melbournesnapshots

It is Saturday AGAIN!!

Its is so interesting (for me anyhow) to look back and realise that I have not made a weblog post during the week for the last 3 or 4 weeks.
Work has been consuming me and I have really been able to get my teeth into developing a new business unit and a very large National client - which I can see captures my attention, passion and most obviously, most of my time.

In my "spare" time and in place of a social life I have been spending all my on-line time looking at collaborative web-sites and enterprise-wide solutions for CRM, Knowledge management, customer service, recruitment etc etc.
I have also spent a lot of time playing with JOTSPOT - which I have been signed up to since January - palayed with it for a couple of weeks - left it, and I have now come back to it again to see if it can answer my dreams and fantasies for supporting collaborative business development and service delivery.
Interesting reading about JOTSPOT here from Graham Spencer - one of the folks at JOTSPOT. There is just something about JOTSPOT that gives me the feeling that it will answer many of my dreams and desires - admittedly, it is just out of BETA and I can see that it is not yet perfect...but the guys at JOTSPOT are really working on making it so. I detect an energy and passion in the culture at JOTSPOT and amongst the people (who still refer to themselves, and each other by first names) that I believe will put them on the map in a BIG WAY.
HAve also spent a lot of time on a thing called www.quickplace.com.au, which my colleague Steve initiated for our company wide knowledge management. It's interesting.
One of the really great features of JOTSPOT is the ability to send (cc) EMAIL's to a particular page ... so, let's say you have a page for each customer, candidate, or whatever, it is possible to cc every email relevant to that entity to the page in your Wiki that relates to that entity - so all emails are easily accessible from a central point.. If you have not looked at JPTSPOT yet, I do recommend taking a little hyperlink journey to their site and checking it out.
My first real exposure to the www was in either 1992 or 1993: one of my contractors started up one of the very early ISP's called OZ something or something Oz (not Ozemail) and I have wanted the type of functionality since that time. It's now 2005 and I am very excited to think that the day may be approaching when mere mortals can establish and maintain meaningful data sharing and collaboration systems via a web interface. (Oh yes, remind me to tell you all about the exciting news in regard to the soon to be completed POMCAST)  (Apparently, I am no George Martin - but watch out - the REAL Parky of the POD is coming!!)

Thanks Johnnie Moore

Thanks Johnnie for helping in the challenge that I have set regarding contacting my friend Barry Edwards. So far, your blog message "paging" Barry Edwards is the first and only primary response to this "experiment". It has now been a few days since I sent out this message so we will see if there is any further action on this one in the next few days. Barry is not likely to be a "web-logger" and I imagine his main use of a computer would be for email and fairly basic internet access so it will be interesting to see whether this "message in a blog bottle" cast into the "sea of the blogosphere" will be found by someone who will pass it on to Barry.

Blog Experiment

I have a friend who I last saw in Dubai in 2001. We have emailed each other occassionally over the past few years but I am now convinced that I have lost contact with him, as my last email to him at his place of last employment has "bounced back" - pretty good indication that he no longer works there I would say. So do you think if I "put it out there" in the blogosphere that I am trying to contact him that he will get the message by seeing the blog himself? Or someone that knows him seeing the blog entry? They say that everyone in the world is connected by no more than six degrees of separation... So, I am not even thinking for one minute that my friend regularly does a google "vanity search", so I doubt this entry will be found by my friend directly. So for this message to reach my friend, I would need to be lucky enough for someone who knows my friend to see this blog. You see, I can't imagine a circumstance where a person who sees this blog and does NOT know my friend would remember or even mention my blog post to another person, let alone someone who knows my friend.
Notwithstanding all that - let's try it! Let's see the power of the blog in action. Will my friend ever contact me as a result - direct or indirect of this blog entry?
Will it happen - on balance I think "yes" - How long will it take? I'm estimating between 7 to 20 days. Here goes... my friend's name is Barry Edwards. and he was last working for kinnarps in Dubai. BArry, if you get the message that I am trying to contact you, please email me or place a comment on this weblog entry. Wouldn't it interesting to use the power of the blog to re-connect with family and friends from all corners of thre gobe. I will let you all know of progress.

G'Day World - On the Pod

Really enjoyed the podcast "On the Pod" by Cam and Mick with Jeremy C. (my auction was "taken down by ebay" Wright. - Ensight.  A really great interview - interesting, some very powerful insights on commercial (corporate) blogging, some very funny bits, (like Jeremy saying that his fire-alarm going off was due to his wife's cooking!). Cam and Mick have developed a very good interviewing style ... relaxed, spirited, funny, entertaining, complete with splashes of spontenaiety on a generally well planned and structured canvas. 
Alan Singer

Back to the Land of the Blogging

For the past few days I have completely immersed myself in exploring a wide range of web hosted groupware/collaborative "wiki" implementations. There is a very useful page called WIKI FARMS which provides a consolidated list of web hosted wikis. Anothe web based service that I have joined up is FlickR  a web hosted photo web site that allows the uploading of a photographic collection that can be organised into "photo sets" for viewing either privately or by invited family, friends or even by the public - the choice is yours to set.

JOTSPOT RULES!!!!!!

Jotspot is IT and a BIT!! - I have had my JOTSPOT account provisioned for all of 1 hour and I can already tell that your interface HITS the "SPOT". It is simply FANTASTIC. For the last couple of days I have been getting very depressed trying to play with some of the other hosted Wikis - (shades of HTML - square brackets, asterisks - no thanks!)

I will not mention their names here as it is early days for the hosted wiki providers I suspect; but JOTSPOT is so "Typepad" like (that's a compliment) and easy to use that I am smiling from ear-to-ear.

Do yourselves a favour - go and check out JOTSPOT - sign up for a free trial and get "Wikking".  (And...remember to tell them that you heard about it on my BLOG!).

Gadgets be gone, it's time to turn off

Excerpt from article in The Age (Melbourne Australia) today.

"What are television, email, chat rooms and blogs if not our lonely selves reaching out for comfort, approval, feedback and distracting noise?

The lie of each is that we can somehow feel connected by engaging in activities that are, at their heart, isolating. All the page hits, crowded in-boxes and voice mails cannot disguise the fact that when the power is off, we are alone."

Is this "heresy" or "truth"? On face value, many people would nod their heads in agreement to the sentiments expressed in this article, and I can see readers thinking "imagine those lonely hopeless souls sitting for hours on end in front of their LCD screens, completely lacking in social skills, unable to function as a robust participant in the cut and thrust of vibrant daily life".
I for one am very aware of the solitude (not lonliness) that can be found in engaging in writing my blog. IS it isolating? I think not. Do I feel connection with others as a result of my "gadget" related activities - YES! - Do I balance my "gadget" related activities with being in the "real world" - yes (I go to computer swap meets every Sunday! <joke>)... but I am now less tolerant of the noise, dissonance and pointlesness much of the so called "social interaction" that we expose ourselves to when we move away from our gadgets. I do not enjoy and consider it a huge waste of time to spend time with people who are the human equivalent of "static interference" or "spam".
When we connect with others in the physical world -  for example at our work, gym, a NYE party, Chadstone Shopping Centre etc etc, are we not subjected to "interference" and distracting noise? Have you never seen lonely people in the street, at a coffee shop or at party?  In Victor Frankel's book, "Man's Search for Meaning" he expresses the idea that the only true place of freedom and self-determination in in the mind of an individual - Frankel was subjected to the most brutal treatment as a prisoner of the Nazis and it was his ability to go to that place in his mind that no-one else could control that gave him his strength, will and sense of self.
I say the world would be a much better place if everyone stopped for a little time each day and reflected on their ultimate freedom, uniqueness and dreams - who was it that said "most people live their lives in quiet desparation"?

G'day World

Used some of the spare time over the last couple of days to listen to Cameron and Mick's Podcast with guest star Mark Jones, Director of IDG Communications. A lot of very interesting talk about publishing, media, weblogs, changing nature of journalism and publishing relative to the emergence of "new media"; RSS, "blogging" - one of the side anecdotes that was very interesting (and quite funny) was in relation to the detaching, wandering tongue/beer TV/Film commercial. Cameron observed that this one one of his favourite adverts; that he was compelled to get the music backing track - but for the life of him - he was completely unable to recall which company's product was being ADVERTSISED. I TOTALLY agree - I can remember sitting watching that commercial at least three times and saying to Kylie - what beer brand is being advertised - and neither of us could remember!! Will also be having a good look at filtered.typepad.com - Mark Jones blog.

BLOG is "WOrd of the YEAR"

Hello, Hello, Hello said Mr. Plod! (or was it Mr. Bloggs) - It certainly wasn't Chris and Marie - they only said Hello, Hello... The following is an excerpt from the MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE

Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year 2004 Based on your online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2004 was Blog noun [short for Weblog] (1999) : a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer.

Click on each of the other words in the Top Ten List for their definitions in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton : noun (1951) : the main body of riders in a bicycle race
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestration

So where is "IPOD" or, indeed as Cameron and Mick would exclaim - where is PODCAST? Will one of these be the "Word of the Year 2005?"

"I" before "E" except after "C" ??

AND except in the word "SEIZE".

So, how embarassing is this!!! - after happily blogging away for nearly six months - OK, not every day Tony, I know!- but I'm still at it ... it has been pointed out to me that the word in the title of my weblog meaning "to grasp" should be written as SEIZE" not "SIEZE". I would like to correct this error but I am not quite sure what the effect will be on my links etc etc... Thank you to the observant person (CM - you know who you are) who pointed this out - I will ponder this a little longer.