Monthly Archives: September 2009
Next generation enterprise aggregator from Attensa released
The Attensa StreamServerâ„¢ creates value by:
- Breaking down information silos by enabling information from separate systems and communities to be found, organized and flow freely throughout your business.
- Networking knowledge by enabling people to easily share insight and knowledge with others.
- Increasing awareness and efficiency by empowering users to benefit from large amounts of information and many interactions as opposed to being overwhelmed.
Attensa have announced the availability of Attensa StreamServer, their next generation enterprise information aggregator. I’m really pleased to see Attensa continue to innovate around this important area and I’ll be taking a more detailed look at their new StreamServer product in the near future.
Parsing the Aussie state: Not just access, but accessible and useful formats needed
Just geocoded Medicare office location data… all looks good, except Palmerston has ended up in West Africa. lol. #gov2au
Last night’s geocoding effort wasn’t without its problems. I probably should have made it clear that this was a mechanical translation and that I didn’t check every location for accuracy. I only noticed Palmerston was a bit off because of where it appeared on the Google Map I created! 🙂
Still, the process highlighted a few issues:
- .xls format isn’t a particularly good Web 2.0 data format. If not JSON or XML etc, then even publishing in a plain format like .csv help as tools like Yahoo! Pipe will parse it.
- If the data relates to or contains geographic data, then it absolutely has to be geocoded to be of any use.
Relatively speaking it didn’t take me long to convert the .XLS file or find a site that would geocode the data for me. However, confirming the quality of even this simple set of geocoded data might take a little more effort. It would be good if all this was done at the source.
I noticed one of the data files supplied by the Government 2.0 Task Force competition has been supplied in SPSS format. This raises more difficult problems because unlike .xls, most users won’t have ready access to software or sites that can parse it into something useful. So, the first step here is translation not mashing. Hopefully people into mapping will have better luck with some of the other geographic data files that have been provided.
Perhaps we should be calling this ParseUp Australia instead?
Mashing the Aussie State: Geocoding Medicare office location data
Just for fun(!), I geocoded the Medicare office locations released as part of the ‘beta’ data.australia.gov.au initiative and then put it on a map:
Examples of innovative corporate IT in Australia: Jetstar and CSC
I picked up a copy of the August/September edition of Australia’s CIO magazine while stuck at Melbourne airport last week. A couple of positive Web 2.0 related stories grabbed my attention (and it does make a change from the usual scare mongering or lame vendor case studies about CIOs spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on some piece of new obscure piece of hardware):
I can see a future where you join a company and they say ‘Congratulations… Where’s your laptop? And, by the way, here’s a 16 gig SD card that contains our SOE’
- The ability to find people and things in an organisation of 90,000 staff around the world;
- Reducing the risk of intellectual property being lost when people walk out the door;
- To help with the ‘on boarding’ process for new staff; and
- To attract new staff, as C3 demonstrates that CSC is an innovative company in practice.
“The general feeling is that it’s a great gap filler and is hitting a sweet spot,” he says. “One guy said he went from a sceptic to a convert and that it really makes you want to get involved, and that this is just what we have needed for a long time to truly connect. It’s much easier, and more fun. Another critical success factor is the senior executives use of the tool; in CSC Australia our local CEO, CFO and VPs are actively blogging which is a tremendous indication of the power of C3.”
Video recording of my Us Now: NSW presentation at #nswsphere
You can find my slides and other notes from NSW Public Sphere elsewhere on my blog.
MediaWiki limits Enterprise 2.0
I have had a fair share of hands-on time with wikis. With that said, I’ve come to a conclusion — MediaWiki inhibits Enterprise 2.0.
I’m with Gil on this. I recognise that MediaWiki *never* claimed to be an enterprise social computing tool and that in many instances it was the bridgehead that introduced wikis inside the firewall, but it isn’t really fit for enterprise purposes beyond a very narrow use case. Gil goes on to describe four inhibitors: No rich text editor, no fine grained access control, no document management and no additional collaboration features.