Backblog

It's been a very busy couple of days in the world of Web-based communications. Between the news about Skype Connect and Google Voice, you'd think the world has moved away from landlines, especially in the home. Yesterday, I wrote about Google Voice on my Service Provider Views column, and that has all kinds of implications for both landline carriers as well as any form of Web-based VoIP offering.

From time to time I get invited to participate in various industry webinars, and the latest one is a half day event on UC with Focus.com. They call these Interactive Summits, and I'll be kicking this one off with a keynote presentation on the UC landscape.

Invoke Solutions, a market research firm, recently performed a study on frequent social media users to determine which factors they feel makes social media trustworthy. The main results, which were discussed in a recent blog post on eMarketer, narrow down several main social media trust characteristics.

Finally digging out enough to get back to blogging. Lots to catch up on, and I'll start here. I recently completed a White Paper on VoIP security for a startup venture, InCharge Systems. It's a very interesting company, and they've taken a long, hard look at the range of issues around VoIP and SIP-based telephony - security, identity, authentication, toll fraud, etc.

The Canadian Library Association has released detailed comments on Bill C-32.  At the risk of being labeled "radical extremists" by Canadian Heritage James Moore, the CLA adopts positions that are very similar to those found on this blog and by those arguing for balanced copyright.

Another White Paper I recently completed was just announced - this time from M5 Networks. Regular readers here will know that I've followed M5 for a long time, and recently attended their 10th anniversary bash in NYC.

Yesterday, after about two months of using the mobile app Foursquare I became a Super Mayor. While this affords me a special badge, it does not entail any superpowers. I will use my meager powers I do have for good and discuss what I like about Foursquare (what I don't like will come next).

Charles Dickens wasn’t the only one with great expectations and an occasional let down along the way. As we’ve written in our blogs and ERP research, 72% of ERP projects fail in one or more three key dimensions: cost, duration, and/or realized business benefits. Much like the characters in Dickens’ novel, those trying to select and implement ERP software are faced with high hopes and great expectations, only to face significant challenges and some bad decisions along the way.

A content management system (CMS) allows regular business owners with little or no technical experience to update and manage their websites quickly and easily. An effective CMS can also be a powerful tool for supporting your business' search engine optimization (SEO) strategy since it provides a powerful base from which you can develop and maintain your website's content, and, consequently, support your overall SEO goals.

A recent study from McKinsey on the basics of B2B sales success notes that "B2B customers say they care most about product + price, but what they really want is a great sales experience." Hmmm ...

The NDP has published a release criticizing the Google - Verizon net neutrality deal, expressing concern about the side deal.  The deal treats wired and wireless services in a different manner, something the CRTC has rejected as part of its traffic management guidelines.

mWhen it comes to writing engaging blog posts, having optimized carefully selected images can be a good way to engage your readers and encourage interest in your posts. Images are also an important aspect of a business blog's SEO strategy and can help bring in readers based on organic search. There are several ways to optimize your images and this post will hopefully help give you some tips on how you can find the best images you can and then how you can optimize them.

Although our company focuses on ERP selection, implementation, and organizational change management, many of our clients ask for help defining their IT strategies as a precursor to a broader ERP software selection process. Since it is difficult to choose an ERP vendor without having a clear IT strategy in place, this approach makes perfect sense.

First of all, congratulations! Getting a business blog up and running is a notable achievement. Working at it consistently to get a core group of readers is something 95% blogs out there will never have. If you’re running a blog as a marketing program for your company though, you’re likely still short of your overall objective, which is to get sales leads.

Based on my research observing and interviewing Foursquare users, I created a list of user types. Most users appear to be a mixture of some or all types, however.

I've completed gathering data for my Foursquare study, so now I'm trying to find some interesting conclusions. From this research, I have put together a list of various activities that users are doing on Foursquare.

Michael Martineau has written extensively about information technology and electronic medical records and is a regular contributor to CanadianEMR. In the following commentary in 'Technology for Doctors', he states:

I received a note from Steve Helms over at Gartner the other day about a release they made covering Rights and Responsibilities for Cloud Computing Services. In it they outline seven rights related to cloud consumption:

My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) picks up on last week's DMCA exemption decision with a contrast to Bill C-32.  I note that since its introduction two months ago, the government's copyright reform package has generated widespread debate over whether it strikes the right balance.  The digital lock provisions have been the most contentious aspect of the bill, with critics fearing that anytime a digital lock is used, it would trump virtually all other rights.