Business and society are founded on networks – networks of communication, people, organizations, infrastructure, trade, and far more. This has always been true, but in our hyper-connected world the fundamental networked nature of our world is coming to the fore. In my book Living Networks I described how these networks are now coming to life. […]
One of my deepest interests is professional networks – how groups of independent professionals coalesce to serve clients. I’ve written about professional networks in both of my books, and this will be a central theme of one of my future books. Future Exploration Network is my own implementation of a professional network, in which we […]
Micropayments on the internet have been a major topic of discussion since the mid-1990s. The internet supposedly creates a “liquid economy” in which products and services can flow easily around the planet. Yet a foundation for any business is the ability to get paid. Most transactions are done through credit cards, with Paypal a rising […]
Every day I am amazed afresh by the transformative power of the Web. Today I have discovered Many Eyes, a site hosted by IBM’s AlphaWorks. It combines open participation with a wonderful set of visualization tools. As such anyone can upload data sets, and then create sophisticated visual representations of those data sets, including scatterplots, […]
IBM has just launched Lotus Connections, a suite of collaboration software, with functionality including staff profiles, communities, project spaces, social bookmarking, and blogging. This is a major release, but has long been on the cards. Back in November 2005 I discussed how Lotus executives were seeing the future in terms of social software. At the […]
Social networking has being the hot, hot trend over the last few years. Over the next few years mobile social networking will in turn become massive. There have been a number of interesting initiatives I’ve referrred to over the last years in this blog and my books, including Dodgeball and its acquisition by Google, the […]
Last week, wandering around Tokyo, I decided to check out what sort of consumer robots were available. I ended up initially finding the Kondo Robo-Spot in Akihabara, where Kondo, a manufacturer of radio controllers and kit robots, has a demonstration facility. The video below shows the robot kicking a ball into a goal, doing pushups […]
I have always said – particularly to those who don’t understand blogging – that blogs are not necessarily important individually, but in aggregate they are massively powerful. The “blogosphere” pulls together what millions of talented people around the world are discovering and thinking. Collectively, blogs enable us to collaborate to filter and uncover the most […]
Are mass media dinosaurs, or rock-solid incumbents that will still rule the roost for decades to come? I was asked to write the “Yes” case to a debate featured in the December issue of Marketing magazine on “Are the days of mass media over?” Below is my case – remember that as a debater you […]
Just back from Japan. The highlight of our two week trip was three days spent in Takaragawa Onsen, which has to be one of the best of the hundreds of hot springs in Japan. It claims to have the largest rotemburo, or outdoor hot spring pool, in the country. It snowed continuously for our three […]
