Facebook will continue to be the 800-pound gorilla in the social networking space for the coming year. The challenge for Facebook will be to not shoot itself in the foot over privacy concerns. Trust is a big component in social networking (in real life as well as online), and Facebook is already on thin ice with many people over their ever-changing privacy policies. If those concerns spread or become more profound (or perhaps worse, attract the attention of government privacy regulators) Facebook risks losing growth momentum. That being said, location-based social networking sites like Foursquare and Gowalla will lose out to Facebook Places in the coming year as Places becomes the 800-pound gorilla in the “check in for rewards” category.

Twitter will release yet another revamped user interface in 2011. Users will complain about it for a few weeks before Read more …

In a bit of technological determinism, Nicholas Carr suggests that the Internet is making us dumber. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, he writes that “a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the Net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is also turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers.” Knowing what distraction does to expertise development, in 2007, here at Cutter Consortium in an executive report on Web 2.0, I had written:

“Unfortunately, Web 2.0, with its high interrupt-driven, instant gratification, rich Internet application (RIA)-powered user interfaces, may be creating a context that destroys expertise before it can develop. Expertise development requires dedicated, uninterrupted time on a complex task so that a human mind can learn how to codify, abstract, and then relate disparate pieces of complex information. It frequently requires other human mentors.”

Read more …

Here is a question to get your mind going. Has the evolution of computing been shaped by Western 20th century politics and culture or have our designs been more indebted to unchanging human psychology?

While this sounds like an abstract debate in which only academics would revel, it started with me tweaking Apple’s iPad in a tweet for what I believe to be ambivalence within the iPad’s file system design. The iPhone and iPad file designs do not exactly follow conventional and hierarchical folder/directory designs of yore. The reason is obvious. Most everyday users of ubiquitous devices have no need for the extra complexity. Many casual users of smart phones and now pads and slates do not understand the ins and outs of conventional file systems, nor should they.

My tweet excited my colleague, Dr. Chris Rice, a political science Read more …

With the new year upon us, we asked Cutter’s Senior Consultants and Fellows for their business technology predictions. Their perspectives — as always — are quite thoughtful, thought-provoking, and varied. Projections cover the changing role of the CIO, what will happen in enterprise architecture, the increasing adoption of agile, the explosion of cloud computing, the impact of green initiatives, and more.

We’re posting all the predictions on the Cutter website as they come in. Here are some excerpts:

Israel Gat: I expect 2010 to be the first year of a prolonged golden age. San Murugesan: In 2010 and beyond, we will see growing interest and major developments in cloud computing, green IT, and mobile systems and applications. Steve Andriole: By 2015, operational technology requirements have merged with business requirements and vice versa. Vince Kellen: Social network Read more …

I’ve got a tune stuck in my head again today. Perhaps this happens to you ocassionally too. It’s triggered subliminally by means totally unrelated to music. Fortunately for me, now that my children have grown into teenagers, the tune is less likely to be The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round or The Barney Song!

On a nearly daily basis, I read or hear something profound or innovative around the topic of Cloud Computing. The debate surrounding cloud security, privacy, and control now triggers a brain-born rendition of Get Off Of My Cloud, originally recorded in 1965 by the British rock band, the Rolling Stones.

“Hey! You! Get off of my cloud Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd”

Sixties music aside, it’s the digital concept of “My Cloud”, as excerpted from that classic song title, which has Read more …

As the old joke goes, alpha tests and beta tests are named that way because “alpha” is a Greek word that means “doesn’t work,” and “beta” is another Greek word that means “still doesn’t work.” But seriously, we know that the classical software product lifecycle includes tests performed by the development team (alpha tests) and tests performed by a limited number of selected users (beta tests). Beta testers have to accept that the software may have bugs (otherwise, what would be the point of testing?) and they commit to taking the time to provide detailed feedback on the issues they encounter. In exchange, they get to use the software early, usually for free, and may even get a price break on the final license price.

With Enterprise 2.0 capabilities, especially those delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), the model is changing a Read more …

Nearly six months ago, the subject for this month’s Cutter IT Journal was conceived, and I was flattered to be invited to serve as the guest editor. Through the collective volunteer efforts (involving thousands of hours) by seven outstanding contributing authors, the set of cutting edge opinion, entitled “The Rise of the Semantic Enterprise”, has now been born. A few quick excerpts follow:

“By exploiting the technologies of the Semantic Web, a semantic enterprise can create a people-machine continuum that enhances business agility”.

“The emerging Semantic Web will require us to dramatically rethink traditional notions of how business, data/information, application, and technology architectures are conceptualized and realized within an enterprise.”

“If CIOs are serious about developing a semantic enterprise, they should start asking themselves what kind of organization they envisage for the future: a “closed-world” organization, an “open-world” organization, Read more …

Enterprise use of social networks is in on the rise. But how do we know if it’s working? The October issue of Cutter IT Journal seeks to uncover the metrics organizations are using to measure the value of their social networking efforts. Article abstracts are due July 10. For more information, visit here.

As 2009 brings dramatic change to the economy, politics, and IT, some consistency might be in order. So, as I have in past years, I’m making suggestions for New Year’s resolutions for enterprise architects.

Execute on Your Roadmap Architecture takes a long time to develop and deliver. There’s a bewildering array of models, processes, options, priorities, and skills needed to achieve enterprise goals. Of course, this cannot be delivered all at once but needs to be phased in over time. How do we know what to do when? First, we need to have a vision of our architectural end state (the point at which enterprise IT is in alignment with both business and technology goals and strategy). Then, we try to understand the dependencies between things, identify current skill sets and training needs, and make a plan to get there. Read more …

In the light of the hype over Web 2.0 this past year, I want to stress that organizations are making use of the techniques to improve the collaboration capabilities of their BI and business performance management initiatives. In fact, according to the results of our recent survey, slightly more than one-quarter of end-user organizations are currently using Web 2.0 techniques to support their BI users. This finding comes from a survey conducted in October 2008 of 85 end-user organizations based worldwide. It was designed to measure the extent that organizations are implementing various types of BI, data warehousing, and other analytic technologies and practices.

Specifically, survey participants were asked “Is your organization using blogs, wikis, or other ‘Web 2.0′ technologies to support its BI efforts/users with collaboration capabilities (e.g., to provide analysts, managers, and other users with the ability to Read more …