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I have decided to move my blog to it own dedicated domain – thoughtexposed.com.  Doing so gives me lot more freedom with plugins, theme, & skinning.  Please update your blog subscriptions & bookmarks to point to thoughtexposed.com.  One of the new neat feature of the new address is iPhone Mobile Safari integration.  Check it out from your computer browser and from your iPhone browser.

Social Giving 2.0: Driving your passion for support

One might argue much of the positive impact of social networking is that of thought proliferation, networking, & idea generation for those fortunate and plugged into techno-sphere. However, one recent positive trend, as observed by this author, is one directly benefiting actual people in need in our society. I call this ‘Social Giving 2.0′

The influence of social networking, is wide and deep in our daily lives of today. Technologies offered under blogging & now micro-blogging, has increasingly allowed for open thought exchange, unobtrusive news reporting, and in many cases even political appointments. Take a look at the prime example model of community organizing by the Barack Obama’s campaign team that many argue played a significant role in Mr. Barack Obama’s seat as the President – “What Businesses Can Learn from Barack Obama’s Social Media Strategy” OR “Presentation: Barack Obama’s Internet Strategy“. On the flip side, there are significant negative impacts of social media in our culture ranging from an addiction of worldly exposure of one’s daily minutes of life to confusion around one’s internet social identity in a realm that has no established guidelines or monitored rules of conduct. A few of the social networks have also become prime grounds for undesirable people. Regardless the pro and cos of social networking, it is here to stay.

Increasingly non-profit organizations are tapping into popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter. The social networking community is actively accepting this model. YouTube announced its launch of a channel – YouTube Nonprofits specifically for nonprofit organizations to upload footage of their work, public service announcements and calls to action. The channel allows these organizations to collect donations with no processing costs, using another tool, Google Checkout for Non-Profits. Facebook has applications that allow users to make donations and recently launched an Impact Channel that connects users with various political and charitable causes.

These efforts have certainly paid off. In 2007, for the first time in history, more than $300 billion dollars went to charities, according to the annual report of Giving USA Foundation released June 23. Online fundraising in the United States has grown rapidly from $250 million in 2000 to an estimated $6.9 billion in 2006, according to the ePhilanthropy Foundation ($13.2 billion globally). In 2008, Heifer International, for instance, raised more than 28 percent of its donations online, and the United Way of America brought in $257.4 million via the Web.

In addition, innovative websites have helped boost the growth of giving globally. Kiva.org, a person-to-person microfinance site, enables individuals to become direct lenders to specific entrepreneurs in the developing world. UniversalGiving.org helps donors engage with projects in countries and causes of their choice – projects that have been carefully vetted for quality. 100 percent of donations going to the donated project, according to the agency. says Pamela Hawley, founder of UniversalGiving. “The Web service has seen tremendous growth: 85 percent from the first quarter of 2006 to 2007, and 101 percent from the first quarter of 2007 to 2008″ says Pamela Howley, founder of this service, in a recent interview. She attributes such growth to the “gift packets” they’ve introduced, such as $20 to help provide “a lifetime of clean water” for a family, or a similar amount for eyeglasses to “save the sight of a child.” People can also design their own packets, she adds, like the 10-year-old who is sending soccer balls to youths in Ethiopia. “What seems to be compelling is that we aren’t asking for a change in [donors’] lifestyle – they already give gifts for birthdays or anniversaries. We’re just asking them to give something more meaningful,” Ms. Hawley says.

New tools have even appeared to spur giving without money during these rough economic times, when people tend to cut back on contributions. GoodSearch.com allows donors to give to their favorite charities every time they conduct an online search on Yahoo (which donates a penny per search), and GoodShop.com donates a percentage of every purchase made from more than 700 retailers. Some 60,000 charities are already benefiting.

On January 8, 2009, a tweet (aka message on Twitter.com) went out asking, in a call to action, other cities to join in hosting a Twestival (brainchild of Amanda Rose) on February 12th 2009, with the aim of bringing local Twitter communities together offline (in person at social gatherings) and raising money for the social cause Charity: Water. In less than a month, close to 1,000 volunteers hosted events in over 200 cities around the world. In all, more than 10,000 people attended. The result is $250,000 USD raised. This is a notable step in social networking. Such event organized by community members without any moniker of corporate sponsorship or group fund raising. It was achieved simply through the combined generosity of individual giving.

Mashable, Kompolt, PayPal and celebrities including Alec Baldwin, Hayden Panettiere, Brea Grant, Corbin Bleu, Ernie Johnson, Kyle Petty, Elevenmoms and Linkin Park are joining together for a major social media charity event launching at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX. The Social Media SmackDown challenges teams to use Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and StumbleUpon to compete to raise the most money for their chosen charities. This 10 day charity social network challenge (March 16th to March 26th, 2009) is expected to reach a combined audience of over 1 million people.

‘Social Giving 2.0′ is not a movement, nor a fad of time. It has been going strong since 2006, as seen in the numbers. The key to its success? A movement that has embraced the times and empowers donors to govern their own passion of giving in the ways they chose. At the same time, they allow the donors to transparently share their support with friends, no matter how big or small the monetary donations may be. It indeed is empowering the individual to give meaningfully, while letting them decide what meaningful is to each. Without setting restrictions around giving they are continuing to get a high return, while working the community using platforms, that people know best. There is a significant lesson here to be learnt by other industries needing to use the power of online community.

Related Articles:
The Future of Philanthropy: Giving 2.0
Giving 2.0: Being Generous in a Web 2.0 World

HOW TO: Real-Time Sync your Google Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Pictures, and Docs with iPhone for free.

Yes there are paid solutions for real-time synchronizing your iPhone to the major google services – mail, contact, calendar, notes and pictures on picasa. A notable one of such services is subscriptions based GooSync.  Why pay when you can use freely available tools to do this, and get access to far more features than paid services.  Free is always affordable.  Let me show you how easy it is:

Google Mail (GMail): Use your iphone IMAP email feature to keep your google email synched. IMAP doesn’t download any email to your iphone, instead it allows your iPhone Mail program to access your email live from GMail servers.  Another biggest advantage of IMAP email is that you when  you read / send an email from your iPhone the same is reflected instateneously if you access from a computer.  See this video step-by-step directions on how to setup your iPhone to use Google mail (GMail) using IMAP.  You will not need to install any additional programs on your iPhone. The IMAP feature is built-in and you only have to configure it.

Google Calendar & Contacts: Use the fabulous service Nuevasync(free registration required) to synchronize your iPhone Calendar with Google Calendar & Google Contacts with your iPhone Contacts over IMAP.  This services allows you to synch multiple calendars, contacts, and also email between your iPhone and your google account. The best part of this services it is synchronous, as in, if you make a change to your contacts or calendar on your iPhone, your google calendar and contacts are updated almost instantaneously.  The process works the same the other way.  This services rolled out a new feature, also avaiable free, that color codes calendars on your iPhone calendar program.  See here(sign-in required) for official step-by-step direction on how to setup your iPhone to use Nuevasynch. You will not need to install any additional programs on your iPhone. The IMAP feature is built-in and you only have to configure it.

Google Notes: For those of you not in the know, your google account allows you to have an online notebook as part of your account.  You can access this online notebook on the web at www.google.com/notebook. Now you can access and keep your notebook synchronized between your iPhone and the web interface.  You do this by downloading the free gNotes application from the Apple App Store.  The application allows you to create new folders, new notes, and even delete notes and folders.  The changes are instantaneously synced between your iPhone and google’s servers that host the online notebook.  See here (free in iTuens app store even-though the web site quotes a $1.99 price) for details on gNotes and how to set it up on your iPhone.

Google Pictures (Picasa): Akin to all of the major google services, the Picasa photo sharing and storage services is also made available for your iPhone.  There is no additional program to download, you simply create a Safari on iPhone bookmark and add the bookmark to your screen (using the + icon at the bottom of your screen when you are browsing using Safari on iPhone).  Google has specifilcally programmed the picasa site to detect if you are accessing from iPhone. If you are it presents an iPhone friendly interface that has also been optimized for fast navigation and loading both on iPhone edge and 3g speeeds.  You can add pictures to your Picasa album using the email method. Read here for details on how to do this. There is word that safari upload feature is coming. Simply navigate tohttp://picasaweb.google.com using your iPhone Safari and add the bookmark to your screen.

Google Docs: Just like the Google Pictures (Picasa) iPhone interface, Google now allows you to access your google docs using iPhone Safari.  The iPhone Google Docs interface even allows you to read, & modifiy existing docs (spreadsheets only at this time).  Just like Picasa bookmark,  you simply create a bookmark using Safari on iPhone and add the bookmark to your home screen.  You have to first browse to http://docs.google.com.

Alternatively,  you can also download the Google mobile application for iPhone from the Apple App Store.  This application provides an easy access to the web sites for these services that load in you iPhone Safari.  Although this can be fine for Docs and Pictures,  using the native IMAP feature for GMail, Contacts, and Calendar; and Native application for GNotes gives your significant speed boost as you are not going through iPhone Safari and using the mobile web access.  For Pictures and Docs, at this point, you have no other choice but to access using the mobile web interface using your iPhone.

Level 1 Secrets of Apple’s design process

During a presentation at 2008 South by Southwest festival, audience members got a rare glimpse into Apple’s design process.  The presentation was given by Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple.  According to Lopp, the process involves:
Pixel Perfect Mockups, a.k.a. prototyping. Admitedly this process takes a significant amount of time but it is akin to a magical wand that eliminates ambiguity and removes needs for correcting any mistakes down in the process.

10 to 3 to 1. Apple designers start with ten mockups for any product or feature, with room to design without restriction. They start to apply the various restrictions (design aesthetics, projected pricing, user friendly UI, etc) whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong design.

Paired Design Meetings. According to Lopp, each week the designers have two meetings. The first is to brainstorm without boundaries, letting their imaginations and ideas reach heights without any constraints through free thought.  The second is a production meeting, which is an antithesis to the first. This meeting is to work out how a crazy idea from the first might actually work. This process and organization continues throughout the development of any app or product.  The designers are mindful to keep an option for creative thought even at a late stage of the product development, even if the production meetings start to dominate the development process as the product comes closer to reality.

Pony Meeting. When senior managers describe their desires of a product to the design team, they are really expressing ideas of products that they think they want, a.k.a. they want their Pony.  These pony wishes are most times very vague and mildly put unthought through. Apple designers, take the best ideas from the paired design meetings and present those to leadership, who might just decide that some of those ideas are, in fact, their longed-for ponies. In this way, the ponies morph into deliverables. In this way a balance in achieved where the leadership feel involved by seeing some of their ponies come to life, and the designers deliver on functional, shiny, products.

Although the design process is just that, the design phase; such practice speaks to a recursive process of refining high caliber thoughts that survive the high caliber scrutiny by such talented people.  Most organizations today, cut corners in this very crucial phase of product development.  They believe, if the construction of product is done iteratively then all mistakes will be caught through repetitive testing, and they will come away with an excellent product.

A bad, unthought and unrefined design, plagues a product through each cycle no matter how repetitively it is built and tested. Design is the granurality that persists in the very nature of the product. If the design is bad so is the very granular aspect of the product.

Despite additional time and cost, the design of a product must be seen as an investment, it has direct impact on the ROI of the product.  Any shortcut taken in this phase can and does lead to significant disasters down the line.  We can learn this by observing the designing pattern from design leaders like Apple.

State of Consumer Spending from Mint.com

 But what the data, the hard facts, mean for you – if you run a consumer business – is that your customers are spending $400 less each month than they were a year ago, have burned through half of their savings, and on average have taken on an additional $5k in debt. – mint.com

According to Mint.com & their 900K sample points throughout their users, and $50B assets & liabilities, ” a tremendous insight” has surfaced around consumer spending trend in 2008.  Using statistics, Mint claims a decrease of $400 a month in consumer spending and categorically decrease of average 25% decline with slight increased spending on financial advisors. Furthermore average account balance was halved to around $5,500 with credit card debt hovering at the same range, investments shrinking by 24% and loans increasing by 11%.

Summarised from:

The Economy according to Mint – TechCrunch via Mint.com

Has Web Development lost its proposition?

Web development is popular because it’s fast, versatile, and relatively inexpensive.  But that doesn’t mean the alternatives don’t have advantages and merit of their own, and in some cases the Web’s weaknesses might outweigh its strengths.

With the advances of hardware processing power & software functionality, it is viable to re-visit the original reasoning behind developing applications for the web.  In addition, it is viable to also re-visit the definition of web application, especially in the light of increased popularity around Rich Internet Application (RIA) models like Microsoft Silverlight,  Adobe Air, and AJAX technologies – that seek to blend thin & thick client application deployment. For the sake of healthy discussion lets look at some areas where web-based applications stack up against system based programming.

• With the traditional web-application model there is a front-end thin Client UI that functions in the framework of browser. This UI handles rudimentary user input, generic input validation, graphics rendering, display of the output.  The real processing happens in the middle-tier integration layer and back-end database.  With the advent of cheaper processors and memory, even the bare-bones computers of today, can put an enterprise grade machine of a decade ago, to shame.  Thus, we want to ask, is it time we reassessed such traditional model.  Is it viable for us to shift some of the over-burdened processing load towards the front-end. With increased demand of information consumption, more and more load is being put on the integration & back-end layers, to a point where scaling data-centers to meet the demands is becoming challenging.  The middle-tier also suffers from security vulnerabilities both in integration & demand load.  

• Increasingly, the evolution of Web standards is being driven by a select few major browser vendors, with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on one side and Apple’s Safari, Google’s Chrome and Firefox on the other. The vendors implement new features first and standardize them later with shaky agreements at best. Independent developers have little genuine input into the future direction of the Web.  Does it make sense to rely on client-side software that’s such a moving target?  Does it make sense to constantly require re-work to the front-end while relying upon such shifty browser software 

• The Web based applications are stateless, they are typically form based UI that take user input, and serve back the result wrapped in sometimes fancy graphical wrapper.  Is this necessarily the right model for every application?  Is the sacrifice of full range of real-time interactivity offered in OS-based apps, worth today’s almost negligible processing speeds of client-side computers? 

• While system programming lead to building apps with consistent UI toolkits such as the Windows APIs, or Apple’s Cocoa, building a Web UI is too often an exercise in reinventing the wheel. Buttons, controls, and widgets vary from app to app. Menus are along the top, other times they’re off to the side. Sometimes they pop down when you roll over them, and sometimes you have to click. This is compounded with the variety of coding frameworks that all promise better performance only to lead to minor efficiencies, yet quite not matching that of system based programs.  All this inconsistency hurts the development budget, but hurts usability even more.

• We might want to ask if sacrificing the full range of languages, tools, and methodologies that systems programming has to offer worth the pains in support & processing we experience while we shoehorn interactivity on an otherwise simplistic input-ouput based platform like the web-browser? Yes, JavaScript has evolved into a respectable general-purpose language, but it could be expected to be all things to all people. User interface code written in such languages as C++, Objective C, or Python can often be both more efficient and more maintainable than code written for the Web paradigm.

• In today’s usability and higher demands on information, HTML and CSS are clearly deficient when it comes to rich interactivity and are often augmented with yet more layers of associative technologies to deliver on expectations. As evident with the proliferation of multimedia plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, and Silverlight. Relying on these outside dependencies increases the complexity and support cost of your applications. Why bother? These tricks wouldn’t be necessary if we weren’t trying to shoehorn interactivity into the browser instead of sticking to the desktop.

• The traditional argument that web-based applications lead to portability and cut the need for tethered access to desktop or office system, is also a suspect, in our world today.  With the advent of cheaper laptops, employees are increasingly able work from satellite locations using enterprise VPN, secure access tokens, and corporate firewall access.  Organizations are increasing portable laptops, which are at times more powerful than desktops, due to ease of maintainability.  Thus, these corporate issued laptops provides portability and at the same time, the horse-power to run system based programs. Does this trend make us re-evaluate the argument that application portability can be achieved by web-application alone?

• The current trend setters in mobile access like iPhone, and Windows Mobile have moved away from browser based applications.  iPhone relies on Apple’s COCOA with a iPhone SDK wrapper,   Windows Mobile relies on .NET wrapped with Win Mo SDK wrapper.  In essence these mobile devices have implemented system application with additional wrappers.  This is yet another testament how miniaturization in technology has evolved and how even devices like our mobile phones prefer to handle system applications vs. web-based applications.  

The debate between Web based application vs. System based applications is not simple. For many applications, Web-based development and deployment remains the cheapest, fastest route to market. But in the midst of our  zeal to cut costs by sticking to Web standards and technologies, it’s important to understand the trade-offs, too.

Evolution of Social Media in 2009

But social media today is a pure mess: it has become a collection of countless features, tools, and applications fighting for a piece of the pie. Social media, in essence, is bumping up against its own ceiling, no longer able to serve the needs of those living within its walls…

Lets face it, social media today is a mess.  I say this with love nonetheless.  Yes I love blogging, yes I admire twitter, and I appreciate LinkedIn. However with so many channels competing for my profile, I am constantly trying to keep up with friends across all the various channels just to exchanges “Hey what’s up”.   Case in point the advent to several applications that summarized your and your friends’ activities on Twitter – Friendfeed, etc.  With so many social networks with so much of social media, our respective online selves are practically encroaching on multiple personality complex.  If you are one who has spread yourself thin across the social media-scape or you are one who is in the business of monetizing on Social Media, readwriteweb, publishes an article, providing glimpse into the changing face of social media.  It points to 10 areas of consideration:

• Its about people where real people are seeking real meaningful connection and self expression
• Creating meaning and value in the social interaction online just like people seek to do offline – where the topics are relevant, interactions simultaneous and organic
• Enabling Convergence for allowing  people to see their multitude social profiles and activities of their social networks in one consolidated platform helping them make sense of it all
• Building a true cross-platform experience where people want to be connected on their own terms demanding high degree of reliability and access no matter what their device of choice – iPhone, laptop, etc.
• Creating relevant Social Network that provide users the ability to connect around things that they love and not a generic cookie cutter platform with vague topics or no topics at all. People now demand ROI on their social presence in replies, comments, and their ability to influence
• Innovating in the advertising space will need to produce semantically aware ads that target niche demographics. Blanket, non-relevant, and non-semantic ad placements are increasingly losing market
• Helping people organize their old-school social media ecosystem where people using consolidation and tagging systems to tag, morph, organize, and make sense of bits of information (video, pictures, articles, product, conversation, gossip, etc.) they encounter through their every day internet usage. With so much information, people are starting to demand ways to cut and re-organize information in their own style and fashion
• Connecting with the rest of US and the world, especially when social media sites like YouTube have been so successfully utilized by the current president of US both during his campaign and current presidency
• Preparing for new social media jobs where “new job descriptions will call on subject-matter experts who can plan for relevant interaction within networks and aggregating platforms and bring together products, services, and people.”
• Making money through increased symantically targeted ads, revenue and user sharing between strategic partners, and selling virtual goods to augment people’s virtual presence are some of the emerging sweet spots of the new social media.

Summarized from:

10 Ways Social Media will change in 2009 by Ravit Lichtenberg

Are We Forgetting to Live in this Technology Laden World?

How will our children and our grand-children, for that matter, our great grand-children, remember us? How will they know us?  Will they have to resort to looking at our cached Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn profiles?  Will they have to peruse the many blog entries on WordPress.com, Blogger.com?  Will they go in history to read through the many tweets we left behind through twitter.com?  Will they have to view the many digital photos we post on Flickr.com,  Picasaweb.google.com?  In our technology centric lives today,  we are contanstly connected with each other, to the world, through not only computer but mini portable devices like iPhone, Blackberry.  Some of u s have even taken up microblooging every moment of our day and our sensory experiences.  I pause to ask, in this contant recording and archiving of every moment of our lives, are we missing out from being the 1st person ‘experiencer’ of these moments?  After all, our respective experiences of our respective lives, are really meant for us to experience first person as opposed to being the recorder behind that camera or phone?  How often are we truly enjoying an experience with our own senses without becoming the operator of some techno gadget recording the experience for later viewing on a monitor?

The fine line between what’s worth documenting and what’s not is a hard one to define. We immediately assume that the most important, the biggest, the most incredible moments are those that should be recorded. But it’s these very moments that are best to experience live, with our full focus.

 

This post on ReadWriteWeb.com brings up this very same phenomenon of our culture today.  Although there can not be a concise answer to this.  For each their own.  The collective, collaborative, social answers truly don’t apply.  After all,  a web poll around this question would only defeat the true purpose of asking this question.  How then, do we determine when to unplug, when to experience life as it happes with all our focus?  Seek advice from your inner human self, the self that desires the human contact of being there, the self that hungers for the full sensory input for your biological self.  Although a moment captured on camera might last longer than your vivid first person memory, being the operator of the camera while the moment passes leaves your with no real interaction of self for that moment at all.

Technology is Great, but Are We Forgetting to Live? by Sarah Perez

Successful Enterprise Innovation Management gets a new face

Like the rest of the world and its processes,  enterprise Innovation Management has also evolved.  Organizations that fail to recognize this evolution has remained in the archained state of innovation, even to the extent of not doing any innovation at all.  The business of Innovation is not an easy concept to grasp for many.  For many, a linear, day-to-day thinking is more or less all that is comfortable.  For those who truly persue excellence in Innovation must also master managing the changing face of Innovation.  To some ‘managing Innovation’ can be a falacy of concepts.   However, identifying and appropriately fostering the applicable Innovation patterns, in an organization, can be the key to success in innovating.

The innovator’s dilemma, … affects companies whose success and capabilities can actually become obstacles in the face of changing markets and technologies. There is no more important an issue on the agenda of top management than driving innovation.  

 

Along with the traditional techniques – ‘Measure Innovation’ , ‘The BCG Matrix’, ‘ The 20% free time for employees to spend on any project they like’ ; are in need of augementing with ‘Crowdsourcing‘ with specific and relevant context with the right amount of processing and filtering of the ideas.  The below linked article, using namesInnocentive & BrightIdea to be two trailblazing in this space.   The article even points to Change.Gov where our President Obama is using crowdsourced input to facilitate change.

How Can Web Tech Help Enterprises with Innovation Management? by Bernard Lunn

Other Related Articles:
Crowdsourcing: Consumers as Creators

Cloud Computing changing the world one cloud at a time

A host of providers including Amazon (AMZN), Salesforce.com (CRM), IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), and Microsoft are helping corporate clients use the Internet to tap into everything from extra server space to software that helps manage customer relationships

An article on BusinessWeek.com posts yet another article of the ‘Cloud Computing’ trend in the technology industry.  The article points to some of the SAS giants in the industry along with exposing the newer growth trends of cloud computing into, ‘Hardware as a Service’ (HAS?).  All these services in their core are “all delivered over the Internet, on demand, from massive data centers”. The article points to Merrrill Lynch’s projection that cloud computing will surge to $95 billion over next three years in the global market. Microsoft (‘Software-plus-Services’), HP, and Dell are already moving forward aggressively to provide such computing in the cloud to its public and corporate customers.   In this model a company essecially is outsourcing the physical real-estate, disaster & recovery of data, and maintenance of their technology to third-party.  At the onset this may seem scary, but supporters of cloud computing point to the reduction of $8 out of current $10 in operating costs for maintaining technol ogy.  They also point to an exponential maturity in relaibility of these technologies.  In addition, these technologies provide an a-la-carte pricing model allowing for strict expense control, a very attractive pricing proposition in this economy.  The naysayers on the other side, point to various goverance around ownership of data and complication surrounding such, if hosted on third party systems.  They also point to the virtual nature of such real-estate and the fact that server clusters maintained by 3rd party could not be under rigorous control as their own.   Needless to say this technology is gradually emerging, the enterprise use of this technology currently remain limited to non-vital data systems.  In 2009 this one is a very interesting development to keep a keen eye on, especially, heavy hitting companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Dell, HP, and Amazon rapidly getting on the band-wagon.

 

How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World by Rachael King

Related Entries:
Cloud Computing to become mainstream in 2009

Other Related Articles:
Sun Microsystems Acquires Q-layer To Expand Cloud Computing Offerings
In Cloud We Trust
Cloud Computing Begins to Gain Traction on Wall Street 

5 Predicted Web 2.0 Businesses That Will Thrive in 2009

An article on mashable.com predicts 5 Web2.0 Business Models with tremendous growth opportunity in 2009. The author starts points to

• ‘Co-Working Spaces’ that lead to reduced cost and increased networking and sharing of intellect. 
• ‘Bootstrapping & Growth Based Business‘ where the lack of VCs in current market will force business owners to create growth based plan and go at it on their own with a high risk and low tolerance of failure but also leading to larger share of profit and more control of future of the business in the absence of numerous investors hungry for the profit.
• ‘Collaborative Tools‘ will keep travel and logistical expences down while work collaboration and increasing networking is done via tele-video conferencing & collaborative tools for peer design & construction. 
• ‘Idea Marketplaces‘ where ideas are generated and sold exposing one’s bootstrap effort to larger organizations for rapidly adding to their services. Making innovation a global proposition. Lastly the author points to 
• ‘Workforce Marketplaces‘ a dicey and interesting sector to watch.  Although very cheap labor can be had for grunt work through international sites like, Rent-A-Coder and GetAProgrammer,  american talent can offer the talent and quality. 

 

5 Web 2.0 Businesses That Will Thrive in a Down Economy by Mark Hopkins

Real Venture Capitalists are now attractive to invest on

In a downturn such as this, when nothing is safe, the risk/reward of investing in a new business that you really understand, with people you trust, suddenly looks less out there on the risk curve.

ReadWriteWeb.com publishes an article putting forth the argument that in the current economic times, Real venture capitalists can for some investors, be a very safe asset class to invest on. The author makes the distinction between Real VCs and Momentum VCs, and picking the Real VCs to be the chosen ones to invest on. Calling Reals VCs contrarian, the author states that these VCs invest when most people are scared and sell when everybody is bullish. He compares Warren Buffet as a Real VC hero. The author goes further and compares the traditional safe asset classes that are popular during economic downturns and puts forth the proposition that they are not as safe for investing anymore.

Real VC Might Be the Safest Asset Class Today – Bernard Lunn

Other Related Articles:
VC Dollars Dropped 33 Percent In The Fourth Quarter, Down 8 Percent For All 2008

Software Development Predictions of 2009

When customers aren’t buying, tool vendors don’t innovate — so don’t expect many groundbreaking new technologies to debut this year.. and A battered economy will mean tightening belts, changing customer allegiances, and the Web as the platform of choice.

Infoworld.com publishes an article by Fatal Exception’s Neil McAllister laying out his development predictions for 2009. These include further struggles from Microsoft in retooling its image, a more open source mindset for Java, twilight for Sun, the Web as platform of choice, and a dearth of innovation due to dwindling economic prospects.  He also adds that smart companies will realize that “process automation is one of the best ways to reduce costs in any business, making 2009 the ideal time to ‘revisit old software schemes that got shelved back when staffing budgets were flush.”

development predictions for 2009 by Neil McAllister

2009 Technology Predictions – J.P Mogran vs. Barclays Capital

Yahoo and Microsoft will finally strike a search deal, video advertising on the Web isn’t working, retail bankruptcies could actually help e-commerce companies, and that M&A activity will pick up in the second half of 2009 (but the IPO market will be dead until 2010).

An article on Techcruch.com publishes 2009 Technology predictions from J.P Morgan & Barclays Capital analysts. There is a common theme of strategic partnerships and advancements in mobile and search technologies.  The author, Eric Schonfeld, summarizes the predictions from the two analysts.

2009 Tech Prediction Faceoff: J.P Morgan Vs. Barclays Capital - Eric Schonfeld

“It’s really important to move beyond just keywords” Marissa Mayer speaks on the future of Google search

 ”Your best friend with instant access to all the world’s facts and a photographic memory you’ve seen and know.”  Mayer describes the concept of the ideal search engine

In a post in techradar.com Marissa is described to oversee about 150 product managers with 10-12 product pitches every month (whom each get 10 minutes of her undivided attention), including reviewing about 1000 – 2000 outside projects. Some say she uses rigid process of critiquing and approving new features with a dubbed name “the Marissa Gauntlet”.  She explains her method involves observing the innovation factor mixed with the strength of the project team. This in her mind produces a high degree of success factor for the product and its growth.  Marissa Mayer uses her ‘20 per cent time’ (the time Google apportions its employees for personal projects) to figure out how the search giant can continue to innovate as it builds new products.

On the future of Google search engine, She speculates, “Maybe the search engine of the future will know where you’re located,” “Maybe they’ll know what you know already, or what you learned earlier today. Or maybe they’ll fully understand your preferences because you’ve chosen to share that information with us. We aren’t sure which personal signals will be most valuable, but we’re investing in research and experimentation on personalised search now because we think this will be very important later.” ”We really need to harness people’s friends better to understand which news to direct them to, which local events to direct them to… these are all things that we think are intriguing.”

Mariss Mayer (Google’s vice president of search products and user experience) o the future of Google by techradar.com

Related Article:
The Future of Search – Official Google Blog

Lessons from an Old Pro – Surviving in Tough Times

• Creatively Zig When Everyone is Still Zagging
• Tough Times are a Chance to Reinvent an Industry 

Fanboy.com posts an article that summarizes an interview by film maker Ralph Bakshi. Bakshi gave an interview at Comic Con 2008 on how he survived his talent during the 60’s when the bleak outlook of theatrical animation jeopardized even Disney.  This article does an excellent job in summarizing the talk into currently day application tips.

 “Ralph Bakshi – Tips on Surviving in Tough Times” by Michael Pinto

Future Web Technologies in light of US Economic crisis

But we’re clearly now at a point where the financial problems of the world will have a big impact on where web technology is headed. Indeed, it looks like we’ve arrived at one of those giant inflexion points – where one web era is usurped by another.

With terms like “now is the time for innovation”, “a re-focus on the bottom line of your business is key”, and “take more advantage of open source technologies and cheaper cloud computing infrastructure”; this article on ReadWriteWeb.com makes its predictions on future of Web technologies in light of the current economic crunch and disasters in the financial markets.  What are your predictions for Web technologies in 2009.  Where do you feel these technologies should invest?

“What’s Next after Web 2.0” by Richard MacManus

Cloud Computing to become mainstream in 2009

Techies will re-energize with corporate cloud computing, Netbooks, and welcome change in D.C.

With support from individuals like Google’s central region managing director Jim Lecinski and David Friedman, the central region president of Razorfish, a digital marketing firm owned by Microsoft;  this article published on Suntimes.com; predicts aided by growing business of $300 ultra-portable Netbooks, Cloud Computing to become mainstream in 2009. In such trend “Software as a Service (SaaS)” is predicted to be widely used.  There is prediction of convergence between the IT and energy sectors with support around clean energy from Washington D.C.  Do you agree with these predictions described by the author?

“Clouded Hopes for Coming Year” by Brad Spirrison

2008 Top 10 People in Technology

Despite the troubled state of the economy, 2008 was a year of great change and successful leadership

TGDaily.com publishes an article describing what the author feels to be the Top 10 influencial people in technology. The author cites people like Jonathan Ive of Apple to Bill Gates formerly of Microsoft.  This is a must read for those of us in the techonlogy industry. 

“Top 10 People in Technology” by TG Daily Staff

What is the value of Web’s Free Labor Economy

Working for praise! This online business model has Americans happily toiling for attention on for-profit sites that don’t pay them money. 

BusinessWeek.com  features an article into the recent rise of a work force who give sites like thisnext.com their time, talent, and effort; just for recognition and get paid nothing. Such a lucrative labor model has its pros and cons.  This article provides an insight into the psychology of such labor, research being done to better understand how to leverage this pattern, and how some of the sites on the inter-web are successfully cashing on this labor force.  What do you think?  Is this moral? Is this a model that we should explore and expand?  What do you feel to be the strengths and weaknesses of this model?

“Will Work for Praise: The Web’s Free Labor Economy” by Stephen Baker