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On-Line Collaboration: The Tools

In our previous podcast we discussed the principles of on-line collaboration. In this episode we look at some practical tools for making this work in practice.


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Web sites we mentioned in the podcast:

Setting up the project:

• Creating the workspace: Ning, Wiggio, Twitter
• Forming the team: Outsource using Elance.com, Guru.com, Rent-a-coder.com
• Project planning: BasecampHQ.com

Scheduling meetings:

• Send around meeting invites using Outlook, Lotus Notes, etc.
• TimeBridge.com allows you to nominate up to 5 possible times for a meeting
• Tungle.me (and many others) allows you to show the team when you're available for meetings

Conducting on-line meetings:

• Teleconferences, Skype
• Webinars: WebEx, Netmeeting, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar

Informal discussions:

• Discussion forums are useful for asynchronous discussions (Ning provides this facility)
• Chat rooms are good for synchronous discussions (Ning provides this facility)
• Bubbl.us for collaborative mind mapping
• Wallwisher.com to create your own bulletin board - example:
  

Document sharing

• Google Docs: A web-based office productivity suite, i.e. a word-processor, presentation tool, spreadsheet etc.
• Wikis: Web sites for collaboratively editing a collection of interlinked web-pages (e.g. Wikipedia)
• Use a Wiki farm for hosted wikis
• Use Rapidshare or Dropbox for sharing big files

Document management:

• Help desks and issue trackers: Bugzilla, Trac
• Google Docs provides revision control

On-Line Collaboration: The Principles

The Internet has made it far easier to collaborate with others - your clients, suppliers, colleagues and even competitors. Here's how to start thinking about creating effective collaborations.


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Broadly, there are four groups of people we could collaborate with:

• Customers and clients: The people you work for.
• Suppliers: The people who work for you.
• Colleagues and team members: The people you work with.
• Competitors: The people you work "against".

This is not just for on-line collaboration, of course; these people are equally valid collaboration partners in "real life". It's just that the Internet has made it easier to work with them.

Guidelines for on-line collaboration:

• Use the cloud: Work on one shared document rather than multiple copies
• Show your face: Allow people to be human and show their personality
• Let go of perfection: Aim for "80% right, 100% complete" - i.e. It's better to release a product that's not perfect than to never release it at all.
• Work to a plan: Be clear about milestones, deliverables and deadlines.
• Set the ground rules: Be clear about rules and parameters for executing the plan.
• Think Global: Take into account the different locales inherent in collaborating with international partners - such as differences in language, time-zones, currency and customs.

Google vs Beijing

Google hit the headlines recently, publicly threatening to pull out of China after its Gmail servers were hacked. There's a lot more to this story than meets the eye, though; and we look at some of the motivations behind Google's threats, as well as explaining how this story affects you as an Internet user.

Listen to the podcast here:

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The Story

On 12th January this year, Google announced publicly that it was "reviewing its business operations in China". The Google announcement was a weird mishmash of stuff about Google's stance on Chinese government censorship, seemingly triggered by Google being hacked. Google's statement was along the lines of, "Hackers tried to break into accounts of Chinese dissidents; therefore we're going to stop censoring our search results, even if that means pulling out of China altogether". Obviously, this makes no sense at all.

The implicit assumption, although Google is too diplomatic to say so, is that it was the Chinese government or its proxies was responsible for the hacking. In this case, Google's stance does make some sense even though the issues of security and censorship are unrelated.

The Chinese government has vehemently denied any involvement in the hacking. Indeed, some security experts have questioned the evidence of Beijing's involvement.

The hack was facilitated by a flaw in Internet Explorer. Microsoft eventually released a patch for the bug but not before several governments urged their citizens to switch browsers.

Google announced that it "will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all".

Additionally, Google has suspended the Chinese launch of two Android phones.

The Response

Hillary Clinton got on her soap box and made a strong-sounding but clueless speech on the topic. Obama, too, couldn't resist sticking his oar in. Beijing told the US to stick to the facts and mind its own business.

Google's stance has been widely supported but some of that support could be purely because of anti-China sentiment:

• "Google living up to its 'Do no evil' mantra"
• "Big U.S. company taking a stand against evil China"
• "How dare the Chinese government try to attack dissidents?" (but it's OK for Western governments to do the same when, say, tracking terrorism?)

Our Response

Censorship

This incident is a timely reminder that the Rudd government plans to impose mandatory Internet censorship, similar to that in China, on Australians. Hilary Clinton has been audibly quiet in expressing concerns about the Australian government's censorship plans.

Cloud Computing

In many respects using cloud computing is like out-sourcing. When using a cloud computing service you are out-sourcing responsibility for privacy and security to a third-party. This incident reminds us that even Google isn't immune to security and privacy breaches.

Google's Motive

What if we turned our sceptical eye to this, and asked whether Google might have some other reason for taking the stance they have - for example:

• It takes the heat off the fact that Gmail was hacked! (Ref: Google Is Worried About Privacy, Not Politics, in China Dispute)
• Google is way behind Baidu in China (30% vs. 60% market-share), so maybe it wanted to get out anyway, but without admitting defeat.
• It earns Google brownie points elsewhere abroad - e.g. in the EU, where it's had run-ins with the French
• It earns Google brownie points at home (USA) (Ref: Google's Clever Branding Move)
  
• It provides a (false) pretext for lifting censorship of Google.cn which could steal marketshare from Baidu
  

Conclusion

Watch this space: Google and Beijing are playing a game of brinksmanship. Only time will tell who will brink first. Stay tuned to the Focal Point podcast and we'll revisit this topic once the matter is resolved.

Reference material

CNN's Buzz Out Loud podcast has an excellent discussion on this topic, soon after the news broke.

Our Predictions for 2010

Chris and Gihan make 10 predictions about what's coming up in the next 12 months in Internet technology and use.


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Here are our 10 predictions:

1. (Chris) Internet Politics - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: We'll witness an increasingly political dimension to The Internet as governments grapple with regulation and censorship of the Net. Additionally, we'll see governments and political parties and activists using the Internet for service delivery, campaigning and activism.
2. (Gihan) There'll be an increase in electronic meetings - e.g. teleseminars, webinars, conference calls, on-line conferences - and this will correspond to a significant drop in face-to-face meetings.
3. (Chris) Less Privacy / Greater Openness: While sites like Facebook and Google are improving the privacy controls they provide to their users, people seem to be increasingly comfortable with sharing information about themselves including embarrassing, even dangerous information.
4. (Gihan) Because we more Internet-connected phones, we'll see a significant increase in localisation and context-specific content - e.g. a restaurant sending you SMS ads when you walk by.
5. (Chris) We'll have more mobile applications.
6. (Gihan) The growth of Google-based phones will exceed growth of iPhones.
7. (Chris) After an annus horribilus in 2009, we'll see the start of a recovery for on-line news media.
8. (Gihan) Smart businesses will figure out Twitter and Facebook.
9. (Chris) The Pervasive Internet: There'll be an increasing number of clever gadgets being launched that "passively" access the Internet as part of their operation.
10. (Gihan) Content syndication - both automatic and manual - will really take off.

2009 - The Year in Review

At the start of 2009 we made ten predictions for the year ahead. Join us for the final podcast of the year, where we look back at our predictions and report on how well - or badly! - we did.



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Here are the ten predictions we made, with additional reference links for some of them.

1. Blogging will become more common
   More about blogging in Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2009 report
2. Strong growth in (on-line) games industry
   Revenue from games sales in Australia were up 8% at the end of Q3 2009.
3. There'll be even more free stuff, and businesses will have to monetize through advertising, subscriptions or premium services
   Past podcast: Free is the new business model
   Past podcast: New media vs news media - will the Internet kill journalism?
4. On-line advertising revenues will fall
5. Everything will accessible via your phone
   BNET panel "2009: The Year of the Smart Phone"
   Mobile Internet to dominate within 5 years
6. Everything will be in The Cloud
   Past podcast: Cloud computing
   Gihan's new Boot Camp www.BuildYourWebSiteInTwoDays.com uses 100% cloud-based software.
7. There'll be more crowdsourcing and collaboration
   Yvonne Adele (one of Gihan's colleagues in Thought Leaders and the National Speakers Association of Australia) is using Twitter for crowdsourcing
8. Continued strong growth in Internet population mainly from developing nations.
   Definitely true in the USA, according to Nielsen Reports
   Smart Company cites a report with some Australian stats
   ComScore reported that the number of Internet users in the Asia-Pacific grew 22% to 484M.
9. We'll have tools to serve lots of social networks at once
10. Social Networking web-sites will become more popular

And we both predicted that Australia won't censor the Internet! But we might get a face-saving watered-down version. This might be the one that we get most wrong! We underestimated the pig-headedness of politicians. The first results of the Internet filtering tests are now in - and, not surprisingly, it hasn't been a big success. But KRudd's government is still going to push ahead with its legislation. Even Google, who is outspoken neutral with its views on content, has weighed in with its opposition to the plan.

Personal Productivity 2.0: Twenty Tips in 20 Minutes

How do you stay on top of e-mail, Web browsing, Twitter, podcasts, and taking part in on-line communities? Today we share 20 ideas for better personal productivity in a Web 2.0 world.


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Watch the slide show here:

Here are the 20 (+1) tips ...

E-mail

• Use the spelling chequer!
• If you receive high volumes of email then turn off automatic email checking.
• Don't use e-mail for urgent notification.
• Don't use your in-box as your To Do list.

Web browsing

• Use the Read It Later plug-in for Firefox.
• Find RSS feeds wherever possible.
• Get Google's toolbar.
• Use tabbed browsing, in particular, Google's search preferences provide a non-default option to open links in separate tabs.
• Use auto-completion features in Google and your browser.

Participating in communities

• Position your Facebook "Status Updates" above "News Feed".
• If it doesn't add value, don't do it.
• Get extra value after participating by cutting-and-pasting into your blog.

Twitter

• Use TweetDeck ("like air traffic controller for your Twitter feed") or the like.
• Separate your reading time from your writing time.
• Be ruthless - unfollow prolific tweeple whose mundane tweets push more interesting stuff out of view.
• Alternatively, use Twitter Lists to group together, say, high-value interesting tweeple vs. your boring friends.

Audio/video

• You can listen to audio while multi-tasking, so choose audio over video if possible.
• Fast forward (e.g. Gihan's iPhone has an option to play podcasts at 2x normal speed)
• However, don't overdo multitasking (e.g. It's difficult to listen to podcasts whilst reading/writing/coding).
• Subscribe to the Focal Point podcast!

Bonus tip: Use the Cloud: Contacts, bookmarks/favourites, web feeds, appointments, email, documents and much more can be stored on-line, allowing these resources to be accessed from any location or device, and shared with others.

Do you have a favourite personal productivity tip when using the Internet? Share it in the comments below.

It's an Open and Shut Argument

It's the battle between two hip, smart and innovative technology companies: Google and Apple. Google is open, flexible and free; Apple is closed, tightly controlled and expensive. What happens when they clash, and which philosophy will win out in the long run?



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Links to articles about Google:

• Google is the world's largest open-source company (if you count lines of open-sourced code).
• Gmail in Germany
• Plethora of Android devices with varying hardware creates difficulties for developers vs. one (few) iPhone with fixed hardware.
• Google Everywhere: Google wants to control the Internet, and could come up against anti-trust issues as Microsoft did in the 1990s.

Articles about Apple:

• Is Apple Evil? - from Jason Calacanis
• Apple vs. PsyStar (Mac clones)
• Apple vs. Palm Pre (iTunes synch)
• Apple vs. Woolworths (logo)
• Latest OSX update might lock-out Intel Atom processor
• Apple rejects Google Voice application on the iPhone
  

News Media or New Media - Will the Internet Kill Journalism?

It's not the first time the question has been asked, but it's become particularly relevant now. Join Chris and Gihan as they go head-to-head on this issue in our first Focal Point debate.

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New Rules for Humans - Part Two

Wired magazine recently published its "new rules for highly evolved humans". We like some and strongly disagree with others. This is the second of our two-part series - you can find the first part here.



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These are the 7 items we covered this time:

1. Don't Blog or Tweet Anything With More Than Half a Million Hits
2. There's No Such Thing as Too Many Friends
3. Ignore Your Ex on Facebook
4. Friend Your Boss But Not Your Boss' Boss
5. Never Unfollow Someone Just Because They Unfollowed You
6. You Can Reinvent Yourself Online
   WayBack Machine
7. Seek out Your Co-workers on Facebook

New Rules for Humans - Part One

Wired magazine recently published its "new rules for highly evolved humans". We like some and strongly disagree with others.


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We covered 6 (of 13) in this podcast, and we'll cover the others next time.

1. Texting in the Company of Others Is OK
2. If You Can't Buy It Online, Feel Free to BitTorrent
3. Leave Your Wi-Fi Open
4. Know What Makes a Good Viral Video
   Here's a list of (supposedly) the top 25 viral videos of all time.
5. Balance Your Media Diet
6. Remember, Online Conversations Are Not All About You
   See also our previous podcast about contributing to on-line forums

We Love Google

Google is the world's most popular search engine. But there's a lot more to Google than just searching. In this episode, Chris and Gihan share their top 10 Google tools.



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Watch this as a slide show here:

Our top 10:

10. YouTube - publish and share videos
9. Adwords/Adsense - paid advertising
8. Picasa - publish and share photos
7. Google Earth/Sky/Ocean - virtual tour of the earth, sky and ocean
6. iGoogle - create your browser start page
5. Docs - collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations
4. Blogger - create your own blog
3. Toolbar - handy access to Google's services
2. Reader - read your favourite blogs
1. Search - search the Web

More complete lists of Google products:

• from Wikipedia
• List of Google Services and Products(Tech Talks)

New products that we're excited about:

• Chrome: the OS and browser
• Wave: next generation email protocol
• Android: the mobile phone/PDA operating system

On-Line Music

If you're new to the world of getting music on-line rather than buying it on CD, listen to this podcast, which describes the current state of play with on-line music, both for purchase and free.



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Broadly, there are two ways to listen to on-line music

1. Acquisition: download audio files and then listen to them
2. Access: stream audio from the "cloud"

The trend appears to be moving from the traditional ownership (acquisition) model to access model.

Useful Web sites

• Our previous podcast "Cloud Computing" is fundamental to the "Access" model
• Our previous podcast "Free is the New Business Model" has significant implications for music.

Digital Rights Management: Technology that punishes legal fans!

• Cartoon courtesy of XKCD
• Has the RIAA declared DRM to be dead?
• Big Content: ludicrous to expect DRMed music to work forever (even more reason to avoid DRM)

Are You the Weakest Link?

Despite all the high-profile stories of viruses, scams and online security problems, technology really has improved our online security. But has it made our online lives safer? Maybe not, because now people are the weakest link in the security chain.



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What's the big deal?

In spite of various technological security measures (anti-spam/virus/phishing) the ultimate security software is your own brain.

Here's a humorous take on this concept:

Some references:

• 52% of respondents to a recent US survey admitted to clicking links in or replying to spam messages
• Even "reputable" Web sites aren't averse to tricking users, as Tagged.com is accused of doing.
• The "UteGate" saga in Australia
• The story unfolds - ABC MediaWatch Ep. 21
• Our previous podcast on phishing (3rd August 2007 - almost two years ago)
• The Phishing and Spam IQ Quiz

Why is phishing still so popular?

• It works!
• Technology is getting smarter, so scammers have to resort to human frailties.
• Things like Twitter and Facebook have made things worse: Many Facebook apps require you to give them access to your data, and Twitter tools often require access to your Twitter account. This has made some people far less careful than they should be with security and privacy.
• URL shortening services don't help, for two reasons: (a) they mask the true URL, so you can't guess if a link is safe to follow; (b) they might lull some into a false sense of security - e.g. people see "bit.ly" and assume it's safe because it has been in the past.

So how should you protect yourself?

• Don't let your guard down! It's as important as ever to be vigilant, careful and just use common sense.
• Use protection but don't allow it to lull you into a false sense of security
• Don't sweat the small stuff - but it's not all small stuff. Be more alert when there's a risk of giving out confidential information (e.g. online banking, unusual e-mails from your boss supposedly asking you to send her Top Secret documents), and relax when there's a lower risk (e.g. your spouse asking you to get milk on the way home).
• Don't get scared off. Immerse yourself more - not less - in the Internet culture, so it becomes familiar to you. You're safer in your home town in familiar surroundings than as a naive tourist wandering through a strange city.

The Internet Road Warrior

How easy is it to do "business as usual" in today's connected world? Gihan put this to the test last month, and has just returned from a month in Prague, which was a combination of work and pleasure ("weisure", as New York University sociologist Dalton Conley calls it, or "furking" (combining fun and working), as Kirsty Spraggon calls it). In this podcast, Chris interviews Gihan about his experiences using the Internet for this purpose.


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Broadly, let's use the metaphor of taking a trip. It has three broad parts: How you get on the road; what you take with you; and what you do when you arrive.

Get (metaphor for Internet access)

In general, Internet access in Europe is easy and fast compared with Australia (and in Venice, it will soon be free to residents). In Prague, wireless hotspots are widely available, though of course you have to be aware of security issues when using public access points.

Other access:

• Use Skype for free computer-to-computer phone calls, and for cheap long-distance calls
• Get a SkypeIn phone number for incoming calls
• Get a virtual fax number with mbox.com.au - your faxes are delivered to you by e-mail

Take (metaphor for essentials)

Phrase book (metaphor for all the language things):

• Be aware of differences in keyboard layouts e.g. finding the "@" key on an Italian keyboard!
• Various Web sites (Google, Bing, Facebook, Blogger) detect your location based on IP address, and default to the local (Czech) version
• Most informational Czech Web sites have English (and German) versions
• If they don't, BabelFish can do translations for you

Money:

• Online banking is easy for transferring money between accounts
• Currency converter - www.xe.com/ucc, OANDA.com or just Google it.

Things to Do

Sightseeing:

• Google Maps - invaluable for maps and directions
• Tourist information Web sites
• Coin-operated Internet kiosks in airports, info offices, etc.
• Planning and booking side-trips can all be done on-line nowadays

Keeping in touch: Plan what level of information you share with each circle of people in your life - e.g.

• Facebook for family and friends
• A blog for business
• An e-zine for subscribers
• Twitter for anybody

Business meetings:

• Use Skype for phone calls - as mentioned earlier
• Use a webinar service like GoToWebinar.com for conference calls and presentations
  
• Time zone issues - www.worldtimeserver.com has a handy meeting planner to show time zones in different countries

Web Search Upstarts

In our previous podcast we spoke of our disappointment that there is no significant competitor to Google's web-search engine. Contrast this with the situation in the late 90s when there was strong competition between search engines like Altavista, Lycos, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Northern Light, etc.

Recently, two new web-search engines have been launched, Wolfram's Alpha and Microsoft's Bing. Are they serious challengers to Google's dominance or will they follow other recently hyped upstarts like cuil into the dustbin of history?

Listen to the podcast here:



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Wolfram|Alpha

Provided by Wolfram best known for their computational software Mathematica.

Introductory video from Wolfram.

Stephen Wolfram refers to it as a "computational knowledge engine" rather than a search engine.

It's built using Wolfram's Mathematica for performing calculations using reference data compiled from sources such as the CIA's World Fact Book and Wikipedia. As such, its "knowledge" is rather patchy and as a consequence a traditional search-engine, such as Google, is better at providing answers to the sorts of queries Alpha is meant for.

More:

• Google already has the ability to perform calculations and source reference material.
• Google has recently added the ability to search and compare (US) public data. Perhaps we can thank Alpha for spurring this sort of innovation.
• The article Another pretender to the throne is fairly critical of it, and so far our experience matches the author's comments.
  

Bing

Introductory video from Microsoft.

According to Microsoft, Bing is a "decision engine".

• It categorises search results (you can click a category to refine your search)
• It provides pop-up preview of each search result
• Other search features: Health, News, Shopping, Travel, Images, Video, Maps (some of these aren't available outside the US).
  

Bing has got a lot of good press (e.g. Beware Google), but still seems very U.S.-centric. Many of the features touted in the introductory video and "Why Bing?" page, e.g. shopping, travel and local, don't appear to be available to Australia.

The New York Post (tabloid) reports that Bing has so worried Google that "co-founder Sergey Brin is so rattled by the launch of Microsoft's rival search engine that he has assembled a team of top engineers to work on urgent upgrades to his Web service". Most likely a sensationalised report of reality but if nothing else at least Bing is spurring innovation.

Conclusion

Are Alpha & Bing good tools? Yes

Are they going to knock Google off its perch? Unlikely

What should you do? As always, judge for yourselves. Keep on eye on these tools as they will continue to evolve and improve with time, and will continue to provide healthy competition for Google.

Technology Flops

PC Authority recently published a thought-provoking article: Top-10 Disappointing Technologies in which commentators Iain Thompson and Shaun Nichols discuss their top-ranked information technology failures.

We'll discuss these, omitting a couple (with which we're unfamiliar) and adding one of our own:


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• Virtual Reality: A technology that allows the user to interact with a computer simulation of a real or an imaginary world.
• Alternative search engines: Google is the 600lb gorilla of web-search. Where's the competition?
• Voice recognition (actually Speech recognition): The automatic conversion of spoken words into machine-readable input.
• FireWire: A technology for connecting peripherals to computers, similar to USB.
• Bluetooth: A wireless networking protocal for communicating over short distances - sometimes referred to as personal area networks.
• Zune: Microsoft's line of portable media players.
• OpenID: A standard that allows a user to log in to multiple services using a single digital identity.
• Windows Vista: Microsoft's current PC operating system.

All A Twitter

Twitter is the latest Internet craze, but not everybody's convinced it's worthwhile - especially in your professional life. Join Gihan and Chris as they explain what it is, how it works and how to get the most out of it.



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What is Twitter?

Compare Twitter with e-mail: Why don't we share our thoughts by e-mailing everybody in our address book?

1. Not everybody wants it
2. Fills up their in-box
3. Messages are too long to read
4. Gets mixed up with important e-mail
5. Difficult to opt out

Twitter solves these problems:

1. Only your followers get your tweets (messages)
2. They only see what streams by at the time
3. Messages have to be 140 characters maximum
4. It operates as a separate channel from e-mail
5. You must have their permission, and they get to opt out at any time

Where does Twitter/microblogging fit in the social networking landscape?

• MySpace/Facebook: family and friends (small circle of people around you)
• LinkedIn: professional network (larger circle, but still you get to choose)
• Twitter: can be both (but very large circle - and you don't have control)

People on Twitter:

• Gihan on Twitter
• Chris on Twitter
• Pollies: Kevin and Malcom actually get Twitter - Obama doesn't
• Celebrities: Demi Moore does it better than her husband Ashton Kutcher; Oprah got 1,000,000 followers, but doesn't get it (tweets in ALL CAPS); Arj Barker gets it.
• You're never too old to Tweet - Ivy Bean 104 years old

But does Kevin really get it? The Herald Sun reckons he's a boring twit, and Gihan reckons he's an arrogant twit with tweets like this:

How to Use Twitter

How to:

• Deepen your domain: Follow smart people (use Twitter's search box or follow recommendations) and read what they say
• Broaden your field: Follow others in your field, re-tweet, reply, DM, go "offline" to e-mail or their blogs or (gasp!) phone
• Expand your network: Invite clients, prospects, e-zine readers and others to follow you; give them value (not promotional)
• Share your thoughts: Link to your blog posts, link to other URLs you like, re-tweet good stuff, say wise stuff

The most important rule:

What To Do Next

Sign up, start following Gihan and Chris, follow the people they're following, then eventually start tweeting!

Remember: Twitter is like a magnifying glass, so use it to support what you do best - learning, collaborating, networking or sharing.

The National Broadband Network

The Australian government is committing $43bn in a public/private partnership to build over eight years a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband network, i.e. a national optical fibre network, superseding the existing copper (telephony) network.

It should deliver 100Mbps broadband to homes, which is a big improvement over the the current theoretical max. of 24Mbps (ADSL 2+) and average/median of 3 to 4Mbps (according to Speedtest.net and ZDnet). Currently Australia doesn't even rank in the world's top-20 for Internet access speeds.

Listen to the podcast here:

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Some history:

• Both parties made this an election promise
• Telstra bid was withdrawn
• No private tenders accepted
• Govt. to go it alone
• Govt. share to be sold off within 5 years of completion

Some criticism:

• political grandstanding: Whitlamesque nation-building exercise
• Would wireless be better?
• Bundled with internet censorship legislation? (This would be a bad thing)
• Too expensive
• No private partners will be interested

As a result ...

It makes many of the technologies we've discussed in previous podcasts (more) possible:

• Cloud Computing
• High definition Internet TV
• Video teleconferencing
• E-health
• Distance education
• A key component if the government is serious about developing a thriving Digital Economy
• Things we haven't even thought of yet: Build it and they will come...

Useful links:

• The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy starting page for the NBN
• Their recent media release
• Wikipedia entry for the NBN
• Rural Australia gets NBN call
• ZDNet Australia asked readers: "What will be the best use for the Federal Government's National Broadband Network?" Some interesting (and funny) comments here
• UK ISP Virgin Media to pilot 200Mbps broadband service

Free is the New Business Model

Web 2.0 takes publishing out of the hands of a few and puts it in the hands of the many. Google is a free search engine; Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia; YouTube lets you be a movie producer; Blogger gives you your own newspaper column; iTunes gives you your own radio station; and Flickr lets you be a photographer. And all of these services are free. Is everything that's any good now free, and is everything that's free any good? More importantly, from a business perspective, will free destroy your business - or can you use it to boost your business?



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Benefits

• Free content gets them into your community
• "Free" is a magic word in marketing
• You must prove you're an expert before they visit your Web site
• Make money through your content, not from your content
• So much free stuff is available now anyway - if you can't beat them, join them
• People will come to your Web site now not because of your advertising, but your reputation
• New business models superseding the old (e.g. newspapers dying)
  

Examples

• The YouTube video of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent went super-viral - almost certain to get her a recording contract;
• Gihan's new book Web Sites for Speakers, Trainers, Coaches and Consultants is free in e-book form;
• Gihan's new Q&A teleseminar sessions are open to everybody;
• BYU professor David Wiley predicts that universities will be irrelevant by 2020 as courseware will be free to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Universities will instead earn revenue by offering diplomas to enrolled students who've paid tuition fees.
  

References

• Free is the future of business - by Chris Anderson
• Make Money Around Free Content - Fred Wilson
• In favour of micropayments over free - Nick Cernis
• Beyond Free - Kevin Kelly
  

Conclusion

If you're a consumer:

• Look for stuff that's free - it's probably available
• Consider upgrading to the paid version - it might be worth it for what you get
• No "free lunch" - sometimes there are hidden costs, from the innocuous (provide personal details, leading to spam) to the costly (sign up now, pay later)
  

If you're a provider:

• Make more stuff free to build your reputation and get more traffic to your site
• Find out who's offering the free version of what you're charging for - it might shock you!
  
• Information is becoming a commodity, so figure out how to add services and experiences to commodities