I was interviewed by Windows in Financial Services Magazine regarding the Microsoft acquisition of Parlano and the original UBS Intellectual Property that spun out into Parlano - it's a fast moving world - published now - on an interview about a month ago - but already it's starting to date !
Yesterday I started using a website to share photos. I happened to have a couple of photo's uploaded to Yahoo Photos - but they are shutting down that old service, and moving to all users & photos Flickr - and offering an unlimited account for those that move - good news: I hope My ISP will be able to deal with the uploads over the next few days/weeks.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/munawar for the photos - there an RSS feed too.
I've been using another 2.0 site/service recently - del.icio.us t o try an manage/ share my bookmarks - I think I'll need to start using Digg as well.
Keeping bookmarks on the "server side", or "cloud" seems obvious, but then I've used yahoo's toolbar for that for a while - the ability to share these bookmarks, get some 'hand-chosen' URLs, make recommendations to your fiends (Network), and subscribe to keywords is interesting.
I probably am in the habit of storing too much in the way of bookmarks - but tagging , and being able to search them helps.
These networking/2.0 services are all very transparent - e.g. If I browse and bookmark a site whilst at work it is very obvious. I see no harm in this in my case - Sadly the division between 'work' and 'personal' time is increasingly blurred - but it could trouble some.
I've added some Google ads to this my blog site - not so much to earn any cash - just to see learn a little more about how easy this has become, and how effective, and context sensitive advertising can be. BTW I've now earned $0.02 from it! Must declare that on my tax return :-) - It’s a while since I had to do a US one - I hope the UK US tax treaty still holds.
This led me on to include some Google analytics, and other web-site analytics tools to the blog.
Google have been handing out free £30 'vouchers' encouraging people to run ad campaigns - I'll have to give it a try !
I hear the deep pockets of Google are going to stretch to parts of the US EM Spectrum that can go through walls (700 Mhz?) - though that rumour seems to have quietened of late. If Google purchase this, and turn on all that dark fibre that they also, apparently, have, the Telco's (mobile/land/and perhaps even VIOP) and ISP's better start thinking about a new business model !
Credit where it's due, my eldest son, Zaahid, worked very hard aged 10, for the '11+" exams, and was lucky enough to get his choice of offers - deciding to go to Merchant Taylors' School, in Northwood.
I helped him prepare for those exams in autumn/winter of 2004 - it was one of the hardest things we have ever had to do: The boy rose to the challenge - and I am hopeful Kumail will Join Zaahid's ate MTS in September 2008.
In a country that apparently has a very low "social mobility", I guess the boys, burdened with their ethnicity [sic] will need all the help they can get!
On Wednesday 20th June I took a couple of ours out of the regular day to go to see my middle, and somewhat talented son, throw and run for Centaurs house, at Manor Lodge School, which he joined in September last year.
He has settled there as well as we could ever have hoped, and is happy there. He said the 'people (children) are nicer, which was very pleasing to hear, "but , dad, you really don't have any idea how hard they make us work!"
Achievement , academic, and otherwise, seems to be very important to Kumail - he's extremely determined, and motivated - he gets it from his mum "She who must be obeyed" . It was very pleasing to see him do well on Sports Day, and get a place on the Cricket team this week to add to his rugby b-team 'cap'.
This week I started using a '2.0' site for "networking", called LinkedIn.
I am ever so impressed that we are finally using computers & the web for something as productive as trying to keep people in touch .I think if this kind of tool/site carries on growing in popularity it could become effective in helping firms recruit better, and better value their People, and their Teams.
One of the most destructive things to an organisation is miss-hires: typically, we do not to much traditional reference checking when staff are hired – this tool allows people to have recommendations – it may help in reducing miss-hires, and all that comes with it.
LinkedIn facilitates the registration of some websites in you profile - so I recalled, and referenced this site, and it has encouraged me to start posting to it again.
It was interesting to see how many people I've worked with are already LinkedIn "users" - I reached out to over 100 that I wanted to get/keep in contact with - many have responded, and Its quite interesting to catch-up on what they have been doing. Apparently, it counts as “socialising” for IT-types!
One Telecom start-up, Uma, actually has teams of people mapping out org-charts of companies, and they are targeting staff across many industries to hire, simply, the best talent in the world.
I hope that ultimately 'networking 2.0' helps ensure that those that deserver it - those that are effective in their work, are well/better rewarded – perhaps that the ‘social’ part of LinkedIn :-) .
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