Where’s my cardboard laptop?

Don Burleson points out that Oracle has sent out some Cardboard laptops!

Oracle cardboard laptop


The outside of the laptop which showed up in Andy Armstrong’s mail July 5th read “We’ve taken the idea that the outside world is a dangerous place for unprotected content.” and the inside reads “And shredded it.”

Thanks to Zach for posting the full text of the interior which reads:

“To derive maximum benefit from your business critical content, you need to share it across a wide user base. But the more people who have access to it, the greater the threat of sensitive information leaking to your competitors. That’s just for starters; content proliferation also raises the risk of regulatory non-compliance and escalating management costs. You know you can’t live without your information, but you’d be forgiven for wondering how to live with it.

Oracle’s recently acquired Information Rights Management solution can help. A key component of our Document and Records Management portfolio, it enables you to share your information when and with whom you want – without fear of the outside world.

But it doesn’t stop there. Should the worst happen – and your laptop falls into unsafe hands – we can even scamble your content before anyone works out how to access it.

We’ll be in touch shortly with more details of how to shred your content management worries.”

So what’s the story? What bandwagon is Oracle getting on here? Only time will tell. Burleson thinks it may be another step in their “unbreakable” theme. I think it may be something with Application Express as a content management system. Something to do with enterprise blogs or wiki or some other web 2.0 kind of content management.

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Bill and Tim’s Excellent Adventure

Or…

Geek 2.0 meets Geek 1.0

If you’ve been following the “Web 2.0” conversations, are interested in the future of web technology, or just have a half hour or so to kill, you should check out this video of Tim O’Reilly and Bill Gates. In the video from Mix 06 O’Reilly leads off by drawing a paralell between Web 2.0 and Microsoft’s Live Software, a parallel which I’m afraid Gates didn’t (or didn’t want to) understand.

Common Web 2.0 topics came up, like perpetual beta, user added value, RSS, etc. Not surprisingly Gates was clearly uncomfortable with the topics. For example, when O’Reilly brought up the topic of perpetual beta, Gates went to his comfort zone and talked about how Microsoft’s plan to upgrade IE as often as three times per year was cutting edge. Similarly when O’Reilly mentioned the mashup of craig’s list and Google Maps as part of the evolution of the web as a platform rather than continue on that topic, Gates shapes his response into a description of the products Microsoft is developing to compete with Google Maps.

Through the whole presentation it becomes increasingly clear that Gates is only comfortable speaking about his own company’s technology while O’Reilly is talking about the direction of the industry. This is why I say Geek 2.0 meets Geek 1.0. Geek 2.0 (O’Reilly) speaks in terms like standards, technologies, trends, platforms. Geek 1.0 (Gates) speaks in terms like program x, technology b, product t. Geek 1.0 thinks their software vendor should and will innovate within their field, while geek 2.0 reaches out to open-source products and custom mashups and software which will evolve with usage.

Watch the body language in this video. O’Reilly looks like he could be sitting in his living room talking to someone. Gates looks like he’s on trial. Pretty bad since the Mix conference was hosted by Microsoft.

Check out the video here.

Thanks to Ken for pointing this out last week.

microsoft, oreilly, o’reilly, web 2.0, web20, web office, software, software development

Blogs.Oracle.com

OracleOracle has taken an interesting step, and I hope others will follow.

Blogs.Oracle.com seems to have been created as an Oracle blogroll! Why is this important? Well, for one thing it means Oracle is encouraging their employees to blog, but additionally they are also linking to non-employee blogs.

Here’s the introduction from Blogs.Oracle.com:

Welcome to the Oracle blogging community, where Oracle executives, employees, and non-employees alike exchange views about best practices for using Oracle and industry-standard technologies. This continuous feedback loop helps Oracle stay in touch with the needs of the overall community, so keep those comments coming!

This not only validates what others have been saying regarding the value of blogging in the corporate environment, but also recognizes the role that non-employees play in the big picture.

Check it out at Blogs.Oracle.com. Right now there are a couple dozen employee blogs and fourty-something non-employee blogs. Hopefully they’ll stay on top of adding new folks as they come along.

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Why blog?

Every once in a while I revisit the question of why I blog. Not because I doubt that I should, but because I see by blog as a living, evolving part of my personal and professional self.

Rod Boothby of Innovation Creators sums it up nicely in reference to MBA students:

With 10 minutes of effort a day, they use blogs (which are web pages that are easy to edit) to reach a massive audience. They can develop a worldwide reputation as an expert in their field. These MBAs don’t blog about parties or their dog. They blog business topics like marketing or financial derivatives. Even with traffic of only 5 to 10 people a day, that quickly translates into over 1,000 people who know who they are, and respect their knowledge and opinions.

This is from Rod’s whitepaper “The Next Wave in Productivity Tools – Web Office White Paper” in which he discusses how many Web2.0 technologies and the folks who use them are entering the corporate world. It’s well worth the read.

Thanks to John for sending this on to me.

blog, blogging, web, web 2.0, internet, information technology, technology, web office

MasterWish.com – Getting Some Great Feedback

MasterWish LogoI am happy to say that MasterWish.com is getting some fantastic feedback from the user community!

While we are not about to stop improving the site it is fantastic to see feedback like this weblog entry from Kevin Scaldeferri’s Weblog. Glad you liked the site Kevin! In our hectic, fast paced, information-heavy world I’m glad to hear people appreciate our less-is-more attitude.

MasterWish was founded on the ideal of offering flexibility… a tool that a person uses the way they want to, not the way we think they should. This feedback helps guide us to continue to develop in this direction.

Thanks Kevin!

For more information on MasterWish, check out my previous article, or go straight to masterwish.com and check it out for yourself!

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