Recently in IT Category

Actually, it is still technically in the future tense. The day the music dies will be August 31, 2008. [...]

So what happens on August 31, 2008? On that day, Microsoft will turn off the servers that they maintain for the sole purpose of validating that the songs that people have already "purchased" through MSN Music are still theirs to play. Those people (hereafter "the victims") will not notice the change right away. The victims will only notice it when they purchase a new computer, or when they upgrade the operating system on their current computer, or when the hard drive in their computer dies and needs to be rebuilt/reinstalled. At that point -- transferring the music files they have "purchased" to another drive or a new computer -- the Microsoft music player running on the victim's PC (like iTunes, but all Microsoft-y instead of Apple-y) will make a call to Microsoft's validation servers to verify that the music files were legitimately purchased. This call will fail, since the servers are not responding, since Microsoft has intentionally turned them off. The Microsoft music player will then conclude, incorrectly but steadfastly, that the music files were downloaded illegally and that the victim is a filthy pirate, and it will refuse to play them. In this case, the left hand knows exactly what the right hand is doing: they're both giving you the finger.

Mark Pilgrim, The day the music died.

I also love this quote :

Bruce Schneier, a famous cryptologist -- or at least as famous a cryptologist as cryptologists are likely to get in this century -- once described attempts to make digital bits uncopyable as "trying to make water not wet."

Don't buy anything that is protected by any DRM that a vendor, anywhere in the chain, can lock up at will or by simply getting out of business.

The first Atlassian User Group in Paris will be held on June 19, 2008 (afternoon, time TBD) in the Publicis building next to the Drugstore and the Arc de Triomphe. The user group is open to Atlassian customers, people interested in their software, and partners.

I'm co-organizing this event with Atlassian and Publicis Consultants.

Program details are still being worked out, but you'll hear about (at least) two Confluence wiki business cases: Publicis Consultants and SFR Service Client (disclaimer: I realized both wikis :-) ).

Seating is limited, so please RSVP on the wiki page linked above if you want to attend.

Phising works because there are people who don't mind entering their login/password credentials into an unknown, closed source software. This should serve as a warning.

Yesterday during my presentation at Knowledge Management 2.0 / Content Management Arena @ CeBIT, I said something along the lines of "age does slightly matter in terms of adoption of enterprise 2.0 tools" which, thanks to a mix of fatigue, confusion and badly expressed ideas in a foreign language, was received as "50-something people cannot innovate". Ouch! Both Ulrich Kampffmeyer and Simon Wardley kindly told me this was bullshit. Of course it is, and of course it's not was I think, less meant to say. I apologize for the cock-up.

That age has any influence with respect to the capacity to innovate may be an interesting debate per se, but here the point I was trying to raise is about the generational cultural differences we can see between the analogs (people who've always used purely analogous communication tools their entire life), the digital natives (people who've only known and used purely digital communication tools) and the immigrants between them (people who've been born in an analogous communication era then had to switch to digital tools). This distinction has been brought up by Marc Prensky (author of "Don't Bother Me Mom, I'm Learning"), and it's valid only relative to our current point in time, it's not an absolute question of age.

The confusion came up, I think, when I was trying to highlight another factor that combines with this generational shift: that middle-management (mostly analogous and immigrants) is a slower mover than youngsters and top management. I mentioned an age range of 50-55, which actually is more something like 45-55. Giving age figures is touchy, as people in that range are entitled to take it personally and feel discriminated. Heck, I know people my age who are just incapable of doing anything useful with a web browser! The idea here, and it's something I have really experienced in several companies, is that middle managers who have made their way in the hierarchy without the help of all those new shiny 2.0 tools, and who lust on their next upper move to the top of the pyramid, see no reason to use them. Even worse, they (sometimes rightly) see all the dangers and threats to their position that those tools can bring. The potential of short-circuiting management, cutting off the stratus that add no value in a network, is an inherent feature of any social computing tool (and a feature that is not often discussed).

Top management is aware of a third force coming into play at the same time: the massive retirement of the baby-boomers (analogs), and their replacement mostly by young recruits (digital natives). From my discussions with CEOs and top managers, I see them pretty aware of the danger of acculturation (i.e. seeing the young recruits quickly fold into the existing culture of the enterprise and maintaining the status quo rather than challenging it) and willing to take the opportunity to plant 2.0 tools and foster cultural changes before it's too late.

To summarize, here are the three elements I wanted to point out:

• we live in a era where there are three generations with respect to social computing: the digital natives, the immigrants and the analogous
• the retirement of the baby-boomers and their replacement with youngsters represents both an opportunity (changing the company culture towards a better use of social computing) and a threat (loosing a lot of knowledge and missing the cultural shift by an acculturation of the young recruits to the "old" company culture)
• middle-management, who've succeeded without social computing and may be threaten by it, can be a strong resistance point against the adoption of social computing

Brief notes from the Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Hannover. Warning: those notes are very partial and may be innacurate, I tend to forget about or miss stuff that's obvious or not exciting for me. The shortness or lack of notes isn't in any way a measurement of the quality of the speaker!

Looks like it's the first event on the subject in Europe, there's definitely place and interest for more.

Simon Wardley (who loves ducks) kicked off the summit by showing us how yesterday's hot stuff becomes todays boredom (see ya at Web 3.0 / E 3.0 soon ;-).

Dion Hinchcliffe -- How Web 2.0 Technologies revolutionize the Enterprise
E 2.0 comes from Web 2.0, rise of social media. Shift from institutional control to consumer control. Network effect: occurs when a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too (postal mail, phones, fax, email, IM, web pages, blogs anything that has an open network architecture). Reed's Law for social networks. E 2.0 applied successfully -> pronounced gravitational effect. Intranet: move from central production (institution) to peer production (communities of individuals) -> unpredictability, variety, volume. Main E 2.0 platforms: blogs, wikis, social networking. Andrew McAfee's definition of modern socila computing (E 2.0): emergent, freeform, social applications for use in the enterprise. E 2.0 Checklist: SLATES--Search, Linking, Authorship, Tagging, Extensions, Signals. Richer outcome (think of what's stuck/hidden in mailboxes). Rod Boothby's E 2.0 Communication Continuum: non-interruptible and leveragable (gosh, do I hate this word!), async apps that do not interrupt your work have more value. Open communications, shared knowledge, anyone can participate, web oriented, emergent/freeform/social.
100% guaranteed way of doing E 2.0: Do nothing, get out of the way, keep the energy levels up (from Euan Semple).
Common challenges: IT's "Maytag Repairman Syndrome", the "empty quarter (senior people with technophobia), the 2% troublemakers (who can use it negatively as a megaphone), the 9x problem (tools must be 10 times better before users have enough incentive to switch), concerns about productivity and security, managing management resistance.
Key Success Factors: start small, keep expectations low...
Future: Suites are coming, will go prime time, grassroots adoption continues, missing "enterprise context" arriving in 08, semantic web will meet E 2.0.

Euan Semple -- The Quiet Revolution
BBC intranet tools (I think it's the 3rd time I attend Euan's presentation and it's always a pleasure ;-). Forums used 7 years ago, because of frustration with email, did a lot for internal discussions for an investment of... 500€. "Connect", a social directory. Blogs (MT). Wikis (Confluence, cool way of putting up web pages without crying for resources to get a webmaster), RSS aggregator (Google Reader), external web 2.0 services like Flickr with use of tags, deli.icio.us, last.fm, Plazes, Twitter, Facebook, Innocentive.

Jeff Schick -- IBM, Lotus Connections
My own take: he pronounced a long litany of dreaded words as "features": control, workflow, retention rules, check-in/check-out etc. Scary! Well, folks who cannot buy E 2.0 without every conceivable lock built-in for total control should not waste time looking for shiny new 2.0 tools (including Lotus Connections). They already have them, these are the "traditional" KM tools that already power their intranets, and we all know how successful they are ;-). OK, I admit it looks nice and I should find out more if there's more than a new coat of paint with sexy tag clouds on top of a good old top-down portal-bloat-ware entirely controlled by IT.
OTHO I might just have got his presentation completely the wrong way.

Kenneth Lavrsen, Motorola A/S -- Collaborative Publishing advancing ISO 9000 Quality Management
Using Twiki for QM. Seen activity grow from less than 2 modifications and comments a year to a document, to 70 times more modifications and 30 comments per doc. Some problems with reluctance to change (erk, a new tool), Twiki has so many features and had no WYSIWYG editor at launch. Nice idea: an effective QM system is one that is up-to-date, and the wiki helped improve that.

Wieland Stützel, Fraport AG -- Skywiki - Making use of the corporate knowledge ressources
Launching a wiki at the Frankfurt Airport (Wikimedia?). Preparation: no start without content and authors. They exchanged experience and opinions with the Club Wikipedia e.V. Deutschland. Biggest challenge: enthuse the employees. Getting mgt board to participate is time consuming. No incorrect use despite possible anonymous usage (anonymous usage? why such a choice?). 340+ users signups (1300 people, half blue-collar) in 7th months. Generate mgt acceptance (kill big discussions), get a small group en convinced companions together, advertise, get new inputs, talk to potential authors personally, take time to properly setup the wiki (otherwise don't bother). Co-admins: IT, HR, KM and several cross departments at the airport.

Dr. Willms Buhse, CoreMedia AG -- Paradigm Change: Enterprises as Social Networks
Promised to publish their presentaion on their website. Willms has also written a book that looks very interesting about the art of letting go, unfortunately it's in German only.

Olivier Creiche, Six Apart -- From Corporate Blogging to Social Networking
Presented several business cases on using their products as CMS and social software (e.g. Huffington Post).

Jenny Ambrozek, SageNet LLC -- Design for Network Effects: Architecting participation and leveraging the space between the tools
The think that doesn't change is the people. Why the Andrew McAFee-Tom Davenport debates REALLY bother me! 4 reasons: 1) it's an AND BOTH world, 2) omits discussion about value creation fundamentals: people, relationships & interactions, 3) ignores how the calue of collaborative working is captures and revealed, 4) their time could be better spent. The org challenge: direct control decreases as social technology increases. E 20.0 SLATES impact: organizational boundaries inside & out less bounded. (Funny slide where shee takes on Simon's ducks: Simon sees ducks, but consider the pond, ponds connected -> watershed ecosystem.)
Viewing org as networked people ecosystems (orgs as networks). Activity stats tell an incomplete story about interactions and how people use social tools. Open innovation increases as direct control decreases. Prediction markets adoption (The Wisdom of Crowds as a trigger). Architecting participation, using multiple tools created value, structural holes and space between the tools. Participation is individual & complex (Ross Mayfield's power law of participation, April 2006). Changing patterns of participation: real and virtual work worlds are one. Using those tools is messy, pay attention to you org's structural holes and the space between tools: 1) business purposes, 2) network thinking, 3) diverse minds, 4) connected intelligence, 5) success recognized. P.S. Jenny has posted some notes on her session, as well as her slides.

Cedric Blum, Société Française de Radiotéléphone Service Client -- Mass Collaboration brings Customer Service to a new level
Here I'll bug my dear client to get the presentation ;-).

Diego Gianetti, BTicino S.p.a. -- Sul Campo - Community of Practice innovates Sales and Marketing
Sul Campo = On the Field. Web 2.0 space for the community of BTicino sales force (350 salesmen) with 3 purposes: make useful info available in a common env, open a comm channel to collect (from network and clients) feedback related to market, products & competitors, to spread experience, skills, best practices.

I'm going to be at the CeBIT in Hanover next week for a couple of conferences, and a big focus on enterprise wikis with business cases from two of my clients:

• on Tuesday at the Enterprise 2.0 Summit, Cédric Blum from SFR Service Client is going to present how they use a wiki in the context of customer help


• on Wednesday at the Forum Content Management Arena@CeBIT, I'll be presenting the wiki I did for Publicis Consultants

Both wikis were done using Confluence from Atlassian. You'll have another opportunity to hear about those two business cases in June in Paris, during the Atlassian User Group Paris that we're co-organizing with Publicis Consultants and Atlassian.

If you happen to be there, please come to say bonjour :-).

Ah ah ah, I predicted that years ago. Merry Christmas to my friends in Tilsitt ;-).

Fascinating stuff to read if you're in the business of handling login credentials on a server:

• Never store passwords in a database!
• You're Probably Storing Passwords Incorrectly
• Enough With The Rainbow Tables: What You Need To Know About Secure Password Schemes

Quick thoughts:

• Don't use the same password everywhere, at the very minimum use a unique one for your online bank account!
• The exploding trend in social software of asking people for their credentials to check if they've got "friends" around is not just leading to social spam, it's helping phishing as well. Plus having credentials floating in the clear on the cloud from servers to servers doesn't inspire security, does it? Well, when you know it takes only a chocolate bar, what can you do anyway?
• If a web service you're using is capable of emailing your forgotten password back in the clear (in the clear!), you can only assume that its security is plain crap. The right way should be to reset your password (and only after you've clicked on a link sent to your legitimate email address, or at least some challenge question, so that no one can lock you out by just knowing your login name.)

Secret iPhone Details Lost in a Sea of Hype and Hate, an excellent deconstruction of all the myths and disinformation published by various so-called “IT experts” about Apple's iPhone.

Also for your pleasure, the Onion's take on iPhone (“Comes with an iPhone hat, so people know you own an iPhone during the brief periods you're not using it”), and New High-Water Mark in iPhone Jackassery by John Gruber.

Vista product activation unpicked:

The greater broadband speeds available since the launch of Windows XP have made it a straightforward proposition to download illicit copies of Vista. Rather than going through the tedious business of running something like the key generation we've heard from Register readers that some people on either side of the Atlantic has surreptitiously used the activation codes printed on boxed copies of Vista to get their system up and running. Use of cameraphones to capture these codes makes the process a breeze, we're told.

We don't know how widespread this practice is but it creates a headache for Microsoft, as pirates activate the codes before they are used by legitimate users.

Activation codes visible on unpacked boxes? Unbelievable.