The IT Beacon

Wild West Web

The web has made the world a smaller place. As Jonathan suggests it can mobilise individuals into doing collective good. Sun was certainly at the centre of the internet revolution. As far as I am aware it was the first to consider the concept of the network of things, which will likely change the game even more radically.

The problem is that the internet is also a tool for the bad guys, school-centric cyber bullies through to money siphoning crackers. I feel we have created an eco system without setting the rules and have thus lost control of it.  Eg. Is copyrighted content on YouTube something that they should be responsible for? There are many people who judge web content authenticity on the quality of the page layout. If the page looks authoritative then the content is true.

WWW might as well stand for the Wild West Web.

As always the associated chaos provides opportunity for both good and bad exploitation. My concern is that the 'dark side' will gain the most traction causing the rest of us to abandon the web.

I know policing is not in the spirit of the web, but possibly some mechanism is required, maybe under the auspices of the United Nations. Failing that I am sure it will just be a matter of time before cyber vigilantes fill the cyber law void.

Sorry for seemingly raining on your parade. I am just trying to flag how the web has provided us with a parallel universe (Second Life?) that scales up the good, but also the bad. We need some cyber leadership.

Selling Security

Bruce Schneier makes some interesting points in his CIO piece How to Sell Security. 

Selling security solutions is a little like selling fridge lights in that the user value doesn't really come from the item purchased. Thus those selling infrastructure, whether it be security software or router hardware need to bundle it up in something that is intrinsically useful to the buyer. Why security firms bother with marketing and direct sales is a mystery to me. They need to focus their attention on channel relationships with value adding resellers.

But security bundled into a technology solution is not enough. Security is largely about users and not technology. The value adding vendors need to offer a security framework that embraces policy if they are truly interested in meeting the needs of the customer. Not easy to deliver, but not impossible.

Noise on the Web

There is a lot of noise out there on the web. But one man's noise is another man's signal. Generation Y types know how to filter the noise. The rest of us having come from an information scarcity background. Remember the days when we use to file periodicals for future reference? Filtering what you need to know from what looks interesting is critical if we are to avoid drowning in content.

This presents a great opportunity for super niche information aggregators that identify communities that are willing to pay for high signal to noise content.

From the Industrial Age to the Information Age

Doc Searles at Harvard Law writes:

"I’ve long believed that the crossover from the Industrial Age to the Information Age will be marked by an awakening to the need by customers to control their own selves, rather than to remain subordinated to the controlling interests of companies. Same thing with citizens and governments..." (see the complete post)

I agree. The time has come for customers, staff and citizens to break their shackles.

Social networking paves the way. Some companies are trying to exert control via their firewalls. The upcoming generation of mobile interfaces will circumvent that. Smart companies and governments will learn how to play the new game despite the odds not being less heavily stacked in their favour.

The rules of employment and leadership/followership are about to take a step change.

Google Health

As John D. Halamka, MD points out, Google Health has hit the market. It has a noble aim of providing a single view of its users' health information.

This raises a few of interesting points. Google has the reach to do this and as such could short circuit multi billion dollar initiatives such as the UK's Connecting for Health. Better still it is a global offering. It feels a  bit like Wifi obviating 3G. Whilst Google is perhaps relatively primitive, its pay per click model will probably enable it to self-fund its evolution.

The scary point is that Google is a commercial outfit and thus has no board of governors focused on the well being of the patients.

However, once they work out the correlation between web viewing and general health they may well be in a genuinely valuable position of detecting illness.

Tech Addiction

The Internet permeates every aspect of our lives. For many the Internet offers an alternative form of escapism. But when does that pastime seque into addiction? Recently the Business Technology Blog talked to Dr. Jerald Block about pathological computer use. Dr Block has developed an Internet-addiction quiz. You might want to try it! Click here to give it a try.-

I have been advised to ease back a bit on Internet usage, but appear to have my usage under control! How about you?

Decide whether to decide

'Three ways to make great decision's' highlights three simple ways to improve decision making. Their apparent simplicity however belies their complexity.  'Interpret information' is nothing less than knowledge management, one of the greatest challenges facing service based organisations across the planet. One's ability to interpret information determines what value one yield's from that information. Where decisions involve more than one person, perhaps a corporation, the interpretation challenge grows exponentially.

'Know your options' - again a knowledge management issue. Do you have access to the knowledge resident in your colleague's heads (perhaps globally distributed) to build a complete picture of your options? The same being true for 'Know your negotiables and non-negotiables'.

I would add a fourth point ' Decide whether to decide'. Often the pressures of business and life cause us to treat our responsibilities as a 'to do' list to work through. Smart people recognise when focused procrastination is the best course of action. A delayed response often has the benefit of recency value in respect of new information coming to light.

Those that make the best decisions(including the decision not to decide) win in both life and business. As more decisions involve  highly intermeshed globally distributed communities decision making becomes a boardroom challenge.

Women Pose a Security Risk When Chocolate is Involved

According to an Infosecurity survey women were four times more likely than men to give away their passwords. When people masquerading as researchers asked members of the public to complete a survey, which included revealing their password in return for a bar of chocolate, they discovered that 45% of women were happy to comply as opposed to 10% of men. 

Companies are encouraged to develop desensitisation programmes to help wean vulnerable staff off this potentially compromising addiction. Or alternatively provide free chocolate so that criminals are unable to capitalise on vulnerable staff during their cold turkey periods.

Too Much Information

Ben Worthen writes It’s Official: There’s Too Much Information. 

My take: There is only too much information if some of the information isn't contributing to making better business decisions. I am sure Wal-Mart's 1 billion records per hour helps it to understand the buying trends of the market. The danger comes when the data is captured on the off chance it might be used, or because the CIO feels that it is what the users are likely to want without consulting them.

Strictly speaking the issue is too much data. Information is what you infer from the data. Though admittedly beyond a certain point the benefits of information discovery yield a diminishing return in business advantage.

Making Money from Social Networks?

In her post On the Monetization of Social Networks, Gladys Priso writes:

"An article on the economics of social networks published by the Economist Online, concludes that “social networking may end up being everywhere, and yet nowhere,” because it is not clear how companies will be able to monetize that pattern of behavior."

Experience suggests that migrating a free-service to a paid service rarely pays off. The content would need to be unique in terms of either content, accessibility or connectivity to like-minded people. LinkedIn appears to provide services that allow payers to see everything about every LinkedIn member. I happen to know many people who find that service of great value.

So perhaps the users continue to get access to social networks for free, but the advertisers, marketers and recruitment consultants provide the revenue stream for the site owners. However I do feel that with good brand management the social networking sites can cultivate the exclusivity effect needed to attract impressionable cash-rich surfers.