Irwin Lazar's "Real-Time" Blog

Nixon & Kennedy debate blogs and wikis

Clever:

Charlie Giancarlo leaves Cisco

See Fred Knight and Eric Krapf's comments at http://nojitter.com/

Is there room for yet another social network?

Over the last few days I've gotten a number of requests to join people on "Spock" which as best I can tell is a social network that crawls the Internet for information about people, so not only can you see what members of your network make available, you can see what information about them is publicly available on the Internet.

At this point I don't see the value in this service, other than if I wanted to be nosy.   Given I'm already on Facebook and LinkedIn, I'm not sure I see the value of yet another social network.  And I see the real value of social networks in establishing communications between individuals and groups, not in trolling for additional information about people I'm supposed to already know.  But, I'll keep my eye on it.

Alec Saunders has posted some of his own observations on Spock's recruitment methods.

IBM Lotus visualizes social networks

IBM Lotus introduced "IBM Atlas for Lotus Connections" this morning, a tool which allows users of the Connections enterprise social networking application to create visual representations of connections between members of various networks.  I had the opportunity to see this tool in action a few weeks ago and I was impressed.  By visualizing a social network one is able to see who are primary connectors within a network, and now groups of networks inter-relate.  In effect one can determine who others use as the source of their information.

I'd recommend that anyone contemplating the use of this tool read "Linked: The New Science of Networks" by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, which explains how networks typically form with a few key nodes that others attach to, making those nodes of primary importance in understanding and growing a social networking environment.

More: eWeek: Visualize Social Networks with IBM's Atlas

Technorati Tags: Lotus

The launch of "No Jitter"

This morning marks a bit of a milestone in the communications publishing arena.  CMP has launched "No Jitter" a new site focused on IP telephony, Unified Communications, and converged networks.  I'm happy to announce that I will be a regular contributor to the site (while continuing to blog both here as well as Collaboration Loop.com.  "No Jitter" features many of the same contributors to Business Communications Review as well as VOIPloop.com. 

Microsoft introduces UC developer portal

Trying to get to blogging again after much travel.....

Microsoft introduced a UC developer portal on MSDN last week.  See:

eWeek: Microsoft Intros New Developer Portal

Here's another example of the push of UC becoming a service for business applications.  Most vendors in the UC space are actively looking at ways to build business value around their UC offerings by integrating UC with business applications.  To get there, they need the help of developers.  Obviously Microsoft has a strong presence in the developer community, and they see their ability to leverage this presence as a competitive advantage for their UC offerings.