Planet Enterprise 2.0

• A Practical Guide to GPL Compliance - Software Freedom Law Center
  

  

  This is a guide to effective compliance with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and related licenses. In accordance with the Software Freedom Law Center’s (SFLC’s) philosophy of assisting the community with GPL compliance cooperatively, this guide focuses on avoiding compliance actions and minimizing the negative impact when enforcement actions occur. It introduces and explains basic legal concepts related to the GPL and its enforcement by copyright holders. It also outlines business practices and methods that lead to better GPL compliance. Finally, it recommends proper post-violation responses to the concerns of copyright holders.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: open source, licenses, gpl

I have been looking for a system to manage passwords for a long time now and I have tried a number of methods and products, but they have all fallen short one way or another. The biggest challenge I have with passwords are:

• How do I safely manage them across all of my computers?
• How do I safely share some of them with my wife?
• Can this be simple to use?

Most solutions on the market today fall short by not meeting the first two requirements. They assume the user only needs to manage passwords on one computer. A few solutions meet the first two requirements but are still too complicated and, at a minimum, require cutting and pasting text between windows (if you have a product that requires cutting and pasting, well then go back to the drawing board).

To make a long story short, I am now using a solution that is working quite well. It is based on RoboForm (which, by itself, is very good at managing passwords) and Windows Live FolderShare (a free file synchronization service). Here is how it works:

• RoboForm detects when a password is entered through a web browser. It's browser integration is very good at detecting web forms asking for login information and even works with Basic Auth (this is when the browser prompts you for a username and password rather than being a form on a web page). However, login forms in some sites that make heavy use of Javascript are not detected by Roboform.
• After I submit the login information RoboForm intercepts it, encrypts it, and stores it in a "Passcard" file. This is a critical point. Roboform does not store login information in a database record . A separate file is used for each Passcard.
• I synchronize Passcards between computers with FolderShare. It does this by synchronizing the folders storing Passcard files. Add, modify, or delete a Passcard on one computer, that change gets reflected on all the other computers. If Roboform used a database this type of simple synchronization would not be possible.
• Later, when I return to the site (on any of the synchronized computers), RoboForm detects this as a place it can enter login information and lights up a button on it's browser toolbar. Clicking this button tells RoboForm to fill in the login information.
• A password is used as part of the encrypting and decrypting processes for the stored Passcard. RoboForm uses a single "Master Password" for all Passcards. However, you can setup different profiles, each managing a different set of Passcards and using a  different master password. These profiles are stored in separate folders.
• Anytime you access a Passcard (like when creating a new Passcard or entering login information on a form) RoboForm will need the Master Password. However, RoboForm can cache the Master Password for a short period of time. I encrypt Passcards with AES encryption but RC6 and BlowFish are also options. Of course, its a good practice to use a long passphrase to make it more difficult to decrypt should the Passcard fall into the wrong hands.

Because Roboform uses the filesystem to store login information it is much easier to move this information around. For example, each Passcard is a file and each RoboForm profile is a folder. Also, by encrypting login information with a high-strength algorithm there is less concern about completely securing access to the Passcard. Although I wouldn't make them available in a public location, it could take years for someone to brute-force decrypt a Passcard encrypted with a long passphrase.

FolderShare does a good job synchronizing files and folders between computers. Combining this with Roboform's browser integration and this setup works quite well.

• The Wisdom of Clouds: The Cloud Computing Bill of Rights
  

  

  This post is an attempt to capture many of the core rights that both customers and vendors of the cloud should come to expect, with the goal of setting that baseline for future Cloud Oriented Architecture discussions.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: cloud computing, saas

• Microsoft Enviroment video reveals datacenter server numbers and power consumption? - istartedsomething
  

  

  Assuming these statistics are real and accurate, then at the growth rate of 10,000 servers a month Microsoft should be at 218,000 servers at the end of August 08.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: microsoft, cloud computing, saas, statistics

• Browser Market Share Study
  

  

  The Browser Market Share and Operating System Market Share White Paper data is by month starting in September 1997 through the August 2008

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: browser, statistics, internet explorer, firefox

• iPhone Increases Market Share in Mobile Browser Wars According to StatCounter | Reuters
  

  

  Apple has increased its share of the Internet browser market in the US by 64% between December and March according to StatCounter, which provides organisations and individuals with a free website visitor statistics tool.(1) Globally iPhone/iTouch has more than doubled its share of the Internet browser market from 0.03% to 0.08%

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: browser, statistics, iphone, mobile, nokia

• Market share for browsers, operating systems and search engines
  

  

  About

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  Tags: browser, operating system, search engine, statistics

• The Future of the Web | Collaboration 2.0 | ZDNet.com
  

  

  Parallax, a novel browsing interface designed by David Huynh to manipulate Freebase, shows how contextual connections can be made with machine readable data to provide a much richer results set which in turn can spawn fascinating visual representations, and more.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: freebase, facets, connections, parallax

• Roy Fielding's OSCON talk about Open Architecture
  

  

  Day's Chief Scientist Roy Fielding gave a talk about Open Architecture at this year's OSCON. Roy specifically looks at Peyman Oreizy's thesis titled "Open Architecture Software: A Flexible Approach to Decentralized Software Evolution". Find the slides below:

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  Tags: open architecture, sling, jcr, firefox, eclipse, osgi

• Enter Content Here: CMS Deployment Patterns
  

  

  While "baking and frying" does a great job of describing how a system is designed, there are lots of slight variations on how to implement a WCMS that are repeatable enough that they deserve names too. Here are a few.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: wcms, drupal, fatwire, parbaked, mvc, patterns

• Ray Ozzie, Chief Software Architect
  

  

  Services Platform presentation

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  Tags: email, microsoft, cloud computing, saas

• E-mail carriers deliver gifts of nifty features to lure, keep users - USATODAY.com
  

  

  In February, the most recent statistics available, they had 256.2 million and 254.6 million users, respectively, according to researcher ComScore Media Metrix. Google is No. 3, with 91.6 million users. No. 4 AOL, the company that first popularized Internet mail in the 1990s, has 48.9 million.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: email, webmail, statistics, microsoft, yahoo, google

• Hitwise Intelligence - Bill Tancer - US: Microsoft and Yahoo!: Putting the Offer in Perspective
  

  

  In the table below, we've listed where Google, Yahoo! and MSN properties appear within the top five positions by industry category for U.S. Internet visits for the week ending January 26, 2008.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: email, webmail, yahoo, microsoft, google, statistics

• Email and webmail user statistics
  

  

  There are no official statistics comparing the user numbers of the different web-based email address providers. Nevertheless, there is enough information available to make some clear statements about the relative popularity of different services. The leader is Yahoo! Mail, closely followed by Microsoft's Hotmail (now called Windows Live Hotmail). Thereafter it gets more uncertain. Gmail is often cited as the third "biggie," but the number of active accounts still falls well short of either of its two largest competitors.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: email, webmail, microsoft, google, yahoo, statistics

• Exchange API-spotting : Exchange Developer Roadmap
  

  

  we can now ensure that all data access goes through a single business logic layer, the same business logic layer that Outlook Web Access, Exchange ActiveSync, Unified Messaging and many other Exchange components utilize. If you haven't already done so, we recommend that you use Exchange Web Services for new development that leverages Exchange.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: email, microsoft, exchange, exchange-web-services, ews

• Drupal Licensing FAQ | drupal.org
  

  

  The Drupal Association has provided this FAQ to help clarify legal matters surrounding the licensing of the Drupal Project and the GNU General Public License

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  Tags: drupal, open source, licenses

• Enterprise 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » Today’s Intranet RSS: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
  

  

  to the corporate worker, there is little difference between today’s RSS aggregator and an email program. In some cases, they are one and the same; Outlook 2007, for example, will also be an RSS aggregator. As more intranet applications provide RSS feeds, we will be processing more messages. This will just add to the already insane amount of email. More information in an already-crowded inbox will not be welcomed by anybody other than the few who are proficient in automating their message filtering. Everyone else may just say "No Thanks" to RSS syndication and write it off as another source of information glut.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: rss, outlook, cannell, information-glut

• Many degrees of multi-tenancy | Software as Services | ZDNet.com
  

  

  Three levels of multi-tenancy: 1. shared schema, 2. replicated shared-schema 3. no shared schema

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  Tags: saas, multi-tenancy

• AT&T Yahoo! Help - High Speed Internet Speed Test
  

  

  This test measures the throughput of the connection from your computer to our network location.

  Saved By: Larry Cannell | View Details | Give Thanks

  Tags: bandwidth, speedtest

Matt Asay says he doesn't think he would have liked attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this past week because:

"It would appear that the Enterprise 2.0 world is still recycling the same froth in an attempt to stand out."

and

"everyone is showing the right slideware and demos, but few, if any, really know how to put it all to productive business use."

His conclusion is based on what he read and heard from friends who were "walking around the exhibition floor."

To be fair, conclusions like this coming from Alfresco are understandable given that (along with being the sponsor of the Alfresco open source project) they are, after all, a software vendor and vendors measure the success of a conference on what happens on the exhibit floor. However, there is much more to a conference, especially the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, than what you see on the exhibit floor.

There were a number of good things being presented and discussed at the conference about early Enterprise 2.0 deployments. In addition, Matt would have been pleased to learn that many of these were done using open source software. But these details came out in the conference itself (you know, in the sessions, the primary reason people pay to attend conferences).

First, there was a terrific session on open source Enterprise 2.0 software led by John Eckman. Participating in the panel were John Newton from Alfresco, Jeff Whatcott from Acquia/Drupal, and Bob Bickel from Ringside Networks. Kathleen Reidy posted a great summary of this session. If you stopped there you might still have thought there was little being said about open source at the conference. But, there's more.

The stars of this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference were case studies of real-world implementations. Open source shined in almost all of these presentations .

• A keynote address by Sean Dennehy and Don Burke from the CIA told us about Intellipedia a wikipedia-style site used by the intelligence community. Sean and Don didn't use Powerpoint to deliver their presentation. Rather, they authored their content in Intellipedia and showed that on the big screen. Although not mentioned (or perhaps mentioned only in passing), this was clearly running MediaWiki.
• In his presentation Ned Lerner, a Director at Sony Entertainment, made some pointed remarks about how open source is important to their strategy. Ned said "open source is a safety net" because they can understand the software and fix it if necessary and that they had experienced "good results with open source."
• In Simon Revell's presentation (Simon is a manager at Pfizer) his screen shots were showing web pages that were clearly based on Drupal (ok, not too many people would've noticed that). If you don't believe me then look at this SlideShare presentation about DIGWWW. In addition, Simon referenced Pfizerpedia which, by the way, was running...can you guess?...yes! MediaWiki.

Not to mention, the Ross Mayfield keynote where he talked about SocialCalc. There was also an open source project in the LaunchPad competition - Project SocialSite, an open source social networking project from Sun. Oh, btw, the LaunchPad site was running on Drupal.

So open source was all over the place at Enterprise 2.0. Maybe this is a case of open source just becoming essential plumbing and hardly being noticed. These examples could have been used by Matt in a blog post to illustrate how far open source has come in enterprises.

And one other thing to point out. In Matt's post he says this near the end:

Over the next year we're going to see the hype around Enterprise 2.0 reach a fever pitch, and many are going to be lost in disillusionment when it fails to turn to gold. However, in the mishmash there will be a few who finally figure it out, and the rest of the enterprise world will follow in due course.

The link in the above paragraph takes you to a CIO.com article about how Pete Fields of Wachovia justified a business case for Enterprise 2.0. Well, Matt may be upset to learn that Wachovia's business case justified a purchase of Microsoft SharePoint. But, you had to attend the Enterprise 2.0 Conference to learn that (and not just walk the exhibit floor). Pete Fields told us so in his Enterprise 2.0 keynote address :-)

In reflecting back on this week's second annual Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston I think what we saw addresses most of (Burton Group colleague) Craig Roth's points when he asked:

"I’m really holding out for the next E2.0 presentation that moves the concept forward, not just goes deeper or jumps on to a new set of technologies."

When Steve Wylie, Conference General Manager, started talking with Advisory Board members months ago about themes and keynotes he was most interested in telling Enterprise 2.0 stories from the trenches and this year's conference delivered on this vision.

Some observations and comments about the conference:

• Attendance was incredible. Interest in Enterprise 2.0 is clearly growing. I heard estimates as high as 1,400 people in attendance, which would be a 50% increase from last year.
• The "Rock Stars" of the show (a label given by Jessica Lipnack at the closing town hall meeting) were Sean Dennehy and Don Burke from the CIA. Their Intellipedia presentation was really good. The press and blog coverage is extensive.
• The Monday evening Cloud Computing session hosted by David Berlind was surprisingly good. I was afraid the topic might not interest the E2.0 crowd but the Harbor Ballroom was packed. The dialog between the vendors (Amazon Web Services, Google, SalesForce) and the enterprise customers on stage was informative, provocative, and entertaining.
• Tony Byrne's sessions about evaluating E2.0 tools had some really good practical advice.
• The Wednesday morning keynotes from end users were excellent and reflected Steve Wylie's vision for this year's conference. We heard from Pete Fields (Wachovia), Simon Revell (Pfizer), and Ned Lerner (Sony). Simon's frankness was refreshing, as were Ned's details.
• These three then joined Andrew McAfee, along with Sean Dennehy and Don Burke from the CIA, for a discussion about implementing Enterprise 2.0. The discussion highlighted the different paths each of them took and the challenges they are facing.
• Although I missed the session, we heard glowing reviews about Lockheed Martin's E2.0 success story at the closing town hall meeting. I am looking forward to seeing the slides.

David Sparks covered many of the sessions. His blog posts are summarized here. A personal favorite is this interview with the CIA guys.

Since tomorrow is the last day of this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference I thought it would be a good time to share an RSS feed that I created and have been testing for a few months. Planet Enterprise 2.0 is an aggregation of 43 RSS feeds, all from the blogs of Enterprise 2.0 thought-leaders. By subscribing to the Planet Enterprise 2.0 feed you will see a steady stream of posts from blogs that are interesting and insightful.

The feed is hosted by FeedBurner. You can subscribe to it here. The site aggregating all of the feeds is hosted under my personal cannell.org domain at planet.cannell.org. The list of feeds currently feeding Planet Enterprise 2.0 are listed on the site here.

Some things you may be interested in knowing about the Planet Enterprise 2.0 feed:

• planet.cannell.org (the website aggregating the feeds) is not indexed by search engines. Content aggregated on the site will not show up in search results as coming from planet.cannell.org.
• If you have a blog that you would like added to Planet Enterprise 2.0 then please send me a request at larry@cannell.org.
• My guidelines for adding feeds are simple. I add feeds that are related to Enterprise 2.0 and are interesting. I remove feeds if they don't have relevant content, are uninteresting, or contain blatant advertising.
• If you use a newsreader that supports Reading Lists (OPML) you can find this on the site here (although I only know of one news reader that supports reading lists and that is BlogBridge, please correct me if I am wrong).
• Why Planet Enterprise 2.0? Because I have seen other planet-type feeds and have found them very useful. More information about planet feed aggregation is at Wikipedia.

ACMEpedia = Wikis + Tags + Facets

Today at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference we saw a presentation from Pete Bell, Co-Founder of Endeca, called "ACMEpedia: Wikis, Tags, and Facets." As part of the Advisory Board I lobbied for a session like this and I am grateful for Pete being here.

Pete told us how Endeca applied their own "guided summarization" product to aggregate information from several sources and present it within an intuitive interface for employees to find information and learn about Endeca's business. The intranet site is called Endeca-pedia and it provides a functional view of corporate data and content coming from:

• Formal documents stored in eRoom and Alfresco
• Business process information stored in SalesForce and QuickArrow
• Informal knowledge stored in a Confluence wiki

It was interesting to see how this combination of structured and unstructured information can be navigated.

I'll post a link to the slides once they are available.

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this morning Ross Mayfield is announcing that SocialText is releasing a production version of SocialCalc, a multi-user web-enabled spreadsheet embedded within SocialText wikis. You may recall when Dan Bricklin announced some time ago that he was working with SocialText to make a commercial version of wikiCalc.

I had a chance to talk with Ross about it earlier and I have to say it looks impressive.

Excel may be the most used collaborative application in business today. We often don't think of Excel this way but many companies make critical business decisions based on data tracking, reporting, and modeling done through Excel. Often this work is done collaboratively among several people.

SocialCalc looks to provide a new approach to traditional Excel-based collaboration by embedding spreadsheet capabilities within SocialText wikis. This has the potential to enhance many existing collaborative spreadsheet scenarios and likely creates a whole new set of possibilities as well. Even a simple spreadsheet embedded within a wiki page benefits by gaining useful wiki features such as version control with rollback and functioning completely within a browser.

In addition, SocialCalc  has a number of options for referencing structured data stored elsewhere. For example, SocialCalc can reference named ranges in other spreadsheets and also query web services (check out this early screencast of wikicalc).

Although SocialCalc is not the first product to offer collaborative spreadsheet capabilities (SharePoint 2007 and even Hyperion Performance Management come to mind) but being embedded within a wiki makes it an interesting option for enterprises to consider.