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Did Oracle burst the enterprise 2.0 startup bubble?
Is the bubble about to burst for the startups shouting "enterprise 2.0" from the rooftops? TechCrunch50 and DEMO and Office 2.0 were full of young, eager companies with fun and frilly applications touting themselves as the next enterprise 2.0 heroes. Some offered white label social network applications and others offered cloud-based solutions, the latter of which didn't especially offer any security or scalability that would appeal to many businesses beyond their kin -- tiny startups and independent consultants. But now, with Oracle officially unveiling additional enterprise 2.0 applications and especially the buzz around Social CRM this week at its OpenWorld event, the goliath might be not only given these smaller companies a run for their money -- it might actually take their ...
Say goodbye to Yahoo! Mash
On today's web, so many social sites never get off the ground because users don't easily migrate from their online communities. As much as I want MySpace to die, people will still be using it as long as their friends are using it. Yahoo's mashup social network had a promising start, but it quickly dropped off. Almost a year ago, I wrote a post about how interactive it was, and how addicted I was to it. I remember going to the site 20 times a day because other people had the ability to update my profile page. I could drag around widgets and import feeds. I actually said, “It’s more mature than MySpace, more interactive than Virb, and more interesting than Facebook.” ...
Computer Time Can Stunt Teens, But Benefit Elderly
According to a noted neurobiologist, the rapid growth of computer technology is dividing humans into "digital natives" -- people who grew up using technology -- and "digital immigrants" -- people who started using technology later in life.That's the provocative suggestion of Dr. Gary Small, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and director of the UCLA Center on Aging, in his new book, iBrain: Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. Small coauthored the book with his wife, Gigi Vorgan, a former actress and Hollywood scriptwriter.Stunted Social DevelopmentAmong other things, Small argues that as children use technology throughout their development, they run the risk of stunting social development."There's a process in young people of pruning, meaning that a lot of the neural networks are kind of pruned away, are never used," Small told Canada's Globe and Mail. "Sixty percent of the brain synapses are pruned away during development. And the teenage brain is not as empathetic. Without the face-to-face time learning to read the subtle, nonverbal social cues, we are going to miss out on some of the empathy building that's traditionally learned during adolescence."The problem, Small suggested, is that when certain tasks are repeated, the neural pathways associated with those activities grow stronger, while less frequently used pathways get neglected and grow weaker.The goal, he said, is to help children and teens strike a balance between technology use and social activities. He offered a familiar prescription: "I say turn off the computers and the PDAs at a certain time every night and enjoy your family, your friends."More Computer Time for the ElderlyIronically, the results of a study led by Small suggest that older Americans may benefit from more time at the computer. A group of 24 healthy people ranging in age from 55 to 76 were asked to...
Revolution? Please, Not Again!
I am appalled at what has been happening in the economy lately. Seems like we are moving from one crisis management to another. First it was the oil price increase crisis, now it s the credit markets crisis, while the oil crisis seems to have disappeared. There are revolutionary approaches to solving these crises being thrown around very lightly and carelessly these days: nationalization of certain industries, redistribution of wealth and other extremist approaches. Haven t we learned from history? Don t we know by now that revolutions do not work? It s been proven time and time again in Soviet Union, China, Cuba and many other nations that revolutions only lead to disasters: terror, holocausts, starvation, turning societies and social structures upside down, ...
And the Winner Is…
Last week, the finalists of the BOSS Mashable Challenge were announced and readers had a chance to vote for their favorites. Mashable has now announced the lucky winners. But first, here's a reminder of the finalists: TuneChimp - Music search socialmention - People/social networking search CopyrightSpot - Original content search KallOut - Selection-based search PopGist - Discussion/topic aggregation Surf Canyon - Real-time results re-ranking Tall Street - Web search using community voting iMusicMash - Social music app for iPhone Our favorite aspect of the Challenge was seeing such a wide variety of mashups. Developers submitted apps built on a bunch of platforms - OS, browser, web and iPhone. And while a lot of the mashups focused on tweaking the current web search paradigm, many were highly specialized (such as CopyrightSpot) or vertically focused (e.g. PlayerSearch). A handful of apps even focused on new ranking algorithms (e.g. Surf Canyon).Drumroll please...After 5 days of voting and thousands of votes, the community has spoken. We're happy to announce that KallOut is the first prize winner and socialmention takes the runner-up prize. Mashable will be profiling KallOut and its developer soon, so keep your eyes peeled for a post.
We'd like to thank Mashable and all the developers who participated in the challenge. Congratulations to KallOut and socialmention!The BOSS Team
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