DONTCLICK.IT - An amazing experiment in User Interactivity

Recently saw this interesting site called DONTCLICK.IT that challenges the user to navigate without using the mouse click. Its rendered through Flash and is probably a great example of how creative and versatile one can get with Adobe Flash/Flex/AIR and keep the user engaged.

I'm not sure how well this kind of a site would perform in the enterprise with Accessibility/508 Compliance kind of scenarios. But definitely had me hooked.

Pretty cool video take on Billy Joels "We didnt start the fire" and the next wave (bubble maybe)

Saw this interesting video posted on Vinnie M's blog and thought I'd post it here.
For some strange reason this brought a large grin on my face ;-). Still trying to interpret my emotions and why the grin.

Enterprise 2.0 a pragmatic view of the world

There is a an interesting Enterprise2.0 related post by Dennis Howlett this morning about his conversation with Charles Phillips, President Oracle Corp.

Its pretty much a given now that enterprises do want to use solutions that incorporate Web 2.0 technology, products and application development paradigms. One of the main logjams being around security. Its not that these products/solutions cannot be secured, they can be secured in the same way/extent as any other application. Its just that providing the same level of security on these kinds of apps as any other enterprise app leads to the E2.0 app either losing some of its delight/stickiness/usability.

Collaboration in the enterprise has always been a big thing and there have been multiple revs of solutions trying to solve that requirement. E2.0 solutions might have a leg up in this area because with even notifications, feeds, blogs, cloud based applications and storage, self-regulating mechanisms like wikis, collaboration is woven into the fabric of most W2.0 solutions.

As always there is still a lot of education that will need to be done around the E2.0 area before CXO's are comfortable signing off large checks for solutions of this kind.

Click here to read the complete article

Oracle shows off Web 2.0 mashup @JavaOne

Click here to view a pretty cool demo of an Enterprise 2.0 mashup using Oracle technology. Its got tag based search, instant collaboration, viewing employee networks and some other goodies all applied to a rather mundane Order Management task.
Wonder why Oracle does not show more of its technology in these kinds of demo's. Its much better than the "Let me show you how to build this using my fav development tool" kind of demos that they've been doing for some time now.

Oh yea and did I say no "pictures or video" at Web 2.0 Expo

Besides the ruffle Google created with their "our PR says no pictures please". I did not see any image or video presence at this years expo. Voice was there with Nokia and TellMe amongst others. Maybe video was out there and I missed out, but as far as I could tell they werent.

So what does that mean with 3-6Mbps lines for users and everyone flocking to Youtube making it the more visited than Google ... no Web 2.0 stuff happening with video??

Huh, that's troubling.

To Web 2.0 Expo and back

The fire was there but the sparks were missing. Dont know why but this years Web 2.0 Expo seemed kinda low key to me. There were a number of companies out there showing off their wares but didnt really see the one or two or few killer applications, tools or products. The Microsoft Live Mesh announcement came close but didnt quite stand out as that spark.

The good thing was that almost all of the vendors out there were trying to position themselves as enterprise 2.0. Which means the guns are now trained on making it happen in the enterprise.

Walking around at Moscone I clubbed vendors in 4 main categories this year.

• PaaS vendors
  
• Vendors who'd squeezed Wiki, Blog, Forums, RSS, Chat into a suite that was enterprise friendly
• Vendors who provided specialized manpower with Web2.0 expertise.
  
• Everyone else mobile apps, voice enabled apps, vendors focused on individual components of category (2) above etc.
  

Its interesting how everyone's swarming to the PaaS space, so the webs been the platform for a while now and it seems like this might be the year when we go mainstream by sending the platform through the web.

Web 2.0 Expo 2008

Web2.0 returns to San Francisco in the week of April22nd and Oracle has a good presence out there. There are some unconferences planned on the booth and here are some of the links to things that relate to Oracle and this event.

Oracle Mix - Oracle's social network
Oracle Wiki - you're here
Oracle WebCenter - Web 2.0-esque features for enterprise apps
blogs.oracle.com
AppsLab Blog - blog by Oracle's own Web 2.0 think tank
OTN TechBlog - official voice of the OTN (developer) community
Oracle Community on Ning
Oracle Tweeters
Application Express

Posting to a Blogger...

Posting to a Blogger from Jott. Trying to figure out where the blog title comes from and what it's posted in the blog post. Also, wanted to figure out how it deals with long pauses and other expressions and also wanted to figure out what the experience of blogging via Jott is like because you might have to think ahead of what you wanna speak and get posted on your blogs. Anyways, I wanted it to give it a try. Let's see how it comes out and also wanted to add some tags, CRM(?) Jott online. Let's see how it goes. listen

Powered by Jott

So I believe the title for the blog comes from the first 3-4 words for the post and also there is currently no way of tagging the blog post. Outside of that it seems to be pretty straightforward.
I guess the "Posting to a Blogger" makes me suspicious if I actually dictated that or it just mis-interpreted something. Need to go back and listen to the recording.

Will play around with it a little more and see how my custom Jott Links behave. More on this later. Oh yea the CRM2.0 link ... I guess no more complaining sales guys dont want to log into a system to create and update activities. They can now do it from their phone, while they are in a cab on the way back from a customer visit.

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Simplicity - Its next for CRM

Interesting opinion post titled "Simplicity: What’s Next in Business Software" on SandHill.com by Anthony Deighton who is the SVP of Marketing at Qliktech. They are a leading provider of next generation BI solutions and one of the fastest growing BI software companies in the world over the last couple of years.

Completely agree with Anthony's message that "Simplicity" is the next big thing for business software and more so for legacy enterprise software vendors. As he very succinctly put it, its not like eating broccoli ;-) to stay healthy .. for some vendors its going to be a matter of survival. Having worked with Anthony in the past I can totally see where he is coming from and what he is prescribing.

I believe that simplicity has been the underlying theme for most SW disruptions. It was really tedious for users to type their commands on a green screen or DOS prompt and then Windows simplified it with visual icons, till Windows/desktop applications became so diverse in their user experience that in came the simple browser based apps where all applications could pretty much be intuitive cause there were a standard set of operations you could perform.

Bringing this message to the Enterprise CRM domain we've seen that a number of newer vendors have made inroads into traditional enterprise CRM land just by simplifying their application delivery and usability without providing much depth to the application. Its already happening and its being very well received by customers. Thats where SaaS/Ondemand had its roots as well. Enterprise customers who had issues with their delivery/deployment models embraced the much simpler on-demand model.

To me the bottomline here is that not only should software vendors pick up the "Simplicity" message but also stick to it.

Personality Not Included - Book Launch

Rohit Bhargava from Influential Marketing Blog is currently in the process of launching his book "Personality Not Included". He decided to approach his book launch in a very unique way and I believe its the new engagement model that will drive a lot of interactions in the 2.0 world. So here's what Rohit said and did;

A conversation does not start instantly with a big spike and then trail off. A really good conversation builds momentum steadily and eventually turns into something more powerful. So my aim today is not to create a short term spike, but to start a conversation about the central idea of the book - which is that personality matters, and continue it over the next few weeks and months. To jumpstart this conversation, I'm asking for your help - and offering you something in return.

My idea is simple: if you send me five questions that you want to know about the book or personality, I'll write you a response on Friday that you can publish on your blog. Let's call these virtual interviews (ie - interviews by email). You choose whether to post the interview on your blog or not after you get my responses, but I am essentially offering for ANY BLOGGER to send me interview questions and I will respond with answers that are NOT cut and pasted, but specific to your questions. I will send all my responses to you on Friday in the order that I get your questions, and I will link to all the posted interviews on Friday. On Monday, I'll be running a competition on my blog to let readers vote on the Best Interview. The winner will get a signed copy of my book and a gift certificate for $100 from Amazon.

Companies will be hard pressed to come up with such unique engagements through the web and more and more conversations move out there. For a relatively low investment and a unique idea smaller brands will be able to get viral and grab customer attention compared to $$ being poured into more traditional efforts.

Here's a link to the book and his virtual interview sessions that he had thru the web




Here are my 5 questions to him and his responses;

- What would you say was the single most important factor that inspired you to write this book
I think it was seeing that there was an ingredient of many successful brands that people were not really talking about ... namely, the importance of personality. The book takes some of hte most often talked about trends in business today, such as authenticity, social media and word of mouth marketing and brings them together. I thought there was a need for a book like this in the landscape of marketing and business books ... so I wanted to write it.

- In the tagline why do you say "Companies" lose their authenticity and "Brands" get them back. Can you elaborate? Do you mean companies that do not invest in their brands tend to lose their authenticity?
Good pickup. To a degree, the difference comes down to the central belief of branding ... which is that anyone can start a company, but you need to build a brand in order to have something that someone can believe in. I think that companies who don't focus on building a brand have a problem defining themselves as standing for something. If you don't stand for anything, you can't be authentic.

- Why did you pick Guy K for the foreword? Is this book mainly focused on technology, startups or entrepreneurship?
Guy is someone that I had admired for a long time and I was thrilled that he agreed to do the forward. He has built his reputation in technology and entrepreneurship, but if you have ever heard him speak you know that he has a brilliant mind for business. He was the perfect choice to do the foreword for PNI.

- What was the message or goal that you hoped to achieve with this book?
My main message is really simple: it's that personality matters. It matters because that is what gets your customers to believe in your brand rather than just buying once and leaving. More importantly, it is what gets them to tell others about you.

- Can you attest that you did not do any templating, cut or paste while answering my questions ;-)
Well, you'll be able to tell pretty easily - since I'm publishing the links to all the interviews I answered on my blog! But I can tell you definitely that I didn't for yours, because this is just the second interview ... so you're definitely 100% original content. ;-)

Enterprise 2.0 - Hype or Happening

Very interesting video I saw on Youtube that does a quick drive by at an event for VPs/CIO's and gets their candid feedback on Enterprise 2.0.

While most of them were really witty, some of them seemed clueless. Tip of the hat to the VP/CIO from Altera and his comment. I think he actually gets it.