Google has introduced a standard for the development of social networking applications, its called OpenSocial. Standards had names like SOAP, BPEL, WSDL and UDDI up to now. The challenge with Web services is not developing the technology but in agreeing on the business semantics.

Did the term ‘Item Shipped’ mean the same thing to every company?

Google’s strategy with OpenSocial is to take the emphasis away from Facebook (which people are getting bored of, by the way) in the same way that Web services where about taking the emphasis away from Microsoft.

The ’semantics’ have converged with naming conventions in the case of OpenSocial. But surely, the effect of OpenSocial - if successful - will be to muddy the waters when it comes to social networking.

Then again, perhaps OpenSocial will allow small communities to exist in their personalised community while mixing with the rest of the world if they want. Make your own mind up, this article from Computerworld is a starting point.

It gives rise to the question is social media a solution in search of a problem? It will only sustain us when we are all sat behind computers all day or they are wired into our brains.

I am not a religious person but it’s good to see religious leaders use their position to raise important issues that affect us all. The Archbishop of Canterbury came out and said what most people already think about the Americans and their imperialist agenda. He has also provided his view on what the Americans (and the West, in general) need to do to regain the moral high ground and I agree with him.

It amazes me that in these apparently transparent times with almost immediate access to information and breaking news our leaders can carelessly throw their weight around while wrapping the whole exercise up as some sort of freedom march.

With Blair, Howard out and Bush on his way out, perhaps we can look forward to a period of pragmatism over dogmatism… I’m convinced that it doesn’t have to be this difficult.

I didn’t mean to but I just spent three hours messing around with templates and CSS. I am happy with the final outcome, its a big improvement on the basic Wordpress template. It was an equal mix of luck and judgement - at one stage everything was on top of everything else.

Right…I am supposed to be doing chores. My neighbour hung up my washing for me, which was nice of her. Now going to Bondi to do some shopping and to drop off a couple of Sufjan Stevens CDs to my mate Alex.

Australia tends to follow the rest of the world and this is the case with social media. The adoption of social media by corporates in Australia is nascent. The country is in market maker mode - a time when influencers should come together to help develop and educate, which makes it hard for me to understand the thinking behind the scheduling of two relevant events in Sydney.

ACE’s Online Social Networking and Business Collaboration and IIR’s Enterprise 2.0 will take place in Sydney on the same dates 3, 4, 5 December.

Now that’s a fine example of collaboration….this country!  

I’v already opted to go for the ACE event (I am a bit worred that they felt the need to use the word ‘Online’ in the title of this event, by the way) but the Enterprise 2.0 line-up looks really good.

…is someone that uses their horn excessively after midnight in a residential area, such as Kings Cross in Sydney…

There has been a change of Government in Australia today. The polls were right, the Labour Party had it in the bag. John Howard has resigned. Long live Kevin Rudd.

Australia has enjoyed an economic boom during Howard’s ten years in power. Personal wealth in Australia has grown higher relative to most of the rest of the countries in the world.

This boom has been largely driven demand from China and other countries for Australia’s raw materials, of which there are plenty.

Labour is entering power at a very uncertain time. The sub-prime crisis combined with disruption in the Middle East, changing global hierachies and the threat of environmental crisis makes for a pretty shitty few couple of years.

I wonder if the Liberals are happy that Labour will take the flak for what is about to happen, leading to their return in just three years time. It will provide more content for negative campaigns in the future. 

The Australian manufacturing sector has deteriorated into nothing and the remaining industry - agriculture - is threatened by climate change, the country is in drought and is now subject to the rise and fall of two masters, the US and China. 

Its election day and people have made their choice but… 

How much influence and control does this country have over its own destiny? So many of the real influencers are macro external and the global nature of things means that Australia has no option but to play ball.

There is no place in the industrial complex for the sort of protectionist tendencies that were once associated with the Labour Party.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQN_btzkg0U]  

Only a few days until Australians go to the polls. The Liberal Party got busted in the New South Wales seat of Lindsay for distributing materials purporting to come from an Islamic group, which supported the Labour Party. Pretty shocking tactics…

All we’ve heard about during the run up to the election is the two party perferred vote polling. I can’t help but wonder if the Greens have the potential to skew the results somewhat given the fact that environmental concerns are high on most people’s agenda and as there is little to separate the parties from a policy perspective.

Is there a mood for change? We’ll find out soon…

There is lot of talk about the abscence of professional tools and applications in the latest social networking sites. I have been thinking about applying the concept of ’social’ in the context of ’social media’ to the work place. This may have been discussed or it may be being discussed. It stemmed from a conference call in which I took actions and circulated them to the participants. Well actually, I sent them to my team mate to review and then asked her to circulate them. Now, if instead of circulating them she posted them to the Web and sent us a feed. We would then accept and they would go into a centralised To Do List, which collects the actions from all of your calls and meetings. Everyone can view everyone else’s actions. When one action is the first step before another, as many are, the team member that completed the first step would automatically initiate the action as ready in the To Do List of his colleague. With the same application, you would have a Twitter like application for teams to exchange pleasantries or share ideas and thoughts. And a status bar would broadcast a descriptive of your current project (if it is of significane and/or lengthy enough to require a status bar update). Imagine a team member is called into an urgent/unplanned meeting and unable to complete a must do task in his to do list before its deadline. This task would pop up on the screens of the team mates with an option for them to accept, delay or reject. If the action is rejected then an automatic chat room pops up for the team to discuss the resolution. Does anyone think there is something in this at least in distributed teams. 

I featured in a Marketing Magazine article today on the topic of BLOGGING. It was written by Duncan Riley and dealt with the relationship between communications (specifically blogging) and company image.  

Here are my comments in full:

Blogging is about developing a conversation and building relationships over time.  By establishing credibility, authenticity and transparency, organisations can build trust with target audience groups.  Strategy for corporate blogging needs to be aligned with broader communications goals and business objectives.   There are, however, two fundamentals for a corporate blog.  First, a blog is not an additional sales and marketing channel.  A blog that espouses corporate messages will fail.  That’s the role of the website.  Second, the blog should represent a single identifiable voice or group of voices within an organisation and should be written by that individual.  External consultants can provide advice on style and topics but ultimately the content and insights needs to come from the author. Blogs need to provide a human face to an organisation, be consistent and interactive (i.e. responsive to feedback) to build credibility. Organisations need to think long and hard about resourcing.  The voice of the CEO sounds great in practice but will he or she have the time or the inclination in reality?  Organisations need to consider the target audience, their interests and the most suitable spokesperson, as they would during the planning stages of any communications program.  Clients also need to consider style, content, objectives and protocols.  Included in the latter are issues relating to legalities and corporate disclosure.  There are good examples from overseas of large corporations that have used blogging to engage their stakeholders and target audiences.  GM and Boeing have opened up its product development processes via a blog and received a lot of participation and involvement from readers and interested parties that revel in the transparency that GM is providing.   Blogs are a great tool for internal communications, replacing (or supporting) the company newsletter and providing a mechanism for interaction and conversations between employees.  Many organisations begin with an internally focused blog to gain confidence and credibility before rolling this out externally.  This can be a great strategy as an external blog that starts enthusiastically but gradually goes dormant is more damaging to a company reputation than no blog at all.

There may be readers out there that disagree with the idea of corporations blogging. The whole topic gives rise to some interesting issues, which I will endeavour to explore in the coming weeks.

Can someone tell me why when I log into Yahoo.com, I get a little pop up asking me if I know about the .com.au site. This happens every time I log-in. The degree to which this annoys me is disproportionate to its size and significance, but annoy me it does. Similarly, calling a bank or a taxi booking service and being forced to listen to the following message; did you know that you can bank/book taxis online at www.whatever.com?. Its fine to remind me once but not every 2 minutes - that’s just plan annoying. Yes, of course I know but would I be calling you if that was a more convenient option for me?