A Technical Manager's Perspective

One Open Feed for All of My Social Communications

Many know that I am an advocate for Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, and Social and Collaborative Tools. I really believe that these collaborative tools and functions will be integrated into our communication and knowledge gathering in the future.

This integration has already starting with the adoption of Web 2.0 both within and outside the Enterprise. Tools like Twitter and Identi.ca have proven to be great new communication resources. Blogs and Wiki's are taking off and RSS and Atom are great tools for pulling data from blogs, wiki's, podcasts and videocasts. This is not new news however with all this data pouring in, we can get overloaded. What is new is the functionality of the aggregation tools like Friend Feed, Plaxo and even Facebook, which allow us to pull data from multiple sources into one tool or stream.

I have been using twhirl to follow folks on both Identi.ca and Twitter. I like Friend Feed, however I would like to have a twhirl like tool that aggregates all of my social communications into one stream. I would like to see my Identi.ca, Twitter, Friend Feed, Facebook, Plaxo and my favorite blog feeds come into this twhirl like tool that updates with a manual refresh.

I understand the complexities of an all-in-one tool, especially with different protocols, different types of data, and varying controls on the data, but tools like OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, Portable Contacts, Microformats and XMPP give us another layer to define Identity and Data Portability in a way that will allow us to be very granular about ourselves and the data the we want to share.

So who is going to come out with this first?  Will it be the Seesmic/Twhirl folks, or the Twitter or Laconi.ca folks? Maybe it will be someone new, but what I do know is that this is only the beginning for these tools. The web is really opening up and going social, which is great for us. Openness in api's and applications allow for customization and improvement across the Internet. This is a real trend and key to expansion and adoption on the Internet.

Just look at how Facebook has opened up. They burst onto the scene, first as a closed system and then opening up to everyone, and now with Facebook Connect they are allowing members to share their Facebook data with other sites. The web was built on Open Standards, and the Facebook example shows us the value of opening your application and api's. My only hope is that more companies follow this tread.

Technorati Tags: Open Web,Collaboration,Web 2.0,Enterprise 2.0

The Open Web, Joseph Smarr and thesocialweb.tv

I had a conversation with Joseph Smarr from Plaxo today about the Open Web and thesocialweb.tv videocast.

Joseph is the Chief Platform Architect at Plaxo which is an Open Social Network - aggregator. Joseph was in Boston attending the MIT Technology Review EmTech conference on the MIT Campus in Cambridge and is participating in a panel discussion about Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Mashups. I sought out Joseph because of the work that he, David Recordon and John McCrea have done with the thesocialweb.tv videocast.

Thesocialweb.tv is a great video/podcast about the social communication tools and building blocks available today. This is not some Social hype show, however it is a factual discussion about tools and products that can be introduced and integrated into current products. Here is a list of many open api's and tools that have been discussed:

OAuth, OpenID, Microformats, Poratable Contacts,

Open Web Foundation, XMPP and Jabber

I love the opening line of every thesocialweb.tv show where they ask the answer the question ...    

Who own's your data and content ? --- You do.

 

 

Our conversation was centered around the Open Web and Identity and how Identity and Identity management will play a big part in many products in the future. I also told Joseph that I thought they were on target delivering Social Media Topics in a clear and meaningful way.

If you have an interest in Social Networking and the latest tools, I urge you to checkout

thesocialweb.tv

Technorati Tags: Social Media,MIT,Social Networking

Why Micro-blogging and Why Identi.ca?

My family and close friends know that I have been spending a lot of time reading, writing and listening to stories and strategies about Micro-blogging, and in particular, the new Open Source Micro-blogging service Identi.ca. I have also been asked a lot about Micro-blogging or the value of twitter and that is what I want to outline in this post, however instead of twitter, I am going to identify why you should use Identi.ca.

Why should you use a Micro-blogging Service ?

Communication, Communication, Communication.

Micro-blogging is about communication, and we often communicate with many people on a daily basis, and often with many different groups of people. Micro-blogging is another way of electronically communicating with others, and it enables folks to follow subjects of interest, or activities of friends, family and others that we would like to follow.

Think of Micro-blogging as "the email of the early 80's", and I predict that in the future, everyone will have an email address and a micro-blogging address. Micro-blogging is like IM on steroids, but I in my opinion, Micro-blogging is better than IM because the folks that you are communicating with do not have to be present when you send the message, and topics can easily be viewed and discussed by a large number of folks. It's so lightweight and flexible that adoption in the mobile market is simple, which leads to increased adoption by the mobile community.

Twitter Jaiku, and Pownce are three well know Micro-blogging services, but all three are somewhat proprietary and not as open a Identi.ca. Pownce has some real nice features and Twitter has the mass market, however neither can talk directly to each other, however we are moving to period where all Micro-blogging tools will be talking to each other, and that will be very advantageous for us, because it will not matter which service that you use.

Why Identi.ca

I really like Identi.ca for a couple of reasons, it's open source software (by laconi.ca), it is somewhat federated, which means that it can easily exchange data with other open services, there is much more of a technical stream and conversation happening on identi.ca and it feels more dynamic that twitter. I also think that Identi.ca has so much potential, and is leading the way to a more open distributed Micro-blogging universe. Finally, I also really like the distributed model, because it will give organizations the flexibility they need to offer open (in front of the firewall) or closed/protected (behind the firewall) Micro-blogging resources.

Whats Next

However, there are still many challenges to overcome. Standardizing feeds into and out of Identi.ca or laconi.ca instances is one challenge. Tracking and searching across multiple federated sites is another, and of course there is the scalability question, what will happen when Identi.ca has 2 million users.

Many others see these challenges and this past Friday (9/12/08), a group lead by Steve Gilmore of the Gilmore Gang sat down to discuss these issues. The meeting was called the BearHugCamp and I have included links to summaries and a video of the BearHugCamp discussions:

BearHugCamp Links:

Jack Moffitt from metajack.im attended BearHug Camp and wrote a nice outline of the proceedings from his perspective. Cem Basman also pulled together a BearHugCamp outline that includes links to pictures. Leo Laporte from TWIT recorded the event and you can find the video here. And, my impression is that this was a great starting point to make sure that we all understand the rewards and challenges and hopefully this will lead to an opening of all Micro-Blogging services and Social Networking sites.

Technorati Tags: Identi.ca,twitter,microblogging,Leo Laporte,Steve Gilmore,BearHugCamp

Tim O'Reilly and Ignite Boston 4

I went the the Ignite Boston Social Gathering last night at the Hooley House in Faneuil Hall - Boston MA and thought it was great. This was my second Ignite Boston and this venue was larger and better the the last Ignite Boston in Harvard Square. Free beer, plenty of Tech conversation and a special appearance by Tim O'Reilly.

Tim spoke for about 30 minutes, outlined his company's strategy, spoke a little about Web 2.0 and and his predictions on how sensors will impacting our lives, and then he spent about 15 minutes talking about two very relevant topics:

 

Working on stuff that matters and,

Get out and vote

 

Tim outlined global warming and small pox examples of things that matter and challenged us to build useful things that make us smarter, and to try and solve real hard problems. He also made a point of asking everyone if they had registered to vote, and urged anyone who had not registered to register, while also urging everyone to vote. He did not take a side or a cause, but made the point that every vote matters.

He mentioned that he was at Demo 2008 on Wednesday, and as he was talking about working on stuff that matters, it struck me that this was what he was doing. He flew all the way to Boston to talk with a bunch of young programmers and geeks, to share his vision about what we should be concentrating on. After hearing his talk, I can only assume that spreading this message must really matter to him.

Technorati Tags: oreilly,ignite boston

Cloud Computing Automation Needs

I have received a lot of great feedback on my Cloud Computing Examples post and want to share some thoughts on supporting resources in the Cloud.

Much like managing physical servers, maintaining resources in the cloud will fall on the shoulders of the System and Application Administrators, and these administrators are always looking for tools and scripts to help them automate their duties.

Starting, stopping and rebooting instances in the cloud is a little trickier than starting, stopping and rebooting resources on the server in your computer room. Should there be a real problem with the resource in your computer room, you can always go into the computer room and power down your hardware and restart, knowing that everything (bios, drivers, memory) have been initialized. But this is not true in the cloud, because in the cloud, you can count on re-initializing your resource, however it takes a little more work to make sure that it comes back.

This is one of the points that Justin D. Leider made in his Running your own hardware vs EC2 and Rightscale post. Justin points out the issue of maintaining persistence after reboots. Paul Stamatiou outlined how to do this in his Getting Started with EC2 post, and recently Lubos Rendek who contributes to www.linuxconfig.org, outlined a strategy to create and maintain a EC2 bundle for Ubuntu with this post Howto CREATE-BUNDLE-UPLOAD & ACCESS custom Debian AMI using ubuntu.

These are all great examples and really show the need for products and services that can help automate these functions. We need to make the support of resources in the cloud, similar to the support of resources in our computer rooms. That means balancing cloud access, security, performance, reliability, backups and recoverability, and ensuring that these new types of services are as maintainable and supportable as the services in our computer rooms.

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,EC2,System Administration

Cloud Computing Examples

I have been reading about Cloud Computing, and from my perspective, Cloud Computing is a great tool for startups and organizations that do not have a web based infrastructure, or for folks that need to deploy and scale applications quickly.

I can see where large organizations may be a little reluctant to do this, as most large organizations do not have excessive scaling requirements, and most large organizations already have their network and computing infrastructure in place. Some of the more flexible organizations will start to experiment with Cloud Computing, and some may move pieces of their infrastructure into the cloud, however I my thought is that more of the larger organizations will opt to build their own Cloud Computing infrastructure as opposed to moving their data and applications into the cloud.

I recently came across a number of posts where folks talk about how they use Cloud Computing and I thought that was worth sharing.

Cloud Computing Hype

There has been a lot of hype about Cloud Computing with many vendors offering services in the cloud or in support of the cloud, and this has blurred the lines of Cloud Computing. Ask a System Administrator what Cloud Computing is, and then ask his boss, his bosses boss, and his bosses bosses boss, and I bet you will get three completely different answers. This is partly true because of the different roles and responsibilities of each person, but it points out that the term Cloud Computing is not well understood. Here is a nice overview of Cloud Computing by Dan Faber and others at the Web 2.0 Expo which helps us better understand Cloud Computing .....

 

 

Real Implementations

If you are considering moving to Cloud Computing, here are a couple of first hand stories from folks that have deploying applications in the cloud.

The first story is from a Georgia Tech student named Paul Stamatiou. Paul has a blog called paulstamatiou.com and Paul is co-founder of a Web 2.0 app called Skribit. Paul wrote about "Getting Started with EC2"  and "How to Live in the Cloud" where he outlines how to launch your first Amazon EC2 instance.

The second story is from a web engineer at CitySquares named Justin D. Leider. Justin has a blog called "Justin D. Leider's Think Tank" and he wrote a great post about "Running your own hardware vs EC2 and Rightscale". Justin outlines the pro's and con's of supporting and maintaining applications in the cloud and gives us a first hand view for deploying applications in the cloud.

Other Resources ....

I often read John M Willis's -  IT Management and Cloud Blog where John dives right into Cloud Computing, and often identifies how to best support and deploy resources in the cloud. John has a podcast series around Cloud Computing, and John is also the co-host of Michael Cotes IT Management Podcast.

Another great Cloud Computing resource is the Amazon EC2 site where you will find a lot of documentation, case studies and instructions on how to get started using Amazons EC2 service.

Build Your Own Cloud

But, for those of you who are considering building your own cloud, here are three different links and sites to consider:

The first link is by Greg Ferro who has a blog called etheReal Mind. Greg wrote a post about Enterprise Cloud Computing - Build Your Own with Cisco VFrame, so if you have Cisco resources in your organization, and you are considering building your own cloud, then you should read this and talk with your Cisco resources.

The second link is for Eucalyptus which is an Open Source Elastic Utility Computing Architecture that could be use to connect to and manage both external and internal Cloud Computing resources.

The third link is for enomalism which is another Open Source solution that deploys a  web based virtual infrastructure platform to support resources in the Cloud.

Security, Reliability and Maintainability

Computing needs can be different across all organizations, and therefore Cloud Computing needs could also be different across many organizations, however I see three important considerations that need to be addressed before moving into the cloud, Security, Reliability and Maintainability. If you can address all three considerations then Cloud Computing can be an effective tool used to support your organization.

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,EC2

Management and Leadership Blogs and Books

In the last six months, the majority of my posts have been about Technology and not about management, so I wanted to share a great management resource with you.

Lisa Haneberg is a Leadership Consultant and Author and someone that I have been reading for a while. She is currently working on her 10th book, and has three or four different blogs. 

One of the cool things that she does is give away free offerings of some of her books and writings in the form of PDF's. One of the books is called 100 Helpful Tips for Great Managers which can be found with three other offerings on Lisa's e-books and artilces page, and is well worth the time to download and check out.

Lisa also authors and edits a Management Craft blog, and I wanted to point out one posts that I can really relate to called Why Managers Fail. In this post Lisa points out the 5 top reasons why Managers loose their jobs and one line that really hit home with me ..

"Management, by it's very nature, is a people-centric job"

If you read the post and Lisa's blogs and books, you will realize why building relationships and trust is key to being a good manager.

Technorati Tags: Management,Leadership,blog

Smart Phones and New iPhone

 

After waiting over 3 weeks, I finally picked up my new iPhone, and I love it. The 3g connectivity is great when it is available, and it works great from home, ok from work, was excellent in Kittery Me today but nonexistent in Kennebunkport Me.

What I really like is the wireless connectivity which is easy to setup and very reliable. Both my home and work wireless networks are setup and pulling up Google or any other Internet service is quick and easy. When wireless is not available, I rely on the AT&T 3G network or their EDGE network. When wireless is not available and 3G is available, then connectivity has been great.

I am able to read both my MIT email and my personal email using IMAP and it is very reliable. I have been investigating mobile sites from the iPhone, but most of the popular mobile sites are big corporate entitles, with very static content that reminds me of older Web 1.0 sites. MIT has a nice site called m.mit.edu which is very functional, and somewhat dynamic.

I see all of the phone manufacturers and network providers offering 3G, wireless access, and mobile applications in the future. This will make accessing the Internet from your phone as easy as accessing the Internet from your desktop. As more folks start using smart phones, and take advantage of their functionality, then enterprise managers will realize this trend, and see the need to develop mobile web resources to their enterprise.

If you are in a role where staying connected is very important, then you should consider a smart phone (iPhone, Blackberry, Symbian Device, Windows Mobile). Smart phone technology and functionality is only going to get better, and as more Enterprises realize this then, Enterprise level applications and functionality will become available on your mobile device.

Technorati Tags: iPhone,smart phone

OpenWeb Foundation

On July 24th at the O'REILLY Open Source Convention OSCON, David Recordon announced the formation of the Open Web Foundation which is an ....

"attempt to create a home for community-driven specifications. Following the open source model similar to the Apache Software Foundation, the foundation is aimed at building a lightweight framework to help communities deal with the legal requirements necessary to create successful and widely adopted specification."

                                                            from the OpenWeb Foundation

Here is David's presentation which includes audio where David explains the OpenWeb Foundation:

| View | Upload your own

This makes a lot of sense. There is a definite movement to collaborative community driven software development as opposed to big company proprietary development, and the web is the perfect infrastructure for this.

Along comes the OpenWeb Foundation with some structure and experience at Open Source community driven software development, and they can help new projects with the Licensing and Structure issues and let the community focus on software development.

Technorati Tags: openweb,open source,social web

Micro-blogging

I have been following and participating on Twitter lately and can see real value in the communication on twitter. Many folks including myself poo-pooed twitter, but after taking a second look and participating in the conversation I am starting to like it.

I started out just following a number of Internet Famous folks, but after a while I dropped a large number of them because they had nothing to say and were boring me. After Podcamp I added a number folks who were at Podcamp and this is were my participation and conversation has really risen. I heard about TweetDeck at Podcamp, installed it and find it a great interface for following twitter conversations.

Last weekend I also created an Identi.ca account and hope to setup my own Identi.ca installation to see how useful it could be at MIT. I am curious about the flexibility and security around this distributed solution. My interest in Microblogging started last month when I heard Joe Cascio’s Distributed Micro blogging talk at Ignite Boston, and then again when Joe gave a similar talk at Podcamp Boston 3. I like the distributed model of Identi.ca, as it pushes the load out to the edges of the network, however I as others have said, we need more than just a distributed model, we need some sort of glue or federation that allows all distributed installations to communicate together. Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed) outlined Federation on the Louisgray.com blog. Rob outlines how federation is more important than just distribution ...

Federation is different from distributed in one simple sense. Federation requires a full copy of the entire system. Federation is the cooperation between various systems to act as one.   .....

The one part of the federation that is missing is the routing between servers. This can be accomplished by following the DNS model. A local DNS server has a reference to its parent or master server. This allows new servers to be built and their location and IP address propagated to other servers. This is a very effective solution and it has worked for several years.

However, my thought is that we need both a distributed model and some sort of central federation, much like DNS which uses both a distributed model within each domain along with a central (federated) root-server for directing DNS traffic to the correct authoritative domain.

Twitter's poor reliability has lead many to start looking for other alternatives, and I would bet on some sort of distributed model, federated or not to gain some ground in this space.

 

Technorati Tags: micro-blogging,twitter,identi.ca,Podcamp Boston