You might have thought that with the current financial crisis, people might turn away from new sites with names like Mint and SmartyPig and turn towards well established banks. But the new sites offer better features to their users, features that take advantage of Web 2.0 technology and approaches. And the old sites belong to banks that in the U.S. may have gone under. No surprise then that the new sites are experiencing signifigant growth.
The NYTimes.com has a good article with the details: Lose Confidence in Your Bank? Turn to the Web
Expect to hear more about these new sites soon.
Not a good page to hit during the Holiday (shopping) Season. But credit to J. Crew for a) having a fail page and b) providing a backup (in this case, a phone number). Much better than getting a “500″ error or some other error code that would mystify most people.
Let’s up this page, J. Crew Fail Page, is replaced by the real home page soon.
The old joke used to go: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?….Practice, practice, practice!”
Well, YouTube has added a new spin on this. Until the end of January, 2009, musicians can audition via YouTube for a collaborative virtual performance and the best performances will earn the artist the opportunity to play at Carnegie Hall. This is social media and Web 2.0 at its best.
I would encourage anyone with the heart and the talent to perform this piece to give it their best and submit it to YouTube. Regardless of the outcome, it will be a great experience. And hey….you never know. Go to YouTube – symphony’s Channel for more information.
See you on stage!
For anyone doing or interesting in doing widget development, you might want to consider the MOTODEV Challenge. Motorola is offering prizes up to $25,000 for widgets submitted to them between now and the Feb. 25, 2009. Not only could you win some nice prize money, but you will surely get lots of recognition for your great work from Motorola and others.
Motorola provides all the information you need at the MOTODDEV site. I’d be interested in know what people are doing here.
ITbusiness.ca has an excellent experience report on one company’s experience with cloud computing: How to shift your business to the cloud with minimal risk and maximum benefit. There’s lots of talk about cloud computing: this article is about putting talk into practice, with all the benefits and drawbacks that come with it. Any company looking to make the shift should read this.
By the way, while I get many newsletters and feeds from various sources on IT, I find ITbusiness.ca I read things from this site more and more. It has a very good mix of articles. I highly recommend them as a source of information.
Interesting: Wells Fargo is offering a service called vSafe to Protect, Organize & Access Important Documents.
It looks low cost ($4.95/month for 1 GB of storage) and since it is Wells Fargo, they have a reputation to maintain. And it is a good reputation, particularly in the area of innovation.
They also have a free 30 month trial, with some restrictions (e.g. you need a U.S. mailing address).
Worth considering if you are interested in cloud computing but are concerned about who is controlling your data.
In talking to clients recently, a number of them have talked to us about how Obama’s team was able to capitalize on the Internet to be successful. This article, In Election’s Wake, Campaigns Offer a Peek at What Really Happened over at the NYTimes.com provides a glimpse into both campaigns and talks about things that went well and not so well.
One thing that struck me was this quote, from Obama’s deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand:
“We’re not supposed to give these numbers out, but I’ll give them out,†Mr. Hildebrand said at another point… “We have 90 people on our Internet team. And they weren’t just doing the Internet. They were producing videos, they were slicing and dicing people who showed up on our Web site to figure who is more likely to give more money.
“We also spent a record amount of money on Internet advertising,†he said. “I want to say in the end $8 million on the Internet advertising alone. That really, really mattered.â€
I am not surprised by these numbers: the ability to create and change information at the rate they did, and the ability to raise the type of money they did would required, would require alot of people and resources.
Anyone wanting to duplicate Obama’s success now has a better idea just what it took him to achieve that.
There are a number of articles out, including one in GlobeAndMail.com, about this study that shows that Happiness is contagious. A key section of the Globe’s article said that the study,
“…(u)sing a standard measure of well-being, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale…found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend who lives nearby experiences a 25-per-cent increased chance of becoming happy. And the more centrally located you are in your social cluster of happy people, the more likely you are to become happy.”
You might think, “well, it might have been a small scale, rinky-dink study”. However,
“(t)he research, being published today in the British Medical Journal, is the latest analysis of data gleaned from the Framingham Heart Study, a longitudinal U.S. survey begun in 1948. The researchers, who have previously published similar findings on the spread of obesity and smoking from the data, focused on 4,739 individuals over 20 years, accounting for 50,000 social and family ties.”
Now what has this to do with Web 2.0? Well it could be that social networks supported by social platforms like Facebook, twitter, and flickr, can support the propagation of happiness (or other feelings). I know when I see pictures of family and friends happy, it makes me happy. And when I hear that they are having a difficult time, it adversely affects me. Perhaps not as strongly as it would if I were there in person, but what social networks lack in quality (i.e., directness) they can make up for in quantity (i.e., I am more aware of more of the feelings of family and friends potentially).
It remains to be seen if this is actually happening generally with people. But I am conscious of what I say when I use social platforms, knowing that people are reading what I write and many times responding to it. It affects how people think, not just about you, but how they think about life in generally. Not that you have to try and make people happy with what you say, but knowing that you might be able to is something to seriously consider.
As for me, I am happy you took the time to read this and think about it! I hope your day is a happy one.
(A most excellent photo of “Mel C” courtesy of *SMILING PUG*’s photostream on flickr)