Scary Google: Larry Page Wants To Change The World. Posted by Tom Foremski - July 28, 2011 Steven Levy, a senior editor at Wired, spent a lot of time at Google researching his new book, "In the Plex.
" And he spent a lot of time with the new CEO Larry Page. Mr Levy says Google is now in the hands of "a true corporate radical. " In an article for Wired, "Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Startup Roots" he reports that Mr Page has said many times, that he has always "wanted to change the world. " He sees the historic technology boom as a chance to realize such ambitions and sees those who fail to do so as shamelessly squandering the opportunity. Interesting stuff. So what will be Mr Page's audacious ideas? Will this distract Google? Google occupies a tremendously important position within the global economy, it's ability to continue doing what it does best, affects huge volumes of global commerce and many millions of businesses. Will it be important enough for Mr Page's ambitions?
But shouldn't Mr Page "change the world" somewhere else? SFCurators: Our Public, Private, And Secret Lives... Posted by Tom Foremski - July 28, 2011 SFCurators Salon met Wednesday evening at PeopleBrowsr and I'm still buzzing from all the great conversations and ideas it generated.
We pulled our chairs into a large circle to get away from the traditional arrangement of speakers on a podium and audience down below. This is a salon of peers not podiums. Our speakers for the evening were dotted around the circle and I acted as a moderator, armed with a large black spoon, which served as a talking stick (and whacking stick if needed :). Going along with the idea of a "salon of peers" we sourced our speakers from within our group. Christine Mason McCaull spoke about how she helped curate local TEDxSF events; Ken Kaplan spoke about how curation is used within Intel; I stood in for Tom Abate and spoke about the role of curation in the newsroom. The circular format was great in that it more easily allowed everyone to speak and share their stories -- not just the speakers. Altimeter Group: Dealing With Deaf Corporations... Who's Listening?
Posted by Tom Foremski - July 27, 2011 (Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group listens to Patrice Lamothe, CEO of Pearltrees.)
I have a soft spot for the Altimeter Group, a pioneering band of consultants founded by the impressive Charlene Li, with a mission to educate corporate America about the value of listening and engaging with customers. It's tough work. Wednesday evening we heard Susan Etlinger, Industry Analyst at Altimeter, speak about her latest research and lamenting the fact that most corporations have no frameworks or methods in place to make sure that everyone "listens" to customers. There's no incentive built into company cultures to "listen. " Afterwards, I chatted with Charlene Li, who spoke about the slow pace of change within large organizations, towards listening and engaging with customers. It's very noble work trying to educate large organizations about the massive disruptive trends within nearly every aspect of their business.
Why? Google: Please Give Me A Throat To Choke... Posted by Tom Foremski - July 19, 2011 I have a serious problem: my GMail contacts won't load.
That means GMail is almost unusable because it won't autocomplete my email addresses. I have to go search and paste email addresses, it's too many clicks For the past two months I get this message on GMail: "Gmail is temporarily unable to access your Contacts. It's not temporary, it's been going on for months. I wish I paid for GMail so at least I would have "a throat to choke," a great expression from the world of enterprise IT, where support is paramount. GMail might be out of "Beta" but it's out of service -- at least for me and quite a few others.
The Tamagotchi Nature Of Social Networks... Posted by Tom Foremski - July 24, 2011 A significant part of my day is spent maintaining my profiles on my social networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and now Google+.
Some of my time spent in these networks is genuinely useful but a lot of it is spent in housekeeping chores, I'm constantly peppered with tasks: approve these friends, like these pages, it's Joe Smith's birthday wish him happy birthday, someone commented on a post you commented on, you were tagged in this post/photo... Sometimes it feels like I should spend my entire life here, tapping and typing all day long, running that hamster wheel. Google+ currently requires a lot of clicking, adding people to circles, etc, and it's tedious work. With Google's circles I initially thought, great! But as with my initial enthusiasm for tidying up my socks, underwear, and T-shirt drawers, my interest quickly evaporated and now I pop people into just one G+ circle.