Alec Saunders SquawkBox

This might be the most important revelation in the technology business this year.  Google wants to know everything about you, and help you organize every aspect of your daily life.  It's a radical expansion of their footprint and mission from organizing the world's information to organizing the world's personal information.  Not unexpected, but perhaps earlier than expected, Google has acknowledged that they will catalog everything, and build more intelligence on top of that catalog. Their apps business?  A mechanism to capture more of your data to feed the maw of the search engine, and provide raw material for their analytics business to build upon in the future. 

Rob Hyndman notes that 10 years ago Double-Click was run out of town for a similar vision.  Have we come that far? 

The breadth of the goal is awesome.  Whether society is ready for it is entirely another question. 

Mike Gotta, writing about the role of analytics in social systems, has posted a pretty neat view of what the ideal collective intelligence system built around social networks would be. He has mashed together a whole series of products and ideas from different people (including the New Presence manifesto) to produce this view of the world:

• Take what's going on in my life
• add more context about what I am doing
• in the context of my interaction patterns
• correlate everything in an intelligent manner
• continue to analyze continuously, both past and present
• discover what's important to me, even if i may not know it
• augment that information before you communicate it to me
• signal such information or messages relevant to my work context and focus
• in a manner that is aware of my attention priorities

I'd paraphrase this to three phases for how intelligent systems can help us be more effective.  They gather information and analyze it in context, discover what's valuable, and then deliver that information using appropriate media and at appropriate times.  That's been our focus (in the domain of real time communications) at iotum since day 1.  Mike has neatly generalized what we do to all information systems.

Facebook is a great example of a tool trying to do this today.  Billing itself as a social utility, it lets you aggregate information from the people you care about, and control the way it is presented to you.  It allows you to selectively dip into the traffic and flow of your social network in a way that fits your needs.  That's the beauty of it, and the reason I switched from Twitter and from Jaiku. 

Go read Mike's whole post. 

We're back from a weekend with my in-laws in Kitchener-Waterloo.  It's difficult to get online there because Gramma Hill (83 84 years old) doesn't have or need an internet connection.

A couple of noteworthy items this morning:

• More accolades for Sightspeed, now named to PC World's top 100 products of 2007.
• Robert Scoble bemoans his inability to control comment spam.  I have the same problem here, and the comment spammers are getting trickier.  Recently I've seen them lifting sections of blog posts, and posting what appear to be legitimate comments at first. 

I spotted this dandelion head floating in a puddle on Sunday afternoon.  The way the camera captured the bulge of the meniscus around the bloom was pretty neat.

The VoIP industry is starting to mature pretty rapidly, and a primary indicator of that maturity is the fact that a services industry has been forming around VoIP offerings.  Take, for instance, VoIP Supply's latest offering, their Network Assessment and Evaluation Package.  Because VoIP installations can be tricky, these guys will (for a modest fee) come by your establishment and check out everything, including:

• Initial telephone consultation with an IP Communications expert.
• Discussion to determine your goals and basic communications needs.
• Discussion of features that fit your needs/requirements and additional features available to you.
• Technical drawing, in flow chart format, detailing the components of your proposed solution and how they interconnect.
• Details to complement the technical drawing, explaining each hardware, software and service element.
• Discussion and explanation of critical concepts including QoS (Quality of Service), remote user/office setup and integration and PBX dialplan setup (Call routing PSTN and SIP/VOIP).
• Recommendations for both PSTN (Analog POTS, T1/PRI) connectivity, data (DSL, Cable, Fiber,    t1/PRI) connectivity, as well as SIP Based VoIP service providers (ITSP).
• Complete quotation for hardware, software, service and accessories.
• Location or a local or national company to assist in the installation of your hardware and    software, including network components.
• Pricing discounts on hardware, configuration and support of your installation.

VoIP Supply is one example of the professional services channel now starting to emerge.  That's very heartening.

In the Camp vein we've all come to know and love, Mercury Grove and the Talent First Network are sponsoring CommunityCamp, an evening to get tech people together and pitch ideas for new community services to be built.  At the end of the evening, one of the ideas will be selected and get built. 

Interested?  Check out the website.