“This is a point of confusion for many of our customers.”  So began a tech support response that was the latest in a string of messages.  The good news is that this was the message that actually helped me solve the problem.  The bad news is that came at the end of almost a day and a half of frustration and confusion on my part.  I searched the help system.  I consulted knowledgeable colleagues (and got them confused and frustrated too.)  This was for an initial setup of a new system, so I expected there to be some annoying setup issues.  But I’m left wondering “If so many customers have the same issues, how about altering things so we don’t all experience this problem.”

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I get a fair amount of useful information off of my twitter feed — in fact it is often more informative than the RSS newsfeeds I follow.  But Twitter, Facebook, Yammer and the rest of the live streaming applications share a common problem.  If you want to refer back to something that floated by several days, weeks or months ago you are pretty much out of luck.   The noise factor is not an issue when monitoring the stream live.  I mean sure, there is plenty of noise, but it is easy enough to filter it out as the garbage floats by.  But try to dig through items from the past and the noise quickly overwhelms.  Anyone got an answer?  Or is do we just need to accept that we must leave the past behind — even if it is digital?

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I attended an Apple sponsored presentation yesterday on using the Xcode IDE to build iPhone and iTouch apps.  It was a very well done presentation, and had me almost ready to rush out and buy a Macbook and iTouch to get started building cool apps — certainly easy to see why Apple App building has become such a popular past time (and big money maker for Apple).

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Message traffic on our company Yammer network is following the classic 80-20 principle, although in our case it is closer to 85-15.  Some stats: Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s New York Times has an article on what programmers are doing with government data — it is great to see the value creativity can create out of something as mundane as reams of government data.  StumbleSafely suggests safe routes home for DC residents based on crime statistics — Routesy is an iPhone app for transit schedules in San Francisco.  Much of this data has been available publicly for years, but not in a format that was readily accessed.  But services like DataSF and Data.gov are changing that, and opening the door for creativity.  What about in your company?  Is it easy to get at various data sets, or are they locked up behind proprietary and departmental walls?  Unfortunately all too often I see more of the latter than the former.   Technology isn’t the problem here — making data should not require a lot of technical work.  What it takes is a committment to the process, and trust in the benefits of openness over the tradition of hording information.  Information = power?  How about openness = innovation?  And builds value many times more valuable than the old way.

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Flickr, the coolest on-line photo site there is, has always encouraged outside developers to build their own applications that utilize the massive Flickr public database.  I have had a Flickr account like forever, before Yahoo bought them — and have used some WordPress – Flickr plug-ins that utilized the API.  But the problem was you had to find the apps yourself, spread around on developers own web pages.  Well Flickr just launched a new page that provides an easy way to find apps.  I found a cool Facebook app that will display my latest Flickr uploads on my Facebook page — very handy.

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