Blog has Moved

I have moved the Blog to http://chrissparshott.com.

I will put a redirect on this templaye soon but for now please go to http://chrissparshott.com.

Cheers
Chris

Lotus Foundations

I have a day job, its called Lotus Technical Sales for IBM New Zealand. as part of that day job I get to play around with a stack of software that people can guy and vast truck load of software that you can't - primarily research development.

IBM have released a new product this year called Lotus Foundations which I think is pretty cool in that it is a black boxed solution for Small and Medium businesses (SMBs). Luckily for me 99% of New Zealand has less than 100 employees so I think the product will rock!

At the moment we have a 30 day trial license available where you can download the code. The install code includes an ISO so yo ucan get on with installing the base operating system (Linux) and the capabilities of Email (with an outlook client), security services, backup services and Collaboration (IBM's OpenOffice Symphony). It is super cheap - approx $1500.

If anyoine out there is thinking of doing the download and building a vmware I have added a couple of videos that really helped me. I am also building a presentation to help which I will post on slideshare shortly.

The videos to help build a vm....

Adobe dabbles in video-object manipulation

My buddy sent me a link to this video which I thought was amazing. When you have finished watching it you will never trust video again!!

As I watch this video I was thinking augmented reality as there are some common themes such as creating content that is not real or has been modified to suit the audience.


Interactive Video Object Manipulation from Dan Goldman on Vimeo.

Rivers Run Red and Immersive Workspace

Following on from the previous blog post where I presented about Virtual worlds there was an exciting announcement around the release of a collaboration platform from Linden Labs and River Run Red.


This is a logical evolution of virtual world technology and this is something we do inside IBM across a number of virtual world technologies. 3D collaboration is in its infancy and the initial release of services will be purely in SaaS mode but over time I would expect on-premise solutions to be the norm.

I am keen to see 3D applications seep into mainstream life. There are examples from IBM Research, Immersive Technologies and 3DInternet that make this more and more likely.

Generation Y and 3D Internet

I have broken my keynote cherry. Last week I delivered the keynote address to the Digital Technologies Professional Learning Symposium here in Auckland. The audience was made up of 150 IT teachers for 11-17 year olds. The conference was orgnaised by Michael King of Cognition Consulting to promote the new Digital Technologies curriculum.

I wanted the pitch to address a generic Generation Y persona, I did this by using a character called Chloe and talking about her likes and dislikes. I then spoke about the employment needs of the OECD economies with a focus on training professionals in the subject of Service, Science, Management and Engineering (SSME). The last section looks at video games, console games, online games and Virtual Worlds as this is a massive growth area for the internet or 3D internet.

Here is the presentation I gave which is on slideshare. The session was recorded so I will upload it to Blip.tv when the organisers send me a copy of the video file.

Keynote Digitial Technology Symposium

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: elearning learning)

Movember 2008

Its Movember, the month formally known as November. In Movember the world comes together to raise awareness and money for Men's health specifically Cancer and Depression.

In New Zealand men live 4 years less than women, why? because they think everything will be ok and there is no need to go to the doctor. We need to try and change this and the Movember project aims to do this.

Movember is a project that is run across the globe so you can contribute to your local cancer societies via the website.

Have a look at the presentation below for more information, visit the Movember website, join-in and contribute.

Movember

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: movember cancer)

IBM Collaboration is Interesting - honest guv

I have uploaded my first presentation onto a video site, in this case blip.tv. The video is of a presentation I delivered on Wednesday 15th October at the New Zealand Software Association. I have already shared the presentation in a previous blog entry but you are now incredibly lucky to have me in glorious technicolor pontificating about Social Media.

Comments appreciated.




Uploading Video

It was quite a palaver trying to decide which video site to use to upload this piece of video. I started with Blip.tv but the response times to New Zealand seemed really slow. As an impatient person I binned that idea and went onto the next video site Vimeo. Unfortunately Vimeo does not allow commercial type material and because this has some IBM content I had to bin that idea. Next site, Viddler. Viddler seemed like a great option as I have had some really cool feedback about it unfortunately they couldn't accommodate a 168Mb file so they were struck off my list and thrown into the rubbish bin (trash can). Running out of ideas I remembered I had an account with Revver (who owe me 28c), two problems here, a really bad description editor i.e. html is not allowed and they don't accommodate the 168 mb video file size. Guess what? I went back to Blip.tv and started the upload, I guess I will have to live with the slow response. - ho hum.


Blip.TV additional extras
The video has been uploaded and blip.tv has some cool extras with regards to promoting your video.

1. Share comments across your blog site - like it although not sure how it will look and feel on this blog
2. Add to iTunes - not done this before so will be interested to see what happens!!
3. Facebook - adds an application
4. Blip.tv channel
5. Flickr

No bad eh!?

Which wiki shall I try today?

I was describing my need to use a wiki in a previous blog post. I had some time this afternoon to do a quick Google search to see what was on offer. One of the wiki's that came to light was Tiddlywiki.

"TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki - including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. Because it's a single file, it's very portable - you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick."

That sounds pretty good especially as its one file.

TiddlyWiki is already being used as:

• A personal notebook
• A GTD ("Getting Things Done") productivity tool
• A collaboration tool
• For building websites (this site is a TiddlyWiki file!)
• For rapid prototyping"

I am having a play with it to see if it adds some value to my information gathering activities.

It looks like Tiddlywiki is used quite extensively within British Telecom. I pulled this video from the Open Source arm of BT called ommosoft so they can give you an incite of their usage.




TiddlyWiki in BT from Phil Whitehouse on Vimeo.

The Magic Number

I had a meeting with Peeyoosh Chandra of Ogilvy yesterday to talk about Social Media and Social networking. The most interesting aspect of the conversation to me was the introduction of the magic number.

In Advertising agencies the magic number is 3. For every person we hit with our advertising we would expect that individual to influence and spread the message to 3 other people. Based upon this metric agencies decide which method or channel should be used to reach say 30,000 people.  (I hope I have not lost anything in translation here)

I delivered a presentation to the NZ Software Association entitled "Collaboration and Social Networking" (pretty snazzy title eh!?) a couple of weeks ago and within that presentation I spoke about Measuring the Success of Social Networking implementations which sparked PC and I connecting.  The initial stats show us that if we introduce a new funky feature into our website or social networking site we can dramatically effect the usage of the social networking site. 

Here is the presentation I delivered to the NZSA in full. 

New Zealand Software Association

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: collaboration ibm)

Something to ponder: Blogging tips

I consider myself pretty new to blogging. I have created a bunch of posts and slowly made small changes to my blogger theme as time allows. I stumbled upon this video presented by problogger which I found really useful. You have three guys giving some tips about how to write a successful blog. Its a short film 02.30 minutes and worth a view.



Where does that leave me and this blog. Should I still blog about random Social Networking stuff or talk about my experiences.... something to ponder.