0 in the enterprise

Posted by John Newton @ 1:54 pm

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags: Web, Web 2.0, McKinsey, John Newton

The collection of techniques and technologies known as Web 2.0 is really only just beginning to have an affect on the enterprise. We are in that phase of market development where in Web 1.0 enterprises just started to realize that the internet is the new brochureware. Enterprises are starting to say, “We want a conversation with our customers.” New employees coming into even some of the largest companies are saying that they want an experience like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube and those companies are listening. But how do they do that? And do they really know what Web 2.0 really is?
Read the rest of this entry »

May 17th, 2007

Microsoft, patents and transparency

Posted by John Newton @ 11:30 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags:

As everyone now knows Microsoft has claimed through a Fortune magazine article that open source projects have violated 235 of Microsoft’s patents. That is 235 out of 6723 patents where Microsoft is the assignee according to the US Patent Office and Microsoft is not saying which ones they are. The onus is on open source to figure out which ones Microsoft means and to come clean. Microsoft is not being transparent on what claims they believe they have because they probably feel it is not in their interests to be transparent.The blogosphere has written much about the fear, uncertainty and doubt that Microsoft intends to make with this lack of disclosure. Microsoft’s intention seems to be to create FUD not in open source, but in customers. Recent history suggests this may not be a wise move. Firstly, open source’s customers are Microsoft’s customers and it generally is not good business to scare your customers. Secondly, these days you cannot avoid transparency.
Read the rest of this entry »

May 17th, 2007

Theory of Information

Posted by John Newton @ 11:28 am

Categories: Uncategorized

Tags:

Physicists have been trying to describe the physical world ever since the emergence of science. More recently they have been trying to develop a Theory of Everything that merges Electromagnetic, Nuclear and Gravitational forces, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity. I don’t understand nuclear physics, but I am trying to understand how information is stored, searched, accessed and used. I am searching for a Theory of Information, but haven’t found it yet.

My quest started ten years ago, immediately after Tiger Woods won his first Masters in April 1997. A group of Documentum executives and I were sitting in the Claremont Hotel in Oakland discussing the future of content management. Having worked in the information management industry for fifteen years at the time, I saw too many similar patterns in the way companies, applications and vendors approached the problems of information management. There must be something fundamental about the way we manage and consume information. There is something called Information Theory, but this is about dissemination of information, not about its creation, use and meaning. There must be a common theory that links the way we organize, perceive, search and handle information. Content management, one form of information management, must itself be related to other forms of information management

Read the rest of this entry »