This two-part BLOG results from my experience in
Leading the Organisational and Complexity
Research Group at Westminster Business
School, London UK, and is all about
exploring the experiment my university is
currently calling ‘Tearing down the Walls’
i.e. exploring new technology in web 2.0
environments. In this first Blog I
describe starting my journey ...
New phrases, new ideas, new models of how we can work and
play and earn from many interlinked
cloud-joined applications streaming data out
at us through RSS feeds, seem to have made
up the content of the several disparate
discussions I have been having recently.
I felt that I needed to sit down and clarify my thoughts on
all this new technology and possibilities
and what does it all mean in what is now so
clearly a sociotechnical world or social
technical as some people are calling it.
Firstly, I think I am confused, and as a user rather than a
developer not excited [yet, but I may be
later if/when I find, as I am told I will,
that using Google documents is easier than
using FrontPage to create a website]. I now
have to learn all sorts of new
acronyms and yet more
applications to get used to. Not to mention
odd spellings! Perhaps its my age but....
In this first of my two-part Blog, here are
some technologies that I have come across
recently, and what I think they mean:
-
Scribd
this is, according to The Guardian
23rd July 09, ‘more than just
a YouTube for documents’. That is what
is describes itself as which makes me,
as a poor user, even more confused – I
thought YouTube was all about videos. So
I read on. It contains all sorts of
papers both academic and otherwise which
are searchable and shareable. It is now
described as a social publishing site
where people can upload their writings
from academic projects [including the
classic student mis-spelling of
startegic management], to recipes they
have devised, to poems that publishers
won’t take, to.... They also sell eBooks
from best-selling authors such as Simon
King and Dan Brown, and if you do want
to charge for access to your work, you
can. So budding authors who can’t get
published or who resent the percentage
charged can try out their ideas.
-
Apps for iPhones
now here I refer to thelondonpaper
for some of my resources but one of our
students in our Tearing Down the
Walls project is also developing one
of these [see more below]. Mobile phone
applications are now big business. Just
like the books on Scribd, the face price
is minimal, just a pound or two, but the
sales numbers are enormous thus
generating very large revenues indeed
for the authors. Apps as they are called
range from music to maps to iSteam –
which is really very silly – it allows
you to breathe into the phone microphone
and then your screen will stream up like
a mirror in the shower, and then you
write on it! And over 3 million people
have downloaded it! Another app which is
going to be a problem in due course, is
one which tells travellers which
carriage to sit in to be nearest the
exit in any London tube station. Just
think, if all 8000 people who have
downloaded it travel on the same lines
and all try to get into the exit nearest
carriage – won’t that be over-crowded!
-
Google Documents
seem to be the ‘better’ version of easy
to collaborate documents that we were
promised in IBM’s Lotus Notes. They are
accessible online and all collaborators
can make revisions in real-time so
really synchronous working. They can
also be used for open access, limited
access or no access, so you can replace
a website with a Google doc – I hope to
try this out myself shortly – when I can
get the time!
-
The Cloud
The term cloud is used as a
metaphor for the Internet whereby
virtual resources are provided across
the Internet and users don’t need to
know anything about the technology that
supports their applications. Data is
frequently stored on the ‘cloud’ and
many applications are accessed through a
web browser. This means that whilst you
are working in the UK your data may be
being stored anywhere in the world and
more importantly, you won’t know where,
and you don’t care... as long as it is
stored for you. Thus you are now very
unlikely to run out of data storage
space unlike when you store data on your
PC, and also, you can work anywhere in
the world on your laptop, and access all
your data without taking a memory stick
of any kind with you. Thus truly mobile
computing across a virtual world is now
possible.
-
Mash-up
Yet another new phrase used in this new
world – apparently means when two
separate streams of data are added
together to provide a useful
application. An example that I rather
like the idea of is if the data about
the locations of all the Cost Coffee
shops were combined with Google maps and
rang me on my mobile to tell me where my
nearest coffee shop is – whichever town
I’m in. Can someone provide this for me?
In the second part of my Blog to publish in September I will
explore this experiment my university is
currently calling ‘Tearing down the Walls’
and our exploration of new technology in web
2.0 environments.
