NASA names its first Chief Technology Officer

On Wednesday NASA announced its first Chief Technology Officer, a new position established to lead IT innovation at the space agency. This person will be responsible for the agency's Enterprise Architecture division and for introducing new and emerging technologies into IT planning and implementation.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.rss.html?pid=30758

India's 3G auction - Better late then never

Bidding in the the Indian 3G auction has now reached upwards of $10 billion. Its taken the government four years to get here (see my Oct 31, 2006 op-ed in the Economic Times), but better late than never.

In Sep. of 06 I had made a presentation to the Telecom Regulatory of India (TRAI) on the benefits of using an auction mechanism for selling the spectrum. This had not been done in the past in India and from what I could surmise, they were leaning towards a beauty contest. Subsequently, I wrote an op-ed in the Economic Times that got published on Oct. 31 2006.

The big question is how are these funds to be utilized? My colleague and friend Prof. Arun Sundararajan and I opined on this in the summer of 2007 with Knowledge@Wharton.

Digital Biology Disruption of Health Care

The data explosion in biology is bringing about a disruption in health care, in which people will shift their thinking toward wellness.

http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/05/04/big-ideas-for-health-it-from-hood-smarr-lazowska-highlights-of-the-ovp-tech-summit/?single_page=true

A New Player in the E-book Industry

Google is entering the E-book market. As expected, they are taking a very open approach. It will be interesting to see how/if the will be able to help define this growing industry.

Neither Rain nor Sleet, but IT Got 'Em

An unbelievable, recent example of the innovative disruption of IT.  Is TV next?

http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15911952

Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook

The title speaks for itself.

Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook.

Apple continues to change the way music is distributed

Apple is shutting down the music service LaLa. LaLa was a great way to try full versions of songs before purchasing them.

Hollywood Video To Close All Stores

The WSJ has reported that Hollywood Video will shut down its store operations. Netflix and Redbox were cited as contributing factors.

Link

Threadless

Check out this Techcrunch article. It interviews the founder of Threadless. Again, this article stresses that Threadless focuses on metrics other than financial ones. My initial reaction was skepticism, but I think that the company really does focus on catering to its fans and artists more than the bottom line.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/01/advice-from-founders-who-bootstrapped-their-way-to-success-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Timescast at NYTimes.com

I'm a fan of the NY Times TimesCast. Its a gutsy move to open up the guts (ok, so I just got back from lunch:-) of the newsroom to the rest of the world. In today's environment, where corporations once high and mighty (e.g Goldman Sachs) seem to have lost the high ground on the ethics and corporate governance, companies need to think hard about how they can leverage technology to win back the trust of the average Joe. I only hope its the real deal, an unfettered version of the real discussions that take place in there.

I believe such use of new media is going to be a great differentiator going forward.

NYC Tech Incubator Finds Success

The NY Times has a good article on a company that has a stable of products with the goal of creating a network of companies with lots of connections between them, increasing the likelihood of success between all of them.

Link

Has anyone heard that iTunes may end up cloudsourced? I just heard about this but the only info I can find is old. Does anyone know if this is true?

http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/20/itunes-dot-com-cloud/

Improving IT Cost Allocation for Better Business Decisions

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14494101

Last Robot Post

OK, last robot post. This one plays the marimba....

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/29/robot.musician/index.html?hpt=T2

FB Open Graph vs Google Search

With its new Open Graph initiative, Facebook is poised to become the network of networks that circulates the majority of traffic on the web. For publishers, that may be a good thing but for Google this is threatening.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-elowitz/facebooks-like-button-a-f_b_554458.html

Linda

Does involuntary UGC still count as UGC?

Critics think that Facebook.com's new roll out connecting user accounts with tons of other websites, from news sites to purchasing sites... is this just another form of social networking/user generated content or is it, in essence, spyware?

http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2010/04/27/27gigaom-facebook-takes-fire-from-senators-over-privacy-1448.html

9 Most Common Data Mining Techniques Used in Predictive Analytics

A recent article provides a quick explanation of the nine most common data-mining techniques used in predictive analytics.

1. Regression analysis
2. Choice modeling
3. Rule induction
4. Network/Link Analysis
5. Clustering/Ensembles
6. Neural networks
7. Memory-based reasoning (MBR)/Case-based reasoning
8. Decision trees
9. Uplift modeling, aka net-response modeling or incremental-response modeling

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2010/3567/the-nine-most-common-data-mining-techniques-used-in-predictive-analytics

Linda

Wipro posts strong outsourcing revenue growth

Wipro, which is India’s third largest outsourcer, said that its IT services revenue in U.S. dollar terms was $1.17 billion, up 11.5 percent from the same quarter last year.

The company has benefited from a surge in demand for offshore IT services.

Link

Twitter and FB neck-in-neck

The Twitter and Facebook online social networks are neck-in-neck competition to be the most used social media marketing tools by marketers, according to a new survey from SocialMediaExaminer.com.

Almost 9 in 10 Marketers Use Twitter or Facebook.

Call me a newbie, but I prefer Facebook.

http://www.marketingvox.com/twitter-facebook-leading-social-media-marketing-tools-046767/

Linda

Twitter Beats Prediction Market

As we learn more about UGD (user generated data) and prediction markets, there's an article in fast market that discusses the intersection of the two. The article claims that Twitter is more accurate that some current methods (Hollywood Stock Exchange) at predicting how well a movie will do in it's first couple weekends of release.

http://www.fastcompany.com/1604125/twitter-predicts-box-office-sales-better-than-anything-else

Linda

Mark Cuban's take on how Facebook is becoming the new Internet

This article is from Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and founder of HDNET, discussing Facebook. He doesn't see Apple or Google as being suitors to buy Facebook since it isn't their style, however he does see Microsoft making a strong bid as Facebook is becoming the biggest threat to the futures of Apple and Google.

http://blogmaverick.com/2010/04/22/is-facebook-the-new-internet-and-how-soon-before-microsoft-tries-to-buy-it/

Dilbert/ I Phone

One more thing here - had to throw my 0.02 in regarding the Iphone theft - and Dilbert always gets it right.

http://mashable.com/2010/04/26/dilbert-iphone/

On FB Next?

Chavez to Join Obama, Castro in Adding Twitter to Media Arsenal.

Now I thought he would go for Myspace considering ol' Chavez is about 5 years behind real time - but hell - maybe he'll be on Celebrity Apprentice next season?http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aWTPnwA.QEos

Google AdWords Changes How it Deals with Ad Agencies

Apparently Google AdWords is making some significant changes. These will not affect normal advertisers, however. Instead, the new changes affect how Google will treat advertising agencies that manage AdWords accounts on behalf of advertisers. Here is Google's VP of Global Agency Development blogging about the changes:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-approach-to-how-we-work-with.html

Floppy disks finally making an exit

The old floppy 3.5" floppy disks are finally making their exit. Sony will stop selling them in Japan in 2011 and other countries very shortly after that.

Apparently in 2009, Sony had still sold more than 12 million floppies. Turns out people were still using those things.

http://en.akihabaranews.com/44700/storage/farewell-to-sony%E2%80%99s-3-5-inch-floppy-discs

~judd

Score 1 point for blu-ray in a new standards battle

Blu-ray is showing its increase in popularity thanks in no small part to the recent release of Avatar. As of Sunday, Avatar sold a total of 2.7 million Blu-ray copies, roughly 40% of its total disk sales.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118018277.html?categoryid=1009&cs=1

~judd

Spammers benefit from outsourcing too

Sophisticated spammers are paying people in India, Bangladesh, China and other developing countries to tackle the simple tests known as captchas, which ask Web users to type in a string of semiobscured characters to prove they are human beings and not spam-generating robots.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/technology/26captcha.html

The Iphone - The New Babysitter!

For all you moms and dads out there....here is a cheap way to entertain your kids ;)

www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/26/smartphones.kids/index.html

Another twist on Location-Based Social Networking

A few of the IT projects focused on location-based services and social networking sites such as Foursqare and Gowalla. It looks like another App is joining the fun. This one, Mopho.to, combines location-based check-ins with photographs. The whole point of it is to post a picture of yourself at the place you are checked-in. I'm not sure how this adds to the whole landscape, but it will be interesting to see if gains any traction.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/23/mopho-to-blends-location-based-check-ins-with-photo-sharing/

The Lost iPhone Conspiracy

Here's a PC World article speculating that Apple may have allowed the new iPhone to be "lost" as a PR ploy.

Link

BigDog

It's robot week on CarlsonIT! This one is a lot creepier... It's name is BigDog, and is clearly being developed for military uses....

http://www.youtube.com/user/bostondynamics?blend=3&ob=4

This article on Facebook attempting to unseat Google by making user generated content the central force on the Internet reminded me of the the Web Evolution slide from the Understanding platform competition lecture. From this article it seems as if we are still largely in the error of "Everyone Can Publish," however and have not gone full force into the era of "Everyone Can Innovate."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8590306.stm

Is anything private anymore?

The boundary between public and private information is blurring more and more every day. Facebook is just the beginning!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/technology/23share.html

One step closer to the Jetsons

Seems like a simple task, but it is actually kindof fascinating to watch this robot fold towels...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo

It is apparently looking for corners.

Blippy Users’ Credit Card Numbers Exposed in Google Search Results

http://mashable.com/2010/04/23/blippy-credit-card-numbers/

Sharing your credit card and online purchases with friends on the web sounds risky and it is. We’ve just discovered that several credit card transactions shared on social networking site Blippy have been exposed — with full credit card numbers included — in Google search results.

Penn State Women's Volleyball & Predictive Statistics

In today's class, we talked about the distinction between descriptive and predictive statistics. We heard the story of how Grady Little failed to pull The Pedro during a 2003 playoff game, and was subsequently canned as the Sox's skipper for not heeding the warning of pitch count statistics. In a less tragic scenario, the Penn State women's volleyball team has a fairly ridiculous winning streak of 102 straight matches going. The secret? Coach Russ Rose's notebooks....of volleyball statistics. Rose, who did his master's thesis on volleyball statistics, doesn't just record the typical volleyball numbers that professional statisticians collect. He makes connections between what he sees (or doesn't see) and outcomes. "Passing predicts the level of play. Hitting and blocking are most correlated with winning." It's a low-tech solution to the problem--but the fundamentals are the same in terms of the predictive power of numbers and how it can be used to drive strategic decisions. For more on Rose, the team, and the streak:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/sports/08volleyball.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Who owns the data?

In our research regarding cloud computing we found that a major issue in makng IT decisions to use the cloud is the risk of not knowing who owns the data. Specifically that different jurisdictions have different rules. This article about Google's recent decision to post "information requests" of various governments throughout the world highlights the issue of varying governmental opinions about internet based data.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2010/tc20100421_746297.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories

Data Mining Social Media for Marketing

There's been lots of excitement around mining social media for marketing purposes through data mining. However, it’s still in infancy considering the ocean of information available that needs to be mined. I would argue this is a fad not worth pursuing considering the high level of work needed for unreliable info.

The ever-changing Facebook game continues....

As I mentioned yesterday, Facebook's "Like" button is set to deploy over many websites and as Facebook expands its use, some are saying it could be a Facebook vs. Google game out on the world wide web.

In this latest CNN article, you can see the kinds of challenges each company has to overcome as well as what each companies current advantage is over the other.....check it out!

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/04/21/facebook-vs-google-game-on/

This is an interesting article that follows up on our team (A7's) presentation last week about mobile couponing. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126351

Facebook taking over the world wide webs

Have you noticed a new message on your facebook home page -"Connect With your Friends on Your Favorite Websites?" Well... facebook has a new 'Open Graph' application that attempts to connect the entire interwebs with the facebook platform. Exciting... or scary??

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126641&nid=113546

Facebook "Like" button to be seen all over the internet...

Apparently Facebook's "Like" and thumbs-up features have become so popular that many other websites want to use them!

This creates some privacy concerns because now other users can see what websites you have said you "like" if you don't remember to change your privacy settings in your Facebook account.

Check out the news article for more information:
www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/21/facebook.changes.users/index.html

Thoughts on blogging...

Going on from Camila's post.... a good friend of mine mentioned how much of a help it was for her to be able to tap into a whole network of blogs once she had her first child. She really felt like she had a whole network of women from all over the world providing her with tips regarding raising a child. By the time many books get published, new research has come out which disagrees with old research or is being the latest "fads".

I have also found blogs to be very helpful for my own "child" - meaning my dog :) . He has recently needed to undergo bladder surgery and I found myself wading through various blogs to find out tips on the treats and food that I can give him after he recovers from surgery but that can help him avoid needing this same surgery again in the future. I love feeling like I can be a part of so many people's stories and to have more insight into what other dog owners have gone through.

Going along with Ishu's posting

Hey Ishu-

I found this article that totally supports your posting - a study recently found that social network activity accounts for 60% of the time spent on the mobile Internet.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126647

Mommy bloggers - the real deal!

I think one of the most fascinating happenings that came along with CGC is the surgence of mommy bloggers. And how does this relate to an IT MBA course, you might ask? This is huge! Women have made a profession out of blogging and companies have tapped into their network to turn them into advocates for their products. It's amazing how much influence these ladies have.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/fashion/14moms.html?scp=1&sq=mom%20blogs&st=cse

A Broader Purpose for our Tenflix Analysis?

It looks like we're one step closer to having a futures market for Hollywood box office receipts. They could be seen as form of insurance in case a movie does worse than expected, or a form of gambling. But maybe we should see them as an opportunity to use our Tenflix competition analysis to make money!
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i45T6trE0cVgYfUPc5adV8eK624wD9F73SM05

A post regarding Bharti Airtel - we would be discussing this in next class I think

The company's application store has clocked one application download per second over the last 30 days.

http://www.informationweek.in/Mobile/10-03-22/Bharti_Airtel’s_mobile_app_store_sees_2_5_million_plus_downloads_post_launch.aspx

Yahoo Rides Surge In Display Ads

Companies are investing more in online advertising and Yahoo is benefiting through increased profits.

Link

Why can't Google get social networking right?

Google is under attack regarding privacy concerns surrounding their social networking platform, Buzz (see link below) A major privacy concern like this hitting Buzz makes me think that maybe Google won't be able to catch up to other social networking sites. When I first heard about Buzz, I figured it would become huge, but this makes me think twice. I also heard that Google originally bought a geolocation based service called Dodgeball, a precursor to Foursquare, but couldn't swing it and shut it down. Now Foursquare is getting really popular. Does it seem like Google is just not very good at social networking? Why can't they seem to pull this off?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8632517.stm

Conversion analytics seem to be driving the marketing strategy decisions of the future. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126301&nid=113431

Great Resource of Internet marketing and E-business Expertise, Research & Articles

The web-site resource from the e-marketing guru Dave Chaffey:

http://www.davechaffey.com/

Best practices guides on digital channel strategy, search engine optimization, paid search marketing and web analytics.

Stranded leader runs country by iPad

Another cool story about the iPad.

Due to the recent volcanic clouds (which have gone as far as affecting Carlson accounting class on Wednesday), Norway's PM is doing much of his job remotely from his new iPad.

CNN Link


~judd

iLike to share music

In our discussion of music sharing last week, iLike never came up. I just wanted to put in my plug for this service. You can add iLike easily to Facebook and add songs so that people can listen to music you are interested in. The nice thing about it, is iLike's website lets you upload music of your own for people to listen to, so it is an easy way to share your own work, directly through iLike or through Facebook via iLike's 'Music' application. I believe the service is actually from MySpace, originally, but don't let that turn you off. It is a nice way to get your music heard.

iPad & Innovation

NY Times blog post detailing some people's concerns that the iPad is a platform that is tightly controlled, stifling innovation.

Link

Foursquare, Are You a Sellout?

Interesting blog post on TechCrunch about the possibility of Foursquare being bought by Yahoo.  I agree with the post, this would be the equivalent of an animal laying down in the forest to die for Foursquare.  It must be difficult with Facebook and Twitter threatening to encroach on their space; however, I really think Foursquare has something unique.  If you were in charge of Foursquare, would you sell at this point?

Link

ERP Systems get Downgrade due to Y3K

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/sports/19grooming.html?hp

I know this is not IT related but everyone needs to see this.

One more - this is cool, especially for marketing peep!s

Take a look at this deck from Fallon - highlights all sorts of cool and upcoming trends in digital marketing!

http://www.slideshare.net/akispicer/fallon-brainfood-sx35w

News?!

Wow - another space to make it 'easier' for people to connect?... is this something newsworthy?? I mean, when is it too much - we already have so many social networking platforms out there in the internets... I wonder what will really be new hottest thing.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=126432

On-Demand ERP Software

Amazon puts NetSuite ERP on its storage cloud. Full article below:

http://news.techworld.com/storage/3220523/amazon-puts-netsuite-erp-on-its-storage-cloud/?olo=rss

Additionally, five benefits of ERP software are:

1. Access the company information from anywhere at anytime since is hosted service via the internet
2. Manage expansion of business’ IT strategies, such as extending corporate e-mail and intranet to remote offices
3. Automate business processes without impacting any existing work or on-premise IT operations
4. Provide flexibility to extend up or down based on the growth of the company without any interruption to the existing functionality
5. Help managers and owners concentrate on the core business without worrying about the health and requirements of the IT environment.

Will Social Networking and UGC Broaden Their Reach?

Facebook (along with Twitter, MySpace, Google and many more) is attempting to broaden it's reach on the internet and turn itself into a platform that is used all across the internet. Speculation is that Facebook will attempt to get their 'share' feature to be used by web developers, thus developing other sites where Facebook users can interact with each other to develop more user generated content. Link to the full article is below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/technology/19facebook.html

Survey Enterprise Java Developers Moving to the Cloud

Good article about migration to cloud computing.

Link

Great article about geo-mapping.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/17/open-database-places/

Social Networking to Find Jobs

Recruiters are increasingly using social networks to find applicants. We all know this to be true, but it seems to be getting more press lately. http://mashable.com/2010/04/19/social-media-recruiters/ When Mayo came on campus to recruit a while ago, they spent more time talking about this element of recruitment than anything else.

The ever changing world of technology....gets crazy!

Check out this new technology which allows you to use your own body as a keyboard! Crazy...

http://cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/19/microsoft.skinput/index.html

Econ meets IT (and intellectual property)

Why Content is a Public Good

Ok, it's a blog post. Not SO much an article. But since I talked about public goods in my econ memo and I'm into IP, it caught my eye. Maybe you'll find it interesting too. Basically it makes the argument that most available IP content (from music to video etc) is a public good. Arguments harp on things like Napster etc.

Analysis of Foursqaure

More on Foursqaure, the location based social networking platform in this K@W article.

Web Coupons Know a Lot About You, and They Tell

Interesting use of IT to get more information about consumers.

Web coupons, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, are packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.

Link

Facebook as a means to change lives in remote areas

I am amazed by the reach of internet and the way it brings together people in geographically unreachable locations together. For my consulting enterprise project, we are trying to connect with groups and individuals who are working in African villages. I came across a group in Facebook which connects us with may such organisations. My team mates are looking for clues in blogs written by Africans and aid organisations' workers from Africa. These locations are remote and tough to do business with, due to geographical constraints. but internet and facebook connects all of us who are working towards a common cause.

Apple, Music, and Cloud Computing

Today we talked about how Apple was able to modify existing practices into more value-added alternatives for music buyers. Last December, Apple acquired a small start-up, Lala, for $80 million. Although the size of the deal is fairly small for Apple, the acquisition has generated a lot of discussion as some suspect that Lala's model might be an early indication of how Apple views the role of cloud computing in the next phase of the music industry.

For more on the deal and some background information on Lala (which is a pretty great site, by the way):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/05/technology/companies/05apple.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/technology/internet/16tune.html

Rewinding Twitter

Google announced today that it is giving the ability for us to go back in time and see Twitter trends. One challenge that remains (at least as far as I could make out) is that these trend indices are not downloadable yet. Perhaps, some old fashioned eyballing and coding into low, medium, high type categorical variable might be a crude but effective way to capture this information. It should be helpful for those of you wondering what the buzz was for a movie three months ago...Let me know.

Impact of lawsuits on file sharing

Posted a Journal of Law and Economics article on Moodle by my (former - of course in academia thats never really the case -- we still collaborate on research) colleagues at the University of Connecticut. They tracked individual file sharers for an extended period of time, before and after the lawsuits.

Social Media and the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Traditionally physicians could depend on some degree of separation between their personal lives and work duties.  When a physician can compartmentalize each aspect of their world, it is easier to cope with the disappointments, the "bad things happening to good people", and the terminal illnesses that are encountered everyday in the hospital.  Many physicians argue that this is what allows them to carry out their duties. However, a recent NY Times article illustrates how social media is bringing these two worlds crashing into one another.

A patient no longer remains an abstract entity; they are someone like us, tweeting, friending, and facebook-stalking.  As these new connections are developed, how will it affect physician's ability to separate themselves from the emotional aspects of treating medical disease.  Is this a good thing?  Should those worlds be separated?  Would you want to "friend" your physician?  Regardless, the lives of the patient and physician are drawn closer through IT.

Cloud Computing and the 4th Amendment

One of our colleagues over at the Law School published a really interesting article in the Minnesota Law Review regarding whether the 4th Amendment prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures applies to internet-housed data. It's kind of long, but it is an interesting read. Ultimately, he argues that the 4th Amendment should apply by analogizing to current law protecting tangible possessions stored with third-partys.


http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/sites/default/files/Couillard_MLR.pdf

Social Not A Threat To Email

Businesses show deep concern about how social media is affecting e-mail usage. MarketingSherpa reported that 23% of e-mail marketers thought “competition with social media for recipients’ time and attention” was a challenge for the channel in 2009, and 71% believed it would gain in importance in 2010.

But surveys of Web users indicate their preference for e-mail as a communications medium. More than seven in 10 e-mail users told Windows Live they would rather talk to their friends and family through e-mail than through social networks.

Link

The Monetization of Twitter

I found this article to be interesting as a followup to the article Lia posted. Plenty of third party developers are trying to monetize Twitter. Twitter realizes that it is now time to start making money on their own product, supposedly they are going to announce how they are going to do it this week.

RFID and the future

As our group put together our project on RFID and the airline industry, I found a lot of unrelated yet interesting applications for RFID, some of which are fairly close to commercial introduction. If you're interested, here is the link: http://www.rfidjournal.com/

Like Rain on Your Wedding Day

The topic for Thursday is the disruption of the music industry, which incidentally comes two days before Record Store Day. As a a famous/angry singer-songwriter once mused....isn't it ironic? don't you think?

Profitability in UGC/Social Media

One of the most interesting battles, to me, is in the social media tech field developers form a catchy idea before figuring out how to make any money on it. Twitter is making it's move now, despite push back. Is there a way to make social media profitable BEFORE you've invested years and millions of users though?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12twitter.html?ref=technology

Web statistics for internet market research: pick a number, any number

"Competitive intelligence” - is one more really great source of data for the purposeful and coordinated monitoring of your competitor within a specific marketplace.
Here you can find the review of the companies, providing marketing statistics on website usage:
http://www.antezeta.com/blog/web-statistics-suppliers

The P&G Case

For my Consulting Enterprise project, we are looking at new ways Thrivent can measure innovation. Today, I was in a meeting with someone from 3M to try to get a sense of how other firms measure and think about innovation. During the meeting, the person from 3M brought up P&G and its global idea sourcing initiatives as an example of how some firms look externally to tap into other spaces for solutions. (The timing of our P&G case was perfect!) From the conversation, I was also left with the sense that this kind of process serves as an internal signal that affirms and propagates an internal culture where ideas and innovation matter a lot. It's interesting to think of these kinds of initiatives as being self-sustaining. In the end, it seems that a firm's ability to implement some of these innovative processes (such as global idea sourcing) is highly contingent upon whether or not it has the internal culture and structural elements to support them.

Another great way to visualize Twitter

http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterSpectrum/TwitterSpectrum.html

Cool Twitter Visualization

http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php?q=mba,+great

Two interesting articles discussing the possible future uses of Facebook and Twitter

How Twitter is serving more as an information source for users and for those who want to follow well-known public figures rather than attracing users who actively will contribute through "tweets".

Facebook continues to grow and could causing "social currency" to transfer into real currency.

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/10/technology/twitter_users_active/index.htm?cnn=yes

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/ptech/03/04/cashmore.facebook/index.html

An old article but talks about similar things and trends what Akhilesh had said....

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=742913

Facebook & Twitter are stressing me out! Real life lessons

My husband's company recently ran an ad that some construed as offensive. The creator of the ad has done ads for them for about 20 years, and has considerable creative license, and therefore my husband--who is technically responsible for their ads--never saw it before it ran. It was published several days ago, and I hadn't heard much about it, but then last night there was a news story on local TV, and today people are tweeting about it and ranting about it on Facebook. My poor husband is very stressed about it--people are calling to yell at him--and it's stressing me out too! As if I didn't have enough things to stress about...

So my natural release is to post on my Carlson IT blog, right? Well, it certainly touches on some of the points that our IT Management class is trying to get at. You mean something for one audience but it can quickly and easily get in front of lots of other people, who might not see the message you intended (the ad was supposed to be funny, but of a certain type of humor; the writer is a wonderful person and did not mean to offend).

On the other hand, any forum where people complain is also available to make apologies and explanations, which is what the company has been doing. I checked out their Facebook fan page, and it seemed to me that there were as many people defending the business as there were condemning it. And, as one commenter noted, many people had become fans of the business simply so they could complain.

So, we worry about what effects all of this publicity will have on business, but I'm trying to be reassured by the adage that "no news is bad news." We'll see what effect, if any, there is. I think there are still 2 more lessons here: one, that it probably seems like more people are "talking" about it than actually are, because you can "hear" more of them; and, two, that it may disappear as quickly as it started. We have pretty short attention spans these days.

Measuring Twitter Counts to Gauge Attention

Some students have been asking about how to quantify the attention something (say an artist such as Taio Cruz) is receiving on Twitter. Fortunately, there are some third part applications that work of the global Twitter feed and can give us good proxies. One such website is http://www.twitterstats.net. Type in a keyword such as a name of an artist and it will give you the number of Tweets in the last 24 hours that contain that keyword. Also gives hourly trends but thats probably too fine a level of granularity for our class project. The total number of tweets should serve as a good predictor, especially going by the HP project cited earlier in this blog.

What other uses can you put this to?

Today's guest speaker is Akhilesh Tripathi of Tata Consultancy Services. He'll be talking about the origin, current status and future of global sourcing of IT and ITes

Tenflix Real Life Example

This article contends that a Twitter prediction model is better than current projection systems for box office sales! Thought it was interesting given how closely related it is to our group project: http://www.fastcompany.com/1604125/twitter-predicts-box-office-sales-better-than-anything-else

Hot off the press -- Sloan article on online reputation systems

Here is an interesting article by Boston University colleague (and co-author:-) Chris Dellarocas on the role of online reputation systems in designing social web platforms.

Check it out. I was aware that companies use twitter as a touch point for customers, but didn't think about it as a use for keeping employees constantly updated. I am slightly awed and slightly disturbed. The chains of social media and the chains of employment braided together into one unbreakable . . . chain, I suppose.

http://mashable.com/2008/09/30/enterprise-microblogging/

Friedman on innovation

Can the US create better policy for granting citizenship to immigrant entrepreneurs?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04friedman.html

Cloud Computing Security Concerns

Security concerns for one of the hottest trends in the IT world....

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/12/cloud.computing.security/index.htm

T-Paw in Your Face(book)!

It looks like our governor is trying to capitalize on social media (at least in terms of political capital). He held a town hall meeting on Facebook yesterday, in which he announced his endorsements for some candidates. I'm sure everyone is shocked to hear that I had homework and was unable to attend, but there were about 1000 people "there." Article on Politico here: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35280.html

Tim Pawlenty's Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/timpawlenty

Sharing vs. your privacy on Facebook

Interesting information regarding how facebook stores and provides our private information to other users and outside vendors.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/ptech/04/01/facebook.developers.privary/index.html

Keys to Successful Global Sourcing

Interesting article about how to make sure companies are successful as they use global sourcing to gain a competitive advantage in the market place.

http://www.accenture.com/Global/Research_and_Insights/Outlook/By_Issue/Y2007/BoldNewGlobalSourcing.htm

More "Ignite" Presentations

All - We did a little work with Ignite presentations in Toby's corporate ventures class - here is another resources you can use: http://pecha-kucha.org/

Business Schools Respond to Demand for Use of Social Media

Business schools are taking note of the importance of social media, pretty interesting:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/education/31iht-riedmba.html

Privacy and Tracking

As my team started working on data collection for the social media modelling project, I thought... hmmm... seems like there is a A LOT of data out there that people might not want to share. Apparently people have thought about that.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/03/31/ars.cloud.law/index.html

This article in AdWeek talks about a new metric for measuring the return of online advertising. Sounds complicated...http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2010/03/30/Gawkers-New-Online-Ad-Metric-Branded-Traffic.aspx

UGC Article

Here is a short but worthwhile article on UHG and some things to keep in mind when deciding how much credibility to give its predictive powers - or even when you decide how seriously to take it. We take what we want from it most of the time - call it self-serving bias if you want (thanks Prof Leroy) but remember to be conscious of the voice of the contributor.

http://mobilemarketingnews.com/?p=12

Influencers/UGC/Social Media

Interesting and quick article with some good stats on social media. Enjoy.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007600

Submit questions for global sourcing guest speaker

I've created and seeded Wikis on both the sections' Moodle -- April 6, 2010 section. Please use this space to suggest questions for our guest speaker Akhilesh Tripathi, Country-head TCS Canada.

ERP Implementation at Cargill - MISRC presents John Geisler

MISRC PRESENTS:

Management Information Systems Research Center (MISRC) Seminar Series located in the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota Presents:
Title:The Tartan Transformation at Cargill
Speaker: John Geisler, Corporate Vice President, Cargill, Incorporated

Date: Friday, April 30, 2010

Time: Check-In 8:00 AM, Seminar 8:30 AM - 11:15 AM

Location: Carlson School of Management 2-206, 2nd floor Directions from the 19th Ave. Parking ramp-Proceed through the skyway from the ramp (3rd floor of the ramp) and continue into the Carlson School around the corner towards the right (entrance from the skyway-3rd floor is the entrance to the 2nd floor of the Carlson School) and a short way down the hallway 2-206 is the 1st door on the right.

Registration: http://www.misrc.umn.edu/registration/

Seminar page: http://www.misrc.umn.edu/seminars/2010-04-30/

Calendar page: http://www.misrc.umn.edu/calendar/

Parking page: http://www.misrc.umn.edu/parking/

Abstract

Cargill, an international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services, is ready for big change. Already a market leader with 159,000 employees and $116 billion in revenue, Cargill is taking a bold, well-planned step to achieve its strategic objectives and growth aspirations. Through Tartan, Cargill will connect 80 business units in 68 countries under a common business process and governance model enabled by SAP and other technologies.
This keynote address features John Geisler, corporate vice president and Tartan Leader, to highlight lessons learned after the first two years of this decade-long journey and how Cargill will sustain this change.

Presenter

John Geisler serves as corporate vice president with responsibilities for Cargills Global Food Ingredient businesses. His role as a Cargill corporate vice president is to focus on leveraging knowledge, perspectives and experience to make connections across the Cargill portfolio of businesses and its people.

Geisler joined Cargill in 1978 and held a number of positions in Cargills wheat milling business until he was named country manager of Cargills operations in Thailand in 1993. In 1996 he returned to Minneapolis and soon was named President of Cargills worldwide dry milling division and executive supervisor of its worldwide malting business.

He is currently deeply involved in the Tartan project, which is a major corporate undertaking to improve and redesign the key business processes we use to run and manage our businesses and to make them common across Cargill. It is also to improve how we capture and maintain our critical business information, the standardization of key Cargill data as well as to simplify and consolidate our portfolio of software applications, and upgrade the technology that supports them so we have the right infrastructure to support our business for 2015 and beyond.

In addition to his Cargill responsibilities, Geisler serves on the boards of Holy Family Catholic High School in Victoria, MN and the Malt-O-Meal Company.Geisler graduated from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in June 1978 with a bachelor's degree in business administration.

Webcast Details
If you wish to ask the presenter questions you can submit your questions by e-mailing misrc@umn.edu or by using the built-in Ask feature of Mediasite.

Detailed webcast information will be sent to all webcast registrants prior to the event.

Additional information regarding MISRC seminars and events, including directions and parking, presenter's slides (if available), and the event calendar, can be found at: http://www.misrc.umn.edu/
Questions or comments?

Management Information Systems Research Center
Phone: 612-625-0862
Fax: 612-626-1600
misrc@umn.edu
http://www.misrc.umn.edu/

Here is another article surrounding how to measure the "ROI" of social media. Again, this is a huge issue on everybody's mind.

http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2010/03/26/how-del-monte-foods-finds-social-media-success/

Understanding and managing social media is a big deal for managers right now. Here is a relevant article that may be good for any group that is looking at social media for the mini-wiki project.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304434404575149883850508158.html?mod=dist_smartbrief

Pricing Digital Media

Turns out that pricing in the digital domain still has some kinks to work out. Check out this short article on the results of Apple's decision to allow music studios to set their own price (instead of "everything is 99 cents").

Am I alone in understanding that just because you CAN communicate something doesn't mean you SHOULD. The same technologies that will make us more productive can also have plenty of negative consequences.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704896104575140361533549880.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_lifestyle

In response to new rules, GoDaddy to stop registering domain names in China

Looks like other companies are following Google's lead in China.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/24/AR2010032401543.html

Want to learn more about the biggest global ERP roll-out happening currently? - April 30, 2010 - MISRC presents John Geisler of Cargill on Project Tartan http://ping.fm/9EAZW

Posterous -- Post content online using email

Came across Posterous.com. Seems like a super easy way to post all kinds of content online and synch up multiple social media platforms. Not sure whether the Facebook linkage is at the Fan Page level or at the user account level. Hopefully, the former...

Twitter site planning to capitalize on microblogging

Twitter is planning to develop a business model to start making money.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/25/coming-soon-twitters-business-model/?mod=rss_WSJBlog&mod=

Not as productive as we think?

Being connected is no longer good enough for creating value for US businesses...

http://www.nytimes.com/external/gigaom/2010/03/25/25gigaom-sweden-rocks-and-the-us-drops-in-tech-productivit-75780.html

An interesting article from this month's Fast Company regarding how technology is influencing educational reform. Anybody doing educational pioneers or planning to interview for a position with them might enjoy this read....

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/144/a-is-for-app.html

The Value of Time

Pages 23-25 in "Wired for Innovation" mention using time as a way to measure activity not captured in traditional economic metrics; this brought to mind the work of feminist economists (e.g. Marilyn Waring: "Counting for Nothing"), who have called for decades for alternative ways of measuring activity. In many less-developed countries, the majority of women are not in the workforce but there is certainly value in the time they spend preparing food, cleaning and raising children, but this is not captured in measurements like GDP. The difficulties in measuring the value added by technological advancements was an unexpected parallel to some of my earlier studies.

Hmm, who reviews the reviewers? -- Yelp in trouble http://ping.fm/lVybS

At the request of some students, created an optional group Wiki for the major project..

Kurt Vonnegut -- Writing with Style

One of the many benefits of meeting and exchanging syllabii with interesting colleagues such as Prof. Mike Smith in places such as CMU. One gets exposed on how to communicate key ideas to students in simple terms.


Here are Vonnegut's seven deceptively simple principles:
- Find a subject you care about.
- Do not ramble, though.
- Keep it simple.
- Have the guts to cut.
- Sound like yourself.
- Say what you mean to say.
- Pity the readers.

Ref: Kurt Vonnegut on Writing With Style

Added article b) for the 3/23 class on Moodle

Invited section 2 to co-author the class blog http://ping.fm/YGAUG

Just invited section 1 students to co-author http://ping.fm/NwtjA Will invite sec 2 students in a couple of days

Influence or homophily?

It's hard to attend a serious academic conference these days and not find somebody attempting to understand better whether how (in a causal way) people participating in social networks influence others. For instance, if you post a positive Facebook update about a product or service, does that cause your friends to adopt it? The key challenge is always separating out the effects of influence versus that of homophily. In the latter people adopt similar things because they have similar preferences, and not necessarily because of the social network based influence.

Check out this interesting study that attempts to isolate these effects in a social contagion game.

Do you think this study suffers from a similar issue?

The Internet of Things

A nice precursor to the Winter BI conference in Utah, this new McKinsey Quarterly article talks about how the "Internet" is now being embedded into "things" such as micro-cameras that explore the digestive track or in Zipcars (a highly IT savvy car-sharing company). http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_Internet_of_Things_2538

Off to REI-SLC to replace a damaged ski pole!

MBA 6240 groups will be along the lines assigned by the MBA office. You do not have to worry about forming your own groups. I'll Moodle..

Pandora -- the music industry

Saw this piece http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/technology/08pandora.html?8dpc in the NYTimes today. We will be discussing the IT influenced disruption and the subsequent re-crafting of the music industry mid April.

Just a reminder to MBA 6240 students. Please buy the Brynjolfsson and Saunders book prior to the beginning of the class. The Amazon link is http://ping.fm/Bf3Gz

MBA 6240 Syllabus

The draft class syllabus is now available on Moodle. The course-pack should be available shortly, if it is not already in the bookstore.

Ping.fm test to post to the class blog, twitter and FB page in one click of the mouse

Blog Twitter Connection

This blog is now connected to the class Twitter page http://twitter.com/CsomITCore. Posts made here get updated every 30 minutes to Twitter.

Welcome to the Core IT MBA Course at Carlson

We will be using this blog:

1. Extend the class discussion beyond the walls of the class
2. Get inputs from and interact with experts outside the class, including case protagonists, industry folks and other faculty colleagues
3. See the value of increased information flows and IT innovation in action

You will also find us on Facebook and Twitter.