| software akuntansi laporan keuangan terbaik Posted: 05 Jan 2012 12:18 PM PST ReadWriteWeb
| What is Really New About the Cloud? Posted: 05 Jan 2012 11:30 AM PST  Socrates: And you did not know, you never suspected, that they were goddesses?
Strepsiades: No, indeed; I thought the Clouds were only fog, dew and vapour.
- Aristophanes, The Clouds
Billions of words have been written about "the cloud" and its benefits, implications, and challenges. Hundreds of vendors have sprung up or re-positioned themselves as cloud companies, and there is a vast amount of real business change underway. However, I have seen very little that explains for the layperson what is actually new about the cloud that makes it so interesting and important.
Sponsor
 Infrastructure-as-a-Service: All of the Benefits, None of the Commitment
Dave Jilk is CEO and co-founder of Standing Cloud, a Boulder-based provider of cloud-based application management solutions. An experienced software and Internet entrepreneur, Dave previously co-founded Wideforce Systems and eCortex. The advent of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) with Amazon Web Services' Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offering suddenly made it vastly cheaper and easier for anyone to provision a system in the cloud. Previously, the primary options were: - Using a shared hosting service, install an application in the shared host container. This is inexpensive, but also very limiting: Only applications that can operate in the shared-host sandbox and do not need to scale will work in this environment.
- Lease or buy physical servers, rent co-location space, and either set up and manage the physical machines yourself, or hire a managed services provider to do so. This is relatively expensive, because it requires a minimum commitment.
- Build your own data center.
With IaaS, you simply sign up for an account, enter a credit card number, and start launching servers from the control panel. These servers are available in minutes, and although they are "virtual" machines, they behave for most purposes as an entire computer system. They are persistent and they have their own public Internet address. The minimum commitment is an hour of server time, which can cost as little as a penny and a half on Rackspace Cloud.
Consequently, while the idea of deploying a system "in the cloud" was not new, the ability to provision the required servers quickly, easily, with no human physical contact, and with virtually no commitment - that was entirely novel.
Two innovations have enabled providers to offer this capability: virtualization technology, which enables the creation of multiple virtual machine servers on the same physical server via a "hypervisor"; and orchestration technology, which fulfills provisioning requests by tracking the physical server pool and the virtual machines running on them. Virtualization took a big leap forward in 2006, when both Intel and AMD added hardware virtualization capabilities to their processors. This both improved performance and made the hypervisor code simpler and more reliable. Popular hypervisors today include VMWare ESX, Xen, and KVM. Perhaps not coincidentally, Amazon built its orchestration system for EC2 around the same time, with the first beta release in mid-2006. Dozens of orchestration systems are now available, including VMWare vCloud, Citrix CloudStack (formerly cloud.com), and Eucalyptus.
Software-as-a-Service: Now Playing Anytime, Anywhere So it's not really the cloud that's new. It is the ease, convenience and value of using the cloud that has vastly improved. There was real innovation involved in making that possible: for IaaS, the virtualization and orchestration technologies; for SaaS, progressively improving connectivity along with more interactive browser technologies. While software-as-a-service (SaaS) is not new and has always operated "in the cloud," the ubiquity of web browsers, broadband Internet and Wi-Fi has made them more responsive and easier to access. Improvements in web browser capabilities and the use of powerful Javascript frameworks and other RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies have made it possible to build web user interfaces that rival the sophistication and interactivity of locally installed Windows or Mac applications. As a result, new categories of applications for which a series of separate web pages is unsatisfactory - such as word processing and spreadsheets - can now be operated as SaaS, on any device that supports a full web browser. These seemingly incremental improvements have created a qualitatively different experience for SaaS, and that experience is new.
The Sum of the Parts But look at what all this means: - I can deploy custom systems in the cloud easily and with low commitment.
- I can keep all my documents and data on cloud systems.
- All my standard business systems can be run as SaaS.
- I can use different client devices at different times without creating a data mess.
- As my usage of systems or services increases, the cost and scale of the systems scales with that usage in granular increments.
- Whether I am acting as an individual or as a business, I no longer need to own or manage any physical servers, and I am no longer tethered to particular client devices either.
So it's not really the cloud that's new. It is the ease, convenience and value of using the cloud that has vastly improved. There was real innovation involved in making that possible: for IaaS, the virtualization and orchestration technologies; for SaaS, progressively improving connectivity along with more interactive browser technologies. The cloud may still be just "a computer attached to a network," but how that computer got there and how it is used is now very different from the days when those pictures of clouds first showed up on architecture diagrams. Cloud photo by Jeff Ruane Discuss 
 | | The First World Consumes While The Third World Produces Posted: 05 Jan 2012 11:10 AM PST  A new study from Forrester proves that the majority of Americans are a bunch of lazy re-tweeters. Ninety-three percent of online consumers in emerging markets of China, India, Mexico and Brazil use social media tools at least once-a-month. U.S. and European consumers are far more likely to use social media as a spectator-like sport, joining it and then just watching it fly by.
In the U.S., 68% of social media users are joiners, which means they maintain a profile on a social networking site and visit social networks. Only 73% are spectators, or users who mostly just read blogs, online forums, customer ratings/reviews and tweets, listen to podcasts and watch videos. This number is strikingly similar in Europe (EU-7 countries, to be specific), with 69% of users classified as spectators and 50% as joiners. Sponsor
 Only 24% of U.S. users are content creators and 36% are conversationalists. Those numbers are quite similar in the EU, with 23% classified as content creators and 26% as conversationalists. In Asia, these numbers look drastically different. Seventy-five percent of online adults in metropolitan China and India create content, which includes publishing blogs and web pages, uploading video and audio/music they made and posting articles or stories that they wrote. Japanese social media users do not follow the same patterns as Chinese and Indian social networkers. A mere 28% of Japanese users visit social networking sites at least once a month. Only 13% of online Japanese adults visit Facebook on a regular monthly basis. Instead, they prefer sites like mixi or Twitter, which fit their preference for online anonymity. 
Emerging Social Mobile Markets: China and Africa Another Forrester report proved that China and other Asia-Pacific countries led the pack in mobile adoption, including mobile social usage and work usage. They were also more likely to own multiple devices. This report showed that in metropolitan China, 33% accessed social networks via mobile, whereas only 25% of U.S. users and 11% of European users did the same. Forrester's report revealed that Chinese users accessed social sites the most, calling them "super connecteds." This study does not include social network usage in Africa, which is only second to China. Toward the end of last year, Facebook partnered with French cell operator Orange to bring inexpensive cellphones armed with Facebook to Africa and Europe. Facebook is available in 70 languages, and more than 75% of its users are located outside the U.S. Discuss 
 | | Death By Smartphone: How Mobile Photography Helped Kill Kodak Posted: 05 Jan 2012 10:40 AM PST  Well, it's official. After years of struggling, photographic services giant Kodak is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company, which was long known for selling film and other photography-related products, had tried everything from branching out into more modern offerings to using its trove of patents to sue others. Alas, the times have caught up with Kodak.
The news comes almost exactly one year after the last roll of Kodachrome film was developed and at a time when the most widely-used camera on Flickr isn't even one of the many digital point-and-shoots or SLR's that had already chipped away at Kodak's dominance; It's the iPhone 4. Sponsor
 
In Kodak's heyday, photography was still a somewhat specialized hobby, even if it had extended beyond professionals and made its way into the lives of everyday consumers. A few decades ago, if one owned a film camera of some kind, they were typically reserved for special occasions and were subject to to inherent limitations of film: a set number of exposures, a fixed film speed and the inability to preview images on the spot. Today, toddlers instinctively ask to see the photo you just snapped of them, which was probably one of several thousand taken since their birth.  Even the more artistic, less special event-driven kind of photography that used to be reserved for hobbyists is now democratized by photo-sharing apps like Instagram and Hipstamatic, the latter of which even mimics vintage lenses and film types, but lacks the need to stop by the one-hour photo processing center.
As popular as they are, it's not these trendy photo apps that have delivered the death blow to the likes of Kodak and retailers like Penn Camera. Rather, they're simply symbolic of the ubiquity of mobile photography. Indeed, Kodak's troubles were already well underway by the time camera phones got really good. Prior to the advent of high-resolution, camera-equipped smartphones, people could buy top-notch digital point-and-shoot cameras that could hold hundreds, if not thousands, of images and fit easily into a pocket or purse. Kodak was able to enter that market with some success, but with way more competition that it saw in its film days. Now Everyone is a Photographer Yet even stand-alone digital cameras were something you had to make an explicit choice to bring along. What used to be reserved for family weddings and kid's birthday parties was suddenly a fixture of any night out on the town. Then came the smartphone. Now, most of us are walking around with high-quality, Internet connected point-and-shoot cameras, complete with with array of photo-editing and filtering apps and social media integration for instant sharing. These gadgets are not something we choose to bring out for special occasions. They're on our person at all times. The ubiquity of digital and mobile photography didn't single-handedly drive Kodak into bankruptcy, but it may well have delivered the final blow. Even the company's attempts to get into the digital photography market with its EasyShare line of point-and-shoots couldn't keep up with the explosion of the smartphone, nor was its printer business successful enough to make up for its losses from the death of film. For some time, the company, which counts the invention of digital photography among its innovations, used patent litigation as a way to make up for years of revenue declines. Today, they're looking at selling off those patents. To be fair, Kodak isn't necessarily done for yet. They haven't yet filed for bankruptcy protection, let alone come out of it. It's conceivable they could turn things around and survive. Even so, it's hard to imagine them ever returning to the days of massive profits and the type of world famous innovation they were once known for. Discuss 
 | | More than 66% of Users Have Upgraded to iOS 5 Posted: 05 Jan 2012 10:01 AM PST  A lot is made about Android platform device updates. Is your phone going to be getting Ice Cream Sandwich. According to the latest numbers, Gingerbread is the dominant version of Android in the wild, with version 2.2 Frozen Yogurt still on more than 30% of all devices. What about Apple? iOS 5 has been available for about three months. How many users have upgraded their phones to the newest platform?
Apple does not publish platform numbers the way that Google does for Android. To determine how many people are using different versions of the operating system we went to app developers and analytics companies to get a clear picture of what version of iOS people are using. Sponsor
 According to Bump, an information sharing app for the iPhone, most users are now on iOS 5. Of users that used the bump app in a period leading up to Dec. 30, 2011, 54.42% were on iOS 5.0.1 and additional 4.74% were on 5.0.0. There was a significant amount of Bump users that had not upgraded, with about 21.2% using various versions of iOS 4.3.x. While Bump's data shows a good cross-section of what its users are connecting to the service, it is best not to trust one app of with a comparatively small user base. So, we asked mobile analytics server Localytics about data from its network of app publishers. The numbers, while similar, are probably much more accurate because of a much larger sample size. 5.0.1: 60.41%
5.0: 5.74%
4.3.x: 19.92%
4.2.x : 9.48%
4.1.x : 2.02%
4.0.x : 0.68%
3.x: 1.72% More than 66% of iOS users have upgraded to version 5.0.0 or above. This cuts across all iOS devices that Localytics tracks. The company has the ability to track to what device a user is accessing apps from, such as an iPad, iPhone 4, iPad 2 etc. We will report on that data next week. Apple has a distinct advantage in upgrading users to the newest version of the operating system. The source code is pushed from one place and run through iTunes via a wire or (now with iOS 5) a wireless connection. At the same time, it is telling that near 20% of iOS users have not made it past iOS 4.3.x. These users either never open iTunes and sync their devices or are using older devices. Nearly 30% (29.4%) of all iOS users are still on 4.2.x or 4.3.x. That is a number very similar to those still using Android version 2.2 Frozen Yogurt that has been out since for more than a year. Apple makes it easy to push updates to iOS devices. It circumvents the primary problems facing Android, namely the relationship between the carriers, original equipment manufacturers and Google. At the same time, some people do not know or care that it is time to upgrade or find the process too cumbersome and do not bother upgrading their iDevices.
Discuss 
 | | NFC In 2012: Time For The Training Wheels Posted: 05 Jan 2012 09:45 AM PST  There is no question about it, the way people pay for things is fundamentally changing. When it comes to mobile payments, 2011 was the year that the major players began marshalling their forces. Partnerships were forged, baselines of technology were established. In 2012, the ecosystem will deploy its innovations, testing the market to see how it will react.
That brings us to the most important question regarding mobile payments in 2012: does Near Field Communications (NFC) have a legitimate future? Shaking the Magic 8 Ball, the answer remains, "answer cloudy, ask again later." Sponsor
 More People Have NFC Capabilities In 2012 This year, NFC technology will finally make its way into the hands of millions of users. This will be spurred along by new smartphones, notably from Android, that have NFC capabilities baked into them. The technology industry is waiting to see if and when Apple decides to put NFC into the iPhone. Many pundits think that when Apple goes NFC, that will be the true harbinger of the heyday for mobile payments. As it stands, Apple's newest iPhone 4S is three months old and a new one will not be released till the third or fourth quarters of 2012, if at all. That does not mean that NFC cannot start changing user behavior. With or without Apple, the technology and financial sectors are going to move forward to create the infrastructure that consumers will need to make mobile payments realistic for physical goods at brick and mortar stores. It is still a cash world, with about 85% of transactions still being made with paper currency. It behooves the financial system and their technology partners to shift those scales. Even a 1% increase in digital payments means billions dollars flowing through the ecosystem. 
The NFC camps have circled their wagons. Google has its Wallet and Offers program and is set to create new partnerships this year now that the original group has lost its "exclusive" rights to the project. Allying against Google are the mobile carriers with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all heavily invested in the NFC Isis project. While Verizon may claim that the Google Wallet posed technological challenges for its network, the motivation has to be the notion that Wallet on Verizon Android phones would cut the carrier out of the loop. Sequent Predictions & Training Wheels One NFC software and solutions company has taken no sides. Sequent, based in Redwood City, Calif., aims to make an open standard software for NFC. Sequent makes software that any carrier, financial services provider or app developer can take advantage of to institute NFC. Sequent's stance is that it could as easily partner with Google or Isis as well as compete along side them. Sequent's CEO, Drew Weinstein, has four predictions for NFC in 2012 that are worth considering: - Mobility will reshape the credit card and payment industry. With recently introduced technology such as Google Wallet, more consumers can pay with their smartphones, while retailers and public transportation agencies are beginning to adopt this technology. The integration of location-based services and coupons will also motivate users to begin adopting NFC. At the mall and hungry? Tap a button on your smartphone and get offers from restaurants near you, apply the coupon and pay with a tap of your smartphone.
- NFC smartphones will outnumber deployment targets. NFC enabled phones will become available and find their way into consumers' hands. Whether or not consumers use NFC and it becomes mainstream remains to be seen. However, peer-to-peer NFC use cases will become more frequent as consumers become more familiar with the technology.
- 2012 will be the year of "NFC training wheels." There will be a big marketing and advertising push to consumers as tags, posters and other advertisements emerge at retail stories and businesses. These tags will connect consumers to targeted marketing and discount offers, allowing them to be more comfortable with the technology.
- Carriers will deploy NFC faster than consortiums. Carriers can act more nimbly on their own versus a consortium with multiple parties, which can result in friction and longer timeframes to make a decision. Consortiums like Isis are trying to solve for payment, the most difficult NFC use case, while other use cases are more easily achieved.
The fourth point is interesting. Isis is a consortium ... of carriers. It almost seems to be a contradictory statement. The carriers can be more nimble on their own but that does not mean they do not need Isis to help set up the infrastructure and standards that are going to be needed to bring widespread adoption to NFC. The third point is spot on. Mainstream consumers are going to have to figure the if/what/when/where that NFC will be used. This does not just mean payments but also physical access to buildings, library checkouts, posters and retail marketing and so on. The first step towards getting users ready to pay with their smartphones is the prepping them for the notion that a "tap" is an acceptable input method. What will it take for you to adopt NFC in 2012? Let us know in the comments.
Discuss 
 | | Why Tumblr Fan Mail Will Beat Facebook Messages & Twitter DMs Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:45 AM PST  Tumblr just announced a new private messaging feature called Fan Mail. It's a more personal means that's not email, which requires you to know your favorite blogger's email address (do you?) or the handwritten form of the 20th century, snail mail. That leaves two social network-y means of contact: Facebook private messages and Twitter direct messages. Depending on the blogger's comfort level, however, they may not make Facebook messages on profile pages an option. Similarly, not every blogger follows fans back on Twitter.
Sponsor
 On Facebook, you can't send a message to someone you're a fan of - at least not yet. Facebook has been testing private messages for pages, but nothing's official right now. Some Facebook users do leave the message option public on their personal profiles. It's more likely that if you're not Facebook friends with that person, you won't be able to privately message them. If you're a fan of a blogger on Twitter, you can only send a private direct message if the blogger follows you back. Otherwise, a public @ message is your best bet. Still, Twitter users do not always feel obliged to return those @ messages. Sending fan mail via Tumblr ensures that your favorite blogger sees your note. 
You can customize each piece of fan mail, and there is no limit to how much fan mail you can send. Tumblr rolls out this feature over the next few days. How do you send fan mail to your favorite bloggers? Tell us about it in the comments. Discuss 
 | | Find Out Where Your Legislators Stand On SOPA, PIPA Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:30 AM PST  There are plenty of websites - not to mention several apps - that will help you figure out where certain companies stand on the Stop Online Piracy and Protect IP Acts. What has been harder to track is how lawmakers who haven't co-sponsored the bill stand on the divisive issues, or how campaign contributions may influence their decisions when the measures finally come up for a vote.
SOPA Track, a geo-enabled mobile HTML application, is designed to figure out who your Representative and Senators are in Congress and immediately let you know how they stand on SOPA and PIPA. Sponsor
 
After you allow SOPA Track to pinpoint your location or you enter your address, you're given an easy-to-read display that shows whether or not your Congressperson has taken a public stance on SOPA, how much money they have received from big media, pro-SOPA groups and anti-SOPA groups, as well as their office phone number and links to their Web and social media sites. You can also search by street address or browse by state. Randy Meech, who created and maintains the site, said in an email he plans to update it once a vote happens to reflect how each member of Congress voted on the measure (most legislators currently have a question mark next to their names as they have yet to take a public stance on the measures). "At the next election, use this app at your polling place to inform your vote," SOPA Track's main page reads. SOPA would block access to sites accused of violating U.S. copyright laws. The measure has been called Draconian by opponents who say it would fundamentally change the free-flow of information across the Internet. Proponents, ranging from the NBA to Universal, say the measure is needed to block sites which flagrantly flaunt copyright laws and make content available for free without paying copyright owners.
Discuss 
 | | A Guy's Guide To Pinterest Posted: 05 Jan 2012 08:00 AM PST  One of the first things I noticed when I signed up for Pinterest earlier this week is that several of my female friends and acquaintances were already on the site. It was as if they had been holding out on what many are promising will be 2012's hot ticket in the social networking space.
Of the 16 people Pinterest said I knew who were already using the site, 14 were women. Over the course of the first day, five more women I know added me and I suddenly felt like I had ventured behind some secret curtain. That is not surprising: in December, Mashable reported that 59 percent of the site's visitors were women between the ages of 25 and 44, and that 58 percent of its visitors in the previous 12 weeks had been female. Pinterest is a visual pin board where you can collect images you find on the Web and arrange them in categories with links back to the original site. It's been described as being like a binder or folder that you use to store everything you clip from magazines and newspapers, but you have the added advantage of seeing what all of the people you are connected to have been clipping and saving. Sponsor
 "Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people," the Palo Alto-based company says in its Mission Statement. "With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests." Once I had added a few people and pinned a few images, the second thing I noticed is that my main feed resembled the walls of the college apartment I shared with three other guys in the mid-nineties. We barely had enough money for books and beer, so our decor was mainly posters thrown out by video rental stores (remember those?) and stuff torn out of magazines. We added the images as we found them, each making our own contributions over time. They were occasionally enhanced with a hand-written comment (often crude) on notebook paper and taped to the image. After four semesters of living there every inch of available wall space (as well as the back of the toilet seat) was covered with found items. I didn't really "get" what we were doing with the walls of 17 Southpoint Drive, but I liked it. And after just a few days of playing with it, I'm not sure I "get" Pinterest just yet, but I like it. If creativity is defined as taking two or more seemingly unrelated ideas or concepts and finding a way to link them together, Pinterest may be a breeding ground for visual creativity. 
Getting Going Pinterest is still an invite-only site, although existing users can invite friends and I had my membership within a day after requesting one through the main site. I logged in with Facebook the first time and then connected my Twitter profile to my Pinterest site. Pinterest let me add people I already knew and recommended some others who seemed to have interests similar to mine. After my profile was set up, the last step was adding the "Pin It" button to the bookmark bar of my browser. The Pin It button lets me quickly post photos I find on the Web sites I visit. (I will say the feature does have some trouble recognizing photos on certain sites, but the problem was occasional and nothing that too debilitating.) First Impressions One of the more pleasing aspects of Pinterest is that it's new enough to be free of marketing and advertising (although that's likely to change). The site design lends a "quiet" feel, and puts more of an emphasis on the photos instead of the captions and comments users are required to write to accompany them. That's a stark difference from most other social networks I use, where the emphasis is on the pithy comment accompanying a video or photo, and users often have to click on the image to make it bigger. I can arrange the images I find into categories, which is a feature that has proven popular with brides planning weddings and wanting to remember the visual details of the dress, the centerpiece or the wedding photo poses they want. Others have used it to curate recipes they want to try cooking or craft ideas they want to make, and articles touting new ways to use Pinterest are now an almost daily occurrence. Multiple Ideas = Multiple Uses In addition to following curated lists, it didn't take long for me to figure out ways I could personally use Pinterest. So far I've mainly had fun just browsing images and seeing how other people use Pinterest, but it does seem to hold some advantages over the other sites I've been using to store links and found items from the Internet. Like a lot of tech writers, I am fashion-challenged when it comes to my wardrobe. Pinterest is a way to keep track of looks I like and find them the next time I go clothes shopping online. I can set up a gallery of my favorite blog posts, or links to the photos of articles I read and liked. I can make a gift registry so people will get me the perfect gift, and I can keep a separate lists of gifts I'd like to give (like I said, I wonder how long Pinterest will remain free of marketers). I like to cook, but often when I clip a recipe sans photo, the list of ingredients isn't enough to jog my memory on why I wanted to try the dish in the first place. Arik Hanson has interviews with 15 top Pinterest users on his Communications Conversations blog, and those seasoned users have far more ideas on how to use Pinterest than this rookie. It's interesting to note that almost all of the respondents say something about using it to collect ideas and thoughts that interest them. Discuss 
 | | Check Point Offers New Cloud-Based Firewall for AWS Posted: 05 Jan 2012 07:32 AM PST  Check Point announced today their Virtual Appliance for Amazon Web Services can now be purchased as an Amazon machine image to directly protect any AWS-based resources running on Amazon's EC2 service. For those of you that are familiar with their integrated security appliance, it is certainly something to consider.
Sponsor
 There are several steps required to install their security appliance on Amazon. First, you need to set up Amazon's VPC to create a VPN connection to EC2. You then locate the Checkpoint virtual appliance - it is an unlisted AMI - and set up the networking addresses to bridge your network and AWS'. Finally, you download the Windows management tool to configure the various security policies. 
The virtual appliance is similar to an actual Check Point physical appliance: it comes with a series of add-on "blades" that are separately priced for other things besides a simple firewall that include URL filtering, application control and data loss protection. Things start at $2000, which includes the firewall blade and virtual gateway. Customers can add on additional software blade protections that begins at $1,500; some are based on a subscription model, such as Intrusion Prevention.
Discuss 
 | | A Manifesto for Efficient IT Infrastructure Management Posted: 05 Jan 2012 07:00 AM PST  If you are using a spreadsheet to track your data center equipment inventory, then take a moment and read this post. You might want to consider using something else that can actually track your assets. From where I sit, many IT managers grossly underestimate the efforts in this process.
Imagine your staff is ordering equipment for your data center and it's going right to the storeroom, not just without being deployed, but also without being inventoried. Then it sits there, depreciating in value and collecting dust. This is just one of the horror stories I've heard in the field. The company this happened to ultimately discovered that, in just a six week period, it had accumulated more than $700,000 in depreciation costs for assets that were not being used.
Sponsor
 The key thing to remember is that managing is different than documenting. Documenting is gathering the data, and, if the vehicle for this documentation is spreadsheets, that is often where the process stops (if it happened at all). In my experience, even with great spreadsheet records, each time there is a change planned to the data center a comparison of the real infrastructure and the infrastructure records is made, just to be "sure." That is hardly management! Case in point: one company I spoke with had a smaller data center of about 80 racks. They were keeping records in an MS Access database and were convinced the records were accurate. They were more diligent than most, running monthly checks to ensure the data was correct. However, the checks were being done based on paper printouts of the data, which in theory was updated into the Access database from hand written updates made to the records. When a full audit was performed the team found 63 servers and switches that were not recorded anywhere. So much for accuracy! Paul Goodison has more than two decades of experience managing major IT projects across the globe and has first-hand experience with the consequences of poorly managed infrastructure in large IT environments. Paul is the CEO of Cormant, makers of the CableSolve Solution. Here is another: I was recently talking with an IT manager who was having issues with power overloads, to the point where electrical breakers were tripping due to current overload issues. The data center was an older design and had power fed from distribution boards instead of end-of-row power panels. His first step to fix the issue was to commission an auditing and tracking exercise of each power circuit, using spreadsheets to document the information. After approximately $20,000 had been spent on external electricians, and equipment had been moved (at additional internal staff time and some service downtime), the problem was resolved. However, within three months the power problems started again. The new equipment had been deployed and the spreadsheets, having not been maintained, did not reflect the current deployed equipment status, leading to another costly audit. Here is My Manifesto Here are the steps you need to be taken to manage your IT infrastructure more efficiently. - Start by deciding what data is important to you first. There is no single list and no one-size fits all answer. It all depends on the age, size, scale and equipment in each unique environment.
- Next, pick a management system that will truly consolidate all the data currently managed in spreadsheets, and the data that should be managed. Strongly consider whether or not the solution requires hardware to be purchased and whether this will add to your problems or lock you into one system.
- Next, ensure there are real, positive processes in place to keep the data up-to-date; no tool is of any use if it's too much trouble to keep it accurate. Some systems make this easier than others. This is critical, as no tool by itself, no matter how fancy, or whatever the vendor says, is going to solve problems by itself.
- Then use the data for planning and further change, which means you need to trust your data. Do not fall into the trap of using the tool and still doing a physical audit each time change is required. All of this can be achieved, but it's not easy and there are no magic bullets. Do not believe a vendor that says their system will solve all your problems without process changes; it won't!
Properly managing your infrastructure is critical to avoiding downtime as well as meeting the demands of operational efficiency. If you are cutting your data center short on proper management to conserve money today, it is almost certainly costing you more in the long run, both in resources and downtime. While no two enterprises are ever the same in what they want to manage, the principle that change cannot be managed effectively without accurate consolidated data and a truly effective infrastructure management system applies to everyone. Discuss 
 | | 7 Ways to Love Blog Comments Again Posted: 05 Jan 2012 12:24 AM PST  Comments on blogs, what are they good for? Sometimes it's hard to remember, but you know there's a lot of potential in taking the democratization of publishing to the next level and letting people comment on your blog-written comments on the world.
This evening a fresh spate of debate has rolled over the tech blogosphere about whether it's worth it to allow commenting on blog posts at all. Comment fields are spam magnets, their filled with trollish bile and abuse, they rarely offer meaningful discourse and they're more trouble than they're worth, critics say. Supporters contend otherwise, and as one of those, I offer below seven specific ways that new startups can optimize the discourse after a blog post has been published by its author. If these don't work, maybe nothing will, but I think they are only the beginning. Give me a great Letter to the Editor of an old fashioned magazine, written by a real expert in the field who's read and taken issue with a published article, and I'm in nerd heaven. Surely we can get some of that in the blogosphere. Comments are little tendrils of thought, structured and online. There's no way that's worthless. Sponsor
 Blog comments aren't just about call and response between blogger and audience, they're about building a network of relationships. Engagio is a new startup, in limited beta right now, that really helps with that. It's like CRM for your commenting across a wide variety of platforms. Your Engagio inbox tracks all the conversations you've begun on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Disqus, HackerNews, Foursquare and elsewhere. All those threads are aggregated in one central place and it's easy to circle back and stay engaged. From a business perspective this can be useful in forming deeper relationships. But from an intellectual perspective it's even better: the service facilitates deeper connections between people online, answers to your questions and easy recall of smart things people shared in response to your postings through its historical comment search. I log in to my Engagio inbox almost every day and it makes me wish I posted more comments around the web. The discourse I do engage in though is made much better by this simple tool for following through with conversation threads. I reviewed Engagio in more depth here. 
Disqus and the Top Vote Getters Let readers vote up comments and then let them sort by the most up-voted comments. That's something that many commenting platforms are beginning to offer. Did you know that Disqus (the platform we and many other blogs use) offers a page dedicated to the most active comment conversations across its network each day? That page isn't great, but it shows potential. If it were broken out by blog category (tech, politics, entertainment, etc.) it would be even better. I would link to a particularly good comment on Android fragmentation posted to Engadget that appears on that page, but honestly the page is so underdeveloped that the same Christmas Grinch that stole the still-anticipated Disqus API must have run away with its wits. When you find a comment posted here at ReadWriteWeb, give a click to the commenter's avatar. It's really nice to see their history of commenting across the whole Disqus network of blogs. How long has it been since they posted here. Are they a regular RWW commenter? Where else to they read and discuss? This is metadata that gives context to a comment and it's easy to see because of the way the data is surfaced. Listening to What's Upvoted - LiveFyre Commenting system LiveFyre lets people not just post comments but also click to "listen" to a conversation. That means you'll get an email sent to you whenever certain conditions are met, like when someone posts a comment on a post you're listening to. I don't believe LiveFyre supports this yet, but it would be great if you could Listen to just comments that get at least one upvote. Or comments from people you're connected with across social networks or comments from Friends of Friends. There's a lot of potential in this Listening idea. Creative lurking, you might call it. There are powerful options that could be enabled for lurkers, the biggest population online. Friend of a Friend as Spam Control This is an idea people have talked about for years: why not use FOAF data as spam control? Show me comments that were posted by either friends on mine on social networks, or friends of my friends. At least by default. Hypothes.is Hypothes.is is a community funded and lead, really innovative, really exciting system being built to annotate online content down to the sentence level - and beyond. Commenting on offline items and objects. It looks fantastic - I've written about it here. This startup, if it succeeds, is going to do a good job of serving up high quality comments from high quality commenters, all over the web. I'm really excited for it to launch. Collapse Comments Blogging platforms that let users downvote comments and then see those comments get collapsed into lesser visibility are good. Slashdot is of course the Granddaddy of this. Why would a person give up on commenting if they haven't tried using a system like that? Troll Mocking Business Insider, a sprawling tech and business blog that's more than a little trollish itself, has a great way of dealing with nasty comment posters. They are banished to the Water Cooler, a segment of comments adorned with cartoons of drunken vikings. It calls out trolls for what they are. I find it quite effective; I skip those comments if I'm in a hurry and I get my self-righteousness fix without nuking the whole conversation. Update: It appears this feature has been removed from the site! The vikings are now well-behaved around a water cooler and offensive comments are removed as offensive! Oh well, I sure liked that idea. There are so many options - and this is just the beginning. As social media is increasingly validated across society, commenting is only going to grow more comment. Hopefully the experience can be optimized. Self-satisfied blog-casters will suffer real losses in the long-term if they don't experiment with tools that capture some of the incredible value made available by listening to voices outside their own. I'm just sayin'. Photo: I Love Jesus because... by elsey_lovefusionphoto Discuss 
 | | The Android-based HDTV: Higher Bandwidth, 6x Streaming, Built-in Sling Media Posted: 04 Jan 2012 05:30 PM PST  The segment of the media delivery industry that may yet take off for consumers consists of programming and services that are delivered to newer HDTVs "over-the-top" (OTT) - meaning, outside of the cable or satellite provider's pipeline. Naturally, the Internet is the delivery medium here. In prior years, analysts have wondered how (or whether) traditional programming from multi-service operators (MSOs) like Comcast would compete.
The answer we may get from CES 2012 is that it won't have to. Semiconductor maker Broadcom is set to demonstrate a new class of system-on-a-chip (SoC) components that could be integrated into set-top boxes (STBs). This new class, numbered BCM72xx, would deliver OTT services alongside cable channels, in a format that would enable MSOs to utilize Android as the operating system, and Sling Media as the streaming provider for wireless devices. It could be the formula behind the phrase, "Goodbye, TiVo." Sponsor
 The multitude of partnerships this new class of products entails is so hot that neither Broadcom nor its new partners could hold off until next week. Essentially, what we should expect to see demonstrated in Las Vegas by Broadcom is a type of STB that delivers all of the following: 1. DVR functionality from EchoStar that incorporates wireless "place-shifting" from Sling Media. Meaning, anything you record to your EchoStar DVR can be streamed wirelessly to your smartphone, tablet, or laptop. EchoStar had purchased Sling back in 2007, but its ability to exploit that technology had been tied up in a patent battle with TiVo that only ended last May, in a $500 million settlement in TiVo's favor. 2. An Android-based apps ecosystem enabled through a partnership with Myriad Group, the maker of the Alien Vue environment that Dan Rowinski introduced you to last month. Existing OTT program services such as Google TV and Roku are already being integrated into Alien Vue; and to that end, Roku today announced its own partnership with premium channel Showtime for a kind of "previewing app" for premium content. 3. A 3D environment for graphical, on-screen program guides using OpenGL ES 2.0 as the graphics standard. 4. Optional built-in videoconferencing, which could be a major plus for cable operators that still want to deliver "triple-play" or "quadruple-play" customer options, but find themselves uncompetitive with wireless providers like Verizon. 5. Interactive supplemental content similar to the BD-Live content on Blu-ray movie discs, by way of Adobe AIR for the Digital Home. 6. Expanded bandwidth for on-demand streaming of as many as six simultaneous channels, by way of support for the Multimedia over Coax Alliance MoCA 2.0 standard. 7. Accelerated channel changing and scanning ability by means of a Broadcom standard called FastRTV. As RWW's Dan Rowinski told me today, one of the sticking points to seeing Android implemented on STBs already concerns something called the device recognition setting, which enables software to determine the size of its own display. Newer versions of Android, including "Ice Cream Sandwich" version 4.0, enable a variety of standard sizes; but at least for now, Rowinski says, "extra large" refers to tablets with 10.1-inch diagonal screens. Any demos we see of Alien Vue on Android-based widescreens, therefore, would probably have to be manual hacks, at least for now. Discuss 
 | | Daily Wrap: Google+ Is Breaking the Web and More Posted: 04 Jan 2012 05:00 PM PST  Jon Mitchell has a bone to pick with Google+. This and more in today's Daily Wrap.
Sometimes it's difficult to catch every story that hits tech media in a day, so we wrap up some of the most talked about stories. We give you a daily recap of what you missed in the ReadWriteWeb Community, including a link to some of the most popular discussions in our offsite communities on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ as well. Sponsor
 
Jon Mitchell details the problems he's found with Google's social offering, Google+. Beyond a few little things that may make the site a pain to use for some, he takes issue with the heavy search integration and the way Google+ posts are prioritized, often above links to the content Google+ conversations are referencing. This one is a hot topic, with many in agreement, and almost just as many who are calling for Jon's head on a platter. Jon says that Google+ Is Going to Mess Up the Internet... Agree or disagree? From the comments:  Chad von Nau - "This article touches on some thoughts I've had recently about G+. Google's strength was indexing the public internet. Then Facebook came along and became a massive, important walled garden. Google can not access Facebook's data, and so the more data Facebook has, the farther away Google gets from being able to access ALL the world's data. Google+ is their "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" response. A semi-walled garden that seeks to own people's data instead of just indexing it. Gmail arguably has the same origins, in that they saw email as a vast, untapped mine of information and wanted a piece of it. The key difference is that no one else ever sees your email, Google only uses it to serve ads (I trust them on this). Before G+ launched, I had hopes that it would land much closer to where Disqus is today. A way to connect existing data on the internet and add rich functionality and semantic information, rather than creating yet another restricted bin for people to pour their consciousness into. This would have been consistent with what I originally loved Google for, strengthening the public internet. The point this article brings up about Google prioritizing G+ over public websites exemplifies their new competitive strategy. I'm sad to watch the internet devolve into something more like loosely-connected intranets. We have the chance for universal information, and we're blowing it. It's not Google's fault, it's is all of ours. Google is just doing their best to stay relevant."
More Must Read Stories: 
Worried about whether or not your favorite Web site is supporting the Stop Online Piracy Act? A new Chrome extension seeks to lift those fears. After installing No SOPA, users get a warning message reading "SOPA Supporter! This company is a known supporter of the dangerous 'Stop Online Piracy Act'," every time they visit a SOPA-supporting Web site. (more) 
Android Ice Cream Sandwich has made its first appearance in Google's fragmentation numbers for the platform. Android 4.0.x is now running on less than 1% of all devices that have accessed the Android Market in the last two weeks, coming in at 0.6% overall. (more) 
Who needs a big, expensive Web-connected television when there are so many other ways to stream content from the Internet to your living room? There are a variety of boxes and plug-ins that users can acquire to get the Web running on their TVs. One of the leaders in the space, Roku, has taken the notion a step farther. Roku is throwing out the notion of the box. Instead, stream movies and shows to your TV just by plugging in a stick. (more) 
As we begin a new year, I thought I would take a moment to review where Web publishing has come and where it seems to be going. We certainly stand at a crossroads, as we move from the "golden age of blogging" into whatever we are going to call things this year or this moment. I tend to think of this as the post-blogging era. (more) 
If you thought you had your online banking security situation under control, along comes this chilling blog entry from security vendor Trusteer about some really nasty stuff they observed over the holiday break. And especially for those of you that have chosen paperless statements, you want to read it carefully and understand the exploit. (more) 
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney won last night's Iowa Caucus by eight votes, and the consensus on what role Twitter and social media played in the contest may be just as evenly split. Jenn Deering Davis of TweetReach, a social media analytics service by San Francisco-based Appozite that tracks Twitter mentions and reach on a wide range of subjects, said Tuesday afternoon that volume about the Iowa caucus was "pretty low." (more) 
It used to be that large companies could pretty much do as they pleased in their ongoing quest to maximize profits and please shareholders. It was only when the harm done to workers, consumers, the environment or a firm's own self image got particularly bad that anything changed. This isn't to say that all big companies do bad things, but some do and in the industrial age, they could often get away with it pretty easily. (more) 
The promises from Intel on the week before CES 2012 in Las Vegas speak of a device that's as lightweight as a tablet, but that has the full keyboard users require to do real-world work, and the Windows 8 operating system they need for their everyday software. It's a "tablet plus," if you will. But will you really be able to touch an ultrabook's screen the same way you would a tablet's screen? (more) 
Yahoo named PayPal president Scott Thompson its new CEO today. Scott who? Exactly. I'd never heard of him either. But with a technical background - and a need to prove himself, and no crazy Silicon Valley persona to stroke - he might actually be the right guy for the job. (more) Keep up with ReadWriteWeb by subscribing to our RSS feed or email newsletter. You can also follow ReadWriteWeb across the web on Google+, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Discuss 
 | | Do's And Don'ts For Twitter Brand Pages [STUDY] Posted: 04 Jan 2012 04:00 PM PST  The Twitter brand pages launched last month need to work hard to engage the user to be successful, according to an eye track study released Wednesday.
SimpleUsability studied four of the 21 brand pages that went live last month. While Twitter had previously allowed promoted tweets and corporate accounts, the brand pages launched in December more closely resemble the way Google+ and Facebook handle corporate presences. Twitter brand pages include space for company logos and taglines, as well as space to embed videos and other media. While some initially heralded Twitter brand pages as a "game changer," that scenario may not play out. One of the major problems facing brand pages, as noted in the SimpleUsability study, is that once someone starts following a Twitter account or brand page, there is usually no reason for them to return to the page as all of the new and relevant information will show up as tweets in the followers own timeline. Sponsor
 The study used eye tracking technology to study how viewers viewed the Twitter brand pages for Coca-Cola, HP, McDonald's and Staples. The best way to engage users, the study found, was to give viewers with visual content in promoted tweets and in the brand pages. Among the study's other findings: - Too much of a "corporate feel" will deter users, but it's still important for companies to use their Twitter pages as an invitation for consumers to learn more about their brand.
- Contests and promotions help draw repeat visitors to a brand page and get them to stay on a page longer.
- Brand pages that come across as sales-heavy will lose visitors.
Users ultimately want brand pages to show a "more human side" to the company, the study said. The HP site, for example, scored well because it did not emphasize sales and advertising, and even made an effort to respond to individual followers. Some of the tweets on the page responded to customer complaints, which improved transparency and credibility as viewed by page visitors. Discuss 
 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | | Gartner: Next, Social Networks Will Sell Insurance, Become Banks Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:30 PM PST  A recently published business development analysis by research firm Gartner looked into social networks' need for a more structurally sound revenue stream, and came to the conclusion that to maintain viability and competitiveness, they will soon enter the financial services industry. One Gartner analyst, Juergen Weiss, went so far as to predict that by the end of 2014, one of the major social networks - by implication, Facebook - would enter the business of property and casualty (P&C) insurance.
"Offering insurance products to their communities would be a natural extension of social media providers' financial services strategies," reads Weiss' conclusions, "and would allow them to capitalize on their extensive set of information they constantly collect about their users." Sponsor
 The predictions appear in the latest of a Gartner series of "Top Industry Predicts 2012" reports, using data compiled late last November. The report's editor, Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, cited "radical shifts in customer behavioral changes and buying habits... challenging many industries to reinvent their product development and sales and services processes to align with customer expectations and technology use." The train of logic begins with Gartner analysts Stessa Cohen and Peter Redshaw, who cite a rapid increase in the number of online banking transactions. This increase has already driven banks to accelerate the establishment of their social presences through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and yes, if you can believe it, Flickr. (Banks share their family photos with their customers. No joke.) "Traditional banks risk being disintermediated by social media websites that are increasingly looking for additional revenue streams beyond advertising," Redshaw and Cohen write. "This is a natural extension of the rise already seen in comparison and aggregator sites, especially for more commoditized products such as small loans, general insurance and credit cards. Examples of recent activity include the social payments startup Twitpay, the virtual currency Facebook Credits and the acquisition of the U.K. price comparison site BeatThatQuote by Google." This "disintermediation," as Gartner's analysts put it, includes the enablement of online debt management services and peer-to-peer loan pools, all of which happens by way of social networks more than by stand-alone Web sites. To stay competitive, traditional banks (Gartner cites Citibank as the leader here) have launched services that reach their customers through Facebook, and enable them to conduct transactions through a social network rather than a Web site. Here's where Juergen Weiss takes over. Weiss notes Facebook's Timeline feature as conducive for users to share their everyday events - getting married, getting a new job, entering retirement. Financial institutions are already using tools like Salesforce.com's Radian6 to search for these events as social net users share them. Weiss believes this could become the social net proprietors' opportunity to pre-empt those institutions from stealing away their own customers. Within just the next few years, he predicts, the social networks themselves (again, implying mainly Facebook, though perhaps Google also) will offer banking services, and then "naturally," insurance services as well, perhaps initially through joint ventures with existing financial institutions but not necessarily the bigger firms. The Gartner analysts perceive this as a genuine threat to the existing insurance industry. In their report, they advise insurers to plan now for the commoditization of their products and services, implying that they should perhaps be sold through portals the way cloud service customers purchase bandwidth and virtual machines today. A ripple effect from this seismic shift could impact government regulators worldwide, whose inability to adjust to changing circumstances has already been blamed for such events as the collapse of the Central Bank of Ireland, and the sub-prime mortgage loan crisis in the U.S. Discuss 
 | | Facebook Announces 2nd Annual Hacker Cup Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:15 PM PST  Today Facebook announced open registration for its second annual Hacker Cup, a competition for the best hacker.
Programmers from around the world will race to accurately solve algorithmic problems, advancing through five rounds of challenges. The winners will walk away with prizes. Only one programmer will take home the title of world champion and the Hacker Cup trophy. Sponsor
 The competition commences with a 72-hour online-only qualification round that starts on January 20, 2012 at 4pm PT. If a developer advances, he or she will move onto three more online rounds. The most grueling round is the first one, which will last 24 hours straight, beginning at 10am on January 28. Only the top 500 competitors will move on to round two, which lasts from 1-4pm PT on February 4. A total of 100 competitors will advance to round three, which lasts from 1-4pm PT on February 11. The top 25 competitors who advance will receive an email. Facebook will fly them out to Menlo Park, California for the last round on March 17, 2012. Facebook promises to reimburse the finalist for a visa application fee and up to $100 USD if it was incurred while obtaining the visa. Facebook does not reimburse for passport-related expenses. Finalists will all receive cash and other prizes, but only one will win the Hacker Cup trophy. Here's last year's trophy. 
Facebook held its first-ever Hacker Cup in 2011. First place went to Russian Coder Petr Mitrichev, who also won the Google Code Jam in 2006. Second-place when to Anh Tuan Mitrichev. The third place winner was Tiancheng Lou, a third-year PhD student whose research is focused in combinatorial algorithm design. Developers, will you register for the 2012 Hacker Cup? Discuss 
 | | Android Holo Themes An Important Requirement to Ease Fragmentation Posted: 04 Jan 2012 03:00 PM PST  Google is making incremental improvements to the Android platform to ease the burden of fragmentation on developers and original equipment manufacturers. While still allowing manufacturers to create custom skins, Google is doing its best to standardize the rest of the of the Android development environment with version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Themes are a big part of standardizing the Android experience. Android has instituted a requirement in ICS that that the "Holo" family of themes be implemented into devices unmodified. This will mean that widgets, apps buttons and menu screens will be much easier for developers to integrate. Sponsor
  In a blog post on Android's developer site, framework engineer Adam Powell writes: "For developers new system themes mean more design targets for their apps. Using system themes means developers can take advantage of a user's existing expectations and it can save a lot of production time, but only if an app designer can reliably predict the results. Before Android 4.0 the variance in system themes from device to device could make it difficult to design an app with a single predictable look and feel."
What the Android engineers are trying to do is make a common set of code that will be the basis for design and theme elements in Android. If a device has Android Market capabilities, it will have Holo themes as "originally designed." That could complicate matters for companies like Amazon that does not inherently allow Market access and thus will have trouble implementing ICS updates to the new software or hardware updates to the Kindle Fire. Google is tightening control on the ecosystem by making these Holo themes a compatibility requirement for Android 4.0 and future updates. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The source code remains open, there are just a few more design-based guidelines to adhere to. This is what many in the Android ecosystem have been waiting for, Google to take a little bit more control of the platform to streamline the experience and give developers better guidelines for creating apps for the platform. "We have no desire to restrict manufacturers from building their own themed experience across their devices. In fact we've gone further to make this even easier. In Android 4.0's API (level 14) we've added a new public theme family to complement the Holo family introduced in Android 3.0: DeviceDefault. DeviceDefault themes are aliases for the device's native look and feel. The DeviceDefault theme family and widget style family offer ways for developers to target the device's native theme with all customizations intact," Powell wrote. "Formally separating these theme families will also make future merges easier for manufacturers updating to a new platform version, helping more devices update more quickly. Google's Nexus devices alias DeviceDefault to the unmodified Holo themes."  Apps designed to run on older versions of Android will not necessarily have this Holo requirement. Android 4.0 will pick out a theme based on the SDK level to "maintain the app's original expectations." That will work for any apps designed for Android 3.0.x Honeycomb (or, any API level above 10, with ICS the top at the point at level 14). To support themes on apps running Android 2.x devices, Powell suggests using the platform's resource system to automatically detect themes for the appropriate API level.
Holo themes are just one aspect of Ice Cream Sandwich intended to make it easier for developers to navigate the tricky waters associated with coding for Android. We noted in September the early efforts that Google was making with Ice Cream Sandwich to easily support a variety of screen sizes by creating several stopgaps that developers can use to make sure their apps work on a variety of screen sizes. The nature of Android will never allow it to fully escape the fragmentation of the platform. The goal though is to make the baseline code as easy to institute as possible with certain requirements that will give the platform a streamlined approach while also allowed OEMs, carriers and developers the ability to build on top of it. Holo themes are a good step in this direction.
Discuss 
 | | Why Would a Newspaper Company Launch a Startup Incubator? Posted: 04 Jan 2012 02:45 PM PST  For most print publishers, the transition from ink to pixels has been at least somewhat painful. Over the last few years, the industry has seen widespread layoffs, furloughs, bankruptcies and newspaper closures. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News are no exception. The company that previously owned the two daily papers filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and ended up selling them the following year. The new owner, a company called Philadelphia Media Network, has since been trying to reposition its publications for the twenty-first century.
Today, PMN fulfilled a promise it made last year by doing something few would expect a newspaper company to do. Project Liberty, the company's tech startup incubator, is now open for business. Sponsor
 Project Liberty is launching with three hand-picked local startups, all of which are recent graduates of the DreamIt Ventures accelerator program. The companies will be housed in the same building as the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com for the next six months. During that time, each company will receive free office space and access to resources within the building. The products they'll be building all have a potential future home at PMN, but there are no guarantees. Digital Tools Fit For a News Publisher  CloudMine, one of the companies enrolled in the incubator, is a mobile backend-as-a-service provider for developers. It offers a pay-as-you-go API that hooks into their hosted server-side platform, freeing developers up from having to code custom backends. Why would a newspaper company have any interest in the success of such a tool? In PMN's case, a service like this could aid the company's ongoing efforts to bolster their mobile products and tablet strategy. Last year, the company made headlines by offering a $99 Android-based tablet with specialized news-reading apps for the Inquirer and Daily News. It was a bold move for a print media company, even if its earliest iteration was largely based around print-to-digital shovelware.
 An even more obvious choice for a newspaper is SnipSnap, a smartphone app that lets consumers scan printed coupons to save and redeem later. SnipSnap CEO Ted Mann, a veteran of the newspaper industry, left his position as Digital Development Director at Gannett New Jersey last year to launch the startup. Today, Mann returns to the newspaper world, however temporarily, as he and his team set up shop in the Inquirer building. They will work alongside the newspapers' digital sales team, although SnipSnap is not officially a product of PMN.
 Those on the editorial side will have the opportunity to collaborate with the folks working on ElectNext, a Web app that helps voters choose the best candidate in an upcoming election on the local, state and federal levels. The app works by asking users a series of questions about social and political issues and then matches them with the appropriate candidates.
Rebranding the "Newspaper" Beyond the nature of the companies being incubated, there are few other obvious reasons for a newspaper company to make a move like this. For one, it serves as a marketing tactic to help rebrand a print publisher as a forward-thinking, tech-savvy multimedia company. By selling news-reading tablets and housing tech startups, PMN can paint itself as a media organization of the future rather than a soon-to-be relic. Another formerly bankrupt news company, the Journal Register Company (now known as Digital First Media), is taking a similar approach this year by launching a tech incubator of its own, which will be geared toward startups specializing in advertising, editorial content and audience development. Like PMN, this move helps Digital First Media find innovative potential future partners and fits in with a larger strategy of rebranding itself for the twenty-first century.  PMN's experiment may be the first of its kind at a big city daily newspaper, but its not the first time that any publisher has tried incubating startups. Hearst and Conde Nast have both launched digital products built by in-house startups, some of which have nothing to do with the publishers' traditional businesses.
A few years ago, moves like this would have been seen as particularly revolutionary and forward-thinking. Today, they're still smart, but are more about survival than thinking ahead. As print revenues continue to decline, traditional news publishers desperately need to find new ways to both build their audiences and monetize their efforts in a way that can make up for the cash they keep hemorrhaging on the print side. The Web has made the former significantly easier than the latter. Incubating tech startups may not lead to an explosion in revenue overnight, but it's a smart step in the right direction. As PMN CEO Greg Osberg said during a presentation at Temple University last year, "I want us to find the next Foursquare and house it at Philly.com." In time, revenue growth is more likely to come out of innovative efforts like these than from clinging to print and milking hideous Web banner ads for every last nickel. Newspapers and Startups: A Two-Way Incubation The intimate relationship PMN is establishing with local startups serves not only to fuel the growth of those new companies, but it may also help adapt the culture within the host organization itself. A lot of "future of news" types like to talk about how old media companies should adopt a startup culture if they want to survive. As anybody who's ever worked at a legacy media organization knows, that's far easier said than done. Having had no other choice, PMN has already started the process by making moves like this, merging its newsrooms and demoting a top editor that they saw as not being digital-savvy enough. What better way to encourage a startup culture than by bringing startups down the hall from the newsroom? Discuss 
 | This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
Sistem Cerdas, Sehingga ANDA mampu meraih hidup berkecukupan mulai detik ini DAN seterusnya....
Jasa REPARASI ILMU Bagi yg pernah belajar ilmu di tempat lain, cuma dapat diktat dll shg belum merasakan/gagal silakan datang langsung, akan kami aktifkan dgn cara yg benar sesuai sanad ilmunya. Biaya Nego. Hub. AURA NUSANTARA 081229536911 (No SMS) GURU BESAR GMA dr. PRABOWO E.K...
Search Engine Submission Company again in 2011
Here’s your invitation to attend a phenomenal gathering designed for anyone that comprises the illustrious Baby Boomer generation. Come and learn about everything that you need to know about the aging process and how to execute it in a manner that is healthful and successful. For your consideration there will be seminars focusing on senior lifestyles and living options. This will include information on affordable housing, choices in real estate, mortgage solutions, assisted living, skilled care, and residential facilities. Also included will be discussions on employment, legal matters such as wills and trusts, and financial topics. Of course there will be attention paid to health, featuring information on nutritional needs, healthcare options, insurance, optometry, and more. In addition guidance on making a smooth transition into this most exciting life phase will be offered. Recreation and entertainment will be discussed too, including activities and travel specifically designed with seniors in mind.
0 comments:
Post a Comment