Category Archives: Being a CIO

New York Times appoints social media editor

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I have to admit I didn’t really know what to make of this when it first hit the wires.

My initial reaction was “contradictions in terms” – surely the whole essence of social media is that is is self generating, self managing and ultimately self perpetuating so why would anyone need to be an editor ?

Dig a little deeper and you find the role, according to a memo from  deputy managing editor Jonathan Landman is “… someone who concentrates full-time on expanding the use of social media networks and publishing platforms to improve New York Times journalism and deliver it to readers”. Laudable indeed. The memo continues that the role will   “… work closely with editors, reporters, bloggers and others to use social tools to find sources, track trends, and break news as well as to gather it”

So there it is. Not exactly an editor – more like an evangelist and mentor to the collective editorial wisdom at the NYT. No bad thing at all…. and the holder of this illustrious title is one Jennifer Preston.

As of 27/05/09, Jenifer had over 2500 followers but surprising was only following 165 of us. I guess she’s getting plenty of input and just being selective 🙂 but we should probably all wish her good luck.

Newspapers failing web 2.0 challenge

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Newspapers need to find innovative ways to embrace web 2.0 – or face a perilous future

(Originally published 12/05/09 – silicon.com)

For too long now people have talked about the decline in newspapers as if this was something slow and cyclical – worse still, something that they can actually manage.  I’m sure the people who ran chemical based photography at Kodak thought the same. The music industry clearly also had this perspective on life. Look, this might well just be a “decline” that has been accelerated by a recession but equally we may be approaching a structural, social and generational cliff face. Either way, you surely don’t want to be just another lemming?

Newspapers are facing the most fundamental period of change in their history. Some would say that until recently nothing much had actually changed since the town crier used to wander into the market square, ring his bell and shout “hear ye, hear ye – plague, death, taxation, fat-cat bankers and the worst recession in living memory …. local vicar involved”.

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Windows XP – the longest goodbye ever

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Quietly yesterday, but right on schedule, Microsoft started the process of winding down Windows XP.

The announcement read ” On April 14, Windows XP will transition from the mainstream support phase to the extended support phase, as planned and previously announced”. Microsoft have said however that they will be patching security issues right up to 2014 so with any luck Windows 7 will have either stabilized or perhaps even been superseded by then. In the meantime, you can rest assured that the continually growing netbook market and widespread loathing of Vista will keep XP alive and kicking for a good many users.

BTW, I was surprised to find out that XP has actually been with us since October 2001 so given that an OS has a typical supported life of about 5 years you have to say that its done pretty well.

What d’ya think – will you be rushing to Vista or Windows 7 ?

Wikipedia 1 – 0 Microsoft

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Microsoft today ran up the white flag in the battle of the online encyclopedias

“On October 31, 2009, MSN Encarta Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009…”

Interestingly they close with ……

“Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years. However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft’s goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today’s consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business.”

Is free and socially networked the only way to survive ?

Does everything have to do everything nowadays …

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Time was when being unique was a bit special; when being different was something to be celebrated. It seems now that when it comes to social networking solutions and tools, everyone just wants to be the same.

A few weeks back facebook announced that they were opening up their status API to “… make sure the ability to share this content was available through our standard APIs….. and opening new APIs for you to post links, create notes, or upload videos etc”. So there you go then, in no way a response to the mega growth of twitter and its impact on the usage of facebook.

Earlier, and in a move that angered many users, LinkedIn added a status element (aka “what are you doing now”) to their offering, mirroring both Twitter and Facebook

Today we hear that social contacts platform Plaxo “…is adding two new stream aggregation features to its stream service Pulse which tries to build a social network around third-party data, allows users to stay connected to their friends’ updates” – sounds familiar.

More worrying though is the conundrum that may soon face many software developers. Is there any value in being unique and developing something new or do you simply just throw something together based on what already exists? What sustainable value is there in being new and first anymore? Don’t get me wrong, mash-ups are cool and many of the best ones work because, through a combination of different solutions and ideas, you actually do create something new. It seems to me though that the current trend in social network solutions is just to do more of the same and shamelessly steal from the competition.

Oh well – looks like everything really does taste like chicken

JMHO

More on offline being the new online

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… from TrustedReviews.com – now Opera implements google gears to allow offline browser accces.

“Gears enables compatible web applications such as Gmail, YouTube, Picassa, Remember the Milk and even WordPress to be accessed seamlessly when offline. It does this by caching data which ultimately means you get all the benefits of Cloud computing when connected to the Internet (anywhere data access, fast operation, online storage/backup) combined with the availability of a locally installed desktop application even if that connection breaks. ”

I use it with gmail and its great

Have you tried it yet – what d’ya think?

Who really cares about ‘up time’ ?

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A Slashdot post caught my eye this morning –

“Twitter Leads Social Networks In Downtime”

“A study on site availability by monitoring service Pingdom shows that in 2008 Twitter greeted users with the ‘Fail Whale’ for more than 84 hours, almost twice as much as any other site. At the other end of the scale imeem and Xanga managed less than 4 hours of downtime for 99.95% uptime. Myspace, Facebook and Classmates.com were the only other sites studied which managed to stay up more than 99.9% of the time.”

Does the old “5 nines” availabity mantra not apply anymore? (BTW, I was never a big fan of that one anyway )and given the ever growing popularity with twitter, it begs the question, are twits just more forgiving than other users of technology / IT solutions ?

Skilling up your team

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Some folks have asked if I can (re) publish the article I did for CIO Connect magazine towards the end of 2008 on skills development

Happy to oblige

When it comes to skills development, Associated Newspapers’ CIO Ian Cohen believes what counts is not the particular framework you adopt, but the ability to articulate clearly where you’re going. “For every person who says one particular development framework is the best, someone else tells you to use another. For me, the specifics of the tools are irrelevant as long as you have the right attitude to skills development and a coherent vision of where you’re going,” he says

Read More >> NB. MS word document

About digital and print convergence …

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Here’s a piece I did for CIO Magazine in May 2008 about some of the print and online convergence activities I’ve been involved with. On re-reading the interview, its pretty upbeat given that it took place the day after the Champions League final in Moscow and I must have been pretty depressed – ho hum.

Setting the multi channel standard

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