The Year in Review

In this episode, we look back at the predictions we made at the start of 2011.



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References

1. The Resurgence of Reading: There’s no doubt video has been the hot on-line medium for the past few years, but we think 2011 will see a resurgence of (gasp!) the written word.
   - Amazon's recently announced fourth quarter results - Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than paperback books.
   - The Association of American Publishers reported in February 2011 eBook sales have overtaken those of both paperback and hardback books, and enjoyed triple-digit growth compared with 2010 sales.
   - Amazon’s top-100 lists for print and eBooks were very different suggesting different behaviours for buyers of books vs. eBooks
2. Email is Dead (NOT!): Rumours of email's death have been greatly exaggerated. Business communication is not really being conducted to any significant degree via social networks or SMS.
   - Email may not be dying but spam volume is decreasing
   - Thierry Breton @ Atos wants to get rid of email for internal communication
   - What is needed is for people to use email properly - they now have multiple electronic communications tools; choose the correct tool for the job. Email is for deferred, non-urgent communication.
3. The Power (if not the Wisdom) of Crowds: Deal-of-the-day Web sites like Groupon.com turn the disintermediation model on its head. They sit between the customer and the supplier, but in a highly value-added way.
   - Groupon’s IPO was the second-biggest in tech history ($700 million, behind Google’s $1.7 billion), but recently share price dropped from $20 to $17.
   - One of the issues Groupon faces is that it’s easily imitated - dozens of deal-of-the-day sites have sprung up (a friend of Chris has created one “Cryki”)
4. Facebook is "the" Social Network: Facebook will continue to be the dominant social network during 2011, and other networks will have to settle for catering to niche demographics. However, there is much room for innovation in social networking so the door remains open.
   - Google+ came out of nowhere - but is it running out of steam?
   - A survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found that Facebook is cited in one in five divorces in the United States.
   - Facebook amongst US’ “most hated” company
5. More Out of Office Workers: More and more organisations will start embracing different Out of Office workstyles for their people - it's feasible, desirable and inevitable.
   - Telecommuters save time and money
   - Half of Australian IT workers said they would consider taking a pay cut in exchange for more flexible working hours
6. Enterprise Cloud Computing: We’ll start to see more private, packaged cloud services aimed at enterprise customers.
   - Amazon has just released its Elastic Beanstalk service
   - Rackspace has extended its Cloud services to European data-centres
   - Microsoft will release its Windows Intune service - a cloud-based PC management service for businesses.
   - Amazon EC, one of the largest provider of Cloud/Utility Computing services to business customers, suffered a major outage in April
7. The Year of the Tablet: Kudos to Apple for breaking new ground with the iPad in 2010. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is hot on its heels, and both will face stiff competition from other manufacturers.
   - The recommendation that all staff and students at Trinity College, University of Melbourne be given iPads
   - Microsoft's global chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie is unsure of whether tablet computers have much of a future
8. Mobile Trends: Android will dominate; smartphones will become even smarter; and smartphones will become the default for mobile phones.
   - Android has become the top-selling operating system on mobile phones
   - Smartphone ownership rose 60% in the US last year, according to figures released by comScore
   - Nokia and Microsoft have announced an alliance whereby Nokia mobile phones will run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system
9. Online Sales: E-commerce has been rising steadily over the last decade, but we have reached a tipping point, where on-line selling has gone mainstream.
   - Aussie retailers facing stiff competition from on-line retailers
   - Amazon crowned the most reputable company in the US
10. Politics: A Tangled Web: The Internet will increasingly become a political battlefield: governments around the world will attempt to censor, regulate and control the Internet; while political activists will create and use Internet tools as a platform from which to attract support for their respective causes.
    - Egyptians have used Facebook and other Web 2.0 technologies to rally protests against their government
    - How will this play out in Algeria?
    - Another popular uprising is met with an Internet blackout - this time in Libya
    - It’s not just authoritarian governments that are considering censoring the Internet

Get More Freedom in Your Work Life

More and more people are tapping into the power of the Internet for greater freedom in their work life. We call this the Out of Office environment - and in this podcast we describe the three main scenarios.



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Ownership 2.0

The Web has made it easier to facilitate sharing, swapping, renting, leasing, bartering, recycling and other kinds of ownership, for both electronic and physical goods.


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This episode was inspired by Rachel Botsman's TED Talk: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption:



Other Web sites we mentioned:

• GoGet
• In August 2011, Waverley Council (in Sydney) announced it wants to charge GoGet for the use of their parking spaces
• Neighbourgoods
• Landshare.net
• DriveMyCar
• Swap.com
• Freecycle.org
• eBay.com
• Amazon has a 14-day lending feature for e-books
• making its Kindle e-books available free to public libraries

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Writing a Book Together

Our book Out of Office is almost ready for publishing. In this episode, we share our experiences of how we wrote this book, using many of the on-line collaboration tools we've discussed in the book itself.

MP3 File

Tools We Used

• Microsoft Word: for most of the writing
• Google Docs: for the project plan and review comments
• Elance: for transcribing audio, ghost writing and book cover design
• Dropbox: for sharing files
• Skype: for discussions about the content
• iStockphoto: for the cover graphics
• CreateBarCodes.com: for the bar code on the back cover
• A QR code generator: for the QR codes
• WordPress: for the Web site and blog
• MailChimp: for the e-mail newsletter

Working from a Home Office

More and more workers have the option to work from a home office, either part-time or full-time. In this episode, Chris shares what he has learned in over 10 years of being a full-time telecommuter.


MP3 File

E-Mail Productivity

E-mail is 40 years old this year (here's a nice infographic showing its history). Many people still grapple with it, but that doesn't have to be the case. So we're sharing our e-mail productivity ideas here.

Listen to the podcast episode here:



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Dan Tynen (7 Days in Email Hell) needs our help!

Incoming e-mail is not necessarily a bad thing! The problem is not with e-mail, it’s with the kind of e-mail you get, the way we perceive e-mail, and the way we manage e-mail.

Here are our three key e-mail productivity principles:

1. Your in-box represents other people’s priorities, not yours - So stop being their slave, and take control of your life
2. E-mail is for deferred, not immediate, communication - So stop reacting and start responding
3. E-mail is just one communication channel (of many) - So just stop using e-mail for everything

Start by eliminating the bad e-mail:

• Unnecessary (e.g. E-zines we never read, Facebook notifications): Cancel the subscriptions, turn off notifications
• Unwanted (Spam): Delete them automatically
• Inappropriate/Misdirected (E-mail that can be handled by other channels - such as RSS, phone, face-to-face): Switch channels
• Unproductive (Jokes and time-wasters, chain letters, staff checking in because you haven’t delegated well, irrelevant cc’s): Ask them to stop
• Unimportant (e.g. useful e-zines, some notifications): Filter them automatically

Learn to process e-mail more effectively:

• Separate checking from processing
• Check e-mail less frequently
• Turn off automatic notifications of new mail
• When checking your in-box, just move items to other folders rather than processing anything
• After processing, ask yourself: How can I prevent another e-mail like this?

Help other people be more productive by sending better e-mail:

• Use a relevant subject line
• Use a signature with phone number and other contact info
• Write one topic per message (split multi-topic messages into multiple e-mails)
• Don’t ask obvious questions that Google could answer (e.g. checking time zones)
• Spell check & re-read before hitting send
• Don’t send “out of context” messages that force others to search old e-mails for information
• Quote sparingly; enough to provide context but no more
• Establish some conventions and shorthand within your team
• Think carefully about each and every recipient you include in the To: & Cc: lines
• End each e-mail with a clear idea of what you want next

Protect Your On-line Reputation

If you're not careful, it's easy to do silly things that harm your on-line reputation. In this podcast episode, we discuss some simple things you can do here to prevent that from happening!

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We suggest four principles:

1. Bite your tongue - assume everything is public and permanent
2. Lock up - protect your passwords
3. Don’t talk to strangers - be careful when you’re out and about
4. Listen up - monitor what others are saying about you

Web sites we mentioned:

• the Failbook blog
• Wikipedia - Use strong passwords
• Recent Sony hacks
• The top 500 worst passwords of all time
• Recent MacDefender malware on Apple Macs
• Recent Gmail “hack” (which was actually phishing)
• Use the EFF HTTPS Everywhere Plug-In
• Google Alerts
• Social Mention.com

Get Smart!

Mainstream media coverage is often sensationalised and biased. The Internet gives us unprecedented abilities to dig deeper, but only if we take that opportunity. We'll show you how ...

Listen to the podcast here:



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Web sites we mentioned:

• The Onion: Actual Expert Too Boring For TV
• When Journalists do Primary Research (Ben Goldacre)
• Wikipedia
• Google Scholar
• Scirus
• CiteSeerX (IT and technology)
• PubMed (Health & Medicine)
• The fake academic journal set up by Merck
• The Union of Concerned Scientists
• The Cochrane Collaboration (Medical Meta Studies)
• Subscribe to blogs: New Scientist, Scientific American, The Conversation
• Listen to podcasts (find them in iTunes): Skeptoid, SciAm (60 Second Science & Weekly podcast), IEEE Spectrum Radio, ABC RN Science Show, Radiolab
  
• Follow Tweeple: Ben Goldacre, Simon Singh, Brian Dunning, Dr Karl, Tim Minchin
  

Books in the 21st Century

The Internet has changed the way we buy and read books. If anything, there's been a resurgence in reading, because of increased availability to printed books, and new formats like e-books and audio books.

So let's talk about how the Internet has changed reading, in three ways:

• How to buy books on-line
• The rise in popularity of e-books
• The rise in popularity of audio books

Listen to the podcast here:


Download the MP3 File here

Additional Resources:

• Amazon.com
• Dymocks.com.au - but only really a token effort
• Purely on-line retailers are much better, e.g. Fishpond.com.au or Booktopia.com.au
• The Book Depository - which offers free shipping
• Marketplaces for second-hand bookshops worldwide: Alibris and AbeBooks.com
• eBay (for both buying and selling)
• Social media tools like Shelfari and Visual Bookshelf (Facebook application)

Focal Point - Wikis

A wiki is a Web site anybody can edit. Although this might sound dangerous, wikis have many benefits for organisations large and small. They are more collaborative, more compact and more changeable than typical Web sites, blogs or forums; and they can build camaraderie, engagement, unity and equity in the organisation.

In this podcast episode, we talk about the benefits of wikis and how to create one for your own organisation.

Listen here:



Download the MP3 file here

Resources:

• Mediawiki: The free wiki software that powers Wikipedia
• WikkaWiki: used by Chris’ employer
• Wikihosts.org: Free hosted wikis (ad-supported)
• Wikispaces.com: Free and low-cost hosted wikis (i.e. nothing to install)
• Clearwiki.com: Free and low-cost private hosted wikis (what Gihan uses for First Step)
• Wikimatrix.org: Compare them all!

The Top 10 On-Line Trends for 2011

Join us for our annual report on the top on-line trends for the next 12 months.

Listen to the podcast here:



MP3 File

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Notes

Here are our 10 predictions:

1. The Resurgence of Reading: There’s no doubt video has been the hot on-line medium for the past few years, but we think 2011 will see a resurgence of (gasp!) the written word.
2. Email is Dead (NOT!): Rumours of email's death have been greatly exaggerated. Business communication is not really being conducted to any significant degree via social networks or SMS.
3. The Power (if not the Wisdom) of Crowds: Deal-of-the-day Web sites like Groupon.com turn the disintermediation model on its head. They sit between the customer and the supplier, but in a highly value-added way.
4. Facebook is "the" Social Network: Facebook will continue to be the dominant social network during 2011, and other networks will have to settle for catering to niche demographics. However, there is much room for innovation in social networking so the door remains open.
5. More Out of Office Workers: More and more organisations will start embracing different Out of Office workstyles for their people - it's feasible, desirable and inevitable.
6. Enterprise Cloud Computing: We’ll start to see more private, packaged cloud services aimed at enterprise customers.
7. The Year of the Tablet: Kudos to Apple for breaking new ground with the iPad in 2010. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is hot on its heels, and both will face stiff competition from other manufacturers.
8. Mobile Trends: Android will dominate; smartphones will become even smarter; and smartphones will become the default for mobile phones.
9. Online Sales: E-commerce has been rising steadily over the last decade, but we have reached a tipping point, where on-line selling has
   gone mainstream.
10. Politics: A Tangled Web: The Internet will increasingly become a political battlefield: governments around the world will
    attempt to censor, regulate and control the Internet; while political activists will create and use Internet tools as a platform from which to attract support for their respective causes.