Simon Scullion

This caught my eye via google alerts, emphasis is mine.

In a perfect world, all email clients would render our designs the way we intended it to be. Seeing as how browser compatibility for the web is still some way off, email client standardization would be eons away from reaching display nirvana.

Together with Outlook 2007, Lotus Notes is a very difficult email client to comply your designs with.

I left a comment explaining how Lotus Notes 8 is somewhat improved in this area.

Source: Online Marketing Business Blog: HTML Email and Lotus Notes

Chris Brogan has a great post in his series on social media.

This list is a must read!

• Blogs allow chronological organization of thoughts, status, ideas. This means more permanence than emails.
• Podcasts (video and audio) encourage different types of learning, and in portable formats.
• Social networks encourage collaboration, can replace intranets and corporate directories, and can promote non-email conversation channels.
• Social networks can amass like-minded people around shared interests with little external force, no organizational center, and a group sense of what is important and what comes next.
• Social bookmarking means that entire groups can learn of new articles, tools, and other Web properties, instead of leaving them all on one machine, one browser, for one human.
• Blogs and wikis encourage conversations, sharing, creation.
• Social software, like Flickr and Last.fm and even Amazon.com, promote human-mediated information sharing. Similar mechanisms inside of larger organizations would be just as effective.
• Social news sites show the popularity of certain information, at least within certain demographics. Would roll-your-own voting within the company be useful?
• Social networks are full of prospecting and lead generation information for sales and marketing.
• Social networks make for great ways to understand the mindset of the online consumer, should that be of value to you.
• Online versions of your materials and media, especially in formats that let you share, mean that you’re equipping others to run with your message, should that be important (like if you’re a marketer).
• Online versions of your materials and media are searchable, and help Google help you find new visitors / customers / employees.
• Social networks contain lots of information about your prospective new hires, your customers, your competitors.
• Blogs allow you to speak your mind, and let the rest of the world know your thought processes and mindsets.
• Podcasts are a way to build intimacy with information.
• Podcasts reach people who are trying out new gadgets, like iPhones, iPods, Apple TVs, Zunes, and more.
• Tagging and sharing and all the other activities common on the social Web mean that information gets passed around much faster.
• Human aggregation and mediation improves the quality of data you find, and gives you more “exactly what I was looking for” help. (See also, Mahalo).
• Innovation works much faster in a social software environment, open source or otherwise.
• Conversations spread around, adding metadata and further potential business value.
• People feel heard.

I could pick any as a favourite!

This post from Andy Beal caught my attention today, commenting on google’s latest feature. As part of its search results, Google is letting us skip a site’s flash intro.

So you know what we are discussing, here is an example search. Check out the [Skip Intro] link to the right of the result.

The new feature in itself I didn’t find particularly notable. However, Andy closes by saying (emphasis mine):

This suggests that Google is algorithmically detecting homepages that are all Flash, and taking it upon themselves to help you skip the intro.

What do you think about this? Great for searchers, but taking liberties with a site owner’s right to display a page as he intended?

Now this made me sit up!

This “right” Andy mentions was taken away with the advent of RSS. It brought into play a whole new way of users navigating the sites they now only rarely visit. Gone are the days when a site owner could “control” the landing page to their site, and what the user had to wade through just to get to what they wanted. Flash intros should be a thing of the past, and I don’t see why google is “taking liberties” in helping people actually get to the content they are looking for. I think site owners should see it that way also.

It surprised me, to see this question coming from a marketing blog resplendent with its RSS feeds and the like. If online marketing types are advising people to move towards RSS and social media, they need to also be explaining some of the consequences.

Still way behind by modern standards mind.

Tags: isp, broadband, speed, spain, telefonica

You bet!

Great stuff!

Via: Lotus Rock Star | SNAPPS isn’t going anywhere this fast… (also seen elsewhere already!)

Some thought-provoking commentary for all us Facebookers out there. Particularly at this time of year, when we are all turning to the internet to help with the task of Christmas shopping.

Here is some poor guy’s story, painfully making it clear why Facebook’s Beacon is a bad idea in its current form:

I purchased a diamond engagement ring set from overstock in preparation for a New Year’s surprise for my girlfriend. Please note that this was something meant to be very special, and also very private at this point (for obvious reasons). Within hours, I received a shocking call from one of my best friends of surprise and “congratulations” for getting engaged.(!!!)

Imagine my horror when I learned that overstock had published the details of my purchase (including a link to the item and its price) on my public facebook newsfeed, as well as notifications to all of my friends. ALL OF MY FRIENDS, including my girlfriend, and all of her friends, etc…

ALL OF THIS WAS WITHOUT MY CONSENT OR KNOWLEDGE.

I am totally distressed that my surprise was ruined, and what was meant to be something special and a lifetime memory for my girlfriend and I was destroyed by a totally underhanded and infuriating privacy invasion. I want to wring the neck of the folks at overstock and facebook who thought that this was a good idea. It sets a terrible precedent on the net, and I feel that it ruined a part of my life.

Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li’s Blog): Close encounter with Facebook Beacon

Be careful out there folk, and think about what these things involve.

Via ChiefTech

Tags: facebook, beacon, privacy, overstock

In order to foster faster communication with everyone at Lotusphere, or even if you just wish to sit back and watch, there will be a Lotusphere channel you can follow and post to. Twitter is setting it up so if you set yourself to follow all the tweets, you can also post to it so everyone gets them. Talk about instant communication when not everyone can be on Sametime and there is breaking news, a vendor giving away cool stuff, when you want to find people or when a vendor has an open party. The possibilities are endless.

IdoNotes (and sleep)

This is just a great idea! Whether you can attend or not, this will add to the buzz from Lotusphere in January!

Follow Lotusphere on Twitter: http://twitter.com/lotusphere

Tags: twitter, lotusphere2008

James Dellow over on his ChiefTech blog is talking about Enterprise RSS, and makes some good points regarding its slow adoption and an apparent lack of understanding:

for enterprise RSS to work you need both RSS content and RSS readers in place. From a technology point of view neither issue is difficult to overcome but we run into the old chicken and egg problem of supply and demand for RSS - It departments won’t invest in RSS if there is nothing to consume, and if there is no way of consuming then why create RSS content?

The other issue is that if you can overcome this first problem, then it would appear you don’t need a enterprise RSS system in place, however the problem I have is that I (and I think most knowledge workers) want an integrated RSS experience.

The chicken and egg situation is a big problem, putting the brakes on what should be relatively easy adoption of an enabling technology.

But I think there is also another aspect of this. RSS is raising its head as part of the conversations going on around social software adoption within the enterprise. This is not necessarily a bad thing, syndicated content is certainly key to these tools and their success. But why are RSS and ATOM not been given more attention outside this context, as part of more strategic thinking?

There is a lot more they can be used for than just blog feeds!

Link: ChiefTech: Why aren’t we getting enterprise RSS yet?

James, I tried posting this in a shorter version as a comment on your blog, but having problems, any ideas?

Tags: RSS, ATOM, enterprise2.0, socialsoftware

Some interesting developments bringing together social networking and virtual worlds:

Active Worlds announced today that they had launched the “Active Worlds 3D Avatar and World Explorer” application, allowing companies and developers to build virtual worlds on the Facebook platform. The company says the application is based on Internet Explorer and ActiveX from Microsoft to build on existing standards and to allow certain elements of the virtual worlds to interact with more traditional websites and Web 2.0 applications. “Since our Active Worlds technology continues to be standards driven, we feel this release sets a new milestone on 3D Internet implementation,” said JP McCormick, chairman of Active Worlds, “The push is on for interoperability and a set of standards which will drive Virtual World technology into the future. We believe that many of these already exist. By continuing to enhance our already standards driven application we greatly increase our value to e- commerce, education, entertainment, and social networking sites, as well as our core business with Fortune 500 companies.”

I’m not so sure I agree with the idea that Internet Explorer and ActiveX can be considered a true standard, widely used yes, but not a standard!

Which somewhat goes against the grain with what comes next:

Active Worlds was present at the IBM standards meeting last month and confirmed its commitment there towards building out standards for virtual worlds.

I haven’t specifically blogged about the idea jam yet, I wasn’t lucky enough to be involved in the beta testing, but have since signed up and been having a look around

Today created my first idea!

idea jam - Linux support for Quickr Domino version

Bruce and the guys have done a great job getting this up and running, now we need to support it by throwing in our ideas!

So if you haven’t already, sign up!

Blogged with Flock

Tags: ideajam, lotuscommunity, lotus, quickr, linux