The BBC’s Robert Peston popularity has increased this week with his almost real-time blog updates running alongside market events in the city and the effect of government decisions.

Whilst watching RBS almost flat line yesterday on the excellent Google finance pages, I notice a few blogs slamming Mr Peston and his comments for market conditions.

Now, that has prompted me to post this response.

The fact that the BBC has chosen to seamlessly integrate Robert Pestons blog into their award winning global website has cause confusion I think.

Robert Peston’s blog is being taken as professional news broadcasts when clearly they are simply the opinion of an individual who is blogging and receiving comments which make his post living ‘unfinished’ articles.

He blogged recently that Sir Fred the shred approached Flash Gordon before the allocation of the bail out was announced and immediate wipe tens of millions off the value of RBS. I don’t believe he is accountable for that. The traders who digest information with little accuracy are clearly at fault.

Similarly, when CNN picked up the blog that started the rumour of a Steve Jobs heart attack immediately affected Apple’s share price.

It is important that we continue to understand the uses of web 2.0 components and ensure that the usage is somehow guided. Its easy to understand how email became so popular that it became abusive, offensive and dangerous in the wrong hands.

Blogs too are following this trend, because of the simplicity and speed.

So how can we rely on the accuracy of the information when so much of it is available and increasingly consumed?

The wisdom of crowds?  Comments please.

I love this post by Mary Abraham on how wikis mess with your mind.  It’s absolutely true within an organisational culture.  I’ve experienced it and I too started off with apprehension that was quickly changed to addiction.  At my previous employer wikis took off albeit a little slowly, but nonetheless ahead of most of our competitors.  The success was simply down to sponsorship from the top down.  The benefits were immediate, the knowledge and the talent in the organisation was blown open and collaboration across teams grew organically or so it seemed.

Virtual teams were created in the content and grew over time.  The fact that people contributed through their own interests was culture changing.  We took it a stage further by integrating presence into the wiki with the goal of creating a tacit knowledge base; meaning that you had the ability to communicate in real-time with contributors to extend the collaboration.

I’m now working on creating a similar platform (or repeating the success) with presence everywhere, but the technology part is easy, the challenge now is to introduce the culture of an open book into the organisation where everyone can publish, search, consume and converse.  That sounds very similar to my old boss JP’s vision of Four Pillars.

Well of course, that’s the culture I supported.

In the early 1990s as an engineer, I experienced the birth of corporate email.  I dabbled into what was on offer at the time and saw dominant products born out of existing platforms at the time.  Soon, dedicated ‘enterprise’ electronic mail applications were being developed and very soon after the industry was revelling in the new acronyms that were associated with e-mail (MAPI, POP IMAP, SMTP), . 

As usual during the growth stage of any product competition exists and in the case of email, this was around the protocols, standards and of course products.  In the case of email there hasn’t really been a dominant winner, but one thing for sure, the SMTP standard has emerged as the de-facto.  Surprisingly this technology although almost 30 years old is still being used today despite it’s shortfalls on security.  The success of email is simply its disruptiveness, the ability to replace cumbersome, complex and high cost alternatives of communications with a simple concept with a low cost of entry.

Email has created an industry within itself.  I chose to focus on it as an early career and many businesses have prospered and continue to on the back of the popularity of email. Archiving, Hosting, Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, Security and Management, business functions too changed and adopted email as a formal and revenue generating service.  Specialist Marketing firms have emerged that provide mass emailers, agencies as their called now provide off-host email services and of course there are the scams that aim to dupe unsolicited individuals from their cash by using ‘phishing scams’ and spoofing.

Electronic communication has now become a high profile regulated communication medium worldwide.  Of course email is beneficial to both an organisation and an individual, it makes money, it saves money, and it can reduce risk.  On the other hand and more importantly, it can ruin your reputation, it can destroy your business, and it can drive you and your business into the ground.  Email grabbed the attention of everyone worldwide with its simplicity and power.  Email was becoming uncontrollable.

When I analysed our corporate usage at the time I noticed that 85% of received email was SPAM.  This was being stored and replicated throughout the organisation and creating a high cost and reduced level of service.  I needed over £1m to get us through the next 12 months.  Email usage was increasing.  80% of our communication was performed using email.  Almost everything down to arranging to go for a quick beer after work to transferring of confidential documents is based on email.

The term information overload appeared on the scene around 2003 as our productivity time was consumed by managing our inboxes, sorting the signal from the noise or the legitimate email from the unsolicited email.  The researchers were telling us we had to overcome ‘information overload’ and email had become out of control.  I somewhat agreed with that but I thought back then we needed to evolve email.  I remember getting excited when I found ReMail and instantly being disappointed that it was never pursued by IBM.

I began looking at some other early dot com ideas that went pop back at the turn of the century and started to chase the concept of a ‘white list’ email platform.  I found a product that was still in a development stage that weathered the bubble.  This was indeed a concept I felt was the next evolution of corporate email.  100% SPAM free, confidentiality guaranteed and storage optimisation through threaded conversations being written as single instance records.  This certainly would decrease the volumes of email we were generating.  Unfortunately still in development meant not fit for production and that was the end of that, but it’s certainly not the end of the search.

Fast forward to 2008, we now have social and professional networking sites popping up everywhere and without noticing we are utilising the inherent email features of these.  In Facebook and LinkedIn we are communicating with members of our network or white list.  Okay, not quite as feature rich as email (i.e. no attachments and no bcc fields etc) but that’s the right direction I think.  Corporate email turned into a corporate filing system that it was never designed to do.  Corporate email turned into a medium that bread under the covers espionage with it’s Bcc field and corporate email systems became a mission critical service so much so that without it businesses could not trade.  Organisations also became accountable for all the content transmitted across email and without any method of policing this email continues to be a mission critical concern.  Added to this we are now embracing Instant Messaging and Chat platforms and now talking about ‘unified communications’ by integrating voice and video (I know this is not new, but it still hasn’t gained the traction it needs) into every peripheral an employee can touch to keep in touch.

These methods of communications have become our identity, which we are and how we can be contacted.  This blog is all part of this too.  My ‘white list’ can communicate with me within LinkedIn or Facebook, whilst anyone can communicate with me on the many email addresses and phone numbers that advertise my identity.

Enterprise Facebook and LinkedIn?  Yes, of course, this is the next evolution of Enterprise messaging and Enterprise CRM, but not in the current consumer guise.  Many organisations are watching these technologies and are willing to embrace, but security is still a concern and could they have this delivered as a service rather than host and manage within the corporate boundary?  Maybe one step at a time, but I’m certainly keen on this direction.

It seems there’s a flurry of German acquisition acitivity in my reader today.  Well, not really a flurry, but certainly signs that Germany are buying anything that smells German.  Commerzbank and Dresdner is a done deal predicted back in December.  Deutsche Bank and Postbank and now Lufthansa and SAS.  I’m sure there will be more.  My question is… are the Germans trying to reverse Globalisation?

If you search for Android in Google there no surprise that the first hit will take you to Google’s Open Handset Alliance page with tons of information and help on Android, and in fact 90% of the first page results are all about Google’s Android. There is one hit that points to the wikipedia page describing a more familiar definition of an Android.

Now if you look at that page, the results from Google are predictive to say the least, but one surprising fact about the page is that there is no sponsored links! Well there is one, sometimes, but there is no one making money from that page.

Now if your business model is based on advertising revenue and you are the number one search engine in the world with millions of hits per second, there’s no wonder you are a leading success and a global brand. Your revenue is based on selling advertising space, your clients pay for the benefit of reaching your vast audience and rely on you placing there ads on the first page in the right place. Of course you have competition, but being number one and staying at number means that you are smart, competitive and understand what the consumers want better than your rivals.

Staying two steps (or more) ahead of the rest means that they are all competing with each other whilst you are defining the next steps and not just waiting for it to arrive.

So who or what will threaten Google? This recent article in Business Week raises an interesting point.

You see according to the article, over two thirds of Americans have experienced Mobile Internet Services and of course this figure is growing. In Europe and in Asia we’ve been doing it for years and faster, but with wireless cities appearing, WiMax on the way, China and India exploding onto the scene and more recently, Cuba, there will be a shift from the traditional PC to the Mobile device. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t likely to be an overnight shift nor will it be a migration from PC to Mobile. What is happening is that more and more of us are experiencing better quality browsers and applications on the mobile platforms and we are embracing it.

According to Gartner, in 2006 there were just under 1 billion mobile phone units shipped worldwide and in 2007 this was around 1.13 billion. With Apple and RIM entering the market the devices are more attractive and functionally stable compared to the browsing experience on early Nokia and Motorola devices. These new devices really are becoming usable and I can at last see the day where I carry a single device.

With the increase in mobility the target audience for the ad execs is now mouth wateringly vast, BUT, the traditional banner ad and sponsored search ad will not do. The billions of mobile and wireless consumers will not accept the same content squeezed into a mobile device display. So, what’s the plan?

Enter Android. Develop a new mobile operating system that will allow your winning business model to thrive. So far, the advertising on Android is anyone’s guess, but personalisation and profiling seems to be the way forward. The recent launch of Blyk from Orange is a good example of how Google’s business model will continue to thrive on the mobile platform and some are predicting a coverflow type of interface that will contain target advertising as well as the content you request.

The BBC reports that Microsoft have walked away from the Yahoo bid.  Does this mean that Yahoo and Microsoft will at last start their engines and get back to producing something new and competitive or will they simply continue on the acquisition trail.  Come on you two…clean up your act and get back to work!

I remember back in the late 1990s I worked on a project for GE to deploy Microsoft Exchange. GE at the time made a corporate decision to deploy a single messaging platform throughout the globe to overcome what they saw as a business communication problem. They used the analogy of a representative from GE Plastics walking past the representative from GE Lighting in the corridors of General Motors or Chrysler not knowing that they were both working for the same company with the same client and not being able to share any information. They believed that working together Plastics and Lighting could benefit the customer as well as GE. The case was compelling and the sponsorship of a single messaging platform came from the top, it had Jack Welch’s buy-in!

Reading Andrew McAfee’s post today I was reminded of this age and it occurred to me that we are still trying to solve this problem but this time the technology is Enterprise 2.0 and the use of Wikis and Blogs in a bid to reduce the use of email.

His students responses, in my view, are right on the button and his dissection of the responses make perfect sense. They mention cases where Wikis and Blogs can improve the collaboration between diverse businesses and teams within many different organisations, they highlight how collaboration and knowledge sharing can improve business processes, but I still can’t help thinking that whilst technology is evolving and we have new problems to solve, we’ve not fixed the problems that existed all those years ago.

Looking at it from another point of view, maybe we are solving the problem, but in stages. Email was the first step, but we are far from finished.

Microsoft, yes Microsoft have launched a voice activated search application for the Blackberry, even before a Windows mobile version! Brushing over that fact, I have to say that I’d love to try it out, but being in the UK it seems I’ll have to wait.

Whilst in the US a couple of weeks ago, I played a lot of golf. Every [other] day we searched local golf courses for times and fees to get the best all round locations. Usually using a desktop/laptop, Google maps and a phone we canvassed local golf courses that met our criteria. As you can imagine, local in Florida is a 30 mile radius and golf courses in a 30 miles radius are plentiful. I’m not going to count.

I can really see how usefull this application can be especially when GPS is stable, fast and effective as it was in Florida.

In the meantime, I’ll be testing Yahoo oneSearch with voice support for Blackbery.

I really like Zimbra’s collaboration suite.  I remember looking into Zimbra, amongst others,  a few years ago when I decided to investigate what alternatives corporate Microsoft Exchange users had if they chose not to follow the MS Exchange road map.

At the time many of the alternatives available on the market lacked mobility, archiving and Outlook integration.  These were some of the criteria at the time.

The lack of functionality is no longer the case.  Zimbra now supports true push to Blackberry devices and also incorporates archiving and discovery.  The reality of moving from a Microsoft server platform is becoming reality.

Having said all that, look a little harder at the corporate level and you’ll see that Zimbra is owned by Yahoo and there is a possibility that this could all fall under a Microsoft brand in the future.  So what will become of Zimbra or indeed Exchange (which incidental is in need of a serious overall from the ground up)?

I can’t wait, but I fear we will all have to.

Having encouraged Alex to play golf he is now leaving me behind with his skill. I have closed the gap recently, but he is certainly the better player (and now a pretty effective coach… my coach). A sense of achievement for both of us.

It then occurred to me, with time on my hands, I’m going to work on my next project.

Ben has suddenly shown an interest in fencing and having researched it and found a school\team, I’m also drawn to give it a stab.

So, when the new term starts, Ben and I will be arming ourselves with our foils, bibs and face-masks at fencing school.

I hope I’ve got the right terminology there, or is it a sword, body armour and helmet?