I have never really adopted the use of Deli.cio.us, the best known social bookmarking and search tool. There was something about the spare, blank, austere user interface that annoyed me, so I never warmed to it. However, I am a great believer in the future of social search, so I turned to the new Yahoo My Web 2.0 with great interest, and now believe, like Waxy.org, that it is possibly a Deli.cio.us killer.

I continue to believe that the center of the social universe is the instant messaging buddy list metaphor: not just because I am biased toward real-time communication, but because human beings are the center of the socialized world. That's the rationale for the Nerdvana ideal that animates a series of posts I made over the past few months. However, the Yahoo My Web 2.0 builds on the Yahoo 360° social network metaphor, to decide who makes up my universe, which is a pretty good second-order approximation. I want to know what the Dunbar core group -- the 150ish most critical folks in my universe -- are reading, finding, thinking. My Yahoo 360° group includes Stuart Butterfield, Marc Canter, Jonas Luster, Greg Narain, Liz Lawley, Ross Mayfield, and a few dozen others, so the results are pretty indiciative of what My Web 2.0 might look like in a steady state of use. Here's a tagcloud based on the tags being used by my contacts in Yahoo 360°:

Ok, so I am going to start using the system for the next few weeks, and I plan a series of posts chronicling my experiences, and the commentary of other explorers.

Here's what the folks at Yahoo Search blog have to say about what they are up to:

[from Yahoo! Search blog: Search, with a little help from your friends]

Introducing Social Search

To address these kinds of limits of today's search experience, we are releasing an early beta version of My Web 2.0 for a limited number of users. It is a new kind of search engine -- a social search engine -- that complements web search by enabling users to search the knowledge and expertise of their friends and community in addition to the web. Here's some of what we think is interesting about My Web 2.0:

• The trusted web -- Anyone can save, tag, and share knowledge with their community. Any page on the web with your comments and insights. Your community can do the same. The result -- a new search experience that combines web search with what your trusted community has tagged and shared. Users can build their community by inviting their contacts via email or by importing existing social relationships from Yahoo! Address Book, Messenger, or their 360° community. My Web 2.0 then leverages the Yahoo! 360° personal network platform to enable people to manage their search community.

• Personalized search -- My Web 2.0 is powered by Yahoo!'s new MyRank Search Technology, which provides personalized search results based on the shared knowledge of the people they trust. Personalized search is also supported by our My Search History capability, (launched in My Web 1.0 ). Over time, you will see us integrate MyRank technology across other Yahoo! applications and services.

• Control over what is shared and with whom -- Each page saved and tagged can be shared with the world, just with friends and their friends, or kept private.

• Structured tagging -- The internet is about much more than web pages -- key dimensions like time and location can be as important as the content itself. With user-provided structured tags like "geo:[location]" applied to pages, search results can now can include maps to locations in addition to the web page.

• Open APIs - Through the use of My Web 2.0's XML and RDF APIs , a whole host of new applications can be built -- like what the folks in the Stanford University TAP project are working on.

How Is Social Search Different?

Social search complements web search, which is driven by publishers and web sites, by providing a better search experience that is powered by people and communities. Flickr is a great example of this power applied to photos and image search.

Much like links and anchor text enabled major improvements in web search by becoming a new source of authority for search engines, people and trust networks are now an additional source of authority for social search engines. In the same way that blogs and RSS are empowering individuals to participate in publishing, individuals and communities can now participate in search, using tools like My Web 2.0 that let them define what is valuable to them and their community.

Over time, we envision communities using My Web to build their own search engines to capture and make accessible the knowledge of their community -- search engines populated with the collective experience of a group of medical researchers, a community of PHP experts, a bird watching club, or members of a structural engineering consulting firm.

Ok, I am looking forward to the integration with Flickr and Messenger, but please make sure everything works with Mac, ok? The Yahoo Address book doesn't sync with Mac, and the newly released beta of Messenger (I wrote about it a few weeks ago: Not Nerdvana, But Maybe The Suburbs) doesn't run on OS X yet.

LA Times piece on just how connected young people are. Offers a better slogan for AOL: "If you don't have AIM, you don't have friends."

Jabber Inc. announced a new version of the company's flagship product: v 4.2 Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) and Instant Messaging Advanced (IMA). The company continues to mature XCP as a XMPP transport mechanism that can form the basis for any sort of real-time messaging architecture.

A new AOL survey proves that we are co-dependent with email:

Signs that we're hooked on e-mail:

• We wake up and check it. Forty one percent check e-mail first thing in the morning, 18% check it right after dinner, 14% say they check e-mail right when they get home from work, and 14% do so right before they go to bed.

• We can't make it through the night. Forty percent of e-mail users have checked their e-mail in the middle of the night.

• We can't live without it! More than one in four (26%) say they haven't gone more than two to three days without checking their e-mail.

• We have multiple accounts. Most e-mail users have two or three e-mail accounts (56%). The average user has 2.8 accounts.

• We check it anytime, anywhere. E-mail users have checked their e-mail in a variety of locations, including:
  • In bed in their pajamas (23%)
  • In class (12%)
  • In a business meeting (8%)
  • At a Wi-Fi hotspot, like Starbuck's or McDonald's (6%)
  • At the beach or pool (6%)
  • In the bathroom (4%)
  • While driving (4%)
  • In church (1%)

Yeah, but you mke it sound like a bad thing.

As usual, the natural, knee-jerk reaction to continuous partial attention is that it is nutso, addictive, bad for your health. Ok -- I agree that emailing while driving, at least if you are the driver, is a bad thing. But not the implicit "this is stupid" reaction.

I am not a great fan of email -- it is bad at what we want most to do: stay close to those we are close to -- and it is really great at spam, and anything that smells like spam, like a company President's monthly pronouncements to the troops. But I am a fan of people remaining in close contact with partners in work and in life, and if people are channeling that social interaction through email instead of media better suited for it (like instant messaging, and blogs) so be it. better to have emailed and connected, than never to have connected at all.

Today, AOL released a software developer kit (SDK) that will mean easy integration for game developers with the 46 million people in the AIM and ICQ networks. The SDK will enable access to the entire AOL network as well as access to such features as the AOL Buddy List. AIM features were recently added to the Matrix Online game, giving gamers the ability to see which of their friends were online and to chat real-time in the gaming environment.

Technorati Tags: AOL, AIM, ICQ, Gaming, IM

Got an extremely brief email from Messagecast which has now been acquired by MSN alerts. Not too many details available at this point.

[tags: Messagecast, MSN Alerts]

BBC reports that "A South African woman has been told to pay damages of 2,000 rand ($333) after sending a racially offensive SMS."

Thought provoking take on Google's grand scheme from Mathieu Balez:

[from The Good God Google]

What we're talking about here is the eventual creation of a perfect digital record of your entire memory, at your fingertips and searchable, all emblazoned with the Google logo and, certainly, some pertinent and unobtrusive advertisement. Scary? Maybe a little.

It is also most likely developing a Google-branded version of Firefox -- the up-and-coming Web-browser. There is no dearth of well-supported evidence on the Web pointing to this fact. Having its own browser out there grants Google the opportunity to package all of its services in one tidy delivery channel. It also further encroaches upon Microsoft's territory.

Most significantly however, it will be the opening move on the chessboard of next-generation desktop computing. I believe Google is vying to dethrone Microsoft as the potentate of PC dominance by pulling the rug out from underneath its feet, by changing the very rules of the operating system game itself. Not unlike its e-mail and mapping software, which are entirely Web-based, Google will release an operating system that will be completely networked and centralized on its servers. You will literally no longer need any software running on your local computer (except the Google Web-browser of course, and a network connection). The computing experience will involve booting your computer, logging into the net, and having access to all your programs (and most of your data) which will reside happily in the ether -- all protected and secure, we will be assured, by the good god Google.

He also hypothesizes the acquisition of Skype or Teleo by Google, which is an advance that I favor, as an end user, personally. I have junked my Vonage contraption, and gone over wholeheartedly to Skype: I now have SkypeIn and SkypeOut capabilities, and use it many times everyday. Integration of Skype with other Google services -- like search, Gmail and so on -- would be a natural. Not to mention Google could then presence enable search results. Imagine you do a search on some topic "google skype rumors" and you find that Stowe Boyd has blogged about it. Then you see that Stowe is online (via Skype), and you opt to read the piece, and then IM Stowe via Skype for clarification on something he stated in the entry. He clarifies. You then could post the result of the IM as a comment in Stowe's blog, or email it to a friend via Gmail. Even more cool if you could post Skype voice-over-IP as comments or podcasts. Pretty compelling vision, and one that would make the apparent low rate of innovation around Blogger sensible, since they may be waiting for a large number of pieces to fall into place before doing anything radical.

[pointer from Robin Dindayal]

[tags: Google Skype Rumor]

Stuart Henshall does what Arieanna and I haven't had time to do: he and his son experimented with the AOL Triton beta. He was not impressed, and for big reasons, not just various UI tweaks they have made that fall short: "AOL is a big player. It just doesn't look like their team immersed themselves in the best "alternates" from a multiplicity of different suppliers. It seems too basic for me to suggest they do a SWOT analysis, I don't even really believe in them for the most part. The real problem here is vision."

[tag: AOL Triton]

AOL is going to be remodeling AIM to include a new UI, as well as making underlying code changes. The new UI will be more fluent for all the ways that IM is used now: for video, audio, and wireless IMing. The beta version, Triton, is available for download. [Update: Triton beta is currently only for Windows XP.]

A new version of MSN Messenger has been released. Upgraded features in version 7 include a more holistic approach to all MSN features - integrating search with video with voice with MSN Spaces and upgraded personalization. Some personalization includes the ability to choose ads as backgrounds - a way to be associated with a brand style. Advertising, overall, is more aggressive: age/location targeting and new text link additions. The new release aims to enhance the "richness" of the online experience. Also includes in the new release are some safeguards against IM worms.

Everybody is talking about social TV (so I created a new category for it). Olga Kharif posted on research going on at PARC, which will incorporate Tivo and instant messaging elements:

Indeed, in many ways, Social TV will be similar to the Instant Messenger you already use on your computer. Only it will be more dynamic: Social TV software, located on a device like TiVo or even your TV set, might notice that your and your buddy's yacking has gone well past the commercial break. The software would conclude that you are no longer watching the show and, perhaps, pause the program until you are ready to resume, says Nic Ducheneaut, member of PARC research staff.

And, today at Many2Many, Kevin Marks pointed to this:

Tom Coates

[from Social Software for Set-Top boxes...]

A buddy-list for television:
Imagine a buddy-list on your television that you could bring onto your screen with the merest tap of a 'friends' key on your remote control. The buddy list would be the first stage of an interface that would let you add and remove friends, and see what your friends are watching in real-time - whether they be watching live television or something stored on their PVRs. Adding friends would be simple - you could enter letters on screen using your remote, or browse your existing friends' contact lists.

Being able to see what your friends were watching on television would remind you of programmes that you also wanted to see, it would help you spot programmes that your social circle thought were interesting and it could start to give you a shared social context for conversations about the media that you and your friends had both enjoyed.

You can tell these people are not playing massively parallel online games, because if they were they could reduce the discussion to a single phrase: Xfire for TV. Xfire (which I reviewed over a year ago, here), provides augmented presence information about your online gaming pals. It shows not only that they are online or not, but also what game they are playing. Xfire provides the ability to join others in those games by just clicking on that presence indicator.

So, social TV -- with what ever bells and whistles involving web cams, microphones, etc -- is simply going to be the fusion of that Xfire notion of context ual presence (what show I am watching) and the online gamer experience of a shared space with integrated chat. The shared space in this case maybe the John Stewart show instead of World of Warcraft, but the basic are all there, and millions of people are already doing it everyday.

AOL today released version five of the ICQ IM. The new ICQ release features Walkie-Talkie service, Voice Chat using VoIP, and video messaging.

Ben Stanfield has peeked into the AOL AIM terms of use agreement, and has discovered that the so-called public IM network is owned by AOL, and maybe anything you say there is too, in AOL Eavesdrops, Grants Itself Permission To Steal Your AIM Conversations

I did a flashmeeting based interview with James Payne of Rhombus, earlier today, as another in the series of Get Real shows (click here to replay).

I recently reviewed Ubergroups, the Rhombus offering that James and I discussed (First Look: Ubergroups).

James shared some thoughts about the Ubergroups real time communication framework (instant messaging and persistant chat, with support for XMPP so you can use Jabber-ompliant clients), and disclosed that calendaring is the next big thing, perhaps in a Q2 release (and a tantalizing mention of wireless support).

I just read Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Blink, which is a wonderful exploration of our ability to "thin-slice" the world around us: to rapidly make judgements at an intuitive, almost instantaneous level. I expected, but never encountered Pascal's quote "The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of."

One of the issues that arises in a world full of real time information feeds is how to thin-slice when we are attention-starved. I have written a lot about continuous partial arttention, which sounds like a disorder, but is actually a winning strategy for thin-slicing many different information feeds on a time-sliced basis. However, effective CPA will require more technology better suited to thin-time-slicing than conventional technologies geared toward traditional full attention modes of use.

One simple example are the increasingly prevalent "tombstones" -- those small, transient windows that emerge from the toolbar on your PC -- that indicate some state change of interest: a friend has come online, an appointment reminder has come into a warning state, or your MP3 player's sync has completed. They come, you momentarily shift attention to register the snippet of info, and then shift back -- or maybe follow that info nugget, by IMing a buddy who has just come online.

But the other side of our brains -- away from text and foreground focus -- haven't really been tapped very well in the business context.

I stumbled across a piece in Wired about Accentus, who is trying to help financial traders thin-slice using music. In lieu of graphs, charts, and text -- which are based on using eye focus and reading centers of the brain, Accentus software indicates various sorts of state changes in the financial world through different sorts of musical sounds. This exploits a rich "vocabulary" of music innate in people's (except for the tone deaf) brains.

Scott Kirsner

[from Listening to the market]

You hear: Staccato G, B, and C coming from a bassoon
It means: Dow Jones is up 50 points on the day, most recent move up 10.

You hear: Harpsichord playing two notes, second higher than first
It means: German DAX index just ticked up.

You hear: Short ascending clarinet melody
It means: Canadian dollar gains 0.1 percent against US dollar.

You hear: Lush strings, punctuated by ascending double bass notes
It means: Trade made on options portfolio; risk position moved up by $6,000.

Years ago, when I was a researcher, I could could tell if my compiling of a program had been successful or not by the noise that the Unix hard drive made. Our ability to make sense of subtle auditory feedback cues will be a huge area of growth over the next few years.

This is probably another are that we should look at massively parallel online games for innovation: whatever becomes commonplace there will be adopted by business, in some form, by the end of the decade. The idea of playing an online game without instant messaging is inconceivable; while many in business still operate without it, as if that makes sense today.

A Fremont police sergeant got on a computer and used instant messaging to persuade a distraught 16-year-old boy barricaded in his house not to commit suicide, authorities said Friday

By the way, if you haven't seen me on IM lately, I have transitioned to iChat as part of my mac migration: stoweboyd@mac.com on iChat and AIM, now. Currently inactive on MSN and Yahoo; I plan to fix the Jabber connection in the next few days.

Stuart Henshall is raving about the new Skype 1.1 beta which has both group chat and new voice mail service that has a decidely social flavor. [Note: As a new, happy, Mac OSX user, I can't play. I guess I could run it under Virtual PC, but...]

In the middle of a softball interview by Gartner's Tom Austin, Ray makes an interesting point about how stupid the current phone system is because it doesn't include presence, when it easily could:

Ray Ozzie

[from The Gartner Fellows: Ray Ozzie's Interview]

Notification and awareness is one of the most interesting uses of wireless devices that has yet to emerge. We're moving into a world of pervasive awareness, where you can control the publishing of awareness of your location, "projecting" to others your interruptability and the modes of communications that you find the most useful at the moment. For example -- when you're driving and have your hands on the wheel, you'd rather suggest to others that they call you rather than "texting" or emailing you. Or maybe they should just let you concentrate.

Projecting your interruptability to others might be really easy if we integrated our handheld wireless devices with our varied communication services. Take, for example, the phone. Why isn't it possible -- without navigating a million menus [which I guess means running an IM client on your phone] -- to slip a little button on the side to select one of four desired presence or interruptability states, customized to you: I'm in a meeting; I'm available to my "intimates"; I'm available for any interruptions; or "do not disturb". This state could be easily published by your wireless operator, through Web Services, to the on-line buddy list of your IM or email programs, or directly to other people's phones.

The rest of the interview honestly baffles me: a lot of looking back at the trends that have brought us to today, but not very much on where Groove might be heading. My current sense is that Groove has wound up in a niche -- a relatively big one, I grant -- supporting mobile groups that don't share a common server, such as the ad hoc interagency groups working in Homeland Security, but who need a secure file sharing platform. But honestly, the Groove add-on tools are a joke, and I can't fathom why Groove doesn't interoperate with other IM networks. With the lovey-dovey relationship they have with Microsoft, you'd expect at least MSN interop. These limitations -- along with the small market penetration -- makes using Groove relatively unattractive for anyone not in exactly the sweet spot for the product.

But the comments about phones and phones companies missing the boat on presence brings to mind something that came up in a phone conversation I had earlier this week with the CEO of Vonage, Jeffrey Citron. I had emailed him about the concept of an acquisition of Vonage by one of the established instant messaging networks. Initially, my interest was driven by the idea -- the power of fusing together the largest VoIP telephone company, with over 350,000 North American users with a public instant messaging network. He very carefully said something like "It would be inappropriate to discuss those rumors." Hmmm. That piqued my curiosity, of course.

But the discussion that followed was me trying to steer him toward IM integration, and him studiously staying away. We discussed the recent Viseon videophone announcement, and I pointed out that millions of webcams have already been sold, and are already running on PCs: why not build a desktop client for Vonage that leverages those. Citron argued that the quality of the webcams is uneven; well, sure. But there they are, and people use them already with the various IM services. So maybe its a strategy of not building stuff that your likely acquirers have already built?

On the otherside, taking use of smarter devices -- like a Vonage phone box that would use wifi or bluetooth to talk to portable or cell phones in range -- looks like something that is coming together. We may still have to fiddle with the menus -- there won't be a 'present and available' switch to satisfy Ray -- but we are getting closer, slowly, to a seamless integration of telephony and instant messaging. Although the stupid phones companies have blown the obvious advantages they had, and are leaving it open for the Vonages and Microsofts of the world to take it all over.

In a recent email alert, ABI Research argues that the size of the instant messaging market will lead to acquisition of Vonage by Microsoft, AOL, or Yahoo:

Vamsi Sistla

[pointer from Om Malik]

Millions of people use the big IM services. Some use their voice capabilities. But the experience is pretty horrible. You have to sit at a computer, use a microphone and speak loudly. And it goes over the public Internet, so quality is poor and security is suspect. Why aren't they doing anything about it? They have an established presence: why don't they buy out a Vonage, an Avaya or a Voiceglo, integrate their technology and start offering packages to existing and new subscribers? Isn't that a huge revenue opportunity for them?

Of course it is. On the other hand, AOL has fumbled its advantages with AIM so many times I have lost count: all they can think about is the on-going defection of AOL subscribers, and the use of AIM as a biollboard for advertising. Yahoo is similarly ambivalent about making money from IM is a businesslike way, and has retreated from the enterprise application of IM.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has designs to circumvent the traditional phone networks, just like Vonage is doing. That matchup seems made in heaven. We'll see, but Sistla may be onto something here.

Janice Brand, editor of CIO.com, pinged me and suggested I might be able to comment on and extend the real-time collaboration elements of a recently posted piece there. This is quite apropos of material I have been fuddling with all week, getting ready for the Corante Real-Time Collaboration Workshop at INBOX. In particular, I have become acutely aware that I have moved away from the conventional IT perspective of some hypothetical spectrum of collaboration options going from aynchrononous to synchronous, and instead have shifted to the perspective that slow-time is just a degenerate and inadequate approximation of real-time.

[from A Travel Guide To Collaboration]

Real-time technologies, such as Web conferencing and instant messaging, require collaborators to log on at the same time to, say, conduct an online meeting to review design specs or to resolve an issue by chatting through IM. Asynchronous tools, such as online collaborative workspaces and e-mail, allow collaborators to contribute on their own schedule, a particularly useful feature for managing projects that span time zones. Workspaces such as Microsoft's SharePoint, IBM/Lotus's Workplace and several industry-specific tools (including PTC's Windchill ProjectLink for the manufacturing industry, Agile for the high-tech industry and Freeboarder for the apparel industry) provide an electronic medium for collaborating, offering capabilities such as messaging, calendaring, document management and workflow automation. Users can see what their colleagues are doing, and everyone with appropriate access credentials can view—and add comments to—the latest version of a document.

Asynchronous tools also serve as a persistent, always accessible archive for discussions and document versions, keeping track of who decided what and when. This can be especially valuable for supporting sophisticated, long-term collaborations and for building trust. "In many ways, it creates trust if during any development process, you know that all information will be saved as a conversation," says Johnson. "Everyone will know how the product developed, how it changed. There's not a feeling that maybe someone did something or changed something and you didn't know."

The line between real-time and asynchronous tools is beginning to blur, however, as some collaboration tools are starting to offer both real-time and asynchronous/persistent functionality. Archiving is now possible with some IM products, for example, and Groove Networks supports real-time communications within its asynchronous, peer-to-peer workspace. IBM has added real-time functionality to its Workplace products. The presence awareness feature of IM (which indicates whether users are currently online) is also finding its way into some collaborative workspaces and meeting technologies. Convoq ASAP, for instance, initiates online meetings as soon as all are present.

I just don't agree with the mindset here, or the distinctions: its easy (first of all) to imagine that a real-time solution can provide a persistent log of all that has happened historically (like my Gush IM logs, or the really interesting Activity Manager technology from IBM (I will be posting about that tomorrow)). But more important, the idea that there is some high-order benefit in being able to collaborate asynchronously. Its always a crude approximation of real-time interaction, because the players are unavailable.

Say you and I are both working, online, at 2:09pm ET on 17 Nov 2004. I happen to be modifying some shared content we are both interested in (some project information or a file, whatever). You noticed through some extended notion of presence that I am editing some shared project content, which leads you to recall an idea you had, and you immediately IM me. We chat, and I modify what I was going to do to the content, in real-time. This is not in some way more complicated -- assuming the infrastructure exists -- on the contrary, the slow-time equivalent is infinitely more complex: when viewed from the social level. In the slow-time version, I make whatever modifications I had in mind; others read them, leading to whatever results and cascading actions. You get around to sharing your ideas with me later, but now for the ideas to bve realized we have to rewind the shared thread, herd the cats back together, revise the content, again, and so on.

From an IT viewpoint, this is easy, because it relies on a small set of primitive features: content editing, and asynch messaging (email). But from a social viewpoint, because people are not allowed to treat time as a shared space, they are divided from each other and forced to fumble through asynch interactions.

I reject the veiwpoint, and suggest that real-time should be the primary basis of every sort of human collaboration, and that slow-time introduces (in general) unnecessary complexities. Sure, there still will be the scnario when you want to leav a voice mail for someon, and not speak with them directly, because you are time constrained, or its a simple coordinative message ("yes, I am good for the call at 4pm"). But aside from these oddball cases, in general it is better to adopt the social viewpoint and drop the information technology mindset.

This reminds me a lot of an article today in USA Today regarding the fundamental differences between Boomers and "Gamers" -- those younger generations that have grown up with videogames as a core part of their world:

Kevin Maney

[...] on a deeper level, video games changed the way the Gamer Generation views life and work. "We thought we'd get back a few interesting correlations" between games and attitudinal shifts, Wade says. "But we got, like, 50 powerful patterns." [Mitchell Wade is co-author with John Beck of Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever]

The surprise: "I was stunned we didn't see a lot of negative effects," Wade says. "I thought they'd be bad team players and reckless."

Instead, the authors found traits that could be good or bad — depending on how you view them. Of course, there are variations among 90 million people, but the authors draw some general conclusions.

For instance, in video games, you're always the star. Once in the workforce, Beck and Wade found, gamers want a chance to be a star. Boomers might take that badly, thinking they have a bunch of prima donnas in the office. But gamers don't want to just do their jobs — they want to lead and stand out. And that can be a good thing.

In games, there's always a solution — you just have to find it. So gamers, as a generation, are more willing to try anything and pound on a problem, believing there is some way to solve it.

In games, failure is part of success. Anybody who tries a new game fails multiple times before getting it right, and that has made the Gamer Generation more willing to take risks.

Contrary to typical boomer parental beliefs, video games don't necessarily rot kids' brains. Games might actually be making the next generation smarter.

"Kids today don't play sandlot ball the way we did or run through the woods," Wade says. "Everything they do is structured. This is a replacement for that unstructured time, and it's a lot more intellectually stimulating."

In business, boomers who don't understand games or gamers could have a rough time as the Gamer Generation floods workplaces. If boomers see gamer traits as negative, the generations will clash — or at least boomers will miss a chance to manage, work with or compete effectively against gamers.

So Wade, 44, is a bit missionary about trying to save his generation from some sour fate, like forced early retirement.

"The first thing for boomers is to acknowledge there is a generation gap," he says. Then boomers can alter their strategies. Like, give gamers a chance to be a hero as motivation. Give gamers a problem and let them whack at it.

A few years ago, Bankers Trust trained its aspiring young currency traders the boomer way — in classrooms. But the Gamer Generation recruits hated it. Then the bank hired a firm to turn its training material into video games, and it turned the program around.

Does the new gap exist just because of video games? I mean, our generation gap wasn't due to any one thing that boomers shared and the previous generation didn't. It wasn't just rock music or television or highly sugared breakfast cereals or growing up in financial security. It was the mix of all of that.

"Games are only one part of the digital experience that changes the way (the next generation) learns, plays, interacts, spends their time and probably even thinks," says Don Tapscott, author of an earlier book, Growing Up Digital. Computers, the Internet and cell phones are all part of the new generation's powerful mix. "Rather than a generation gap, we have a generation lap — where kids are lapping their parents," Tapscott says.

Just like IM, videogames frame a new sensibility about our self-image and how we make sense of the world. "We make our tools, and they shape us." And when you "get real" you are changed, and not by the speed up of events, but more profoundly in what you think is important, the manner in which you interact with others, and how to respond to events in the world.

AOL has started to go after spimmers: those trolls trying to hawk Vicodin in chat rooms:

[from America Online | Press Center]

America Online, Inc. today announced it was stepping up its fight against purveyors of unwanted, junk computer messages by filing two new lawsuits in Federal Court. The announcement was made in conjunction with AOL's anti-spam partners Microsoft, EarthLink and Yahoo! - who also announced they filed lawsuits against spammers in courts in Washington State, Georgia, and California.

AOL's lawsuits are noteworthy and unique in nature. The first AOL lawsuit, filed against twenty "John Does", is the Company's very first lawsuit that expressly targets "SPIM" - unwanted communications to online consumers via instant messaging tools or chat rooms.

The other lawsuit is the very first AOL legal action to target a spammer peddling controlled substances, including Vicodin and other pharmaceuticals, which are legally available only with a physician's prescription. This lawsuit, filed against ten "John Does", is also noteworthy because it is the first time AOL is filing a spam lawsuit based on a large number of complaints specifically determined to be from AOL Europe and AOL Canada members.

According to Todd Bishop, this is not the first such suit:

[from Microsoft's 'spim' suit]

[...] contrary to some reports, while it's AOL's first spim suit, it's actually not the first lawsuit in the industry to target the practice.

Microsoft filed a suit last year in King County Superior Court (download .pdf of complaint) against a Canadian man alleged to have sent spam over the MSN Messenger instant-messaging program, as well as MSN Hotmail. The case is still pending. The complaint also includes a screenshot showing what a spim looks like, in case you haven't had the pleasure.

Despite that suit, spim isn't a major problem on MSN Messenger, according to Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft's Internet safety enforcement attorney. As mentioned in our item about the suits this morning, that's in part because of a "reverse list" feature in MSN Messenger that lets people see when someone else puts them on a buddy list, and, if they want, lets them stop that person from sending them messages. That feature also extends to IM "presence," letting MSN Messenger users block another person from knowing whether or not they're online.

A reminder that on Tuesday, 26 Oct, 9am PT, I will be presenting a webinar called "Instant Messaging and the Attention Economy" courtesy of the nice folks at Microsoft (click here for more info and registration).

It going to be an hour, with me blabbing for 30 mins, 15 mins of dialog with the host, William Flash, and then 15 mins of Q&A.

I hear that like 100+ folks have signed up.

Highlights from the Jabber on Wall Street event today:

Navin Rajapakse, Vice President, Global Architecture and Engineering, Lehman Brothers

Lehman made the decision to adopt Jabber two years ago. We had Mindalign (Parlano), as well as several homegrown IM solutions. We had various non-communicating islands of IM.

We also wanted to be able to communicate remotely, with people working outside the building. So they opened up to AOL and Yahoo. Soon, we grew concerned about that, and wanted more control, but still needed to talk with the public networks.

The requirements led to a bake off between IBM/Lotus Sametime and Jabber. The customization of Jabber's client was significantly easier. On the server side, we evaluated the flexibility of Jabber, and adopted various open source modules.

And in the final analysis, the Jabber solution was more cost effective.

TIBCO is the company's enterprise application integration framework, and Jabber seemed relatively easy to integrate there.

We had a need to develop self-service 'bots, and Jabber offered an easy way to do that.

And we had to meet various SEC requirements on privacy, security, and auditability.

[presents tiered architecture: notes that today, Lehman is not taking advantage of server-to-server capability]

We have integrated a generalized notion of presence that can be included into other applications, and we have presence enabled our directory.

Used an early version of the Jabber web client, but the Win32 client was more critical to Lehman's use.

While the 1:1 chat was solid, there were various features needed for roll-out of group chat, which Jabber rolled out in a few months time.

Now, in use at 80%-90% of the company.

We have SEC compliant escrowing and retrieval of all IM messages as needed.

We have eliminated other IM solutions, and have integrated 20 or 30 applications taht are using Jabber as an alert mechanism.

We have integrated with LehmanLive, directory, security and reporting services.

2,000-9,500 concurrent users. All over the globe, and even during the weekend, so we need to be up 24X7.

3-3.5 M messages per week, which includes IM and chat.

Launched early part of last year: it is considered a tier 1, mission critical application, like email.

Different groups have different modes. Like the equities guys who use a chat room to swap deal information.

On the equities side, we have set up chat rooms, like foreign exchange.

We have extended the client and chat in several ways. For example, we integrated voice, so you can right click on a buddy, and it will dial.

We decided to pick a protocol, XMPP, and go with it, even though the market has not settled that protocol war.

Issues with compliance with AOL and various consortium based IM clients were problematic. We decided to go with an 80/20 rule, and use Jabber, and let the other issues fall to the side for now.

Most important, we ensured SEC compliance.

Question: How much monthly maintenance? Have you considered a hosted solution?

A: We don't have a dedicated team, we have an operations staff that handle it. Its nearly a zero maintenance, except for upgrades.

Question: How builds the applications that integrate with Jabber?

A: We built a TIBCO bridge, so our application developers are experienced in building to that.

Question: How do make sure the apps don't crush the Jabber system?

A: We have a Karma system that tracks message rates, and quickly resolve any issues.

Jeremy Condie, SVP, Thomson Financial

Whay are we here, at a conference about Jabber?

I am a senior VP for Thomson Financial, and I am architect for our collaboration and communication systems.

What is Thomson Financial? We are one of the three largest financial information services, we are the largest provider of information to banks, for eample. We are better known for our brands, which are now being united into a single framework: Thomson ONE.

Collaboration is central to our business. We are moving beyond providing information. If you are a banker, a trader, an analyste, we are going to help you collaborate better.

Our strategy is based on helping our clients to gain mindshare, so that they will get the phone call at 2am from a customer.

We are focused on inproving user's workflow, and of course, that means we have to integrate with what they have on their desktop.

We are not building a proprietary IM system, we are incorporating a successful and proven instant messaging infrastructure from an innovator. That means we are leveraging ROI, minimize user disruption, and rapidly get productivity for our clients.

Being informed is not enough; until you impart that content to a client, it doesn't benefit you. How can you make sure that you are up with the moment on ionformation that is critical for clients. Is that already priced into the market?

Thomson has bought nearly every information company out there. We have an infinite degree of content. When we created Thomson ONE, we didn't make a single solution. You can configure your desktop with what you want, and all the components plug-and-play, and communicate with each other. We have integrated Jabber int he same way.

For example, if I am tracking some datum about Qualcomm, I could bring up various research and real time feeds about Qualcomm. So I can know before my client asks. And you can confirm in real time using Jabber.

Where's the edge in financial services? You need to gain an edge through a deeper insight rather than faster typing speed.

What about extending the IM environment to your customers? You can filter the information as needed, but you could present an IM window on the client's desktop where you could be sharing certain information. Whether its a banker, or an analyst, or a bond trader.

This is pushing the boundaries a bit, but this is where we see it heading.

David Fowler, VP Marketing and Alliances, IMlogic

No one uses email without spam filters; the same sort of management has to be applied to IM.

Companies have to get past the denial stage of IM; you can't seriously contemplate turning it off. A recent study showed that bond traders that use IM make 500K more per year than those that don't.

Today, use of public IM is still the majority in the market. But we see a trend in the market toward enterprise solutions, like Jabber. But we will see them running side by side for a long time to come.

First problem when we go into an organization, they don't don't really know what's going on. They don't which IM systems are used, who is doing file transfers, and what identities are being used.

Second, IM tools tunnel through your firewall, and there are a number of security problems: viruses, for example.

Third, there are legal risks. A large amount of sexual content is streaming aorund; and just the institution of archiving will curtail that, as well as keeping track of commitments in deals, for example.

Last, we need to avoid IT headaches -- like integrating with LDAP.

How do we manage IM? We act as the proxy, running side by side with your enterprise IM system, and control the interface with the public networks. We can map identities, and control the various features: if you want to disallow file transfers, for example, we can do that.

And obviously, we support compliance: archival, retention, discovery, supervisory, surveillance, and entitlement requirements.

How does this all fit together? It is likely that you are using a public IM system today, and considering moving to an enterprise IM system, like Jabber. We recommend that you take a long look at Jabber, and think about putting

Q: How do you integrae with existing archive solutions?

A: We have relationships with Legato, KBS, and other archive solutions.

Q: Is there a certain size company that would best fit this solution?

A: We have groups as small as 10, and up to thousands. Small comapnies sometime try to sneak by, but the cost is so small it is not worth the risk.

Paul Guerin, SVP Sales and Marketing, Jabber

We see the financial services industry as a hotbed of collaboration and communication. We see the power of presence as the keystone of the next generation of applications, and the business processes that are core to the industry.

I want to thank you all for coming, and we hope you will come to other events in this seminar series, as well as our webinar series.