Lecture 7–Content management

 

Eli talked about new kind of service that manages all the cloud storages in one place – Otixo, and how the Terms of Service virtually grants all rights to the user content to Otixo.

I never read ToS, but I’ve decided to try this once. After some digging I’ve found this:

Copyright in Your Content. Otixo does not claim ownership rights in any information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, messages, or other materials or content you make available or use in connection with the Site and the Service or use in connection with your account (“Content”). By submitting your Content and accepting the consideration set forth in these Terms, as consideration for our permitting you to use the Site and the Service, you unconditionally grant to Otixo a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable right and license, with the right to sublicense through multiple levels of sublicensees, under all of your intellectual property rights in the Content, to (a) reproduce, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally transmit, and otherwise use the Content in any medium or format, whether now known or hereafter discovered and (b) exercise any and all other present or future rights in the Content. You remain the owner of all Content that you submit to the Service and as a condition to your use of the Site and the Service, you represent and warrant to Otixo that you are the owner of the copyright to the Content you submit to the Service or that you have written permission from the copyright owner to submit such Content. In addition, you warrant that all moral rights in any Content have been waived. You agree to indemnify and hold Otixo harmless for any violation of this provision.

So, now I know why I never read ToS. I have no idea what it means. I don’t understand the above quote. Really, I don’t. What confuses me is that it says that Otixo doesn’t claim ownership on the content, but they can use it  forever .

Anyhow, it makes you think…

This service is not alone out there with these features. There are at least 2 others.

Joukuu – is a free windows program that lets you manage some cloud accounts. The service is paid if you want to add more than one account of the same kind. The support of cloud services is limited but should be expanded soon.

Primadesk – Web services with huge number of clouds supported. Free account gives 1Gb of cloud space and connection to 5 other cloud services. Paid customers get more…

No, I didn’t read ToS for any of them. I prefer to take care of my clouds by myself and I prefer to encrypt them by myself (when needed).

 

My advice to you – don’t get lost in the clouds

Lecture 6 - Portals

I don’t like portals.

I believe that it is possible to have a useful and functional portal that would provide some kind of a gateway to the needed functionalities for each person/employee, but I haven’t seen a single portal in my life that could be described as such.

All the portals I have used were overloaded with mostly useless information (at least for me) and there was a feeling as if the content manager was thinking “Oh, here is a white blank spot, I have to fill it with something!!!!”. Useless information is only a part of my problem, but the fact that I actually can’t find what I’m looking for is the most disturbing part.

One of the elements of the portal is menu. Menus represent hierarchy, hierarchy represent some kind of flow where one item is related to another one. The problem is that this logic is in many cases is not universal and represents the logic of the content manager and not the path that is logical for me.

After some searching, let’s say you do find your item in the list of the menus and taken to the content page. How do you find the relevant information on that page? The pages are mostly long and in most cases there are no internal search engines that can help you find the content on page (or sub portal area).

Another item that is missing for me is that in many cases there are no comments allowed. As Facebook generation I really feel uncomfortable to see any content that I can’t comment. When I can’t comment I can’t contribute to the content and that means that my knowledge is lost for others.

So what do I suggest, you ask?

I’ll keep my ideas for the patent proposal but the general idea is that the content (all content, including comments) needs to be commendable, searchable and context aware.

Lecture 5 – Search wherever and whenever you are

 

This time one of the main topics of the lecture was search strategies.

It seems that most of Elis examples were PC oriented, but I think that today, when most of us have at least the basic options to browse the net on our phones, we should at least consider some new ways to find the information and how the information can find us depending on when and where we are.

Both current technologies giant (Google and Apple) try to find ways to give us an option to find information using nonconventional methods and mobile devices.

Will start with Google.

Google goggles is an application that lets you search using your phone camera and location. For example if you take picture of a bridge, the application would try to match it to known bridges while using your location to improve the accuracy. So, if your location is San Francisco, it will search for all bridges in the area and match the appropriate one (Golden Gate bridge).

By the way, text is not the only thing that can be found. Pictures, maps, videos, games and essentially anything else can be found using Google search.

Recently Google presented a concept (which I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Another of my ideas taken by someone else ) – Project Glass. The video below will give you the details, but just think about how it can change the way that we see documentation. You don’t have to look for documents anymore, but when you are in specific situation – all the steps can pop automatically.

 

Apple has been working on some nice features as well. Siri is a personal, voice activated, assistant that uses online sources, like Google, Wolfram and others, integrated with your current location and knowledge of your personal details, in order to provide the best fitting information whenever and wherever you need it.

One of the great features I use a lot is location related reminders. Just tell Siri to remind you to check the email when you home, and she will do it no matter when you get home :)

I think that the next few years will bring more tools that will make searching for information and receiving it much easier.

Lecture 4 - Patents – the good, the bad and (of course) the ugly

 

The lecture started with a guest lecturer Dr. Esther Luzzatto ( http://www.luzzatto.com). She talked about what Intellectual Property is and the process of filing patent request.

From the knowledge management perspective (per my understanding) patents are used to provide a legal coverage and protection for the owners of the knowledge to use and benefit from it without need to worry about the knowledge being stolen and/or used by someone else. This protection is given for a limited amount of time, and during this time the owner is supposed to cover all the expenses that were invested into R&D and hopefully profit.

There is no arguing that patents are needed and are very important, but it feels that while they provide all the above, they are also impairing the creative processes and innovation.

Now, I know I have to explain myself…

There is a saying that all “new” is a forgotten “old”, but I think that sometimes it is also “new” done right.

My examples are mostly based on a small company named Apple which products I like very much.

Apple and Samsung, while being partners, are battling for the last few years about the patents with each other and it seems that they use the patents not to preserve own knowledge, but to impair other company profit and development.

Apple is known for taking someone else's ideas and improving them to perfection (touch, voice control…), but it seems that when other company tries to release a product that has even a hint of Apples patented feature – they do not spare any effort or money to fight it.

So, why is it bad (and ugly)?

Isaac Newtons quote “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants”, would probably been much less meaningful if the giants would not let him stand on their shoulders…

I’m basically saying that there is no innovation without reuse, and with current pace of development we would need a lot of innovation (and reuse) to keep going. The question is only when the patents will become more damaging that useful.