Lots of Great Reading

Recently I have been doing lots of great reading, well listening to learn more about the way the Internet works and how it is changing our world. You can keep up with my reading list in full using my LinkedIn Profile and the Amazon Application or I tend to blog about books I am reading here.

I read - Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe that examines how businesses and nonprofits can use the crowd (the 1 Billion Internet users) to communicate and interact in the new world. This book was a bit long but provided a lot of great examples.

John Brackney, president and CEO shared with me a book called Tribes. This is a short must read for anyone who is in business and those who want to know what the business world is doing. We are all in Tribes, our family, our city, our companies, our HOAs, PTA, Churches and Temples and everywhere else we are in tribes and we are looking for leadership. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin paints a very clear picture of what is happening and what we all need to do to move with the tides and not be pulled under by the current.

Right now I am working on two books - Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World by Pete Blackshaw a leader in understanding consumer generated content like this blog post about these books and The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman who shares why the world is becoming flatter and flatter with technology.

Each of these books have great information and their authors are well versed in their fields. I look forward to sharing my findings and gleanings on this blog, my sessions and in my Email Newsletter.

The Future of Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is the most popular office productivity application in the world. Other vendors have been trying to break into this market by providing tools at less cost or with new features. Collaboration has been a primary feature in the fight for the most feature rich application.



Google has been a primary combatant in this war (and part of why Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo). Google apps give users the ability to collaborate on text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.



Microsoft has some collaboration tools now but they require expensive licences and the full application to be installed. Since Microsoft Word is a very large application this limits what can be done. Accessing Microsoft Word and other documents in Internet Explorer or another browser will vastly open up the pool of people that can collaborate on a given project and potently shore up Microsoft as the office application winner.



You get more information in thisMicrosoft Release about Browser based Office Support or this video from Microsoft.

Firefox Targted by Malware

Users are often told to feel safer (including by me) if they use Firefox because of its more secure design and because less spy ware and malware is made for it. Today it was released that there is new Malware (malicious software) that "[the malware uses technology to] identify more than 100 financial and money transfer Web sites, including Barclays, Wachovia, Bank of America, and PayPal along with two dozen or so Italian and Spanish banks. When it recognizes a Web site, it will collect logins and passwords, forwarding that information to a server in Russia." http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/120408-firefox-users-targeted-by-rare.html?netht=rn_120408&nladname=120408

The issue here is that the threat of malicious Internet users effects everyone. It does not matter what security software you have it is how much you pay attention to what you click on and install. Use safe Internet practices and have a good security program like AVAST! and you should be fine.