Ubiquitous Human Computing
Elisabeth Oppenheimer blogs about CrowdFlower and GiveWork:
CrowdFlower.com is a site that uses Amazon Mechanical Turk’s technology to create work for refugees in Africa. AMT, as noted, allows companies to parcel out tasks that are simple but can’t be done by a computer. One problem with AMT is that it’s hard to check answers for quality; people may not understand the task, may not speak the language well, or may just blow through the task to rack up the payment. There are different strategies for dealing with the problem; this article, for instance, describes how to design certain types of tasks for maximum effectiveness. What Crowdflower does instead is charge a premium to have independent users double-check the work.
CrowdFlower has started a project called GiveWork. CrowdFlower employees train refugees in Africa to do AMT tasks. iPhone users who have downloaded a free app can then donate a minute or two to double-check the work. (In fact, AMT users frequently say that they’re doing tasks not solely for the money, but because the tasks are easy and amusing, like solitaire. CrowdFlower pushes that angle to iPhone users.) Once the iPhone user has approved the work, it’s sent off the the company that requested it, and the refugee is paid. You can check out more details on CrowdFlower’s website.
This is cool: it gets real work in the hands of people who can complete it and for whom the money is desperately important. There are plenty of things to worry about with ubicomp—labor standards, the disaffection that comes with assembly line work, doing a piece of a task without being able to evaluate the moral valence of the whole—but the potential should be nourished.
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Mark Brewer on why and what a CIO should blog
Mark Brewer, CIO of Fortune 500 Company writes:
- I’ve announced the start of our IT Strategic Planning process and we’ve post drafts for anyone to see and comment on. All were invited to give us input.
- I’ve talked about critical issues like business continuity planning, Green IT coordination, electronic security and many other topics. I’ve used the channel to share what and why.
- Values have been discussed numerous times. Trust is a big one.
- Lots of talk about collaboration and highlighting what that means and where we are getting traction with better collaboration.
- Recognize people who have accomplished something important. Perhaps a new certification, or a patent or a great new result on some project. It is great to recognize people who’ve done great things!
- One of the teams in a partner organization made some great use of tools we provided. I got to highlight that team and their work. I’ve been able to connect with lots of folks outside of IT
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Nicole Black on use of Cloud Computing in a Legal Practice
Cloud computing providers are adapting quickly to and responding to the concerns raised by lawyers. As a result, lawyers are becoming increasingly comfortable with the concept of cloud computing. In fact, according to the 2009 Am Law Tech Survey, 84 percent of responding law firms already use SaaS (Software as a Service), a form of cloud computing, in some capacity.
As cloud computing becomes more prevalent in the legal field, more lawyers will understand the importance of carefully negotiating their contracts with the services providers to ensure that, for example, they are notified if a warrant relating to their data is served.
Mark my words: Cloud computing is the wave of the future, and encrypted communication is one of the keys to putting attorney’s minds at ease regarding an emerging technology. Astute providers will incorporate encrypted communication into their platforms, and smart lawyers will learn about and use the emerging technology in their practice.
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Interesting Tweets from Enterprise 2.0 Conference
Speeches from the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in SF are available on [E2 TV]. I posted some interesting tweets from the conference attendees earlier, here are some more:
- When people talk about “breaking down” silos they add fuel to the fire that E20 is a crock. Silos collaborate they don’t break down. (@mikojava)
- Change agents have always existed, 2.0 tech brings agents together (@nitinbadjatia)
- Knowledge Management used to be a dusty destination, ent 2.0 allows it to be dynamic and responsive to individual requests (@paulmirvine)
- @CarolineDangson: E2.0 should perhaps be considered more like digital dna, the knowledge backbone of an organization (@paulmirvine)
- Start behind the firewall, open to all employees, educate rather than prohibit, trust is returned (@dcoleman100)
- Clara Shih: people are using FB and Twitter so their friends can serve as social filters for content. (@cjnash)
- @nenshad: “Marketing creates the brand, Support keeps the brand alive.” (@JuliaMak)
- Luxury hotel implemented Six Sigma and eliminated it because it didn’t allow them to overdeliver on Customer Service (@uwehook)
- E2.0 culture change: “Imagine if a store with low sales accused their customers of “resistance”!” (@timoelliott)
- Adoption is not a matter of resistance. If your store that wasn’t being trafficked, would you blame resistance?(@marciamarcia)
- “When you grow up on the internet, client-server looks like green screen today.” (@nenshad)
- Nike talks about “lessons shared”, rather than “lessons learned”. (@lehaweslive)
- @rotkapchen: Why do so many people use the term “enterprise-wide” then? Why not “enterprise-deep”? (@richardveryard)
- @rotkapchen: The first sign that someone has absolutely no clue about E2.0…when they keep referring to “users”. (@ekolsky)
- @marciamarcia: If culture eats strategy for breakfast, how do you feed culture? (@ajeanne)
- Innovation occurs at the intersection of contextually disparate concepts brought together creatively and with an open mind(@paulguyandersen)
(source)
Rachel Earley talks about Refresh Dublin
Rachel Earley talks about Refresh Dublin and some interesting Augmented Reality projects! 
E2.0 Conference
Enterprise 2.0 conference is in progress this week in SF. Most of the speeches are available on [E2 TV]. Here are some 
tweets from the Conference attendees:
- trust, collaboration, network, engagement, task-driven, productivity-enhancement, defined-roles & responsibilities = 2.0 world (@ekolsky)
- Content is no longer enough, context of persona is key to E20.
- You can subscribe not only to a person feed, but also on tags.
- people want to work in an org where what they do matters, aligns with their principles and beliefs, be part of something (@ekolsky)
- The ethos has shifted from “need to know” to “responsibility to share” – Andrew McAfee
- Forrester reports that 1 in 2 businesses will use E2.0 software.
- Transparency does not eliminate the need for identity, security, etc
- More features are not what people are looking for in #E20. Focus 80% of your efforts on the 20% that really make people socially productive
- Use e2.0 for what you can’t do with email, like journaling your work.
- 3 challenges to successful E2.0 deployment are Risk, Control, and Trust. deal with up front. – Dion Hinchcliffe
- Collaboration works best when it’s in the flow of work- encourage interactions and multitiered adoption.
- you’re never going to get people to that happy sharing place unless its in their flow of work.
- Key challenge with dedicated (standalone) enterprise microblogging platform is that it’s not part of the workflow.
- collaboration needs to move from a doc-centric solution to a conversation-centric solution
- manage knowledge mostly by connecting people. Brains are just so much better than databases.
- The point is not to teach people how to use computer, but facilitating Human-to-Human interaction through a computer.
- “Business is conducted by people, not users” – @eugenelee
Source: Tweets from the Enterprise 2.0 2009 Conference (#E2Conf)
Dr. Chenxi Wang’s comments on Amazon EC2 side-channel-attack
Researchers from MIT and UC San Diego recently demonstrated an attack against Amazon’s EC2 where an attack virtual machine can launch attacks against a victim virtual machine that is located on the same physical server.
Does this mean that there is a security vulnerability within EC2? Yes.
Should you be concerned? Not really.
