Is Twitter now an enterprise productivity tool?

I would have to concur with Marshall Kirkpatrick. I also now use Twitter as a working tool, not just for ‘status upates’ (which I don’t really do any more unless I can say something vaguely informative or funny). I use it to interrogate and interact with my work and social contacts. It’s now one big ongoing conversation which can help me in my work, and especially in writing stories. I

Twitter killed the Status Star

When Twitter started out it seemed like a cool new web application to update your ‘status’ (what you are up to) for friends and, well, the world in general. Like Facebook status updates, but out on the Wild Web. But when people started having conversations via their Twitter status updates using the “@” symbol (e.g. “@mike Yeah, I thought that”)I was initially quite annoyed. I even direct-messaged some people to

This week I am mostly at…

I HATE blog posts that apologise for the lack of updates. Like, who cares?! Either blog or don’t blog. Just don’t apologise. However, I do find that these days I update my Twitter microblog more than this blog! And I have been working on other stuff other than blogging lately. And thinking. However, I will be writing about the Brunch Bites event last week soon. This week I have been

Dvorak just doesn’t get it

John Dvorak is an old-fashioned tech jounralist in the US who thinks we’re going to have another dotcom bust: “Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust…Today everything from YouTube to the local church has a social-networking angle. And this doesn’t even consider

Turn Facebook statuses into a twitter feed?

Julian Bond at Voidstar has a great post on routing all your and your friend’s Status updates from Facebook to Twitter using Mario Menti’s excellent TwitterFeed service. Now, here’s my question. Is this not completely insane? Keeping up with Twitter feeds is hard enough. Adding Facebook status updates would hasten my “Twitter Bankruptcy”. At least with Twitter most people tend to keep in the back of their head that at

German hacker turned away from the US

I have written about security and terrorism before (in The Guardian). One conference I went to a few years ago in Dublin involved sitting around working out how to hack into WiFi. ‘Black Hat’ security is about things like ‘reverse engineering’ software to work out how to break into it. It’s pretty useful both for governments and for companies to work out how secure their systems are. So I’m amazed

Desparate startups bearing coffee

As described in Wired Magazine today: “TechCrunch Blogger Michael Arrington Can Generate Buzz … and Cash” “Michael Arrington was sound asleep in his bedroom in Atherton, California, when three men burst in. Naturally, he was startled. His first reaction, he recalls, was to tell them to “get the fuck out.” But he quickly realized they meant no harm. Clad in white business suits and speaking English with a Dutch accent,

Freebase aims to monetise data Wiki via API services

OpenBusiness has interviewed Robert Cook, one of the co-founders of Freebase, a startup which aims to become the “Wikipedia for data”. Revenues will come through charging thrid party firms to access the API and leverage its data. Uses this coudld be put to include working out how many dentists are in one mile vicinity, if they are next to tube stop and are specialists in teeth whitening. Web 2.0 guru

Tribler’s long-tail video service

Watch out TIOTI.com? As Mashable reports, Denmark-based Tribler (note the .org domain) has created a BitTorrent client which works like Last.fm to find new media based on your downloading history. The non-profit group, a joint research project from Delft University of Technology and the VU University Amsterdam, already has $8 million in government funding. It's also about to be tested with video on-demand services for the Netherlands Public Broadcasting organisation: