Thursday, June 19, 2008

"Download" (documentary)The True Story Of The Internet "People Power"

Link to video (43 mins) hosted on Google Video

Summary:
Host John Heilemann explores the interactive nature of the modern World Wide Web, from early successes like Napster and the still popular Craigslist, to more recent phenomena like the social networking sites MySpace and Facebook.

In this episode, "People Power," teenager Shawn Fanning invents Napster and forever changes the way music is shared over the Net -- and, later, the way people communicate with each other via this medium.

Download: The True Story of the Internet is about a revolution -- the technological, cultural, commercial and social revolution that has radically changed our lives. And for the first time, we hear how it happened from the men and women who made it possible.

From the founders of eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Netscape, Google and many others, we hear amazing stories of how, in ten short years, the Internet took over our lives. These extraordinary men and women tell us how they went from being geeky, computer obsessed nerds to being 21st-century visionaries in the time it takes most people to get their first promotion. And, how they made untold billions along the way. The style of the story-telling is up close and personal.

With first-hand testimony from the people that matter, we tell a story that has all the excitement of a thriller -- full of battles and back-stabbing, moments of genius and moments of sheer hilarity. You will never surf the net in the same way again.

Download is hosted by technology journalist John Heilemann. He's an edgy, combative, hi-energy New Yorker who never takes anything at face value. He's also a personal friend of most of Silicon Valley's most important characters and he revels in craziness of it all. After all, this is a story in which 20-year-olds become overnight billionaires, create, destroy and re-create more wealth in ten years then human race has ever seen, and still struggle to get a date.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Link: Browser as the new Operating System

Related to an earlier post of mine that the Browser is the platform that applications should be built for...except this article uses the term "Operating System". I disagree with the terminology - the Operating System will always be the layer (above the BIOS) that the computer uses to work with its hardware, and no 'Browser' can do that. But it is an interesting term, and relevant for the article since it is making the case that applications are being built on the browser, as they would otherwise atop the Operating System.

Link
Excerpt:

The Browser Is The New Operating System

from the local-storage dept

A couple of weeks ago TechCrunch had a good write-up of the move toward open local storage APIs in web browsers. As websites have come to look more and more like applications rather than static pages, they've begun to bump up against the limits of what today's web browsers can do. Developers have responded by using a variety of proprietary plug-ins and workarounds to expand the browser's functionality. One example of this is local storage. There aren't a lot of good options for applications that want to store significant amounts of data client-side in a way that will continue to be available if the Internet connection goes away. Google has Google Gears, while Adobe has Flash. Each offers local storage, but neither is compatible with the other, nor are their APIs likely to be adopted by other browser vendors in the future.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

CSPS should have a channel on YouTube

The CSPS hosts armchair discussions, almost weekly, on topics of interest to the Canadian public service. Unfortunately these discussions reach a tiny group of local attendees and those who join by 90's-style webcasting having reserved the time on their 90's computer (complete with Windows 95).

If CSPS had a channel on YouTube, employees (like Research Analysts) could disseminate views, information, news, updates to the public service at large and its own employees, without costly systems, upgrades and inferior systems. Of particular value would be to develop learning modules and lessons.

Instead of having a 90's style website where the video is stored as a video file for download by users, if the video is uploaded to YouTube or Google Video, the video is centralized for fast streaming and commenting and rating (if permitted) by users, and the content can be found by others not familiar with CSPS or its material, and hence expand the relevance of CSPS by expanding its user base.

The issue of copyright and ownership has come up...to this I point out the many examples that YouTube has removed content due to copyright violation, and user controls enable users to remove content they have put up, as well as specify who can see what video (private or public). Furthermore, it's also easier to manage the videos all in one place, instead of having users download the videos.

There is precedence for this. Instead of storing videos on their website, CBC has a channel on YouTube for disseminating their best videos (and hence expanding and responding better) to their user base.:
http://www.youtube.com/user/CBCtv

Other channels of interest:
There are music companies that have channels on YouTube, with full music videos and interviews:
There are learning channels, where companies create content for dissemination on YouTube:
There is an opportunity here for the CSPS:

No Channels found for “school of public service”

Interesting video about Information, the information economy and the workforce

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Demoing - CSPS armchairs CAN be on iPods and online

And they should use Google Video or YouTube as the medium to deliver them to the user.
Each video has been set to only be visible in Canada. Other countries cannot. Also these are not searchable within Google - you need to have the link to find out where they are.


Using YouTube or Google Video means:
  • less load on IM/IT or Corporate services, who don't have to host the video and maintain the servers
  • empowered users/staff who can put them online (following guidelines), meaning content can be live faster and edited more efficiently (even taken down more efficiently)
  • forward-compatible - Google Video and YouTube change their system and update the video player. Now public servants can watch the webcast on iPods and Playstation Portables. Tomorrow on other devices.
TED Talks and Google lectures are put up on-line for all to see, and everyone benefits and attaches the TED name or Google name to the lectures, getting people in touch with more content and disseminate more.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

From Slashdot: CIA's Wiki Web 2.0 tool

CIA Details Its Wikipedia-Like Tools For Analysts

"If you think selling Web 2.0 in your organization is hard, some early backers of a Wikipedia-like project at the Central Intelligence Agency were called traitors and told they "would get someone killed" by their efforts. But Intellipedia — the CIA's version of Wikipedia — now is so heavily used by analysts that the agency is using it in its security briefings, according to two of the CIA employees who work on the project. Intellipedia has been expanded since it was first launched so that now it boasts its own YouTube-like channel for video and Flickr-like photo sharing as well as a wiki where workers can debate different intel information."

Top Civil Servant talks to small groups & media - still avoiding 21st century notion of a "blog"

Another article in the newspapers about Canada's top Civil Servant, Privy Council Office Clerk Kevin Lynch gave another exclusive presentation about the state of the Canada's public service (it's aging, still, and will retire, in droves). The article writes that Lynch "has taken to regularly meeting with small groups in an effort to provide a glimpse of what the government is working on".

I'm not sure how it helps that Canada's top civil servant is talking to small groups, including the media, to disseminate his message to the masses when he can very well do it himself with a very basic blog. With a blog, the media, public servants, and the whole public can get the message directly, instead of filtered through a journalist's assessment and recollection and interpretation of the events.

I know that Lynch can get his message out, with his online index of speeches on his PCO Clerk website, but this isn't the same. I was at a meeting two months ago where a consortium of universities were presenting how they plan to get the government of Canada up to speed on Web 2.0 Collaborative tools, by showing their own progress among - themselves. My response at the meeting was that what has worked in the academic sphere may not and likely will not work in the government sphere. Canada's public service has a much different culture, in Academia information is freely shared, undergo rigorous review and practice. In the public service, information is horded, protected, and developed anonymously. Not to say there isn't any potential for Canada's public service, but the cultural barriers need to be broken down first before we consider the tools and platforms.

I indicated that direction from the top, Kevin Lynch, should enable us to get on the path of becoming less risk averse with our information hording and more risk managed with our information sharing. I pointed to Kevin Lynch's (at the time) latest speech where he said:

"[The] 'gotcha' mentality in the press and at times in Parliament, where error free government, not risk management by government, has become the benchmark for success or failure...Innovation in public policy thinking and in public service delivery is not possible without risk taking, where success is not always guaranteed nor failure precluded...More of the solution lies with attitudes towards risk taking in the public service by the public, press, Parliament, and government."

I think this is a very important citation. I said if we were going to finally be about information-sharing, maybe we could start with Kevin Lynch having at least RSS feeds on his speeches and reports, so I don't need to keep checking every 2 days for new content, and that his speeches or reports should be in a blog format, or allow for commenting (that are moderated of course). The response to this was not favorable, as some in the room who actually have worked in the past with the current and past PCO clerks voiced that they "were unsure just how successful that would be" and the idea failed.

After the meeting two analysts from PCO said I hit the nail right on the head at capturing what "Mr. Lynch" was saying in his speech. I guess his message just isn't getting out there to the people outside his office who need to know most. Like the people who were around that table discussing the possibilities of collaborative software in the government.

Why doesn't Kevin Lynch have a blog (or even an RSS feed)? This boggles me as certainly he would be able to get his message out more effectively.

While he continues to giving "small groups a glimpse of what the government is working on" other small groups will continue to discuss how they're going in another direction from where he's going, until they can find out from him and not what they can perchance gleen from an article they come across from the Globe & Mail. And I'll have to rely on outlets of the media (like the Globe & Mail) to inform me how Lynch is going about his renewal of the public service.

my music videos

that I like to watch at work while I'm working.

Monday, June 9, 2008

The kind of workplace of choice for the next - no, THIS generation

If the government wants to entice the younger generation to work at the government, they get some insight from young dynamic workplaces like that of Digg:


Digg Dubb: Groove Is In The Heart from Trammell on Vimeo.

It's not so much that they made this video, but that they had people who were willing to make this video and had a company supportive of the germinated idea and to see it to fruition.

Not only that, the video serves excellently as a hiring tool to help the company to show they engage their employees, beyond the lip service of other companies.

I can't help but think people like me would watch it with envy, wanting to work at such a place...

Friday, June 6, 2008

PWGSC does consulting!

I’ve learned from a friend, who will soon be working with this group, that PWGSC does consulting!

http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/apropos-about/fi-fs/gcisp-ciss-eng.html
http://publiservice.tpsgc.gc.ca/conseils/text/index-e.html

My questions:
  • Are PWGSC in the best position to be doing this?
  • Is this something CSPS should consider – to deliver consulting (instead of being a pseudo-think tank?)
  • Wha-?

IRCan blog/forum site built on Drupal Open Source software

http://gccom.project.ircan.gc.ca/?q=en/node/162

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Google vs. Microsoft on Open Source

(Story link)

Google's Vic Gundotra, vice president of Engineering for Developer Products, declares:

"After years of competition among platforms, the web has won because it's open, because it's ubiquitous, and because there's a passionate community working together to move it forward. Openness is great for developers and for users because it knocks down hurdles to building great applications, and because it speeds the next wave of innovation by letting good ideas be shared. The web doesn't depend on any one API or tool or product, from Google or anyone else. What makes the real difference is the aggregate effect of us all working together, with open standards and open source.

Can you imagine Microsoft making that sort of a statement? Never. And that is why it fails on the web.

In sum, Microsoft still doesn't understand the Internet, the ultimate child of the open-source movement. It is the Internet that simultaneously makes Google and open source so brilliantly destructive and disruptive to Microsoft's future.

Ray Ozzie is right to be afraid.