Richard Filing

Australian Government and Web 2.0  Excerpt: The rise of new multimedia broadband technologies such as Web 2.0 bring a stream of digital innovations that are transforming the way people use the Internet and the way in which they communicate. Specifically, Web 2.0 provides amongst other things, real time interaction, democratized web spaces, user generated content and citizen journalism. People’s use of these new innovations is driving expectations for new approaches to the way government interact. Governments cannot ignore these changing social dynamics, especially in relation to citizen engagement.

Lynda M. Applegate from the Harvard Business School is spending the next 12 months looking at the role of disruptive change in kickstarting enterprise innovation.

Information Week with some lite case studies
Excerpt: Facebook and other social networks in the workplace can suck up employees’ time and worse. But managed right, they may be the next breakthrough in business collaboration.

Excerpt: …much of what you see and read about Ajax is not really Ajax; it’s Dynamic HTML, or DHTML. Ajax, in its proper sense, consists of a single JavaScript object called XMLHttpRequest. This class provides a background communication channel to a server and for the resulting response. Everything else, including drag-and-drop, DOM updates, styling, and all the other things that make everyone go “ohh and ahh”, is DHTML.
Ajax with Websphere Portal

Alex Iskold comprehensively tackles the slow implementation of the Semantic Web at Read/Write Web
Summary: The original vision of the semantic web as a layer on top of the current web, annotated in a way that computers can “understand,” is certainly grandiose and intriguing. Yet, for the past decade it has been a kind of academic exercise rather than a practical technology. This article explores why; and what we can do about it.

Web 2.0 techniques aren’t only for tech-drenched startups. The basic ideas can be applied by almost any company, even without using any Web 2.0 technology. Some of the core principles of Web 2.0 are:

1. Mix and Match: Data or applications can be combined in new ways to create new opportunities.
2. Distribute Widely: Instead of waiting for customers to come to you, release products or services where customers already are.
3. Enable, Don’t Control: Instead of forcing customers to do things a certain way, make it easy for them to do it in whatever way works best.

More from Susan Kuchinskas at BNET

Today the business world is undergoing a significant transformation thanks to a set of technologies collectively known as “Web 2.0.” Although it’s tempting to dismiss Web 2.0 as Silicon Valley hype, that would be a mistake. Web 2.0 represents an important step in the evolution of Internet-based tools, and in the years ahead, it’s likely to have a major impact on the way information is managed and distributed within your company.
Excerpt from Susan Kuchinskas BNET Web 2.0 Crash Course

Capgemini announced Monday an alliance with Google to support enterprise deployments of Google Apps Premier Edition, marking one of the largest channel partnerships to date for Google’s hosted, Web-based office productivity applications.
Read the Capgemini press release here