Doing the Wave across the globe

Have you heard about Google Wave, yet? It's a personal communication and collaboration webbased app that's a huge developmental step forward for email from the same folks who brought us Google Maps. I'm not sure it's going to get widespread adoption because it's a completely new way of communicating and the masses may not think they need yet another way but it has the potential to push antiquated email toward extinction if enough folks really embrace it.

I have been wondering whether it could be used at the enterprise level to help manage and share information among functional teams and cross-functional teams. It's a combination instant messaging, email, Twitter, and potentially digital asset/knowledge management system. I haven't actually played with the application yet, but from what I've seen this just may be possible.

For now, it's the buzz at the intergeek level...

Reading a Wave - Who's Blogging What
Hands on With Wave: Weird and Quite Wonderful - CNET
Google's New Wave - Reuter's
Wave: Google's Take on the Future of Communication - VentureBeat
Google Wave First Impressions - Information Week
Google Wave: Our First Hands-on Impressions - Read Write Web
Google Wave - the New Facebook? - Gerson Lehrman Group
Google Waves Me Back to Blogging - Four Elements blog

Apparently I'm not the only one thinking about how Google Wave could be applied at the enterprise-wide business level...

Google Wave Surfing the Future of Collaboration The Forrester Blog
Google Wave Will Cause Some Big Ripples in the Corporate World - CapGemini Blog

More on news transformation

I posted earlier about creating a personalized version of the news giving readers the ability to be their own editor. Amazon has debuted a larger format Kindle that brings us one step closer to personalized news delivered direct to your Kindle. It's rumored that NY Times will announce it is reducing the price of it's electronic subscription in conjunction with this new release.

I also found Newsmap (image at left), via John Winsor. This is exactly what I'm thinking could be the format for personalized news. Imagine having a Kindle-like piece of hardware that receives your news in a format similar to this below every morning. Including professional news, blogs, and other daily refreshed information (stocks, weather, bank account?, etc).

Create Your Own Publication - you choose the articles you want in the pub

Very cool idea from Cunning for HSBC Premier. They created an experience at Heathrow for travelers to create their own magazines using a vast array of articles that they had available.

Cool idea to do on a Kindle at the airport, as well. Using their 'People Who Bought This' concept would allow them to recommend other articles that folks might be interested, too.

My question: How would it work for advertisers?

A hotspring of ideas

With the obvious evolution of business and culture that is taking place right now, I can't help but wonder what changes will actually stick? What business ideas are the next big ideas of the future? I've got a bunch of ideas in my head right now - I tend to come up with ideas during unique times of transition in order to solve the challenges I'm faced with during the transition.



But my lingering question... How would I even go about pursuing any of these ideas? Are they good ideas or would they only solve my problem and no one else would really care? I sure do wish I could find an outlet to vet these ideas - which prompts me to think of an idea/concept to solve just that!



Despite the bleak economic atmosphere I can't help but be optimistic. I think we are all a part of a tremendous shift in the world as we know it. I'm sad to see our newspapers disappearing, but I think they are a metaphor for what is currently taking place economically. We all need to TRULY be open to real change; don't dig your heels and insist that it has to be the way it's always been, you'll be dead in the water if you do. I don't think newspapers will disappear completely, but I do think they're entire business is fundamentally changing and I don't think the newspaper business was willing to accept that. Same as the music business. And the media/entertainment business. There are very few fields that won't have to change and evolve as technology becomes an extension of our personal being. We all need to focus on the future and be prepared for a wild ride.

What does the future hold???

I've been wondering alot about what the future holds for us particularly with all the great changes taking place on the web. Where are we headed with this information overload? How will we deal with this economic crisis? How will people find the right jobs to match their experience? How can the information gathering get easier?

So, here's a complete train of thought -- what if everyone has their own personal space on the internet that houses EVERYTHING about us? It's our personal space (could it even be on something like Second Life?) and it has all our health information, all our credit information, banking, investments, our work history and resume, any additional information about us (ie: Myers Briggs score?) and then it also has information related to our interests. It's customized and maintained all the time -- whether we do it ourselves physically or technology is capable of pulling the information from external sources of information - and therefore, it is able to pull all the related information available on the internet and provides it to us in an easy to digest format that's customized just for us. It includes everything we typically receive from the newspaper but the information is specifically related to what we would be interested in...

For employment type needs, it enables businesses and individuals to better hone in on the absolute right job match by allowing for specific information to help drive the right pairing. This one would likely make people nervous, but imagine we didn't have to spend so much time trying to find the right job, or the right employee - and instead the exact right fit was identified electronically and it takes into consideration not just your resume, but your personality type?

Essentially, this is our alter existence online, but it's a realistic portrayal of us that includes all our data points pulled into one centralized location. Rather than 'surfing' the web, we live in this space and the information finds us through our space.