Dion Hinchcliffe is tracking ‘DYI phenomenon’ of widgets and mashups. He considers five key issues for successful mashup creation tools:

1.    Ease of use
2.    Embody best practices in software development
3.    Support open standards
4.    Use a broad array of visual parts and non-visual Web services
5.    Will encourage social use and uptake. 

It’s completely true, Dion. However, I’d add one more critical key issue, ‘Providing Security Option’. Given the early state of mashups, they still lack robust security features. At least, they need better policing and control. Mashups may create a hole in your system because of low password security, easy access to private information, and so on. That’s why mashup creation tools should consider such issues. Data integration has never been easy, folks. So, we need to take security steps, before it’s too late.

Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, Mashups | No Comments »

The numbers in ‘Enterprise 2.0’ are pronounced as ‘two point oh’, as Phil Wainewright has written in his blog. The variants ‘two dot oh’ or ‘two dot zero’ are wierd or incorrect. The survey conducted by Phil undergirds this way of pronunciation. So, the rules are as following:

·         Use ‘point’ when you’re talking about a decimal point in a number, e.g. version 2.0 or 16.9 percent (but not when the number is a sum of money, and if the position of the decimal point is obvious from the context, e.g. if your cup of coffee costs $3.49, you’ll be asked for ‘three forty-nine’). As with the money exception, it is also accepted usage to say just ‘two oh’ if the context makes it evident that what you mean is ‘2.0′;
·         Use ‘dot’ when you’re talking about a separator, whether between letters or numbers, e.g. a web address like zdnet.com is said ‘zdnet dot com’, and similarly a numeric IP address like 192.168.1.1 is said ‘192 dot 168 dot 1 dot 1′. This rule also explains why the name of an IEEE standard like 802.11 (Wi-Fi) is spoken with a dot rather than a point: as one commenter posted in response to my poll, “the IEEE stuff usually ends in a letter, but yes, also a dot for specs that don’t end in a letter like Ethernet, 802.3.” 

Also, there’s an interesting article in WikiPedia about using ‘dots’, ‘decimal points’ and ‘decimal commas’. I was surprised to know that the Chinese and Indians use an asymmetric distribution of comma separators (i.e., 123,4567.89 or 3,00,00,000). It is easy to get into a mess if you visit Asia, but I hope it would be clear about ‘2.0’, at least. =)

Filed under: Enterprise 2.0 | No Comments »

Here’s a good reminder from David Linthicum about hidden Software as a Service (SaaS) costs. Really, training, troubleshooting and outages do increase support charges, but this is not the whole story.

SaaS approach doesn’t completely avoid core expenses like software maintenance. A lot of companies need customizing and adding features which are critical to them. Such application integration may be not a zero cost yet necessary. 

And the bandwidth expenses, too. A company may require broader bandwidth to keep up with SaaS technology, which is an issue in areas where telecom costs are high.

So, don’t be naive while choosing SaaS services and keep your eyes on the ball. However, remember another reminder from David, ‘the other values of SaaS make it a compelling proposition’.

Filed under: Enterprise 2.0, Software as a Service | No Comments »