Delicious is simply delicious

Let's talk about something other than Twitter this week - let's talk about Delicious (formally del.icio.us*, pronounced "delicious"). Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for sharing, storing and discovering your bookmarks.

I don't know about you, but I don't like how browsers store bookmarks - those great web sites you find that you want to store end up getting lost when you buy a new laptop, or when you use more than one type of browser - so prior to social bookmarking sites, I would store my favorite web sites in a txt document on my hard-drive. Then came along social bookmarking web sites - leading social bookmark is Delicious, where I can not only store bookmarks, I can tag them with my own keywords, discover web sites bookmarked by others and share my bookmarks with the world.

Delicious is also clever enough to track how many times a particular Web site gets tagged or bookmarked and it presents the most popular bookmarks on its homepage, which is a great way to

It's definitely worth giving Delicious a try - visit the site, scroll down the homepage and read the headlines on the most popular bookmarks, click on the "Explore Tags" tab and see what's there, search a keyword from your industry (heck put in your company name), set up an account, add some bookmarks, and add some bookmarks (click on the save a new bookmark tool from the top right of every page).

Social bookmarking is worth exploring and Delicious is a great way to dip your toes into this Web 2.0 feature.

* The "del.icio.us" domain name was a well-known example of a domain hack, an unconventional combination of letters to form a word or phrase. Del.icio.us and delicio.us now redirect to the new domain, delicious.com.

The 411 on RSS

Let's turn back the clock a few years and talk about some technological oldies but goodies from the start of the Web 2.0 world.

I'm sure you've heard about RSS feeds, but can you tell me what RSS stands for and what is does?

RSS stands for "Real Simple Syndication" and does exactly what is says it does, provides the technological means for real simple syndication of a web sites content, including blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video, into a standard format that is called a "feed" or "news feed." Typically RSS feeds contain headlines and short blurbs, but sometimes RSS feeds contain full articles.

The standardize feeds allows for web site owners to distribute their content out to individual news feed readers, and feed aggregator sites, like Google reader and it allows individuals to bring their favorite web site's content to their desktop or homepage.

RSS allows you to keep up to date with multiple Web sites, and gives you control over which headlines you decide to click on. Power to the People!

Get Linked with LinkedIn

Most people I know who work in the consulting, technology or the internet sectors are members – although not all are active members – of LinkedIn.

What is LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for business people – a social network to help business people keep, make and build connections.

At it's basic, LinkedIn can be used as your virtual resume and at it's most complex, LinkedIn can become a major pipeline for business intelligence, client acquisition, business news and/or finding a job (if you are looking for a job)

How to get the most out of LinkedIn

1. Join
2. Fill out 100% of your profile, including your personal picture (corporate logos, although allowed initially, can be removed by LinkedIn). The profile is easy to update don't worry that you have to get every word just right the first time.
3. Make your profile public – this applies to almost everyone, of course there are a few special high-profile individuals who may not want the whole LinkedIn-verse to see their profile but still want a profile that they can share with specific individuals. Since most of us aren't those types of people – just make your profile public.
4. Use LinkedIn's applications to include your blog, twitter and slideshare accounts to your public profile
5. Add contacts by searching for current and past co-workers, employees, employers, associates, and alumni
6. Recommend some of people. If you know of a superstar, tell the world about it.
7. Join a group or two.
8. Spend a few minutes each day participating in your groups – lurking, reading, and answering questions.

Cautionary Note

Don't write anything you don't want your employers or clients knowing about. Changes made to your profile can be delivered to members of your contact list every week. So if you are currently employed yet you are looking for a job, you may not change your profile to "desperately seeking new employment". Remember almost 8 million people visited LinkedIN in January 2009 – you can bet someone you know is among those millions.

Should you and your have a LinkedIn Profile:

Absolutely yes.

Ten Twit Preventing Tips for Twitter

Twitter has hit the internet, and the media by storm, so much so I think we have safely call Twitter the Internet's newest wunderkind.

So I've come up with these ten steps to getting started with Twitter, since it seems that everyone has, will be or should be starting on Twitter.

1. Understand your playing field. If you work a company other than your own, check to see if your company has a policy on employees using Twitter while at work and/or Twitting about work. If they don't have a policy then ask specific questions about what you are allowed to do on Twitter and get the answers in writing. You don't want to be facing the unemployment line because you twittered-inappropriately about work.

2. Join and participate. Sign up in your real name with a bio and picture so the rest of us know who we are talking to.

3. Select your Twitter voice. Is the main focus of your Twitter account business or pleasure or both? (check item # 1, to confirm that you can twitter about your business)

4. Follow people who find it useful and watch how they behave. Follow some top people to start with and invest some time in reading their tweets and clicking on the links they include in their tweets. You will start to understand the power of Twitter.

5. Get over that uncomfortable feeling and start to twitter.

6. Download and use a client such as thwirl or tweetdeck, or my personal favorite hootsuite. .

7. Find people who share your interests using tools such as Tweetscan or Tweetgrid and see who the important people in your locality are with Twittergrader.

8. See what everyone else is talking about and emerging topics by using Twitscoop. Need some help on what to tweet (verb: tweet – the action of writing on twitter) about?

Here are some winning practices of top tweeters:
* Don't be pedantic. We don't care what you're eating for lunch, or that you just woke up.
* Don't use Twitter just to pimp your blog posts.
* Don't pimp your clients all day
* Don't over-tweet. If you need half a dozen tweets to make your point, do one that points to a blog post.
* Do link to interesting articles, sites, blog posts.
* Do include links in as many of your posts as possible
* Answer and ask questions
* Be polite and don't be boring.

9. There are serious news issues being covered on Twitter such as the coverage of the Mumbai bombings and Hudson plane crash. Follow your competitors and what others are saying about them by entering their name into search.twitter.com. You might as well search your companies name as well – you might just come up with some interesting research.

10. Relax and give Twitter a chance. If Twitter doesn't work for you, then at least you'll know and you’ll already have a Twitter account and some Twitter experience if you ever need it in the future. If Twitter is keeping you more informed, helping you connect with customers and/or friends, then you can call yourself part of the Twitter Nation!

Tweeting on Twitter

Twitter has been in the news a lot in the past weeks:
* rumors of being courted by Facebook,
* huge traffic numbers,
* tweets from the courtroom, and the surgical suite and congress.

Here's the 411 on Twitter.

Twitter is an open micro-blogging service. It enables its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Do you need a twitter account?

Maybe, maybe not. Although there are a lot of people on Twitter, unless you can establish a specific reason for your company to be on twitter, I would say just wait. Go and secure your name and/or your companies names by signing up for a Twitter account.

The upside of Twitter, it's easy to use, with plenty of 3rd party tools to extend your ability to interact with Twitter and to track usage.

The downside of Twitter, you are only talking to other people who have a Twitter account.

Is Cloud Computing Really Computing in the Sky?

Is Cloud Computing Really Computing in the Sky?

Ah, no. Cloud computing has nothing to do with sky, weather, satellites or clouds for that matter. You may have heard about cloud computing this week in relation to the Google Gmail outage on Feb 24th and TechCrunch's explanation on the cause of the problem.

Cloud computing is considered the next step in the growth of computing and the Internet, where software (like office suites, and development platforms) are found on the Internet (in the cloud) and not on individual hard-drives. Examples include Salesforce.com and Google Apps which provide common business applications online that are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on the servers.

That's it for the explanation on cloud computing - the debate on the pros and cons of cloud computing will be saved for another time.

Online Privacy is Still a Concern

After 12 years of the common man using the Internet for everything from online gaming to banking, online privacy still seems to be of great concern for over 80% of internet users.

Concern, prevalent among all age segments, increases with respondent age: rising from 67.3% among respondents 18-24 years to 85.7% with respondents 55 years and older.

* Over 60% of respondents are aware of the tracking, collecting and sharing of information that occurs as a result of online activities.

* Respondents do not see value in ads targeted to them based on their web surfing behavior – even if it improves their web surfing experience.

As someone who not only uses the Internet daily, but who makes their living from this media, I know that I have a different relationship with the Internet than the typical users, but it's still surprising that so many people are concerned about their personal privacy online. In an age of grocery stores tracking our purchases through our loyalty cards to provide us coupons for products that we normally purchase, health care companies and pharmacies data-mining every purchase we make, large stores monitor traffic patterns to determine the best placement of items to Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" and "What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?" - a feature that I have a love/hate relationship with - I am a little surprised to hear that consumers are concerned that web sites track what consumers are doing on those sites.

But, setting my personal opinion aside, the concern exists, it's real and we need to address it, especially on a health or medically related site.

What's the best way to handle this?

1. Establish Privacy and Terms of Use policies, and then follow them all the time, not just when it's convenient.

2. Hire or appoint a chief Privacy Officer and give that person the ultimate authority over all things related to personally identifiable information.

4. Collect only the information you need, and no more. You may wish to have 20 data points on every consumer but if you are only goin to be using 5 data points, then collect 5 for now.

3. Explain (out in the open) why you are collecting data and what you will be doing with that data.

I have found that being open about why you collecting data, and what you will be doing with that data goes a long way to increase a consumer's trust level in your site.

Wiki, Wacki, Woo!

We've all heard of Wikipedia – the world's largest web site. I'm sure almost everyone who uses the internet has read an article or two on Wikipedia, thanks to their incredible search engine ranking. Let's take a look at exactly what Wikipedia and wikis are.

From the "kettle calling the pot black" file, here is Wikipedia's definition of itself:

Wikipedia (pronounced /ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/ or /ˌwɪkəˈpiːdiə/) is a multilingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia project. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau (a combination of portions of two words and their meanings) of the words wiki (a type of collaborative Web site) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information. from wikipedia

We all know what an encyclopedia is, but the definition of a wiki might not be quite as familiar.

A Wiki
A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language (a set of annotation that tell text how to displayed. Example: Mircosoft WORD showing bolded text). Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and Knowledge Management systems". from wikipedia.

The word "Wiki" is a Hawaiian word for "fast".

The first web site that could call itself a wiki is WikiWikiWeb, started in 1994 by Ward Cunningham. The largest and most familiar wiki is Wikipedia.

So, a wiki is easy to use (very easy to use) knowledge management and distribution system that can be completely private, semi-private or public. Are there applications for a wiki in healthcare? Absolutely – from department-level intranets to a professional-level wiki where doctors share cutting-edge research.

Wiki's and HealthCare

Here is a list of different applications of a wiki in healthcare. This is not a comprehensive list nor is it a list of the best healthcare wikis, it's just a list of some of the good ones.

AskDrWiki
"Dr Wiki is a nonprofit educational web site made by physicians for physicians, medical students, and healthcare providers. Its purpose is to serve as a online repository of medical information that can be accessed by anyone."

MedPedia
"In association with Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, University of Michigan Medical School and other leading global health organizations, Medpedia will be a commons for the gathering of the information and people critical to health care."

Clinfowiki
"The Clinical Informatics Wiki." "The Clinical Informatics Wiki is an implementation of a wiki devoted to topics in clinical informatics.

Consumer Health Information service - Toronto Public Library
"This site, created and maintained by the Consumer Health Information Service (CHIS) of the Toronto Public Library, is designed to help you find reliable, understandable health information for you and your family. The information on this site is constantly being revised as changes or new information comes to light."

Diabetes Wiki
"A consumer-focused diabetes education site. Allows anyone to tell their story and share their knowledge."

ECG-pedia
"A wiki electrocardiography (ECG) course and textbook designed for medical professionals such as cardiac care nurses and physicians."

Journal of Medical Internet Research e-health Wiki
"This is a platform for the eHealth research community to collaboratively develop eHealth and Internet research ideas and observations into papers, proposals, research protocols, projects and programs."

FluWiki
"The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies."

Ganfyd
"Welcome to ganfyd.org - The free medical knowledge base that anyone can read and any registered medical practitioner may edit. "

WiserWiki
"WiserWiki is a wiki that will allow accredited physicians to comment, collaborate and update medical information online and is viewable by everyone. The site was originally seeded with content from John Noble's 'Textbook of Primary Care Medicine' (3rd Edition)"

Tweeting on Twitter

I'm sure you've heard of Twitter, just in case you haven't, you really need to read this blog, because Twitter is everywhere.

As before, we'll start with the official review from Wikipedia:

"Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Micro-blogging is a form of multimedia blogging that allows users to send brief text updates (say, 140 characters or fewer) or micromedia such as photos or audio clips and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, digital audio or the web."

So, Twitter is a messaging service where your messages are limited to 140 characters. Period. It's not generally considered an instant messaging service (like ICQ, or AIM) where you can have one-on-one conversations with individuals (although it is possible to direct message or DM one individual on Twitter). Twitter is a messaging service that allows you to message all of people who are "following" you. There are some privacy settings on Twitter but most tweets (messages) are open for everyone to read.

Twitter in Health Care:
There has been some noise in the technology blogosphere about all of the usage of Twitter in health care. Now I can see many applications for e-health companies to use Twitter for marketing and community involvement, and on-line and real world patient communities to encourage members to keep in touch with each other. But I can't see immediate real world application for most hospitals, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or health care professionals, beyond the reasons other people use Twitter: keeping in touch with friends, family; keeping up to date with news, cultural events (lots of twittering on inauguration day) and conferences.

Does Subject: Brilliant! twitter? Sure I do, so sign up for Twitter and follow me.

I think the 140 character restriction on Twitter is too limiting for most health care applications. Does anyone know of a great health care twitter usage? Let me know.

Mashup – Smashup

This week, I thought I'd start covering some standard technologies that are floated around all the time in Web 2.0 conversations. Today, let's review Mashups.

Official Definition
The official definition of the term Mashup is (taken from our favorite web 2.0 encyclopedia, Wikipedia.org):
"In web development, a mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. The term Mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently done by access to open APIs* and data sources to produce results that were not the original goal of the data owners. An example is the use of cartographic data from Google Maps to add location information to real-estate data, thereby creating a new and distinct web service that was not originally provided by either source."

Shorter Explanation:
"A mashup is a combination of data sources to create a unified interface and experience."

Laymen's Explanation:
You can think of a mashup like a Reese Peanut Butter Cup: peanut butter + chocolate: individually two pretty good items and some would argue that chocolate is beyond pretty good. And when you combine those two pretty good items together, you get something greater than the sum of its parts. That's what a mashup is - two technology-based products that are combined to make something new.

Mashup's can be web-based (two different web programs slammed together), or digital art, or video, or music.

Best Examples of an e-Health Mashup
It's always hard to stick your neck out and say "this is the best" of anything on the web, but let's say that this is the best examples of an e-Health mashup that I've found.

Fight4Rx

Fight4rx.org is a brand new web site, having only been live for about 24 hours. It is an excellent example of how a mashup can be used to provide relevant information to a health care consumer. "Fight4Rx is a non-partisan grassroots effort of the National Community Pharmacists Association aimed at educating patients about the value of their local community pharmacy." (from the Fight4Rx.org web site) Although there are more tools on the site than the mashup, their mapping component that allows a user to type in their zip code and find the closet community pharmacy.


"Who is Sick".

"Who Is Sick was started in 2006 with a mission to provide current and local sickness information to the public - without the hassle of dealing with hospitals or doctors. With a strong belief in the power of people and a faith that user generated content can be extremely valuable, our team set out to create an entirely new system for tracking and monitoring sickness in your area and obtain sickness information. Information retrieved by tracking sickness in my area can also be used to map sickness trends in my region." Taken from the Who Is Sick web site.

People go to the site and enter their zip code, age, gender, symptoms, length of illness (anomalously) and any additional details about their illness, and results are plotted on an easy to read Google map, so visitors can see the types of illness any state, city or neighborhood.

Pretty neat eh?

*API
Explanation coming soon.

Do You Do Social Media?

Whether you call it social media, Web 2.0 or social networking, its 2009, so if you aren't putting your toe into the world of social media, you'd better get started and soon. Let's start with some basics like a definition.

Just what is "Social Media"? If we tap the world's largest encyclopedia, Wikipedia, for a definition of social media, this is what we get:

"Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences."

Huh? ... "depends on the varied perspectives and "building" of shared meaning among communities". Okay, enough of the consultant-speak-garblely-gook. Let's try again.

Social media are online communications in which individuals move seamlessly between reading and creating content (content could be words, images or video). They use social software that enables anyone without knowledge of coding, to post, comment on, share or mash up* content and to form communities around shared interests.

*Tomorrow I'll cover what a mashup is.

More definitions:

Robert Scoble: What is Social Media?

Bryan Eisenberg: Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social Media.

Brian Solis: What's Wrong with Social Media.

The Internet is Big ... And Going to Get Bigger

The global internet population has crested over the 1 billion mark according to ComScore.

Even as the internet population passes the one billion mark, only 41% (416 million) of adults (15+) in the Asia Pacific are online while in the US only 28% (185 million) of 15+'s are online. That leaves a lot of room for continued growth.

"Surpassing one billion global users is a significant landmark in the history of the Internet," said Magid Abraham, President and Chief Executive Officer, comScore, Inc. "It is a monument to the increasingly unified global community in which we live and reminds us that the world truly is becoming more flat. The second billion will be online before we know it, and the third billion will arrive even faster than that, until we have a truly global network of interconnected people and ideas that transcend borders and cultural boundaries."

Sites that Top the Global Internet Traffic Mountain

It should be no surprise to anyone who has even a basic understanding of the internet these days that Google is the "King of the Mountain", with over 775 million visitors. Yikes ... remember 8 years ago when Google was breaking into the search engine market? Google was named the top search engine by PC magazine in 1998. The most prophetic statement in the short PC magazine article, "There's much more to come at Google!, but even in its prototype form it's a great search engine.", truer words have not been written.

Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL hold positions 2, 3, 4 and coming in in 5th position is the Wikipedia Foundation Sites. Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone and that aims to provide free encyclopedic information to its readers that was founded in 2000. and it can boldly hold claim to the success of user-generated content. As of Jan 25/09 Wikipedia contains 2.7 million articles.

If you think it's too late to claim your corner of the internet? Think again. The internet is only just beginning and one can only imagine that new businesses and innovations the next billion internet users will bring.