Komail Mithani
Komail is entering his Junior year at the University of Texas at Austin. He is majoring in Public Relations with a Business Foundations Certificate. Before interning at nGenera, he worked is Las Colinas, TX for a bartering company named West End Media Group, Inc. Currently, Komail is one of the four interns in nGenera's Austin office and is working on training documentation for clients to familiarize themselves with nGenera's products.
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July 24th, 2008, 02:38pm
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A few weeks ago, my colleague Ben Letalik wrote about the MLB in his weekly Wikinomics Report Card. This Tuesday, the MLB announced that it began installing IBM software “to exploit the next generation of the Internet.”
“The IBM WebSphere Portal software architecture allows us to consolidate information from a variety of sources. It enables collaboration within our user community and provides a strong platform for future growth and development,” said Mike Morris, Vice President of Application Development and Program Management for MLB.
The immediate use of the software will help umpires officiate the game better by providing insights on player behaviors, weather conditions, statistics, and other key information.
“Major League Baseball has vaulted into the Web 2.0 era with powerful collaboration technology that puts the power of the World Wide Web and technology specialists into the hands of the baseball experts,” said Bob Picciano, General Manager, IBM Lotus Software.
I am hoping that, with the introduction of IBM’s software, the MLB becomes more transparent on issues concerning the game such as steroids and the idea of having instant replay. I can see how umpires will benefit from having player statistics and behavior tendencies instantly given to them. Maybe later when the software is integrated into the MLB culture, the umpires well have the opportunity to receive instant replay on a screen, so that human error can be reduced. It’s good to see that such a large part of American culture is beginning to understand the need to collaborate, especially such a large multi-billion dollar business.
I am interested to see if the NFL, MLS, NBA, or NHL decides to follow baseball’s footsteps.
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July 17th, 2008, 12:32pm
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On Monday, the online microblogging website, Twitter, announced its acquisition of Summize, a search engine for online conversations. According to the Twitter blog, “there is a perfect technology fit, vision fit, and cultural fit.” Twitter is one of the fast approaching social networking websites that keeps you instantly in touch with co-workers, family, and friends. I personal enjoy the text messages from ESPN, so I’m always informed on the daily sports news. But, with all the information Twitter accumulates, for new users it sometimes becomes very cluttered and unattractive to use. With the addition of Summize, built from the passion of three designers, having a search capability that accumulates relevant information to you will be the next step in the development of Twitter.
“In 2008, we discovered Twitter as a source of the most timely and relevant opinions on trending topics. We immediately embarked on a plan to develop the best Twitter search and discovery application to serve the Twitter community and burgeoning Twitter ecosystem,” says co-founder Jay Virdy.
With the addition to Summize it will be interesting to see the response and potential growth of Twitter. It’s a great tool for teams scattered across the US, because remember in Web 2.0 people are always connected no matter where they may reside.
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July 9th, 2008, 03:39pm
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A few days ago, an article written in the Boston.com business column told a story about Comcast responding to a complaint by C.C. Chapman about his service. While watching his HDTV, the reception starting becoming very poor so Chapman quickly started expressing his anger on Twitter and “within 24 hours, a technician was at Chapman’s house in Milford to fix the problem.”
“Chapman’s experience is one example of the ways customer service is changing in an age when a single disgruntled consumer with a broadband connection can ignite a crisis,” from Carolyn Y. Johnson, the author of the article.
The article shows the power of ordinary people fighting against large corporations. For fun, in Google, I searched “Comcast complaints” and found over 1,870 listings and without quotations around the phrase Google brings up over a million listings.
“Comcast’s customer service was rated “poor” by 30% of respondents” and it had a strong hit after this video, which showed a Comcast technician sleeping on a customer’s couch. It was viewed over 1.2 million times with over 700 comments. Also, a website named ComcastmustDie.com was created for users to tell their stories of their experience and grievances with Comcast.
It seems like Comcast finally got the message. With the emergence of Web 2.0 ordinary people can have their voice heard and create a terror of a public relations problem for companies. “Listening and acting upon what [customers] are hearing and being very proactive is different than waiting for a customer to pick up the phone and call us. We can nip it in the bud,” said Karen Hartzell, division vice president of customer care for Comcast’s NorthCentral division.
In the new business environment, companies need to implement a team of individuals to help combat the conversations about their company. By combat, I am not referring to a retaliation, but providing a solution to the problem. Working with customers to generate a satisfying customer experience is essential to thriving in business today. Customer service is just one of the departments shifted by Wikinomics.
I’m interesting to hearing your thoughts on customer service. Is their a company that you will absolutely never use because of their horrible customer service, or is their a certain company that has a level of customer service that brings you back? It may or may not have to deal with Comcast, but please share.
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July 3rd, 2008, 10:51am
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If we ever needed a greater example of social networking in the 21st century, then New Orleans would be the first place to look. After being destroyed being flooded on account of failed levies in the fallout of Hurricane Katrina, the “sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest hurricane on record that made landfall in the United States,” New Orleans was in desperate need for aide and restructuring.
In an article by Network World, we learn about a non-profit organization called Think New Orleans where an underpaid programmer, Alan Gutierrez highlighted “how a crash course in social networking helped people emerge from the rubble; find their voice; fight the government; solicit help; and save their neighborhoods, schools and each other.” He explains that residents hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina used their creativity to use social media sites such as: Flickr, WordPress, Yahoo Groups, and Google Maps to increase rebuilding efforts “away from the wrecking balls swung by city government.” Read More »
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June 26th, 2008, 09:43am
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A survey published by the Rasmussen Reports, “an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information,” found that 49% of Americans believe that the federal government should regulate the Internet the same way as radio and television.
This was in response to a Missouri woman pleading “not guilty to charges in an Internet hoax blamed for a 13-year-old girl’s suicide.” Lori Drew, a 49-year old mother, allegedly created a fake Myspace account “to send cruel messages to a 13-year-old neighbor Megan Meier, a friend of Drew’s daughter, including one stating the world would be better off without her.” Meier committed suicide after these messages were received. You can read about the incident here.
With huge talks about Internet piracy it seems that Internet harassment is an issue we haven’t discussed. According to the survey, 73% of Americas believe that it is a crime to harass someone over the Internet. So what will the impact of this trial lead. I believe their will be substantial consequences to this trial because:
1) This is the first federal charge involving the well-known social networking website, Myspace.com, and
2) The decision of this trial will push law makers to address the issue of Internet harassment on not just a local level, but a national one
Now, I know that this is my second post about security (my first one covered internet infrastructure in Estonia but I believe it should be spread across the blogosphere. How can a parent sink so low to use a social networking site teens use to express themselves to emotionally hurt one of her daughter’s friends? If Ms. Drew is convicted it will be interesting to see what implications this decision will have. I will keep a close eye on this trial to see the final verdict. This just shows the Web 2.0 has evolved parenting. It appears that cyber-bullying is starting to get more attention and will soon raise concerns among parents.
So do you think the government should step up and pass policies to stop Internet harassment and cyber-bullying? How should social networking websites such as Myspace and Facebook address this issue?
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June 16th, 2008, 04:34pm
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Web 2.0 enables people to collaborate without regard to boundaries to engage innovation and creativity. But, some people tend to forget about hackers, who are also part of the Web 2.0 sphere and when they have the ability to collaborate, security begins to become a large issue. Wired Science published by PBS, reported on an attack on the Estonian network. The video takes a look at how Russian hackers collaborated to create a botnet that disabled banks, newspapers, and some government ministries.
An interesting part of the report highlighted Estonian’s Internet Defense Team that ultimately combated against the hackers to bring everything back to normal. Throughout the video, I was consistently reminding of Die Hard 4 where a ‘fire sale’ (an attack against the entire digital infrastructure of a country) created mass chaos for the entire country.
This is an issue I believe many companies should take seriously as well as governments. After watching this video, I pose this question for all you Wikinomics innovators: with the emergence of Web 2.0, how has the security issue risen for globalized companies to insure their systems aren’t affected? Should their be a greater push for governments to implement Internet defense strategies in case of the Estonia-like event?
