Search Results for: Twitter

I’ve been a fan of Facebook pretty much since its inception, as soon as they let dinosaurs like me in. Continued to be a fan as Facebook grew, count a number of people there amongst my friends. [And no, I do not own any stock there]. There’s lots about Facebook I like. When some people [...]

Thought I would try something out for a while. Every Friday, I will post an unGoogleable question. When it’s an image, I will make sure it’s unTineye-able. If it’s music, I will make sure it’s unShazam-able. [And yes, I understand that something that's unGoogleable today becomes Googleable tomorrow. That's the nature of the internet and [...]

In 1997 I was hired by Dresdner Kleinwort Benson to run their Euro, Y2K and Regulatory Minimum Requirements Programmes. Three classic “mandatory” projects that engendered classic responses: everyone agreed the projects needed to be done, everyone had an opinion on the how and what of each project, but nobody wanted the job of actually getting [...]

When you try and describe the internet (and, for that matter, the Web) what metaphors do you tend to use? Is it a “series of tubes” to you? A place? A river or ocean? Something organic, living, evolving? None of the above? All of the above? As I began to write this, I thought I’d [...]

Cartoon courtesy the ’09 archives of the LA Free Press How much do you make? Have you ever contemplated suicide? Are you now or have you ever been…? Are you aware of the fact…? I have here before me… [...]information devices for universal, tyrannical womb-to-tomb surveillance are causing a very serious dilemma between our claim [...]

Little Milton. That’s the nickname given to Gerald Bostock by the village of St Cleve, after he’d been presented with a poetry award when he was about 8. We’re given to understand that the award was revoked after he was heard uttering the word “g—-r” during a live television broadcast. [I'm not going to spoil [...]

Have you read Haydn Shaughnessy? If you’re interested in the social enterprise, you should. I haven’t yet read his recent book, The Elastic Enterprise, but I will: I intend to read it as I cross the Atlantic on my way to SXSW later this week. (I’m speaking there on the Saturday, on Massively Multiplayer Work, [...]

Serendipity is a wondrous thing.  Yesterday, as I did my leisurely trawl through the three hundred or so people I read regularly, I came across Tom Foremski’s intriguing post. Is Skype A Social Network? That set me off on a gentle, aimless wander on what makes a network social. Then, a little while later, I [...]

….because sometimes they do matter. I’ve been fascinated by what people share, when they share it and how they share it for some time now. And for even longer, I’ve been thinking about why we share what we share. [Those of you who’re interested may want to read some of my earlier posts. Why We [...]

Thanks for all your comments and tweets re my earlier post. Some of you solved the “unGoogleAble” question. Others commented on what they’d been doing with the Prime Numbers in Arithmetical Progression question. And a number of you engaged in conversation with me across a variety of platforms. It helps me think. And learn. For which [...]

Here’s what’s trending on Twitter right now: And here are the top stories on Google News: Here’s what the BBC News site has at top billing: I tried to even the field. So the twitter trends were set to “Global”, I finally overrode Google’s very irritating attempts to point me towards google.co.uk rather than google.com, [...]

A few days ago, I set a cricket question for my twitter followers. To be precise, I set a question for those among my followers who were interested in cricket, interested enough to try and answer the question. The question was simple: Herschelle Gibbs holds the record. Vinod Kambli was the previous holder. What is [...]

[This is a follow-up to the post I wrote late last night; thank you very much for your comments, Likes, RTs, +1s and Shares. Active and visible feedback is a great motivator, and helps me learn to write about the right things and in the right ways]. Where was I? Oh yes. Why am I [...]

I don’t think I can remember a New Year’s Day when I’ve been more excited about the year to come. Let’s start with the political landscape. You all know about the year we’ve had, the long-standing governments that have tumbled, the despots and terrorists who are no more, the growth in measured nonviolent protest. It’s [...]

[This post continues from where I left off in the early hours of this morning, here]. I’ve been following the work of W Brian Arthur for over three decades now, starting with his paper on “Samuelson, Population and Intergenerational Transfers” in 1978 or thereabouts, while I was reading Economics at university. During the 1980s, he [...]

1. Parasitoid larvae in caterpillars affect the behaviour of moths: Found this as a result of my looking into ecosystem equilibrium. I am fascinated by how pests, parasites and plants live in fragile harmony: there is beauty in that fragility and in that harmony. I also like three-cornered hats and regulatory systems. Parasite hides in [...]

At school and at university, I was reminded by teachers not to allow the knowledge I’d accumulated to constrain unduly my thinking about the future. There was something liberating about the mere process of trying to understand that knowledge could be considered a constraint, a liberation that continued throughout my life, evinced at different times [...]

I didn’t know Steve Jobs. Like many others I’d seen Steve on stage a few times; we’ve been in the same small room once, but didn’t actually meet. Until this year, when I was at the iPad 2 launch on 2nd March: Marc Benioff had been invited, and he gave me the opportunity to go [...]

[Note: This is a follow-up to a post I wrote yesterday, which you can find here. Based on the comments, tweets and messages I've received, I felt it was worth adding this little coda. And I wanted an excuse to link to one of Joe Cocker's fabulous versions of the Beatles song.]   There are [...]

I’ve been wanting to write this post for some months now, ever since I gave a talk on gamification in the enterprise in New York sometime in June. You can see the video of the talk here. Yet I didn’t write it. Because I didn’t particularly want to add to the hype, or for that [...]

…. And it’s only the giving/that makes you/what you are Jethro Tull, Wond’ring Aloud (Ian Anderson). From the album Aqualung [Note: this is a continuation from my post a couple of days ago, linked to here. I began that post with the first line of the song, it is only fitting that I begin this [...]

Wond’ring aloud/how we feel/today Jethro Tull, Wond’ring Aloud (Ian Anderson). From the album Aqualung. Photo courtesy Patryk Pigeon From late 2005 on, there was a very interesting discussion about Web 2.0 and SOA. John Hagel, Nicholas Carr, Andrew McAfee and Dion Hinchcliffe were involved, amongst others. To refresh your memory (or to make it easier [...]

[Disclaimer: As most of you know, I work for salesforce.com, and have been doing so since October 2010; you will also know that it is not my style to write corporate plugs on this blog, and I'm not going to start with this one. I've written it for two reasons. One, if you're interested in [...]

[Esther Dyson, Clay Shirky, Marc Benioff and David Weinberger, people I consider as friends, have said and written things that have influenced this post considerably; the curated conversations between Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carriere, as recorded in This Is Not The End Of The Book, have also been very influential. Finally, Steven Rosenbaum's excellent Curation [...]