Take the Test

I was totally taken by surprise by this one.

(A little further research has revealed that it was created by WCRS, and that there is some con­tro­versy over the ori­gin­ality of the idea. What a shame.)

links post 03/​21/​2008

15 Free Social Media White Papers and Ebooks  Annotated

tags: research, social media, white­paper

for all that extra reading time I’ll have…

15 Free Social Media White Papers and Ebooks

Submit A Business Plan  Annotated

tags: business, business model, funding, vc

So saith Sequoia: “Start-​​ups with these char­ac­ter­istics often fore­tells the success of a business and the like­li­hood of it becoming a sus­tain­able, enduring company.”

Start-​​ups with these char­ac­ter­istics often fore­tells the success of a business and the like­li­hood of it becoming a sus­tain­able, enduring company. We like to partner with com­panies that have:

Eudora Releases – MozillaWiki  Annotated

tags: eudora, penelope, thun­der­bird

If I’m ever able to ditch exchange server, this sounds a very plaus­ible altern­ative: “Eudora 8 is an email client that combines Mozilla’s Thunderbird with code, features, and GUI elements from Qualcomm’s Eudora.”

Eudora 8 is an email client that combines Mozilla’s Thunderbird with code, features, and GUI elements from Qualcomm’s Eudora.

I’ve Got a Tiddler

A TiddlyWiki, of course. You can see my very small TiddlyWiki here [no I don’t any more] or a more impressive example from Jeremy Ruston, who created the thing, at the main site.

It’s a sort of wiki — but wait, come back! There’s a few inter­esting dif­fer­ences from the sort of wiki software you might be used to:

(a) the whole thing is con­tained in a single HTML file — the javas­cript, the CSS, the data you’ve added.

(b) so you can download it and use it on your laptop or travel with it on a USB key. If you like you can sync that with an online version.

© you can use it on any browser — even the iPhone.

(d) it’s written to encourage short posts — Tiddlers — rather than the massive empty spaces found in the MediaWiki software and others.

tiddly

Apparently, there’s some way to use it as a blog platform, but I’m still working that bit out…

Who Uses Social Networks, and How?

It’s a genuine question. No rhetoric here.

I am working on a con­tri­bu­tion to a white paper being prepared by Hotwire PR via Drew Benvie — my par­tic­ular chapter is ‘Who Uses (online) Social Networks, and How?’

I have a feeling that my first stab at the answer — ‘lots of people in all sorts of ways’ — won’t stretch to 1000 words, so any con­tri­bu­tions, quotes, intro­duc­tions to eminent scholars and links are very welcome. By next Tuesday. I’m also con­sid­ering its economic import­ance to UK, plc.

I suspect that my original answer is probably right, con­sid­ering there are networks for old people, babies, dogs, zombies and pretty much everyone in between. However, some uses are likely to be more common than others. For the purposes of this article, I’ll define online social networks as web sites that allow users to create personal (and often per­son­al­ised) profiles on their own pages within the site and also to com­mu­nicate with and befriend other members, thus artic­u­lating and visu­al­ising their social networks.

Economic import­ance is tricky, too. Most stories from official sources are along the lines of “£10bn a day lost pro­ductivity due to Facebook”. On the other hand, how much money has been saved on things like research time, recruit­ment fees, knowledge-​​sharing, advert­ising and general strength­ening of loose ties which one day lead to money changing hands?

Anyway, over to you. You can reply via email, if it’s a secret.

Google = Rubbish (Heh)

So, appar­ently Internet Explorer 8 is avail­able for download, according to my twitter col­leagues and a certain Mister Gates.

But don’t search for ‘ie8’ with Google, because you’ll get this:

ie8-search

 

One half of the screen is a search for news about ie8. The next suggests that I was probably searching for IE7. None of the remaining four links, as I scroll down, are any use.

I buy into the idea of integ­rated search, that results from news, maps etc. be incor­por­ated into your search. But, in this case, half the screen is devoted to trying to persuade me to search for a dif­ferent product entirely.  Pah! — Page and Brin, your time is up. (Not that I tried any other search engine for this result — we all know they’re rubbish,eh?)

(Here are the links you really need.)

New Colleague

[as a note­worthy aside]

NMK has employed the services of Elizabeth Varley as a new events con­sultant. She will be pro­du­cing around four new events and a similar number of courses for us over the next year.

Elizabeth has been working in new media for a number of years and has great links with a number of key organ­isa­tions in the web 2.0 revolu­tion as well as web 1.0 diehards (viz. the ones that made money). She’s also a kick-​​ass writer and thinker on this stuff.

I’m really thrilled to be working with Elizabeth. The key thing, for me, in a role like this, is that you’re able to spark off each others’ ideas but at the same time com­ple­ment each other’s skills. She’s clever, well-​​organised, focused and determ­ined… So that should work out fine.

Join the NMK Facebook group here.