T3kBiz

An article I wrote today describes a loophole in the process of signing up for St George’s online trading system, which allows anyone to access the account balance information of any of the bank’s customers.

The detail of how it was done is in the article, but the most interesting part is that it’s not a technology flaw, but a processes flaw.

I suppose it’s a pretty common theme across technology, but you can have the best systems in place, without the processes to support it, something will go wrong.

It also really emphasizes the need for a standard identity verification system for the online world. Something similar to the 100 point check you do at the post office.

The Federal Government will introduce the Work Skills Voucher program, that will encourage SMEs and entrepreneurs to take courses in administration, communication skills, accounting, maths and IT.

I came across this after talking to the Australian Information Industry Association’s (AIIA) CEO, Sheryle Moon, who blogs about it here.

This is a very proactive announcement, that will really benefit start ups and small businesses, and give them access to the IT knowledge and know how to help their busineses thrive.

Right now it very much seems to case is that all the tech start ups and development is being done by ex-techies, rather than people with expertise from other industries and disciplines.

This would seem to go some way to addressing that imbalance.

Apparently Google’s OpenSocial isn’t as open as it first made out to be. According to Tim O’Reilly’s blog, the information used in Google’s Apps is basically locked away. It’s own mini walled garden, if you will.

I think this really just takes the sting out of Google’s annoucement.

Like I said before, from a business perspective there are so many possibilties when information can be transferred and shared. It would break down so many information silos that exist that hold back productivity, and the collaboration it would open up would no doubt allow the business to develop some real efficiencies.

But by locking information into each application, this will be just as bad as the so called walled garden social networks.. In fact worse because instead of having a couple of big walled gardens, there will now essentially be millions of tiny ones.
What benefit is there to the user if they have to continually load their information into a bunch of platforms. This will meant that apps will want to be where the people are, which is exactly the case now..

Google has either made a massive oversight here, or OpenSocial has just been designed to undermine the Microsoft/Facebook and MySpace platforms. I’m inclined to believe the latter, and that the search engine giant is just looking to keepthe attention on itself.

People will realise that without information sharing, Google’s OpenSocial is actually quite anti-social when it actually comes to interacting with other social networks. It has to unlock the information for this to have real value, rather than providing a truly free and open platform where developers and social networks can thrive.

I was invited to an Ericsson product launch, which gave a glimpse at just how the integrated the multimedia experience will be in the future. Things like transferring media from a phone to a set top box, and then remotely collaborating with your friend to decide what to watch. Very cool.

However, there was one big sticking point. In a single day, it was added that a teenage girl could use around 23 mb of bandwidth just by downloading music and sending images.

On the internet 23 mb is nothing, but on the mobile networks where service providers charge insane prices for bandwidth, that’s alot. This is just early days as well, imagine the day when people rely on the phone to consume multimedia.

Well i doubt this day will come anytime soon if the telcos are given the same free reign over the network as they are today.

This is another reason why i think Google’s phone announcement was a bit premature. As long as network providers control bandwidth through high prices, the development of applications will be at their mercy.

Apparently there is set to be another stand off between the media and a national sporting organisation.

Cricket Australia is planning on hiring its own photography companies, and then on selling the images to media companies. Their excuse is that they are looking to protect and properly monetise their IP.

It seems incredible to me that these sporting organisations think that they can also be their own media company, and that the general public will graciously eat whatever they serve up.

The media is the crutch that sports rely on to operate as a professional industry, and regardless of the in-roads the internet has made to break down its power, this has still been limited.

In fact in this age where information has been devalued and instantly accessible, organisations have a responsibility to participate in this open process, rather than lock up their walls. All attempts to do otherwise will only hurt the credibility and finances of such sports and companies.

Dell has just launched a blog that is aimed at investors.

Dell Shares is written by the company’s investor relations team and on the inaugural post they talk about being able to “share perspectives and build and maintain relationships with our investors, potential investors and anyone and everyone who is interested in joining the conversations here”.

A nice ideal, but in terms of investor information about Dell, i’m not sure they can do much more than they’re doing without breaking some rules in what is a heavily regulated industry.

Where they will have better luck will be to try and pass on their investing experience and insight onto shareholders, and educate them in the process. Neville Hobson also said it can be used to add some opinion or colour to what is untoubtedly dull reading, the announcements.

And from their perspective, there is a lot to gain from talking and engaging with the punters. Perhaps one day the investment blogging will to some degree replace the roles of the traditional AGM.

When it comes to media, I think the strength of the blog is not in replacing the traditional sources (and i don’t think it ever will), but in providing another level of reporting that is more informal. It actually creates a range of coverage that wasn’t there before.

In that same vein, blogging does have a role to play in the investor relations. Shareholders can get a more in depth insight into different announcements and investing in general, and by engaging directly with the investor relations team they can look to have another vehicle for communicating to the company.

It will be interesting to see how the experiment for Dell plays out, and let’s hope that in their attempts to not break any investing laws or regulations, the computer giant doesn’t turn the blog into yet another corporate mouthpiece.

The New York Times (NYT) has started to use Blogrunner in tandem with its editors to help aggregate content on its technology section, it said in a press release.

NYT has dismissed the notion that it is trying to replace competitor sites like Techmeme and Google News. However, TechCrunch isn’t buying it and said, “the NYT would like nothing better than to displace those two news crawlers”.

But rather than being cynical of the move, people should realise that this legitimises a technology that so far definitely not shown it is capable of fully replacing the incumbent system of editors deciding the news agenda.

More importantly it’s a very smart business move from NYT, as by starting to bring news aggregators to the mainstream, the masthead starts to position itself as the pre-eminient destination for news.

Nissan is set to launch its own social networking platform for its employees, according to an article in BusinessWeek.

At first it will connect around 50,000 employees in Japan, and provide them with functionalities such as creating “online profiles and blogs, form online communities and discussion groups, and swap data files”.

What’s amazing is the reason it was rolled out was to “circumvent the formal bureaucratic channels and create unexpected partnerships”.

The platform was trialled with 1,000 employees, and one said that using the site they were able to organise a meeting and make a decision on a product in three days, compared with 33 days through traditional channels.

There are obviously big issues around protecting certain types of information and where it can be made available, and who controls what and to what degree.

But the fact that Nissan has taken the step to introduce this platform shows that it is keen to embrace the social networking trend as a way to drive business.

The big news at the moment is Google’s OpenSocial, which has been quite comprehensively covered around the blogosphere, so far this has largely revolved around the social networking side, and one aspect that hasn’t really been explored is the implication for businesses.

Google’s enterprise blog mentions a couple of OpenSocial enabled products that have been announced provide some very useful functionalities for businesses, including LinkedIn, SalesForce, and iBuild.

The decision to get on board was spot on from LinkedIn as its vast database of contact information becomes so much more valuable now that it can be unlocked from the site and integrated into any compatible OpenSocial platform. Adam Nash from LinkedIn talks about it on his blog where he said “Open Social provides us with a mechanism for developers of great business applications to leverage the power of the LinkedIn professional network and reach that audience, all using known web-standards of HTML & Javascript”.

It was also a smart move from SalesForce.com to partner up with Google on this one, as it means the vast range of apps developed on its Force.com platform will now have a far greater reach, and consequently a far greater value. There’s more on the Apex Developer Network Blog.

iBuild allows users to create shared apps that can run as Gadgets on any iGoogle website, on the business side of things think to do lists or shared contact managers. But right now this information is isolated and locked away within the site or in the app

The amazing thing about OpenSocial is that it allows this information to be published and shared amongst all other sites that are compatible with the technology. iBuild demos it on its blog here.

And on the flip side of the capability of opening up the availability of information, companies and IT departments will also have greater control over who has access to what information. This is something that will be of great interest to industries like government and financial services.

This problem currently exists on FaceBook as managing who is allowed to see certain information.

As far as collaobration applications go, OpenSocial definitely has the potential to break down the current platforms, and make the information flow more efficient and easier to manage for all businesses.

This week I was lucky enough to be invited to a dinner that was also attended by some Sydneysiders making a real go of the web 2.0 thing.

Obviously it wasn’t on the scale of what you’d see in the States, there was about 30 people there in total, but as far as I could tell some of the guys were onto a really good thing.

Bardia Housman, the founder of goodbarry was there, and he’s taking his website creator for small businesses to the States, on the back of this local success. They got this mention on techcrunch not long ago, so they’re not doing that bad..

There was also Dean McEvoy, who founded the online booking system bookingangel.com, which has found its feet in Australia in the restaurant industry. Its service is basically allows customser to make a restaurant booking over the internet, and gives them an immediate response. It also recently opened offices in the States looking to get its product into anything that needs a booking.

I also got to speak to the guy that started airlinebookings.com, something i’ll be keeping an eye on, as well as Nicholas Holmes a Court, who founded Shifted Pixels and is passionate about nurturing local ideas, people and companies.

And this was only a handful of startups from Sydney and Surry Hills, it’d be interesting to know what’s happening around the country..