Blogging CEOs

It seems like a blog gets created every couple of seconds and now CEOs are encouraged to take advantage of Web 2.0 technology and get in touch with their clients and share holders.

But what if a CEO doesn't have anything interesting to say? Will that harm the company?

Ian Harvey, in Backbone article CEOs should blog, writes "We tend to expect miracles from CEOs...They must be part accountant, part pit boss, part Dr. Phil and part visionary... And now, we expect them to be communicators."

I wonder when CEOs can fit blogging into their busy schedules. It's true, they are expected to keep a company afloat and now we want to hear from the person behind the scenes.

Many high-level executives have started a blog, but there are still others who are resistant. There's even the CEO Bloggers' Club, which offers tips on how to blog, starting a blog and who are the new members.

They even outline how a CEO should tag their blog to be successful at giving the organization and its readers an insight into his/her vision and personality.

Basically, this is another strategy to try to make a company seem more personable. Quarterly meetings and presentations are not enough in this tech-age. As an audience who wants to know about everyone's doings, it is only fitting that we expect regular
communication from the "boss."

More reading: CEOs told 'blog and embrace web 2.0'
Debbie Well on BlogWrite for CEOs
Example of a CEO blogging: Jonathan Schwartz CEO of Sun Microsystems

New Kid on the Block

Technically, this "kid" has been around for a little while, but only recently has been open to the public. Move over MySpace, everyone is moving to Facebook.

MySpace is done, well almost done. It's still out there and millions of people are using it, but the moment that Facebook accepted anyone, the crowd decided to move onto something better.

Facebook isn't new. It started in 2004 by a Harvard sophomore who wanted to keep in touch with his classmates. Until recently, membership was reserved to university students only (anyone with a university email). Now, the doors are wide open and Facebook is direct competition to MySpace.

With it's standard template, Facebook is easier on the eyes than some of the awful designed pages of MySpace. Otherwise, the idea isn't new. Once signed up, you search for your friends, people you actually know by first and last name. Facebook doesn't do pseudonyms, which makes it a more respectable site and source for finding old classmates or co-workers or friends you haven't seen or spoken to in ages.

Once signed up, you can update your profile, fill out some details, post photos, upload your blog, invite people to events and have them directly RSVP and all sorts of other things.

In concept, it's similar to MySpace and many other networking websites. But in design and functionality, it's completely different. No more annoying songs, ugly designs, photos that distort pages, instead you get one design that works.

Another thing about Facebook is that it continues to cross boundaries with Internet's lack of anonymity. First, full names are used and secondly, every action you make on Facebook is broadcast to all your friends. You comment on a photo, everyone knows. You break up with your significant other, everyone knows. You decide to change your political views, everyone knows. Facebook reiterates the idea that there are no secrets on the Internet and we are not afraid to publicize our daily activities.

We publicly allow others to know our every step and in return we want to know theirs.

It makes me wonder what other sites are going to come out there (or already exist) that will become direct competitions.

Could Zooomr become a threat to Flickr?

Could Google Video be the next YouTube?

The competition will always be there. It's the trends and word of mouth that make sites popular. If enough people hear about something new, the crowd just follows the leader. Who knows what Web 2.0 website could be making waves.

Wikipedia Evolves

Wikipedia - the online free encyclopedia - has grown into one of the web's web 2.0 successes. It has over 1.7 million visitors on the English version alone. The downside to this free service is that sometimes you'll find erroneous information, outdated articles or not factually accurate articles used as sources.

But, to faithful Wikipedia users, this is a small price to pay for the wealth of information that is available to them instantly in an open "anyone can edit these pages" concept.

In an article, Founder defends evolving Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, founder, defends his vision and says the new version will try to eliminate some of the problems.

He says new features will make it easier to detect errors coming in from the community. But, Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia doesn't think this will change anything. In an article, Wikipedia co-founder seeks to start over, Sanger wants to create a better free encyclopedia. His project called, Citizendium will still enjoy the same benefits of Wikipedia, but aims to eliminate factual errors. Unlike Wikipedia, Citizendium will want its contributors to provide real names and experts in various fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy.

Will this be better than Wikipedia? Would Wikipedia be better if it had experts verifying facts? Would this be a better alternative to a free encyclopedia? Obviously, it isn't the only one out there, but is it going to try to address the issues and criticisms that face Wikipedia?

The fact that both encyclopedia's still have the "anyone can edit" motto, this draws in a lot of people. But, the issue still lies with identity and verification. How many people (experts) would Citizendium need to hire in order to make itself a credible source on the website that teachers would accept as a source of reference for student papers?

The future will tell if Sanger has the right idea.

Award Junkies

I knew we were a generation of award junkies, but has this gone a bit too far?

The first YouTube Video Awards of 2006 allow you to vote for your favourite videos. You've watched them. You've made them famous. Now, vote for the ones that you remember. Simple enough.

Seven categories: Most creative, most inspirational, best series, best comedy video, best music video, best commentary and most adorable video.

Among those categories you will find lonelygirl15 nominated for best series, Blunty2000 for best commentary and the VancouverFilmSchool for most creative.

You have until March 23 to vote.

Since we're making award shows out of everything, how about we have Web 2.0 awards? Let's award the peer networking websites. There's a number of them that can fit under each category like: Worst design (I nominate MySpace), easiest to navigate, will likely not see the next year, best hobby site and so on.

Or how about the best blog?

Or awards for a media site that's trying their best to integrate multimedia to their product?

Some of these already exist, but let's allow the public to vote. Post the categories online and like we've been doing with broadcasting ourselves, let's broadcast our vote.

New Technology for New Fuel

The Economists technology issue came out last week and this time it's concentrating on new technology to counteract climate change.

Woodstock revisited looks at new techniques for producing ethanol. The technology isn't available yet, but the writer makes an argument that instead of using corn for ethanol, why not use trees - Treethanol.

Ethanol is being embraced by politicians and environmentalists for a number of reasons. It's renewable and when burned, it reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. Perfect!

The writer therefore asks: "Why use trees, rather than maize or sugar cane, as a feedstock for ethanol?"

The simple answer is: it's more energy efficient. The ratio of energy you put in to energy you get out is a lot closer than what you would get with sugar cane or other energy crops.

The article makes a great argument for ethanol from trees. Trees grow year round, it's easier to produce ethanol from them (burn a lot easier) but it's more expensive to do that than if you were to use other energy crops. And another downfall is the type of tree will determine the best results. So, a tree's rate is limited by its lignin structure - which is what determines the trees strength and form. Those that contain more will produce more ethanol. But, not all of them do, so that would mean cloning and genetic modification would be used in order to create a type that will yield the best results.

This will create more problems than solutions. It takes years to grow trees and by the time scientists find the genetic variation and then grow it, we may be out of oil.

It's a great idea and I support it, but can this new technology be developed quickly enough?

Threatening Radio

Web radio is taking off. In fact, it is starting to be seen as the biggest threat to FM stations since the rise of TV.

An article titled, Everyone's on the same wavelength now, writer Grant Robertson examines the rise of this new and popular technology.

Internet radio has been growing in popularity. With iTunes radio available to anyone who has iTunes on their computer, a user has access to a huge selection of radio stations varying by style available to them anytime.

Then there are the websites that started it all. Last.fm allows you to discover new artists and hear new music and Pandora claims it knows what type of music you'll enjoy by simply typing in a favourite song.

With the proliferation of WiFi, it is no wonder that companies have been reacting to these social websites and pumping in money to the technology.

Yahoo launched Yahoo Launchcast and then there's AOL Music. These websites do the same thing as Last and Pandora, but have more money and a recognizable name that draws in enough audience to compete with FM radio stations. Yahoo brings in 3.5 unique users a month!

The growth in bandwidth has transformed the access to this technology. Broadband has allowed companies to stream better quality music files. While recommendation engines, which stream songs based on claiming they know what listeners like, are threatening standard radio.

Instead of playing music that meets broadcast standards, these radio stations allow users the freedom to choose their music. And there aren't enough radio stations for every type of music. Web radio solves that problem.

Another plus is the lack of commercials, or if they do exist, it's promotional material for the radio station.

I wonder what will happen once advertisers will start tapping into this technology. I guess web radio listeners will go somewhere else for their music.

Politics 2.0

Presidential candidates have discovered what the web can do for them and their campaigns. It goes beyond sending out mass emails to supporters. They are tapping into Web 2.0 technology and realizing that the best way to reach an audience is to make the campaign all about "you."

Social networking websites, after all, give them access to an audience that doesn't make it to the polls.

An article, Presidential Campaigns Tread Carefully Into Web 2.0 World, looks into how candidates are accessing the available technology and why.

Barko Germany, deputy director of the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet at George Washington University said, "The race to the White House in 2008 will be all about how candidates talk to people online."

It's all about carefully crafting messages and getting the audience involved.

John Edwards has always been a very techy politician. He blogs, podcasts and it was only natural for him to announce his candacy through a video on YouTube. The video filmed in New Orleans and titled, "Tomorrow Begins Today" show how Edwards is using non-conventional ways in reaching a new audience.

Hillary Clinton also announced her candidacy on her website. She has a blog written by Crystal Patterson and numerous videos from her campaign trail.

Barack Obama announced that his campaign is about "You" on his website. He's really using Web 2.0 and allowing his supporters to have access to the website, network with their friends, create their own blog and write about issues that matter to them. Obama also has a blog and he's even using Flickr to post photos of his campaign, YouTube for videos, PartyBuilder for event schedules and Facebook. He's truly covered all the areas.

The question remains, where else will these candidates look for votes?

Mobile Web 2.0

There's a growing demand for better browsing qualities on our cell phones. Better screen for better picture quality to browse websites or better yet, watch movies. So what's next? The demand of access to web 2.0 on the go.

Web 2.0 or social networking craze with websites such as YouTube, MySpace, Flickr and Facebook has phone manufacturers trying out various tie-ins to allow the generation on the go access to their websites.

Text blogging through a mobile phone is still seen as an emerging activity. Who really has the time to type out full thoughts and opinions on topics through a cell phone? But with the growing production of videophones (and the improving quality), people are more willing to take photos or videos and upload them online - as seen on a popular South Korean social network Cyworld.

How are companies responding to these social changes?

Yahoo's mobile internet services allows its Flickr users access to their photos through the mobile.

Vodafone tie's-in with YouTube and MySpace will allow customers to have access to their MySpace pages and instant upload of videos on YouTube. Companies are eliminating the middle man - the need for a computer before having access to a website.

But this new technology is still in the works. Accessing the web through a mobile phone is slow. It all depends on bandwidth. People don't have patience to wait one or two minutes while a photo uploads. They want instant results.

While we are still trying to wrap our heads around this new idea, Second Life has moved on to represent what Web 2.0 is capable of in the future. Second Life, a virtual place that has user-generated characters and businesses is trying out something new. It's trying to combine web 2.0 and mobile devices together.

IBM's inventor Zygmunt Lozinski explained his vision as not just accessing Second Life through the cell phone, but bridging the gap between the virtual world and the real world.

He asks: "What would happen if you could connect people and objects in a virtual world to real world communication networks?

Companies already advertise in Second Life, so if someone wants to get in touch with a company, why not simply connect them, either through a mobile or a home phone?

This will just create a blurring of the lines. What is escapism in the virtual world will become reality in the real world. Then what will we call the "real" world? The reality bubble will burst and confusion of identity will soar. We will come too close to the truth. The created characters will no longer be characters, they will be "real" identities.

Maybe it is time to leave the virtual world alone.

Read the full article.

e-Waste Progress

Electronics are being replaced on a daily basis, but few of us know what to do with them. Instead, we throw them away with our weekly garbage and computer parts end up in the landfill. Few get recycled and disposed of properly. Result: mounts of electronics are pilling up in our landfills.

The greatest concern is that the electronic devices carry toxic substances such as lead, cadmium and mercury. These substances pose threats to the environment and to our health, if not properly recycled. Other metals such as aluminum, ferrous metals and copper are also found and need to be properly disposed of. Problem is that not many people know how to do it and there aren't many e-waste friendly disposal sites available in Canada. It's a growing problem with an even faster growing generation of electronic users who upgrade products to newer and better.

That may soon be changing in the U.S. with a new legislation that would impose a national "e-fee," a recycling charge that would be paid like a sales tax on computers, televisions and other electronic devices according to an article in Computerworld.

U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson called the bill, National Computer Recycling Act. The bill was introduced years ago, but for the first time, it may actually be taken seriously. Environmental policies and platforms are no longer ignored. Politicians can run on an environmental platform and possibly win with the growing interest in climate change and global warming.

Four states in the U.S., California, Washington, Maryland and Maine, have approved electronics recycling laws and another 21 states are considering similar measures.

Electronic makers and retailers need to agree on a method to charge recycling fees. The new legislation is modeled after California's law, which imposes a fee on newly purchased electronic devices. The retailer keeps 3 percent to cover its costs and the rest goes to the state, which distributes the money to recyclers at 48 cents per pound.

The other option is not to pay a fee at purchase, but have manufacturers be responsible for recycling costs. When someone returns a computer to place of purchase, the retailer gets in touch with the manufacturer and sends the computer to the manufacturer.

Would this work in Canada? Absolutely. The steps are already in place. Since 2004, Canada has been implementing its own five year program to get manufacturers to be responsible for recycling computer parts. There is also talks of implementing a tax on laptops and printers between $2 and $7, and $20 to $25 for television sets and personal computers.

Read more about the mounting concerns on e-waste in Canada. The questions remains: When will we start hearing about this program taking shape in Canada? When will we know what to do with our old electronics? What will it take?