The ColdFusion 8 project-based curriculum is designed to teach experienced web developers how to create dynamic, database-driven web applications using ColdFusion 8.

http://www.adobe.com/education/instruction/teach/cfcurriculum.html

Read the article: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9958211-2.html?tag=nl.e501

See the website: http://www.goosh.org/

Stumbled into this blog by Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School where he tends to talk about the “impact of information technology on businesses and their leaders”

Looks like several articles on Enterprise 2.0 and related topics.

Jakob Nielsen warns that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

by Tom Davenport on March 21, 2007 11:51 AM; Harvard Business Online

I like stuff that makes sense. The best definition of Enterprise 2.0

Enterprise 2.0, or the widespread adoption of social media and participative technologies in order to transform culture and decision-making in large organizations.

And the key arguement why it isn’t the magic bullet.

Enterprise 2.0 software and the Internet won’t make organizational hierarchy and politics go away. They won’t make the ideas of the front-line worker in corporations as influential as those of the CEO. Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations  power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today  won’t be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone

Excellent article arguing the negative point of enterprise 2.0.

This is more on Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Its an interesting read on implementation and expectation of Web 2.0 technology within the corporation.

Owad looked up the Amazon wishlists of everybody whos first name was Mark. Finding 124,887 public wishlists Owad then proceeded to identify a few books he found subversive and mapped the addresses of the individuals concerned.

If you imagine what next steps would happen with this project is becomes a little frightening how information that may have been thought private or obscure can easily be used to give a clear picture of you. Imagine if knowing your name and reading preferences Owad next extracts your address and telephone number from the public telephone directory; next he gets the property values in your street or even the last sale price of your house; next census data detailing general details about people in your area; next, do you have a myspace profile, or a blogger account that could be tied back to this growing profile.

I’ve got to say, none of this seems particularly difficult and its a real issue.

From an ebusiness perspective the requirement to keep someones private information private will need some real thought as these technologies move forward.

Refs:

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists viewable at
http://www.applefritter.com/bannedbooks

Indeed, Google appear to be developing / acquiring the tools to create a complete distributed application suite for performing all the functions previously performed by desktop applications according to Boothby (2006) and others. Google itself does not view its content sharing tools as Microsoft Office competitors, as Dr Eric Schmidt, Google CEO has stated on numerous occasions:

We embarked on a strategy to build apps that are search centric and very sharable….as something use in normal life. We are not arguing it is an [Microsoft] Office replacement, but a different way of manage information. I dont think it replaces Office. – Dr Eric Schmidt 2006 quoted in Bogatin (2007)

Google has also taken full advantage of Web 2.0 technologies and according to Tim O’Reilly is the standard barer for Web 2.0. I liked the concept that Google was a middleman or enabler between the user and his or her online experience.

Refs:

Ghemawat, Sanjay., Gobioff, Howard., and Leung, Shun-Tak.; Aug 2003.; The Google File System.; http://216.239.37.132/papers/gfs-sosp2003.pdf

O’Reilly, Tim.; 30/Sept/2005.; What Is Web 2.0 – Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software.; http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1

Boothby, Rod.; 11/Jan/2006.; Google Replacement for Office.; Innovation Creators.;http://innovationcreators.com/wp/?p=87

Bogatin, Donna.; 17/April/2007.; Google 2.0 redux: Eric Schmidt meets John Battelle again.; ZDNet.;http://blogs.zdnet.com/micro-markets/?p=1233

1. The information could be inaccurate or false
2. There has been little thought about security and privacy
3. The possibility that viruses could propagate through a mashup
4. The possibility that a mashup could be used to cause havoc by misrepresenting information.

The scope for causing havoc is obvious. If you look at http://www.chicagocrime.org/ which shows crime statistics and locations on a Google map it would be a reasonable assumption that high crime areas have lower property values but what if the crime statistics feed was modified to show certain areas have higher crime levels in an attempt to artificially lower property values.

Marks does recommend that installation and authentication of servers with SSL certificates will alleviate some of these problems.

Refs:

Marks, Paul.; 12/May/2006; Mashup websites are a hackers dream come true.; New Scientist; http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/mg19025516.400

Atlassian’s products are distributed applications targetted at the enterprise. One of the issues with open source is that large organisations do require support from a vendor and that just isn’t achievable with most open source products. Atlassian has a real advantage here in that while its products are definitely proprietary it makes use of open source components.

The concept of distributed applications built on open source components also aids in the flexibility and ability to reuse Atlassian’s products in other areas.

Atlassian are a company that is doing ebusiness right.

Refs:

Atlassian website.; http://www.atlassian.com