Subject Matters

I installed Pocket Blog at my Qtek 110 and I am writing this post using it. Now l can post wherever l am. True meaning of ‘communicator’ word now is much more clear.

Having at moment some troubles with it I still think I will make it work properly.

By Richard Koman for SiliconValleyWatcher

San Francisco will tomorrow become the first jurisdiction in the country to declare that bloggers should be treated no differently than traditional media. That’s what the San Francisco City Attorney will state at a meeting of the city’s Board of Supervisors. The Board is considering an amendment to the city ordinance that would require full disclosure of who is paying for political messages.

The proposed language exempts “news stories, commentaries or editorials distributed through any newspaper, radio station, television station or other recognized news medium” unless the medium is “owned or controlled” by a candidate, political party or committee.

So are blogs a “recognized news medium?” Yes, the City Attorney will say at the Supervisors’ meeting tomorrow. What’s not clear is whether independent individuals who are paid to do partisan blogging would fall under the press exemption. For instance, would a campaign consultant be able to blog without disclosure? What if he or she were not being paid directly by a campaign, party or committe? What if someone were being paid for technical consulting and was “volunteering” to publish dirt on the opposition? I couldn’t reach the City Attorney’s office for comment.

Google Experiments with Video Blogging PunkOfLinux writes “TechWeb has an article about Google’s plans to start a video service that sounds similar to Picasa. Excerpt: ‘While there’s no formal announcement yet, Google co-founder Larry Page said Monday that the well-known search engine concern would soon let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google’s servers, partly in an effort to learn more about how to more efficiently search and display information about video-based data.’”

John Robb writes about Joe Reger’s new venture:

The concept is simple. Data is usually locked up in monolithic applications (CRM, ERP, etc.). Application seats are expensive. Training is expensive. Etc. People that need the data often can’t get to it.

What if human readable data flows (via RSS) could be generated by these applications? It would allow the development of easy to read weblogs (that republished these RSS flows) that almost everyone in the company would find valuable. The combinations are almost limitless and the flow is completely automated.

The flip side is also extremely valuable. Using a weblog model of data entry, it would become much easier to train people to enter data in a timely fashion. Further, they get immediate feedback on their efforts since the data they post is transformed into an entry on the blog.

To be honest that seems a little bit eccentric for me as ERP consultant. In ERP applications users typicaly get regular output in the form of report. Alerts are another form of output for irregular information. Then there is one more way of getting information called query. I can hardly imagine these to be replaced by RSS. What I am thinking about is typical scenario where some user is processing each transaction on a one by one basis. Then RSS-like presentation could be very interesting to think about. The examples could be order approval, cost account/element assignment,  order shipment, etc.

But as for CRM it’s quite another matter. As Reger explains:

Let’s take the example of a sales force working at a Fortune 100 company. This sales force works on long-cycle consultative sales that generally take 60-90 days to complete.

Traditional Blogging:

Members of the sales force make blog entries each time they talk to or visit a potential client. This practice is valuable because it creates a repository of sales tactics and results.

dataBlogging:

Just like in traditional blogging, members of the sales force make entries each time they visit a potential client. However, and this is the key, because their blog entries have additional data fields on them they track quantifiable information like Chance of Close, Effectiveness of Pitch, Hours Invested, etc.

Graphs are generated from the extended data attached to each blog. For example, an Effectiveness of Pitch vs. Hours Invested graph will determine whether spending more time selling is worthwhile.

The Advanced Data Search feature is used to find entries based on quantifiable data searches… in much the same way that somebody might query a database. However, it is done simply through a web interface by anybody.

The extended data for each sales call is published in RSS feeds, meaning that other enterprise systems can consume it… a simple integration between the dataBlogging system and more complex and possibly more difficult-to-use legacy systems.

Paul Graham about good writing:

A lot of people ask for advice about writing. How important is it to write well, and how can one write better? In the process of answering one, I accidentally wrote a tiny essay on the subject.
I think it’s far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you’re bad at writing and don’t like to do it, you’ll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated.

Paul Boutin writes @ Slate:

Editors and relatives often ask me if there’s an application that lets you scrawl notes on a Web page. Instead of e-mailing a link to a news story, you could circle what you think is important before passing it on; rather than bookmarking a page, you could slap on a sticky note. The funny thing is, that kind of Web page annotation software has been around since before Netscape. Yet hardly anyone uses it, and none of the top browser makers has embraced it.
In 2001, Microsoft bought Web page markup technology from a company called E-Quill but hasn’t incorporated any of its features into Internet Explorer. The iMarkup toolbar, which debuted to rave reviews in 2000, hasn’t gotten much buzz since. You can still get iMarkup — a 30-day trial is free and it costs $39.95 if you want to keep it after that. One screenshot says it all: You can highlight parts of a page, post sticky notes, draw freehand, and insert arrows, links, file attachments, and sound bites. Taking notes on the Slate home page won’t change what other surfers see. But when you revisit the page, iMarkup will remember what you wrote and slap your notes atop the live site. In one simple step, you can e-mail your annotations (or a screenshot of your annotations) to a friend. Using a free iMarkup plug-in, they can then view your notes overlaid atop the live site.
After playing around with iMarkup for just five minutes, I was convinced that it’s a useful tool. But after a few more days of tinkering, I realized that Web page annotation has flopped because it doesn’t offer a compelling reason to change how we use computers. You could take notes in iMarkup, but it’s more straightforward to jot down your thoughts in Word. You could also use it to collaborate with colleagues, but it’s easier to send an e-mail or instant message. Then it hit me — there is a compelling reason to scribble on Web pages and news stories. This is the killer app for political bloggers.