beyondthemba

Great Social Tools - For Business...

A lot of tools that business uses, or ends up using, start with the "technology hobbyist". Think of things as simple as the personal computer. I remember when they were being used in homes and businesses were deathly afraid of putting distributed power on people's desktops (A lot due to IT wanting to protect their domain). What would happen if people could explore outside the confines of the local network? Oh my God!

But, alas, finally distributed power and the internet came to business.

There is now a entirely new category of software that hobbyists are using and will ultimately, in my mind, become standard in the business world and this is Social Networking. Internet locations such as Facebook, Myspace etc. will become "meeting grounds" for the business world. They will add huge value in the sharing of information and the distribution of knowledge. Further, the new workforce will demand that the old way of doing things be broken. They are far more sophisticated and demanding in their use of computing power.

Yes, I know that very sophisticated work places already use a lot of this stuff but the "industrial heartland" still remains defiant when it comes to new technology. Just as I heard "Why would anyone need email" and "Why would anyone need instant messaging",  I am now hearing, "Why would anyone use Facebook for work?"

I am now using Twitter which is a way to enable your SMS tools on your phone to keep track of what people are doing. Rather than someone sending 100 phone messages, they can update Twitter with where they are or what they are doing and that message will go out to all 100 phones. This, again, will have business value as a traveling and busy executive wants to keep both their family and their teammates apprised of what they are doing.

The key  point is you will never know how it can be applied until you "play" with the tools. That is why, I believe, most of these start with hobbyists. They are "playing around" and then the "ah ha" moment hits them and the business application is  born.

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Google Must Be Careful

Link: Google’s Tipping Point

Google is starting to become overbearing. They truly have "The Model" and are about to conquer the web (if they have not done it already) with their docs and spreadsheet applications. What could trip them up are privacy issues and the appearance (Whether real or imagined) that they are using their position in a predatory way (a la Microsloth).

In a world where companies have no assets beyond their "good name", they have to be very careful or the entire value of the company could crash down overnight (a la Arthur Anderson / Enron).

GOOGLE SMS Functionality

A very good feature of GOOGLE which I was unaware of until today is the ability to search via SMS message. You send the message to GOOGL (46645) and you query it. So, if I wanted to find a pizza in Andover, MA, I would send the SMS message to 46645 and in the text I would send: pizza 01810. Google would return the locations of pizza joints in Andover.

That is innovative and very useful. It has things such as driver directions, weather, word definitions etc. You can read more about it at Google SMS.