By web 2.0, Kathryn meant: “To me, Microsoft plays really well in the large corporate ap space and is very good at that … but if I want to show people about the conversation, re-mix, open access, interoperable web, then MS is not the first port of call…”

I can only agree with Kathryn’s statement. Microsoft hides all its cool web 2.0 things under a bushel. In fact, the problem probably is that the coolness are hidden under many bushels, all over its web footprint. But hey, I am not from marketing; I am a mere Professional Geek. That is also why these listed are free. Some are even Free-as-in-Freedom, too.

I think it important that people get to hear, see and try alternatives before defaulting to “the known and safe.” And yes, I realise can work both ways.

Another perspective, and my own opinion, is that Microsoft should not seek to do everything on the web. For instance, creating a “Microsoft Twitter Ultimate Edition 2010″ is stupid. Nor should Microsoft seek to purchase every cool company that pops on the web. Again, that is my opinion. And I am the lowest on the low of the totem pole; a.k.a Individual Contributor or Sacrifical Unnamed Ensign (ref: Star Trek)

Here is an edited version of my email response; drafted quickly and by no means exhaustive. If you have other cool examples, just post a comment and I’ll update the list.

• http://Office.live.com for online mini-Sharepoint site for team collaboration. Office.live.com is a good place to start where people will use desktop apps for a full experience. Don’t forget other online app tools like EditGrid and Zoho.
• Don’t forget bing.com & associated sites (including Photosynth, Virtual Earth) as viable alternatives to google. Librarians use all sources available
• www.worldwidetelescope.org
• Live Is more than spaces (spaces.live.com) – there are photo storage, file storage (skydrive, as mentioned by Michael Rees in his post), and live.com integration into twitter, facebook and other online social media services.
• There is a Creative Commons plugin for Microsoft Office 2007 to permit correct (cc) for remix stuff out of spreadsheets, word etc http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=D1DDBDC8-627F-415A-9B0A-97362BC9B480&displaylang=en
• Other remix things: apps.live.com is a single source for our desktop apps, including LiveWriter (don’t forget that Live Writer has a whole host of plugins: http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?c=0&bt=9&pl=8&st=5 ) and video editing stuff, too. There are Wikipedia, FIickr, Twitter and all sorts of plugins. Office 2007 SP2 has both OpenXML and ODF (for OpenOffice) support.
• Don’t forget that the most-used online conversation tool in Australia is Live Messenger (MSN) which does video + audio conferencing, too
• RSS into outlook… hmm, possible but not something I’d recommend. Too clunky
• Don’t forget IE8; with accelerators and webslices http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 these use open formats to work
• http://visitmix.com/Lab has some cool tools, including Oomph with is a Microformats toolkit (works in all browsers, uses jQuery) … I use it on my blog. Licensed under MsPL (open source,  OSI approved, BSD-like)
• Another good, slightly techy tool for Windows users is http://www.microsoft.com/web with the Web Platform installer. Permits installations of PHP, WordPress etc on your Windows machine without being a rocket scientist

Background

Over the weekend, Channel 10’s Rove attempted to fist twitter, bringing in at least 1000 new Australian twitter users. A plethora of ABC celebreties are following Mark Pesce’s lead and are joining twitter. There are 5 million Australians on Facebook. Politicians have realised the shift of power towards, and reach of the internet. There is no going back.

Over the last 2 years, and more-so with the departure of Frank Arrigo from Australia, invitations to speak at ‘social media’ conferences landed on me. Internal Microsoft teams came asking about social media asked for my advice.

None of these are a formal, measured part of my job. Sure, using the technology and being a social media practitioner will still important: but being a Social media expert is not.

So, with a little regret, from today I hand over the reigns of social media expertise and public representation to others at Microsoft.

Cameron Reilly’s recent Podcast “Ex-Gloria Jean’s Franchisees Speak Out” is investigative journalism in the raw.

Further evidence that non “Mainstream Media” can do deep investigative journalism. TPN goes into the same orbit as Crikey.com.au in my book.

The story has been going along for some months and shows Cameron’s desire to find out the story to a greater depth than newspapers.

It will be interesting to see if Gloria Jeans (or at least the parent organisation of the franchise) replies to this, and asks to be interviewed by G’Day world. Or better yet, Cameron asks the organisation for a response.

Well done, Cameron.

Described by Duncan as a “mix of tech, pop and fark type stories”, it promises a blog that captures the lighter side of this strange web world.

I, for one, welcome our new Duncan overlords.

OK, can we then get our trusty government and ACMA to stop the SPAM I get from Nigerian scammers living on the Gold Coast; offers to enlarge my crown jewels and keep them shiny and bigger than other jewels; Phishing attempts for all those offshore bank accounts on dodgy islands in the Pacific; get-rich-quick schemes co-promoted by members of border religious hill cults.

Since Opt-out is the new word for hidden censorship, that is: how would the non-savvy internet user know they are getting a dumbed-down internet feed, maybe it’s time to ask the Federal Government to do more.

Here is my list:

1. Spam filter at the border. Why should Spam filters need to be installed on email servers at schools and at home? As Spam is internet traffic, just block nasty emails at the digital border. Usually spam contains naughty words like p3n15 enlargement that our women-folk should not have to read about.

   All we need are virtual drug– and foliage– sniffing dogs, just like Customs owns, and train them to sniff for spam.

2. Stop an Nigerian Scams (419 Schemes) from both internet via email and via fax, too. The first Nigerian scam I saw was a fax sent to a work colleague in Perth about 12 years ago.

   Stopping the outflow of funds by non-savvy Australians, presumably the same ‘gullible internet users’ the Australian Government is attempting to protect, will help our balance-of-trade.

3. Phishing. Since the success of capitalism over that nasty communism and the fall of the Iron Curtain, malevolent Russians have found a quick way to readdress the last 60 years. Sending out emails that look like your bank’s login page. Hey presto! Username and password is logged, and some geek slave of an ex-KGB Colonel is removing your hard earned South Pacific pesos and turning them into Euros.

   As this is just internet traffic, the Australian Government must help us to extend the cold war and protect us from new capitalists.

4. Identity Theft. A few google searches, and some searching in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter — all legitimate services, and a scammer could pretend to be anyone. Even me.

   Using my details, they could attempt to falsely claim social security benefits. Get the $60-odd per month I get and route it to their accounts on a former Australian immigrant processing centre in the Pacific. As identity theft can occur over the internet, the Government should just filter this out too, and protect us all.

All of the above are illegal either directly in statute or in common law.

In none of the above cases can any Government provide a safe environment to all its citizens all the time. Just how far is our benevolent Federal Government willing to go to protect it’s citizens?

I’d prefer the Federal Government set up a division of Department of Foreign Affairs online ready to help out netizens as they travel to this unique universe, not just fearfully blocking. Use the technology to educate people.

Stated Mark Paterson on ABC AM this morning, the secretary of the Department of Innovation, Industry Science and Research:

“The essence of the message was that the Government wanted to ensure a degree of consistency in message on key messages and therefore wanted to clear key messages through the Prime Minister’s office.”

Shades of Yes, Minister in the above. What a giggle.

Just blog it, agencies. Bypass the Bureaucracy, Subvert the Hierarchy Comrades!

Yet, Stilgherrian has found one. Maybe it’s his vet?

There will be a point where us Generation-X-ers start worrying about the future rather than the size of our LCD/Plasma screens. We’ll look to our parents and apologise for our self-centred-ness (whilst underneath blaming the me-generation of the 1970s) In our concern and worries, we’ll realise our kids are highly digitally socialised and our seniors are conversing with them. We’ve missed the boat. We’re in the generational chasm.

If you don’t get it, get Mike’s business to help. They’re not only native, they’re going feral.

Ahh, Christmas. Dontcha just love it? Brings out the Scrooge McDickens in all of us.

Scoble is leaving PodTech. Doing something else from mid-January 2008.

In his post he talked about live streaming/twittering and the conversation that results from immediate connectivity to an audience.

From Scoble’s post:

Another thing that opened my eyes? The Google Open Social press conference where I had the only video, thanks to Kyte.tv and my cell phone (they had asked for me to leave my professional camera in the car — funny that’s a story I’ve heard several times, including on the panel discussion yesterday where Jeff Pulver showed off video he shot on a small pocket camera of the recent Led Zepplin concert. He told the audience that Led Zepplin wants to buy his photos and videos because they were better than the professional ones).

Blogs, Video-Blogs, Podcasts emulate the old media. Push out. Wait for comments (aka letters to the editor). The immediacy is missing. There is too much latency between thought to feedback

Immersive Conversations.

Live-streaming/Live-twittering/Live-full immersion-SecondLife/Live un-meetings of the ilk as discussed on EEL recently is the next step. The technology is here permitting low-cost, high-bandwidth immediate two-way sessions.

In conversations with Cameron Reilly, this is exactly where his mind has been for some months.

The move is on.

Articles mention: Jeff Sandquist in the April 2007 Wired.

“The heat internal being 70x” is a littler hyperbolic — more like 70% of the heat is internal when blogger steps outside our blogging guidelines. Some notes on our Policy has been discussed here already.

“Microsoft Popfly is for making Web Bling” lulz. my favourite quote.

Microsoft Office Live Workspace signup.

I use Editgrid for collobrative financial management in our house.

Microsoft in Australia links, because I could not recall on the fly.

Microsoft on HD DVD

No: Welcome to Generation-C

Uncle Mike talked about this last week: why you tag your photos (cc) and geotag your photos.

Unlike other large corporations who have mis-used (cc) licensed photos, Schmap correctly asked and obtained permission to use one of my photos on their site:

Schmap Christchurch Third Edition: Photo Inclusion

Hi Nick,
I am delighted to let you know that your two submitted photos have been selected for inclusion in the newly released third edition of our Schmap Christchurch Guide:
Godley Head
www.schmap.com/christchurch/sights_attractions/p=174111/i=174111_2.jpg
Godley Head
www.schmap.com/christchurch/sights_attractions/p=174111/i=174111_3.jpg
If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal page, then please also check out our schmapplets — customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap Christchurch Guide, complete with your published photos:
www.schmap.com/schmapplets/p=37473564N00/c=SE51033694
Thanks so much for letting us include your photos — please enjoy the guide!

Like all pictures, there is a back story, too.

Note: 11th September

(cc) Creative Commons Australia has further discussion

• PowerPoint 2003 version of the presentation
• PowerPoint 2007 version of the presentation

Just as a note: Download Compatibility Pack for previous versions of Office

By installing the Compatibility Pack in addition to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007. The Compatibility Pack can also be used in conjunction with the Microsoft Office Word Viewer 2003, Excel Viewer 2003, and PowerPoint Viewer 2003 to view files saved in these new formats. For more information about the Compatibility Pack, see Knowledge Base article 924074.

What is the Web 2.0 World Saying about you, now?

I strongly recommend any Marketing/PR person just starting out to download and install Particls: http://particls.com/. You can use Particls to watch the internet for you. Enter the phrases and words that are your products and brands, and watch the conversation that ensues.

It is wise to start your online journey by engaging the existing conversations and existing communities, rather than attempting to start your own lonely blog and talk to noone.

Social Networking use by Marketing/PR

Social network using MySpace/Facebook/MSN Live/Linkedin/Bebo etc etc etc is a perfect mechanism for creating a community; and more importantly: staying connected.

Note that people are largely engaged in these communities for personal social reasons, not to have a product shoved down their throat. The rule of authentic voice applies.

SecondLife use by Marketing/PR:

Know who and where of your audience. Despite heavy hype in the traditional media, the number of people logged in to SecondLife always seems low. (25000 to 40000)

There is something enticing about a completely immersive 3D world, where in a dream-like state you can fly anywhere and build anything. It demos well, and the allure of “instant millions” attracted a certain “type” of initial user.

The web was like this in 1994/5. Not much out there, much hype and a limited few had the hardware and ‘bandwidth’ to participate. I would highly recommend doing deep research prior to significant investment.

Fully immersive worlds such as World-of-Warcraft (note: you probably cannot market here) are very successful; and the future of end-user generated immersive worlds is large.

Twitter use by Marketing/PR:

http://gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com/2007/08/23/gday-world-281-melbourne-twitter-lunch/

@Froosh expressed it best: Twitter is micro-blogging: thoughts in 140 characters. It is also more instant. What is happening now.  An organisation’s existing blog strategy should also cover Twitter.

Running 2 bots (http://twitter.com/NeilFinn and http://twitter.com/Elv15) and an event alias (http://twitter.com/auremix07) my assessment is that Twitterers are looking for real people, not chat bots at the other end of the line. Twitterspam such as “go visit this link” and the like causes mass unsubscribes. “Our product x is now shipping” the same.

What the Twitter-verse is looking for is the instant human reaction and feeling from events that precedes the formal cycle.

So, just Twittering to get a “message through” or hype a product/event does not work. What is needed is an authentic, honest voice of a real person. It is part of your Word-of-mouth, viral strategy.

In a Write/ReWrite/Read Web, People matter. Not Messages

I think Particls just changed my life. I’ve replaced my Microsoft Windows Vista Sidebar with this new version of Particls. Having Particls watch the web for me keeps me on-the-ball, more than caffeine. Well, almost.

Having interviewed Chris and Ashley from Particls, and visited their lair in Brisvegas, I knew these guys where onto something.

Upon returning from my 2 weeks off work on holiday, I had a couple of thousand feed items all demanding my instant attention. Holidays are a mechanism for adjusting your personal APML. Along with two cats and a bag full of washing: it was difficult to prioritize what was/was not important.

Chris Saad let me into their secret: a new Sidebar-focused version of Particls

Feeding the mountain through Particls, the important stuff popped onto the top.

Living my working life online in the intarwebs, it is way too easy to lose those nuggets and jewels in the streams and tubes.

Why turn off the Vista Sidebar? On my laptop, screen real-estate is precious, and what is most important needs to be flowing in front of me to grab my attention. My eyes move focus to movement (think hunter, not gatherer) — and with Particls ‘moving’ items as they flow in, it grabs my attention.

Gadgets that I have used in Vista have been static information; or at least something that I am happy to view once per hour or so.

So, these static pieces of information can stay in Internet Explorer as favourites, Windows Live, and therefore in online services.

Particls is no gadget. It is now a must-have desktop application with the screen space it deserves.

The Microsoft PopFly alpha can make you lose three days. In a good way. I haven’t had so much fun since, well, Photoshop maybe.

I’ve created a public PopFly “Block” called NeilFinnLyrics (now shared) this is bare, bare bones. It simply uses the new REST interface to the Random Neil Finn Lyric Server.  The Lyric Server supports SOAP/WSDL, and normal image insertion.

PopFly is social programming: drag and drop blocks onto the page, and create your own mashups of data. Adding Neil Finn’s Lyrics to the data that can be mashed up is just another step in getting the words out there. My love for Neil Finn knows almost no bounds.

Writing a Block with the current Alpha requires knowledge of JavaScript and XML. And a little bit of patience.

Come have a chat at ReMIX to discuss where you may also profit from PopFly. The first thing that should be created is a branded PopFly Superannuation Block. Thoughts?

In 2000 on the Adobe Photoshop 6.0 Roadshow, Liam and Avril attended a night session of my “1980s Music Trivia Photoshop Technical Session”. No sales and marketing here; discussion of JPEG vs GIF, artefacts and Flock of Seagulls.

In the IT industry, it’s tough to show your kids what you do for a living. So having Liam and Avril attend was a major buzz.

Liam then realised what I did for a crust.

Now he is teaching me about this online stuff. Strange world!

So, how do you explain to your Mum what your day job is?

Reading this Social Media White Paper from the Australian Blog, Better Communication Results will help out. Send it to your Mum, too.

Now Frank Arrigo, my manager, has entered that into the internal Microsoft address/HR system as my title. What a laugh!

I wonder if I can claim diplomatic immunity when I go feral?

additional: … maybe not as feral as David Lemphers!

Twitter.com being down forced Sydney’s web geeks to get together. My first WebJam, and it r0x0red. Needed more cash to purchase the t-shirt. Sorry, ’bout that.

Andrew Muller from Builder.com.au on the night.

Stephen Collins on WebJam 3

GO WEBJAM Melbourne!

So, my rough notes from the night:

• Bigbrother voting style on SMS with live results on screen
• shout out to funkycoda, scenariogirl, rails t-shirt geeks, mick from tangler
• Woohoo in crowd for everyone’s favourite web 2.0 in au tangler.com
• Adobe funded drinks went in 20mins (thanks Claire)
• More geekier people than web 2.0, but more “off” than “on” (as Mossyblog said, down-tools time)
• WebFS the world
• Mossyblog heckled by rubber chicken lovers at rear of audience
• acidlabs; revolution social computing nice. Hello, Stephen.  I agree: web2.0 cultural change in corporations is going to be really interesting
• singlebutton de-thetan machine was my second favourite
• Silk Charm attended and started a new un-industry association, with goblins hodge and lachlan (first of three lachlans) as mascots.
•  rails vs python in the crowd. I am a pythonic.
• reactive dot net 2 global corporate challenge flash google maps dot net 2 my favourite as it mashed everything together, web2-style.
• spice web2 geek dance. waiting for the <video> **winner**
• vjloops logo flash director loopz for videos. Nothing wrong with AfterEffects, however many tools reach the same ends.
• “and you can podcast it“
• ai bot module for ecommerce sites. ask a question rather than clicking through
• spaulds rockin’ demo. well trained by Mark Szulc.
• Yes, Prime Minister: viral marketing from http://samesame.com.au. It appealed to my inner 14 year old.

(heads down, pplz voting)

leslienassar and I had a great chat in SCRLTT on the way home

The view down King Street at night:

(none of the above are wallflowers!)

Other comments:

• James Dellow, ChiefTech
• Ben Barren

As people subscribed to my twitter.com/nickhodge feed experienced, I attended the Web 2.0 Futures Conference hosted by Ross Dawson at KPMG today.

Ross recently wrote an article for Read/Write web on the Top 60 Web 2.0 applications in Australia.

My random, assumptive breakdown of the audience of about 140 people:

• 10% < 25 years old, 80% gen-x, 10% baby boomers
• <20% female
• 45% of men in suits, 15% wearing ties
• 33% had money, 33% had ideas but no money, and the last 33% of us were wallflowers watching the first 66% in a subtle dance.

I met my first Web 2.0 celebrity (not including Microsoft’s Jeff Sandquist; but that’s being a little twee) — Richard MacManus of Read/Write Web. I have a feeling he’s enjoying the latter slightly more than the former part of his blog (ie: more writing than reading)

The first part of the day involved an interesting discussion on what is Web 2.0, and what is Australia? Is the notion of borders relevant, anyway? My assessment is that language and/or culture are greater than timezones and borders. The “digital natives” see borders in different ways than previous generations.

Being that there were many VC’s in the audience, and many people wanting their startup funded: the discussion around revenue models was also quickly covered.

The highlight of the day were the 5 minute demonstrations from the following Australian Web 2.0 companies:

• Omnidrive
• Tangler (hi Mick!)
• gnoos.com (hi Ben!)
• Scouta (in closed private beta)
• Atlassian with Confluence

Shout out hi to Bronwen of http://www.perthnorg.com.au, Lachlan “Hot Geek” Hardy.

At the Hill and Knowlton “Surviving and thriving in the next decade — Technology Publishing” Breakfast Bytes this morning, a group of eminent panelists in picture above, from the left:

• James Tuckerman – Publishing Editor, AntHill. New relatively magazine about ideas, money and skills. Previously more print than online, but adding new online projects later in 2007.
• Heather Craven — Director of Marketing & Communications, Circulations Audit Board,
  Australian Circulation Bureau. Sub-committee researching digital.
• Brian Haverty – Editorial Director, CNET Networks Australia : Readers first, video and text style publishing.
• Tony Sarno – Editor, APC. Adding new online APC projects later in 2007.
• Peter Roberts – Managing Editor, BRW. Part of the Fairfax group, around since 1857. Noted that http://www.afr.com/ relaunched this week, and closed content model AFR Access continues.
• Andrew Kirk, Hill and Knowlton: Chair

The theme from the morning’s panel and Q&A is that “there will be a mixture of online and print” and that “online and print” readers are treated as different readers by the big-names. My perspective as a corporate online/citizen journalist is slightly different.

Like the quintessential investigative journalists: Woodward and Bernstein learnt: follow the money. In the above listing of panelists, notice where their stated investment is going. It’s online.

From a traditional publisher’s perspective, the business is about employing journalists to gather hidden facts, connect, analyse and write stories. People buy the paper (atoms) to read the stories and maybe their eyeballs will stray onto an advertisement. The marketing groups of companies buy these positions on the paper in the hope that the right eyeballs are enthralled by the product and/or service — and buy the product. The core of a publisher’s job is managing the compelling content such that a specific audience is created that advertisers value.

The web is no different, except that anyone can be a publisher, and outsource the revenue side (advertising) to Microsoft or Google. Large publishers, such as Fairfax, are unhappy that their expensive infrastructure is subverted online: Peter Roberts mentioned twice that Google made $200 million in Australia without investing in the content-side.

Peter Roberts also commented on one of his competitors, Alan Kohler’s Eureka Report, having only an online mechanism but successful business model. My perspective is that Alan’s business is successful as he is seen as a respected and independent entity within Australia’s financial community. Alan Kohler is a trusted brand.

The Gadget Guy, Peter Blasina’s question near the end summarised the morning for me: What does the future really look like? Each of the represented panelist’s organisations (maybe with the exception of cnet) have their business strategies weighted toward print, and the brand-value that print brings.

Peter Blasina comes at this with credibility as a true multi-channel brand and personality: print, online and TV — and surmised that the coming generation will change the face of the print publisher’s world. And they know it.

The future for publishers is where the eyeballs are. And eyeballs are not going to be in print, it is going to be online. Eyeballs stay longer where this is trusted value, and most importantly where there is a community. Reading a magazine is an almost high-latency feedback medium; where two-way interaction is slow if attempted at all.

Demographics of the eyeballs are changing to more online: younger readers being digitally native and older generations having more time to explore online; with more females than males desiring a community and interaction rather than passive acceptance; high bandwidth connection to permit TV, Radio and Print being equal online mediums.

Whilst I have no research to back this up, I am going to state it here. A common refrain from print publishers is that “Radio did not replace newspapers, and TV did not replace radio” as their backwards looking perspective on why online will not replace these old media. My argument is that the internet can replace the media styles: with web pages, podcasts and vidcasts. As Rupert Murdoch is quoted as saying: “Big media no longer controls the conversation” 

James Tuckerman knows his readers, and I think has a plan to create value in Anthill’s community. He understands the emotional connection that he has with his readership. James also stated there are “population lumps” at birth-years of 1949, 1974 and 1985. According to the ABS, there is another population lump in the 2005–7 range too. My suggestion is to watch Anthill as a publisher. They are starting a conversation with their community.

A Question about SecondLife, the current “craze” in Australia potentially due to a visit in meatspace by a Linden Labs persona, resulted in Tony Sarno saying that “many PBL management have visited SecondLife”. I fear it is because of the gambling dens rather than the community aspect. About 20% of the audience of largely PR and technology industry attendees had logged into SecondLife, of which most had logged in once.

So, in industry parlance, what is the tip-on for online? It’s the community. Community is the new Brand.