http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/ A blog for people that make the Web worth reading en Copyright 2008 Thu, 08 May 2008 03:19:18 -0600 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Intranet Global Forum). “The problem for any business considering Facebook is that it’s a determinedly consumer play, to the extent that I don’t think it can ever seriously fly in the enterprise,” says analyst and ZDnet writer Phil Wainewright. “Facebook trades free functionality in return for attention and relationship data — and users give up a lot of their control over that data. Businesses aren’t willing to make that trade-off. Google is far ahead of Facebook in this respect with the Google App Engine (Google Gadgets), and already has made impressive inroads in the enterprise software business with the Google Mini and Google Enterprise Search. And now you can see why Microsoft is particularly interested in Facebook (more than just acquiring those eyeballs). The Facebook Platform is not a legitimate enterprise or intranet platform… yet. But it’s only a year old and continuing to evolve; don’t think for a second that Facebook’s management isn’t looking at your business and the revenue potential of becoming the host of collaborative employee applications – or the entire intranet. Microsoft knows it too, and wants a bigger slice of that multi-billion dollar pie.]]> http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/2008/05/microsoft_wants_facebook.html http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/2008/05/microsoft_wants_facebook.html Toby Thu, 08 May 2008 03:19:18 -0600 new study by Pew Internet reveals that nearly two-thirds of surveyed students (700) say their Web communications style sometimes bleeds into school assignments. Roughly 50% admit to omitting proper punctuation and capitalization, and, shockingly, a quarter of them admit to using emoticons such as smiley faces. “The state of writing among teens today is marked by an interesting paradox: While teens are heavily embedded in a tech-rich world and craft a significant amount of electronic text, they see a fundamental distinction between their electronic social communications and the more formal writing they do for school or for personal reasons,” says the reports authors. I’ve been saying for about 8 years that the Internet would spawn a writing revolution. I must admit however that I didn’t forsee a possible re-writing of our English language :) LOL! IMO!]]> http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/2008/04/print_content_resembling_lazy.html http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/2008/04/print_content_resembling_lazy.html Toby e-communications electronic communications emoticons informal print students text texting Toby Ward web web vs. print Writing Fri, 25 Apr 2008 16:10:24 -0600 One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), I immediately stepped-up and supported it. I immediately wrote about and promoted the campaign to encourage the world to buy one of their computers, so that a like computer could be donated to a child or classroom in a third world country. In fact, the Internet and its denizen of bloggers have helped turn this charity into a massive darling that has received heaps of wonderful, international praise. I encouraged friends, colleagues and readers to support it, and instructed my company, Prescient Digital Media, to spend thousands of dollars on the program. In fact, we were a relatively early contributor during the Christmas campaign of 2007. At the time, OLPC promised the delivery of their computers before Christmas. Four months later, and five months after they took our money, no computers have been delivered.]]> http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/2008/04/one_laptop_per_child_abuses_do.html http://blog.ragan.com/contentmatters/2008/04/one_laptop_per_child_abuses_do.html Toby children laptops Mary Lou Jepson Nicholas Negroponte OLPC One Laptop per Child poor third world third-world Toby Ward Thu, 10 Apr 2008 13:11:07 -0600