For me Facebook was frankly a very efficient way to get the word out – to interact with people.  One of the reasons I like Facebook is that it allows you to connect with people in an easy way.   I can post one item about my life that’s share with so many people.  And it’s better than just a broadcast e-mail – as you can interact with each other.  I don’t want it to replace all relationships in my life – but it’s very useful for people who live far away.  This may make feasible to keep up easily with those friends that move away.

It may also appeal to the geek in me – which I got from my Father.  Writing something online seems so natural – so second nature now (isn’t that strange how quickly that’s changed).  Facebook also fills that asynchronous nature of communication – in that you can communicate with many people – just not at the same time.  That’s also why texting has become so popular – as you can better time manage your communication.

In some ways this makes the world so much more impersonal – but in others more personal.  I can understand the smaller items of your life by what you share – in ways we probably wouldn’t do otherwise.

This was pretty much a rambling – but that’s about the energy and intelligence I have this week…

The author’s premise is that the nature of the workforce and society is changing rapidly – due to a number of factors:

1. The younger workforce is not interested in “permanent” employment – they’ve much more self-centered, many of their parents have worked from home and technology has changed permanently the way they interact with people (growing up with Facebook, Twitter from a young age?).  They are not likely to want a traditional full-time job nor expect that to be in their future.
2. The world keeps changing faster and faster – and traditional corporations have a hard time adapting. To re-organize hundreds of full-time employees into new organizational structures can be very painful and expensive, much less time consuming.
3. The world is becoming increasingly global -with new consumers coming on board every day across the whole world – in places many of us have never heard of.
4. Therefore the complexity of relationships of the business environment in the world to come will be much more significant.

So the author makes the point that the traditional corporation isn’t flexible enough for the future – but a completely decentralized corporation isn’t good either -as it has no identify – no sense of who it is – which can lead to a lot of trouble. Therefore the author proposes that a new structure be created  - one with a core set of employees (full time with job security) that set the values of the organization – with another set of employees, contractors, vendors, etc. – that have less and less commitment to the organization.  This “cloud” is then the flexible and dynamic part of the organization – whereas the core is the stability.

The core is also a balance against the CEO – even though they can’t set business strategy themselves.  They can actually advise a new CEO against taking a path that would be folly given the corporate culture.  They also will help develop the tools to educate the “cloud” with the corporations values, standards, etc. – to avoid potential problems.  This also then makes the board of directors more important – as they become the arbiter between the CEO (business leadership) and the core (corporate continuity).

The author really doesn’t seem to be trying to promote this corporate structure for it’s own sake – but as a method of handling the changes in society and business that he feels are inevitable.  Interestingly enough the author also indicates that the federal government should consider re-organizing into something other than the monolithic organization that it is – the massive bureaucracy. Instead consider moving toward more of a “cloud” model itself – which is an interesting idea.

The overall writing of the book is good – but it wasn’t spectacular either.  I would recommend reading this book as food for thought – not as a blueprint for how to re-build a corporation.  I do think many corporations  need to start looking at themselves in terms of how they are organized – in order to adapt better for the future.  The economies of scale of old may not be as effective in the future as they are today – which are a specialization of many large corporations today.

One of the challenges for America will be the current coupling of health insurance and retirement with an employer.  If a larger percentage of employees are no longer full-time employees somehow these employees will need to obtain affordable health insurance and plan for retirement.  These may require some structural changes in how our society is organized – I’m just not sure how.  I sometimes wonder though if those items were taken out of the equation if more people would go work for themselves – if that is what is tying them to a full-time job.  It will also require Americans to get off their debt binge – as to work on a contract basis will require individuals to actually have savings – so they can go between contracts.

I’m starting to see the writing on the wall that HTML5 (H.264 likely) will overtake Flash for video in the future.  Google and Apple are pushing hard for it – and in theory it works a lot better.   I don’t have a lot of experience with it myself – but I’m learning.  I just put a YouTube video on one of my clients sites: http://www.bradbuyshomes.com/.  I originally made this video as an AVI and uploaded it to YouTube (which took a while). Unfortunately it didn’t work – so I then exported it as MPEG-2  and that worked better.  Probably MPEG-4 is now the best choice – buy my Roxio Videowave doesn’t have any MPEG-4 at anything other than very small resolution outputs. I should have used Pinnacle Studio to create the MPEG-4 file….

What would Facebook be like without these – more usable or something?  Of course, I wonder then if I’ll ever hear from some people – as it seems that’s all I see is app notifications (those I haven’t blocked yet…).  I know Facebook apps are money makers – but they’re kind of annoying.  If I see one more Fishville notification….

What I wonder if this is a good possibility for the developing world – if you couple this technology with bigoas it has some potential.  I’m wondering if in a developing world you could a remote area with one of these boxes – coupled with some kind of biogas plant (sewer system?) to develop the fuel.  One advantage it would have over solar is that it could work at night without having to use batteries.  It would might not need a large infrastructure or footprint – as it looks like it could be small.  I don’t know how reliable these are – only time will tell.   But it’s an interesting concept…

The Palm Pre looked like a potential iPhone killer – but seems to have fallen pretty flat.  I like the idea of multi-tasking, support for my legacy Palm apps, and a newer screen.  What concerns me is the long-term potential of Palm – whether they’ll be around for the future.

There are 2 main competitors that may be the death knell for Palm:

1. Google’s Android OS – shortly after the Palm Pre came out Google’s Android operating system seem to have taken off.  You have the Droid, the Nexus One and a growing host of phones coming out on multiple carriers based on this OS.    There’s a whole set of apps being created for  this platform.
2. Windows Phone 7 Series – just when I had about written off Microsoft as a real player in the smartphone market (as Android and iPhone seemed to be duking it out) they announce a redesigned OS.  This looks pretty impressive and likely to take even more attention away from Palm.

So we now have little Palm going up against Apple, Google and Microsoft – I don’t think this looks good for them.  Palm has always been a company that flirted with bankruptcy -so I don’t know how much time they have left.  I may still upgrade to a Pre if it makes financial sense – but I not so enthusiastic about it as before.

1. I needed access to the following.
   • 2 Twitter Accounts
   • Personal Facebook Account
   • Multiple Facebook FAN pages
2. I wanted the ability to have a combined view of all these accounts – so I don’t have to switch panes, etc.
3. I wanted the ability to view comments/add comments in the client.
4. I would have liked to have my LinkedIn account also tied in – but I noticed all I got was this person connected to this person – which wasn’t very meaningful to me.
5. I would like to have Google Buzz tied in – but I don’t think any of the clients support this yet.

So here’s my personal strategy:

1. I will have Seesmic client open – which consolidates all of my feeds into one timeline panel.  It won’t display the updates like Tweetdeck (which I liked) but I can scroll down the list to where I left off – or if I’m logged in does provide a discreet notification.
2. I post most of my content via this blog – which takes care of my main twitter account and Facebook FAN page. I use ping.fm to do the push and LinkedIn is connected based on a tag in the post.
3. For my secondary Twitter/Facebook FAN page I’m creating a “page” on this site and manually posting it to Facebook – which pushes it to Twitter.
4. For my groups on LinkedIn I think the weekly notifications are a prompt to login and interact with others.
5. For the Google Buzz experiment I’m just manually posting a link to these – I’m still not sure about Google Buzz as the default view of all comments expanded is driving me crazy.

Comments about Tweetdeck:

1. I was actually using Tweetdeck for some time and quite happy with it.  I liked the pop-up notifications and the overall GUI.
2. Unfortunately when I built a 2nd Twitter account it didn’t flow well as I couldn’t configure it well.
3. I think I also noticed that the “tweet” notification sound was occurring on my wife’s login – which was kind of annoying

Comments about Hootsuite:

1. I don’t have as much experience with this one as the others.
2. One of the key differences of this tool is that it exists totally in the browser – as opposed to a desktop client

So that may influence my evaluation of Buzz – as it’s integrated into Gmail.  Frankly I’m pretty confused by Buzz – as it’s a bit overwhelming.  Right now I don’t think I can get past the expanded comments  - the long, long string of comments.  I’m used to seeing status updates with comments not taking over the screen.  Also I can’t seem to find any settings to control this – so it’s hard for me to use.  I haven’t researched how to use Buzz yet – but I’m wondering if I should have to.  I can still see how the key feature is that it’s integrated into gmail – a kind of one stop shop…

Lately I’ve been trying to figure out the best client to keep up with my social networks – as I now have 2 twitter accounts, personal facebook account, linked in account, multiple facebook fan pages.  I’ve been using Tweetdeck- but it doesn’t seem to easily support a 2nd twitter account.  I’m also trying Hootsuite and Seismic – which seemed to have unique features in each one.  My goal would be to have a client that easily supports all my different accounts – easily showing me updates from all the accounts – and letting me reply/retweet/comment on the posts (and see the comments).  I’m not concerned so much about posting – as I usually do that from another place (usually this site via ping.fm).

So to conclude I don’t totally get it – I’m a bit lost in the tool.  In fairness this is a brand new tool – has it even been out a week?  It may change soon for the better – Google tools will improve over time.  If you’re already in the Google stack (gmail, docs, calendar) then this could be a nice add-on.