Toluu

I'm Not Actually a Geek

Observations on technology and business from someone who should know better

My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 070309Today

From the home office in Wasilla, Alaska…

#1: This tweet about some guy that didn’t get picked for some winery’s social media job is getting a lot of Digg interest: http://bit.ly/1vhvWM

#2: “#1 factor preventing full adoption of social media is the lack of executive trust in employees” http://bit.ly/2FbMQY by @CarolineDangson

#3: New Spigit blog post: Is Enterprise 2.0 Just for Knowledge Workers? http://bit.ly/3pwQVF #e20

#4: Reading: Are You Encouraging Innovation? http://bit.ly/Hh5U5 by EMC�

Seesmic’s Evolution Is the Latest Example of Innovation in ActionJune 29

Seesmic was started as a video conversation platform, a video twitter. The idea is that people interact via videos instead of the written word. Industry leader Loic Le Meur is the founder of Seesmic.

As I’ve written here before in one of my first blog posts, online video is a tough nut to crack. That apparently was hurting Seesmic’s video conversation efforts. As Allen Stern first noted, Seesmic is now de-emphasizing the video platfrom, putting its resources into its growing desktop client to manage Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Loic explains why:

Just because video is too narrow. Very few people do it the way you do. But I agree. I love it. The quality of friendship that were created by the site are just amazing. Just very few people do it. And so if I keep focusing only on that it’s a sure path to failur

My Ten Favorite Tweets – Week Ending 062609June 27

From the home office in Buenos Aires…

#1: Early criticism of veracity of MJ story was that it came from TMZ. Does TMZ misreport or lie? Or do people just not like what they cover?

#2: Reading – How to approach open innovation: With lessons from P&G http://bit.ly/EjcSp by @lindegaard #innovation

#3: “As strongly as you & a few like-minded people feel the impacts of info overload, a lot more people just don’t care.” http://bit.ly/9OnX4

#4: CLEAR, the service that used biometrics to fast-track you thru airport security, is no more

FriendFeed adds file attachments. Next up, Google Wave?June 25

FriendFeed just took a fairly significant step forward. And in doing so, I wonder if they have an ultimate destiny as some sort of business platform.

FriendFeed now supports file attachments. When you post a new entry directly to FriendFeed, there is now an option to Add: Files. Here’s a test post I did:

You can see the PDF attachment, along with the file size. From an extended conversation by the community with the FriendFeed team about this release, here are some other details:

• Documents are virus-scanned
• The amount you upload will be governed by undisclosed limits per file, and in aggregate over a rolling 24-hour period, but most people won’t hit the limits
• Videos aren’t supported with this release
• Audio files are limited to 3 per day

Last December, I wrote If You Had to Choose One Form of Digital

Google Gets Serious about InnovationJune 24

Yeah, that’s funny to say, isn’t it? Google is getting serious about innovating. “Serious” as in determined not to miss out out good opportunities. From the Wall Street Journal last week:

Google has recently started internal “innovation reviews,” formal meetings where executives present product ideas bubbling up through their divisions to Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and other top executives.

“We were concerned that some of the biggest ideas were getting squashed,” said Schmidt.

Google Searches for Ways to Keep Big Ideas at Home, Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009

Google is renowned for its innovation chops. The company consistently ranks among the Top 2 most innovative companies in Business Week’s annual survey. It’s not surprising. The ability of engineers to devote 20% of their work time to any side project of their choosing is one of the strongest statements about the importance of innovation in the world (the new United States CTO