Category: IO Mapping

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Reference: Social Media for Business 101

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Collaboration Zones, IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, IO Technologies, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats, Topics (All Other)

Eric Lefkofsky

The New York Times November 17, 2010

A Business Creator Sees Big Returns From Social Media

By DARREN DAHL

Asked to name the world’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, few people would think of Eric Lefkofsky, who is 40 and keeps a deliberately low profile in his hometown of Chicago. But Mr. Lefkofsky has an impressive entrepreneurial track record, one that recently led Forbes to estimate  his wealth at $750 million.

The first business Mr. Lefkofsky started, StarBelly, made tools for building Web sites; he sold it in 2000 for $240 million. He then started two companies that have since gone public —  InnerWorkings, which provides printing capabilities over the Web, and Echo Global Logistics, a transportation and logistics outsourcing business he founded with a law school friend, Brad Keywell. He also founded MediaBank, which helps companies buy advertising. In each case, Mr. Lefkofsky used the power of technology and the Internet to update an industry.

And then came Groupon, the social-coupon Web site that he bankrolled and started in 2008 with Andrew Mason  —  a venture that has been called the fastest-growing company ever. Groupon offers its followers a deal-of-the-day coupon, sponsored by a local business, that the followers are encouraged to share with their social networks. The local business gets customers, and Groupon takes a share of the coupon proceeds  —  a business model that has led to talk that Groupon, still privately owned, could be worth as much as $3 billion. More recently, Mr. Lefkofsky and Mr. Keywell started an investment fund with $100 million of their earnings. It’s called Lightbank, and it invests only in early-stage technology companies that are built around social media. The following is a condensed version of a recent conversation with Mr. Lefkofsky.

Read full article at The New York Times…

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Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation

03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Security, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Cultural Intelligence, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, Law Enforcement, Mobile, Standards
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

The Great Cyber-Heist

New York Times

By JAMES VERINI

November 10, 2010

Full Story Online

Mid-1990s: Gonzalez, 14, is visited by F.B.I. agents at his high school for hacking into NASA.

Gonzalez,  law-enforcement officials would discover, was more than just a casher. He was a moderator and rising star on Shadowcrew.com, an archetypal criminal cyberbazaar that sprang up during the Internet-commerce boom in the early 2000s. Its users trafficked in databases of stolen card accounts and devices like magnetic strip-encoders and card-embossers; they posted tips on vulnerable banks and stores and effective e-mail scams. Created by a part-time student in Arizona and a former mortgage broker in New Jersey, Shadowcrew had hundreds of members across the United States, Europe and Asia. It was, as one federal prosecutor put it to me, “an eBay, Monster.com and MySpace for cybercrime.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: We opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994, making the observation that when the Israeli's captured a hacker they gave him a job, while the US simply kicked them in the teeth and sent them to jail.  We tried to keep Phiber Optic out of jail, and we have for decades been on record comparing hackers to astronauts–full of the right stuff and pushing the edge of the envelope.  No one, including Marty Harris then in charge of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) wanted to listen.  Today the US Government is again ignoring the warnings on the urgency of getting a grip on all information in all languages all the time, and roughly 20 years behind in creating “root” cyber-security.  This article by James Verini is a phenomenal update on what we all knew in the mid-1990's that the US Government is still oblivious to–this is not a problem technology or wanton spending can solve–this is a problem that demands discipline, integrity, intelligence, and sharing.  It is neither possible nor desireable to secure government or military computers in isolation–this is an “all in” smart safe nation challenge.

See Also:

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

Search: smart nation intelligence reform electoral reform national security reform

Continue reading “Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation”

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NIGHTWATCH Extract: Anchors Aweigh in Bay of Bengal

Earth Intelligence, IO Mapping, IO Multinational, Military, Peace Intelligence

India: The Chandigarh Tribune reported the results of last Wednesday's bi-annual naval conference, at which Minister of Defence Antony spoke. Antony said the government approved the construction of two new naval bases in the Bay of Bengal, opposite the Malacca Strait and Sri Lanka. At present, the only Indian naval base in Bay of Bengal is the huge naval establishment at Vishakapatnam, the headquarters of the Eastern Naval Command.

The northernmost base will be built at Paradip in Orissa State, closer to Bangladesh and opposite the Malacca Strait. The southernmost base is at Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu State, opposite Sri Lanka.

The Tribune commentator assessed that the two new bases are a counter to China's increased naval presence in the Bay of Bengal, including in Burma and Bangladesh. The Navy has smaller stations in the eastern Indian Ocean, but no full-size bases capable of providing all logistics support, supplies, replenishment, repair and maintenance. A third base for nuclear powered submarines also will be built at a separate location in the Bay of Bengal. The bases will take at least three  years to build.

Comment: Chinese naval interest in the eastern Indian Ocean is spurring the expansion of India's naval infrastructure. China has announced its intention to build a deep sea port at Sonadia near Cox Bazar, Bangladesh. It is also building ports in Burma/Myanmar. All are in the Bay of Bengal.

Most major Indian naval infrastructure construction has been focused against the threat from Pakistan. The new bases represent a shift in Indian strategic thinking — to counter the threat from Chinese poaching in the Indian Ocean, without reducing vigilance against Pakistan. A new naval base in western India was announced in April 2010.

Phi Beta Iota: The maritime environment may well displace the space environment in the 21st Century, as offshore cities and factories come into being (including water desalination plants away from the brown water), and a portion of the population takes to permanent ocean-going residence.  As with outer space, the “Outlaw Sea” are not charted in the sense that most vessels do not have transponders and there is rotten “situational awareness” overall including close-in.  We we re-writing the 450-ship Navy piece today, we would place even more emphasis on getting the 75-ship Expediter into existence, and we would create a surface and air breather arm to the Ocean Surveillance Information System (OSIS) as a new command with global reach and very tight multinational information-sharing and sense-making networks centered at each of the regional multinational decision-support centres that China may fund if the USA does not get its act together.  Whoever owns and operators those regional centers is going to be in the cat-bird seat–they will completely displace the unaffordable ineffective secret C4I grid that DoD and the US IC have now.

See Also:

Search: maritime piracy charts + RECAP

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Water

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Journal: Building Information Modeling as the Core of Sustainable Design Impacts on 40% of Global Energy Consumption

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Methods & Process, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Published October 27, 2010

OAKLAND, CA — Building information modeling can be a valuable tool for architects, engineers and contractors that allows them to explore different design options, see what projects will look like and understand how a structure will perform long before it's built.

BIM, as it's known in the industry, also can help building owners and operators throughout a structure's lifecycle by providing visual context to performance-related data, retrofit plans and other projects intended increase energy efficiency.

In a webcast on Tuesday moderated by GreenBiz.com Executive Editor Joel Makower, representatives for design software giant Autodesk, DPR Construction and the consulting engineering firm Glumac talked about “How Building Information Modeling Solutions Transform Sustainable Design.”

– – – – – – –

Increased costs of energy, ongoing challenges posed by the economy and concerns about sustainability, market demands, occupany and eventual regulation of carbon output combine to make building owners, operators and managers increasingly aware of how their properties perform — and compare with others.

Those issues and the availability of state and federal incentives are powerful drivers to improve portfolios. “Not surprisingly, large multinational companies are getting their buildings in order,” Deodhar said.

Examples include Walmart, which will retrofit 500 buildings this year, Marriott, whose hotel chain includes 275 hotels that bear the Energy Star label, and Starbucks, which by the close of the year will begin to seek LEED certification for all new company-owned stores around the world.

Globally, buildings account for about 40 percent of energy consumption and more than 200 million buildings are candidates for efficiency improvements, Deodhar said. But optimizing a building's environmental performance requires incorporating interrelated factors, such as location, orientation, internal systems, how the building is used and other variables, into design.

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Phi Beta Iota: This is the kind of project we had in mind for DIA/DO (Directorate of Open Sources & Methods).  Apart from DoD being the biggest gorilla on the planet where any improvement can be measured in billions of dollars, this is the tip of the “true cost” iceberg and a success here could be immediately extended to every aspect of acquisition across all mobility, weapons, and other systems, over to the rest of the federal government, down to state and local, and out to the world.   In the 21st Century design is intelligence, intelligence is design, and intelligent design, not weapons, is the influencer most likely to achieve the desired outcome.

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Reference: Reader-to-Leader Framework–Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation

Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Standards, Strategy, Tools

The Reader-to-Leader Framework: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation

Jennifer Preece, University of Maryland1
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland2

Abstract

Billions of people participate in online social activities. Most users participate as readers of discussion boards, searchers of blog posts, or viewers of photos. A fraction of users become contributors of user-generated content by writing consumer product reviews, uploading travel photos, or expressing political opinions. Some users move beyond such individual efforts to become collaborators, forming tightly connected groups with lively discussions whose outcome might be a Wikipedia article or a carefully edited YouTube video. A small fraction of users becomes leaders, who participate in governance by setting and upholding policies, repairing vandalized materials, or mentoring novices. We analyze these activities and offer the Reader-to-Leader Framework with the goal of helping researchers, designers, and managers understand what motivates technology-mediated social participation. This will enable them to improve interface design and social support for their companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations. These improvements could reduce the number of failed projects, while accelerating the application of social media for national priorities such as healthcare, energy sustainability, emergency response, economic development, education, and more.

Recommended Citation

Preece, Jennifer and Shneiderman, Ben (2009) “The Reader-to-Leader Framework: Motivating Technology-Mediated Social Participation,” AIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction (1) 1, pp. 13-32
Available at: http://aisel.aisnet.org/thci/vol1/iss1/5

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