Reality Check

TweetClouds, Twubble, & a FB/Twitter App

For any twitter folks out there, here are a few links that are pretty cool.

(1) TweetCloud: This creates a cloud of all your twitters - See HERE for mine.

(2) Bob Lee (better known as Crazy Bob) from Google created Twubble, an app that can help you find more folks you may know on Twitter based on your friends. I am pretty sure it maps off of Google's Social Graph, which is pretty neat.

What I'd like to see? An app that utilizes the Open APIs that Facebook and Twitter have so that I can figure out which of my 500 FB friends use Twitter. Anyone interested in building this for Web 2.0 Expo? If so, I'll buy you a beer next week. If you use Social Graph to build it too, that would be pretty neat... is it possible? /LC

Be a part of our Web 2.0 Expo Talk - you ask, we'll answer. Anything. Yep, Really.

I'm moderating a discussion (debate!) between Stephen O'Grady and Anant Jhingran at Web 2.0 Expo next Thursday, April 24th, titled, "Creativity v. Control: The Debate Continues - Can Enterprises Have Both?"

Background here: Anant thinks that enterprise customers need more control in their Web 2.0 products (which I too, have witnessed w/ customer visits) and Steve believes that more focus needs to be on the creativity that each individual brings to the enterprise through new Web 2.0 style tools, and that the benefits really lies here (which I also am a firm believer of). That said, I'm not giving justice to either stance w. this, so ck out the links below for more detail.

Anant's stand is here.

Steve's is here.

I evidently get to hold the gavel (or the mic) for this debate (which is usually a show in itself, pls laugh at my jokes, but forewarning, I can be pretty damn sarcastic) but before I create my questions, I wanted to ask you guys - what are the tough questions you want to ask? Anything goes here, so let me know - how does this work in your company? Do you think it should be more focused on the creativity new tools have brought to the table, or control that IT wants over this data? Will this affect how data is freed up to be used in mashup and situational apps? If you're a CIO or IT leader, what is your stance on this?

Here's a quick session abstract:

Creativity is at the heart of Web 2.0, and has been the key factor in growing this phenomenon on the Web and throughout the enterprise for the past four years. With enterprise organizations adopting Web 2.0 (coined Enterprise 2.0), there is a new level of “control” that customers and users may want to include in their applications, while preserving the creativity of the application users and creators. But the question remains: is control stifling creativity? Will Enterprise 2.0 succeed if employees are forced to comply with certain rules and regulations of the enterprise? Who wins here, and is it possible for both to live within the enterprise ecosystem?

This topic will be presented by Anant Jhingran, CTO of Information Management at IBM, and Stephen O’Grady, a top industry analyst with Redmonk. Topics include specific enterprise and customer scenarios, examples of emerging creativity with Enterprise 2.0, and views on specific ideas around control with Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Also included in this discussion will be security, governance, and other key issues that are related to this debate. The audience will be asked to voice their opinions on this topics at the end of the presentation.

/LC

IBM Mashup Center: Insider Details Revealed... (shhh)

Yes, I know you can't download IBM Mashup Center yet, but you will be able to very soon, I promise. I've been heads-down working with our awesome dev teams getting this ready for beta, but unfortunately, we're just not ready for a public beta _quite_ yet. So, here's a deck that I pulled together that I just got clearance to blog about today that reveals some additional details of Mashup Center, Lotus Mashups, and InfoSphere MashupHub -

Yesterday we formally announced "IBM Mashup Center," an end-to-end solution for organizations looking to Web 2.0-enable their existing infrastructure as well as build mashups and situational apps for internal and external use. The key here is that the product is actually simple enough for business users to utilize... (I, for example, have built a few "HelloWorld" apps in my day, and I can use the transformation capabilities, which is probably the most difficult - if you want to call it that - feature).

Here's a brief deck that overviews IBM Mashup Center (with some details in here that weren't revealed in yesterday's PR or the IMPACT presentation) for you guys to check out. Specifically, this digs into a lot of the features that InfoSphere MashupHub has - like transformation capabilities, connectors to existing systems, catalog features, etc. It also digs a bit into Lotus Mashups, which is another key product we partnered with to create Mashup Center.

If you recall from my previous posts, MashupHub is not only built with an APP based open API structure, but it was also built with the idea that not only mashups could consume the information created in the Hub, but things like mobile devices, other apps, etc can consume this information as well. More on that later...

With no further ado, here's the deck. Questions? Find me on Twitter or ping me direct.

| View | Upload your own

I love it when people "Get it." Mike Ferguson, you are my new hero.

I love that feeling, when you are talking to someone and the light bulb finally goes on. Even if it's something you have been talking about and feel like no one gets, and then finally, BAM. You literally can see it happen.

Today was one of those days. We've been talking about MashupHub (officially it's IBM InfoSphere MashupHub now, but we'll forgo the corporate garb here) for awhile and its capabilities, but to be honest we've really been limiting its capabilities to what it will be able to do with Lotus Mashups and a few other products out there - which is awesome stuff, don't get me wrong. But we've got additional plans, right? We do have plans to release a standalone MashupHub (can't comment on that date yet, sorry). And man, Mike Ferguson just nailed them today. He gets it, and I LOVE IT.

Mike has been writing an ongoing article I've been following on mashup technologies, titled, "Web 2.0 and Business Intelligence: How do they fit together?" Now, I've never met Mike (I don't think...) and I opened my reader today to see his article, focusing on mashup products, but specifically calling out MashupHub, and the product formerly known as QEDWiki (these capabilities will be available in Lotus Mashups VERY soon).

Mike writes about MashupHub capabilities here, and says (I have highlighted the important parts):

This server [MashupHub]takes data feeds and mashes them together to provide richer information. Note here that mashups separate the mashing of data from the presentation of data. Therefore, the data can be presented using a variety of mechanisms once it has been mashed.... Various output formats can be rendered by a mashup server (e.g., RSS, ATOM or even XML, which can be passed to browser side JavaScript and XSLT). I see no reason why this output could not be made available to portals, Office applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS feeds), wikis and other applications. Therefore, this means that business intelligence can be combined with other information without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

There are a few key points here that Mike hits on that we've been thinking a lot about:

(1) The separation of the mashing of data and the presentation of the mashed data, which relates to how the information can be output.

(2) The different applications and devices that can consume this mashed data.

(3) Information can be combined together without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

(4) Also relevant here is our Open API strategy, which David Boloker and I spoke about in March.

Below is the diagram and an excerpt from Mike's article, but be sure to read it as well. It's a terrific read, end to end, but kudos to you Mike. You made my day. /LC

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The other way to create mashups is the buy option (i.e., to buy a mashup server from vendors like Kapow and IBM). Other mashup editors include Microsoft PopFly, Yahoo Pipes and Google Mashup Editor. Also, EII vendors such as Denodo are also pushing into this space. Figure 3 shows an example of the IBM Mashup Hub. This server takes data feeds and mashes them together to provide richer information. Note here that mashups separate the mashing of data from the presentation of data. Therefore, the data can be presented using a variety of mechanisms once it has been mashed. In the case of the IBM Mashup Server shown in Figure 3, the data is presented to the user using a presentation component called QEDWiki. When I first looked at this product all I could think about was that it looked similar to ETL workflows. Essentially, data such as RSS feeds and XML data from remote web services is taken in by the mashup server, any necessary filters applied, and the ‘mashed’ output made available for presentation.

 

Various output formats can be rendered by a mashup server (e.g., RSS, ATOM or even XML, which can be passed to browser side JavaScript and XSLT). I see no reason why this output could not be made available to portals, Office applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS feeds), wikis and other applications. Therefore, this means that business intelligence can be combined with other information without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

(http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/7168)