My suspicion of the under-informedness of both the Canadian media and Ottawa is continually reinforced - this article, stands as evidence.

OpenText is a very large software company, the largest in Canada - distributing poorly constructed, over-complicated CMS and ERP software to company’s who pay too much money for them - the Canadian government just added itself to OpenText’s list of suckers client.

The Globe & Mail also gets it wrong:

Many companies have begun to use Web 2.0 tools such as wikis and blogs internally as a way of sharing information and promoting communication between employees and departments.

Web 2.0 is not a series of tools (or tubes) - Wikis are not, of themselves, Web 2.0. You can’t magically make yourself a social enterprise by installing a wiki - especially one that costs thousands of dollars and is still inferior to the totally free alternatives. Wikipedia became web 2.0 because it harness the power of the masses and leveraged network effects.

Web 2.0 sub-systems are those which improve the more people adopt them. Creating a new interface to a closed system doesn’t open that system - which is the point. A good litmus test for a Web 2.0 app, ask yourself, “Is there a maximum number of intended users for my application?” If you answer yes, chances are good your application isn’t Web 2.0.

OpenText doesn’t know how to make products like that.  They’re a big-iron big-pricetag development house to build applications useful to pharmaceutical companies, they are not the avenue to creating the transparency. They can do some impressive things with content management, OpenText has a lot of knowledge retrieval systems that a good - for 1994.

Where’s the semantic web data layer? Where’s the web service and open source tool integration? Where are the mechanisms for large scale constituent interaction? These are tools that don’t exist in the OpenText line-up, have a look for yourself.

This is a very impressive list of products - virtually the gamut of Web 1.0 content and community management apps. These are not the tools Ottawa needs, this is more of what they already have.

Have a look at OpenText’s vision for Enterprise 2.0. Decide for yourself if that sounds like a decentralized, socially driven, network based architecture for open, standards-based information exchange.

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Google, MySpace and Facebook are digging in for what is shaping up to be a serious fight over who controls a user’s data. MySpace and Facebook, both storage facilities for social network data have entrenched interests in maintaing as close to total control as their users can tolerate.

While they recognize total closure of their walled garden will alienate users they do so grudgingly. A majority of Facebook users haven’t quite realize how angry they are because secondary disruptive services haven’t hit the market in a big way - most social network apps obligingly play by the various rules established by the social networks.

Facebook in particular is angling their control of users’ data as ensuring privacy. This is a patent, bald face lie. They aren’t interested in user privacy, they’re interested in not pissing the users off, these are very different things. If they can quietly and obsequously hand-off information to trust worthy high-biddiners they will. The hubris of Facebook in not permitting users to do with their data what they wish will very likely prove to be their undoing if they don’t seek to remedy the situation and engage portability in a big way.

It seems like Microsoft has got more than a financial stake in Facebook - Zuckerberg has inherited Gatesian tactics with regards to grassroots tech movements -  screw those unwashed users, I’ve got a vision and a business to realize here!

Google has realized, wisely, several things. Firstly, it hasn’t convinced itself that Orkut can compete on the social networking scene in the US with Facebook and MySpace - so it has instead put itself in the middle of the social data providers and the social data users - not surprisingly, Google leads THIS pack as well, YouTube & AdSense stand to gain more from data portability than Facebook or MySpace can squeeze out of their walled garden. Not to mention Google Office etc.

Google’s Friend Connect should be seen as a slap in the Facebook, FB reaction - that is to shut-out access to Google is a proverbial kick in the balls to the user. They’re taking out their frustration with a smarter, larger and more competive adversary on their users.

Michael Arrington wrote about it on TechCrunch and the increasingly questionable Robert Scoble, of course, weighed in. Arrington poigniently challenged, “How dare Facebook tell ME that I cannot give Google access to this data!” That is the underlying point. Google wants users to hand off their social data to lots of services, Facebook only wants those who profit it directly.

As a game theorist, this is a hands-down win-win for Google. Either Facebook raises the ante by closing the doors while Google ramps the demand for socially networked apps by building a platform of tools to set Facebook users salivating and ranting at their admins, or Facebook opens up and Google can profit from the data availability. It seems Google knows Facebook better than Facebook does - as demonstrated by the nullifying effect of OpenSocial API on the Microsoft investment announcement.

Obviously this is theoretical, there simply aren’t enough broad-use socially networked applications to make availability of them a decisive issue. Most MySpace Facebook users are behind the alpha-geek curve - Plaxo etc just aren’t in their vocabulary yet; the modal age for the userbase being no small factor.

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Microsoft last week at Web 2.0 Expo debuted what is arguably their most disruptive announcement in years in a new product called Live Mesh. Live Mesh is an integrative platform whereby a user’s devices are meshed together into a sing-point-of-management platform with distributed and customizable data flow.

These devices will not only be aware of the services available by each but will integrate with online services such as social networking sites, photo and multimedia distribution systems etc.

The potential this has for Microsoft in terms of entrenching it as an untouchably huge market force is frightening as it is exciting. In the 90’s there was buzz surrounding X10 enabled appliances, the idea that smart homes could be made by integrating computer controlled switches into existing appliances.

Live Mesh really updates the promise of this concept by making every gadget part of a mesh - rather than just those with a screen and a modem. With RFID, Bluetooth and a handful of cheap remote sensors the smart kitchen could be deployed for a few hundred bucks using clever programming skills. Alarm clocks that are integrated into your Outlook calendar which is hooked into your phone which is hooked into the Info server on your campus. Or you social network being immediately connected to your phone - a sort of media-hybrid Grand Central where email, txt, voicemail and phoning converge is pretty straightforward with such a platform.

Further the interplay between web mashups and specific hardware devices is hard to miss. Imagine if your epicurious list was aware of what was in your fridge? Or if you Amazon account knew what was already on your shelves? What if your Kindle knew what books your FaceBook friends were reading? What if your iPod downloaded movie previews you’ve talked about on web forums? What if you could price compare between Amazon, eBay, Best Buy and the retailer you’re standing at or be notified of price deals at a store you’re walking by? How about being told about concerts being given by the bands on your iPod at the bar you’re standing in? The list goes on and on.

This could theoretically be enabled through the Live Mesh system. Microsoft is, as I’ve said before, going to remain the market leader in tech. Google may be smart and growing fast - but Microsoft is in territory that Google simply cannot touch. Microsoft has a leading position in the markets containing the most affluent and influential members of society - it literally monopolizes the elite of the world. From business leaders to smartphone users to video gamers, Microsoft is in the top 3.

The also still make the best damned keyboards and mice around.

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