Introduction to Blockchain In his keynote at 18th Cloud Expo, Andrew Keys, Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise, provided an overview of the evolution of the Internet and the Database and the future of their combination - the Blockchain. Speaker Bio Andrew Keys is Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise. He comes to ConsenSys Enterprise with capital markets, technology and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, he worked for UBS investment bank in equities analysis. Later, he was responsible for the creation and distribution of life settlement products to hedge funds and investment banks. After, he co-founded a revenue cycle management company where he learned about Bitcoin and eventually Ethereum. Andrew's role at ConsenSys Enterprise is a multi-faceted approach of strategy and enterprise business development. Andrew graduated from Loyola University in Maryland and Unive... (more)

BlogMobs – The Attack of the Fifth Estate

The events in Egypt over the past few days made me think about an article I was compelled to write back in late June 2006. It pondered the question, “Can any traditionally organized government withstand the ideological forces of a technologically empowered proletariat?” Call them blogmobs, txtmobs, tweetmobs or simply publishers, everyone in Egypt has a voice – and no matter how the government tries to silence them, in the Information Age, information will find a way. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: Throughout history, the Estates of the Realm have come under various attacks. In the past, the asymmetry of wealth usually struck the decisive winning blow for the first or second estate, and all was set right with the world. Truth be told, the fourth estate (the press) has been under the complete control of the first (clergy) and second (nobility) estates throughout... (more)

Web 2.0 Needs a "Confusion Solution"

Web 2.0 has the capacity to astonish and engage. It also has the capacity to confuse. So those of us who feel they have a duty of care toward Web 2.0 had better move fast. We need a "Confusion Solution." The latest person to highlight the precariousness of public understanding of Web 2.0 is one of the absolute pioneers of a richer web, Nexaweb's founder and CTO, Coach Wei. Wei's concern centers on the common misapprehension that Web 2.0 is solely a consumer phenomenon - MySpace, Flickr, Flock, YouTube, etc - instead of realizing that, as Wei puts it, "Web 2.0 can fundamentally impact core enterprise IT operations in a way that can only be matched by the shift from mainframe computing to client/server computing" [my emphasis]. Andrew McAfee, a Harvard Business school professor, in fact takes it a whole stage further. So adamant is he that there is something very signif... (more)

Jeremy Geelan's Social Computing Blog: From "Charlotte's Web" to Web 2.0

"Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach become publishers & editors-in-chief." It wasn't Aristotle who said this, but it may just as well have been. For, as I write this inaugural editorial for Social Computing Magazine, I am forced to admit that there's more than a degree of truth in the formulation. To put this into perspective, you need to cast your mind back to an age before blogs and wikis, before RSS, before DHTML even; to an age when Netscape had not yet developed the browser, let alone JavaScript, back to a time when telephones still had wires and the only thing people put on their lap was a TV dinner not a portable computer.  Into this idyllic, long-gone past walks a child; let us call him - for the sake of argument - well, Jeremy. Jeremy is an inquisitive child, of average intelligence (at best!) but perhaps above-average in the r... (more)

How To Survive the Global Recession Through Cloud Computing

Michael Sheehan's Blog Adopting Cloud Computing as a primary technology strategy will be one of the main catalysts for technology-savvy business to not only stay in business, but also be successful in the long run. If the Global Recession truly hits as it seems that it will, items that directly and positively impact the bottom line of companies will naturally rise to the top. This week, Gartner, Inc released their list of the top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009. This information stems from research performed within the Technology sector and factors in their client and research feedback. This list, released at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo, is considered to be potentially “disruptive to your environment or market in some way,” says Gartner analyst David Cearley. While I sometimes find some of Gartner’s commentary on trends in technology a bit conservative and missin... (more)

Brad Templeton: Pioneer Whose Company Began the Dot-Com Era

20 years ago yesterday, Brad Templeton posted to USENET the public launch of ClariNet, his electronic newspaper service delivered over the Internet. According to Templeton, "ClariNet was the first business founded to use the Internet as its platform for business, and the era of the 'dot-com' had begun." He has posted a history of ClariNet here. Among his introductory remarks are the following words: "It seems odd to think of just 20 years as distant history, but the story of the internet is so accelerated that the world has changed in such a short time. ClariNet has a claim on being the first 'dot-com.' Of course, how you judge that depends on your definition of what a dot-com company is, and there are of course other definitions and other companies with valid claims." ... (more)

ClickDigest: Weekly Round-Up: 9-Oct-2009

TGIF and welcome to ClickDigest weekly roundup! It’s a big world out there in the content-marketing/social media/B2B blogosphere, so we would like to save your time by rounding up the best posts and articles of the week. We highlight a take-home point of each post, giving you a snapshot of what thought leaders and influencers are saying. Improve your Lead Gen: 8 Takeaways from the B2B Marketing Summit Author : Brian Carroll Brian Carroll highlights many takeaways from the 6th annual B2B marketing summit.  Several themes emerged during the course of the event, and eight key takeaways are summarized in the post. The 4 Step Content Strategy Program - Content Strategy Simplified Author : Joe Pulizzi "Let's face it.  Content strategy is not easy.  Actually, it's pretty difficult." says Joe Pulizzi and builds a roadmap for all of us to build a successful content strategy in... (more)

‘Drowsy’ Networking

No, not the kind you do on Facebook when you’re really, really tired but the kind defined as a means to reduce power consumption without affecting application performance or availability by eliminating non-essential processing and networking whenever possible.  An article on “Drowsy” computing as a means to reduce power consumption in data centers got me thinking about how such concepts might be applied to networking. To summarize the concept of “drowsy” computing its basic premise is that when applications aren’t being heavily used some mechanism is used to reduce the power consumption on the physical server to its lowest levels, thereby saving costs associated with drawing power. The CEO of 1e, which offers a product to provide the mechanism by which power consumption levels on servers are manipulated, says the concept “can make a significant dent in what is cu... (more)

Web Analytics 2.0 Hits the Stores

Today I ordered Web Analytics 2.0, which is the second book by Avinash Kaushik, the best selling author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.  As an avid website designer, SEO nut, social media fan, and overall Internet marketing addict, I can’t wait for delivery of my new purchase. I already subscribe to Avinash’s very popular blog Occam’s Razor, which provides insightful discussion on Google Analytics and the software’s newest functionality.  I enjoy his blog entries and cannot wait to immerse myself in an entire book of his Internet intelligence. You can learn more about Avinash and his new book at www.webanalytics20.com. ... (more)

How to create best practices programs

Getting your customers to come to you with their success stories    A best practices award program is a contest your company/organization creates, manages and orchestrates to reward customers for outstanding product/service implementations. At the end of the contest, winners are acknowledged, creating positive visibility.   In addition to pleasing winning customers – deepening your partnership with them – a best practices program has a very useful residual effect: it gives you high quality references. Because customers want to participate and win, they put in the time and effort to share perspective filled with detail and ROI benefits. This kind of “pull” campaign is a welcome addition to the tedious “push” outreach to seek out and find customer references.   How are winners selected?   Success is measured using a variety of factors y... (more)

Photokore opens the ‘Asian Flavors’ Photo Contest to all photographers

Asia-based stock photo company, Photokore, launches an Asian-themed photo competition today, inviting image submissions that portrays each contestant’s concept of Asia. Images are being accepted from today, March 1. The contest, ‘Asian Flavors’, is open to all photographers around the world, and is accepting single or multiple image submissions that illustrate the photographer’s personal concept of Asia. Participants can submit images to two categories – People, and Still Life/Objects. Subject matter is left to the contestant’s imagination – traditional, modern, everyday items/situations, conceptual photos, etc. The objective is to submit a photo that portrays the participant’s concept of Asia. “Asia is a broad and diverse region, and everyone has a different concept of Asia. We’re interested to have photographers from around the world – whether they are located ... (more)