Microsoft

Nov 20 2008   9:08AM GMT

Windows Azure video demo

Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
Uncategorized, Microsoft, Virtualization, Web 2.0, programming, operating systems, Web services, WhatIs.com, Web applications, software development, cloud computing, utility computing, the cloud, Windows

Here’s Manuvir Das’ presentation about Windows Azure, from Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Developers’ Conference:

Sep 22 2008   9:10AM GMT

Video: Windows 7 start button and improved calculator

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, applications, operating systems, Technology, video, YouTube, blog, desktop, Vista, demonstration

What’s new in Windows 7? We’re still learning. Not the guts of the OS, anyway. Microsoft will be keeping the Vista kernel in Windows 7.

Thanks to a couple of videos posted on YouTube (found via thinknext via Gizmodo) we also know that there’s a cool hover effect over the new Start button:

And a substantially upgraded integrated calculator.

The date-to-date measurement feature really is pretty nifty.

Sep 22 2008   8:57AM GMT

I AM a PC — and my ads finally capture the breadth of human experience

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, business, operating systems, Technology, fun, video, YouTube, blog, advertising, buzz

 After two commercials with Jerry Seinfeld that left many tech pundits scratching their heads, Microsoft has finally found a sweet spot with the next two ads: the massive userbase of the world’s most common operating system. Do these ads make you want to switch over from a Mac? Or upgrade to Vista? The jury may remain out on that for a bit, especially given the current macroeconomic conditions in the US, but these ads will likely make you smile. These days, that’s definitely a win for the folks from Redmond. Make sure to scroll to the end to catch Steve Ballmer making his position on the matter crystal clear. Just turn your volume down a bit first.

Plenty of chuckles in the comment section on the YouTube page for the ad noting that the agency that made the spot uses only Macs. Gizmodo found that ironic, of course.
Good follow up that riffs on the stereotype meme, too:

Here’s Ballmer. As Gizmodo notes with characteristic snark, “we’re convinced to run out and buy a few copies of Windows Vista (to distract The Ballmer should he charge us on the open plain).”

Sep 2 2008   5:21PM GMT

Chrome: A shiny Web browser from Google may just be the next global platform for running Web applications

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, Microsoft, business, Mobile, applications, Web 2.0, operating systems, Apple, software, Technology, Web services, AJAX, video, YouTube, Internet, search engine, innovation, cool, social bookmarking, social publishing, reviews, Silicon Valley, downloads, collaboration, freeware, advertising, desktop, Office, geotargeting, social networking, blogging, buzz, communications, Web applications, buzzword, cloud computing, the cloud, Windows, SEM, demonstration, SEO

Techies and geeks returned from one last weekend of sun, sand and summer to find news of a disruptive change sweeping the online business world. Meet Chrome, Google’s new Web browser.

News of the announcement was leaked yesterday when Philipp Lenssen, an avid blogger of all-things-Google, received the comic book Google put together for the release and posted it, along with his first impressions. My director, ahead of the curve as usual , picked up on it right away and added it to WhatIs.com’s Buzzword Alert.

Google has since put up a high resolution of the Google Chrome comic book. I highly recommend going over and reading through the comic. Google put considerable time into clearly explaining the challenges faced by the designers of modern Web browsers with respect to memory bloat, rendering engines, Javascript threading errors and much more.

Since Lenssen broke the news, the tech blogosphere has of course been awash with reviews, opinions and speculation about what, exactly, Chrome will mean. Walt Mossberg posted a comprehensive review of Chrome in the Wall Street Journal, including speed and feature comparisons with Safari, IE 8 and Firefox. Rafe Needleman liveblogged the press conference introducing Chrome over at Webware. John Furrier colorfully blogged that the search wars just turned into the operating system wars. That’s true — except (as he notes) that Chrome goes far beyond search. SEO/SEM hounds and search engine watchers, however, will find Danny Sullivan’s thorough evaluation of Chrome’s search functionality quite useful.

Following below is own my two cents, both with respect to the browser itself and the significance of its introduction. First, however, I’ll let the video embedded below provide a quick introduction:

Obviously, Chrome has a lean, clean interface. This is Google, after all. Menus, dropdowns, extra bars and dialogs are largely stripped away. So what’s left?

The Web pages themselves. What a concept! I downloaded and installed the browser this afternoon without a hitch, imported my bookmarks and search history from Firefox and was off to the races. Chrome is quite speedy.

The address bar has been merged with the search field you’d see on the right in IE or FF. Firefox 3 includes a predictive search in this field already, so this isn’t ground breaking, but it is a clear recognitiion that search has become the default navigation method for most Web users. Enter your desired search terms and away you go.

Google is calling the new address field the “Omnibox,” a nod to its ability to incorporate “everything” you might need to explore. The Omnibox’s utility is another sample of Google’s secret sauce, in this case combining a record of your search and browsing history with Google’s own PageRank for given terms. The Omnibox is eerily good. With only a little use, it could predict precisely which page I was looking for after only a few characters were entered.

Chrome also features tabbed browsing, a key improvement introduced by iBrowse in ‘99 and then popularized by Opera in 2000. Once Mozilla included it in Firefox, the feature took off and is now a default feature in Internet Explorer and Safari. Chrome expands the tabbed interface in a number of innovative ways, including grouping related tabs and designing each tab so that it acts as an independent browser. Bookmarks, the Omnibox, menubar icons and menus are all inside of the browser, which again frees up more space for displaying rendering Web pages.

The pop-up blocker and phishing or malware alerts also included in Chrome may not be innovative at this point but they’re certainly effective and useful. The private browsing mode, aptly called “Incognito.” (This clever feature name was perhaps made in hopes that it will avoid the “Porn Mode” moniker that has dogged a similar feature of IE 8, InPrivate.)

There’s another key development: Chrome may not be the fastest Web browser currently available but Google hopes that it will be the most stable for pages loaded with Javascript. In a Web 2.0 world ruled by AJAX, that’s no small thing. And anyone that’s used one of Google’s many online applications knows that a stable, reliable environment for this kind of scripting is crucial.

This hints at perhaps the most important detail of all, and one that I tipped my hat to in the title of this post. Microsoft made an early bid for Internet dominance in the infamous browser wars of the 1990s by including Internet Explorer in each copy of Windows. Despite the Justice Department’s successful antitrust suit, IE continues to have upwards of 75% of the world’s browser share. Firefox has made inroads on this market share, to be sure, and the most recent version of Mozilla’s browser has been the best option around for speed, privacy, safety and usability since its introduction this summer, following close upon the success of Firefox 2.

Now it’s Google’s turn.

Google’s introduction of its own browser has the potential to upset the market in a way that no other company can, simply because of Google’s ability to promote the download and use through its various Web properties. As Google’s various Web applications and cloud computing architecture continue to mature, the Web itself can develop into an operating system. If this sounds familiar, that’s because Sun’s vision of network computing in the 90s using Java popularized such a concept long ago. Vastly improved broadband connectivity, viable Web-based apps and an Internet technology giant flush with revenue from the world’s best advertising platform change the dynamic a bit, of course. Google built its own Javascript engine to improve performance and, crucially, integrated Google Gears with Chrome to allow true offline access to its various Web applications. That adds up to something that distinctly resembles a fully-fledged desktop operating system and productivity suite.

While it’s true that consumer and enterprises haven’t been making a run on thin clients running on Linux quite yet, the potential to further erode Microsoft’s dominance of the operating and desktop productivity software markets is embedded within Chrome. I’m far from the only writer prognosticating on this count, of course. Michael Arrington thinks Chrome is Google’s Windows Killer. As Michael points out, this clears the way for “millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs.” Given that both the enterprise and consumer markets haven’t exactly been hot about Vista, I suspect Microsoft may be somewhat concerned about this development. Henry Blodgett over at the Silicon Valley Insider sees the development from precisely this angle, blogging that Google has launched a cloud operating system and called it a ‘browser.’

Who else should be concerned? Maybe Mozilla, though judging by this interview with its CEO, they’re putting a good face on the development for the moment. What’s next? Harry McCracken asked 10 questions about Google Chrome over at Technologizer that address Mozilla’s future relationship (and relevance). Jeremiah Owyang has added a few more questions in thinking about what Chrome could mean long term. Both ask for response and speculation in their comment sections, so have at ‘em.

Microsoft hasn’t been standing still, of course. They’ve been chasing search revenue for years, as evidenced by the failed Yahoo! acquisition. As the folks over at the Google Subnet blog at NetworkWorld point out, IE 8’s InPrivate mode thwarts Google’s targeted advertising. Unless the world upgrades to IE 8 and begins to browse InPrivate en masse, however, I’m guessing that GOOG’s 3+ billion of revenue per quarter is gonna be safe for the moment.

That’s especially true when you consider another critical element of Chrome: its future relevance to mobile search. Google’s Eric Schmidt has been quite bullish in this area, estimating that mobile search revenue will likely surpass desktop search in the not-so-distant future. The iPhone has shown what a data connection and full Web browser can do to mobile search (Try 50 times as many searches originating from iPhones vs. a normal cellphone). Here’s a prediction you can take to the bank: Just as the iPhone features a stripped down version of Safari, Google’s Android OS will have a similarly light version of Chrome optimized for a mobile device and poised to fully take advantage of the possibilities for geotargeted advertising based upon a user’s demographics, Web history and location.

Louis Gray is dead-on when he points out that Web browsers are now about the hooks. Apple’s Safari will be increasingly optimized for the iPhone and working with the private cloud that is MobileMe. Microsoft has built IE to be integrated with Windows and Office, though because of the bundling issues presented by antitrust has always had to walk a fine line. Flock, the social media-optimized version of Firefox, carves out a niche because of its tie-ins with the various networks and services. Chrome is no different, as I pointed out above. If you are already a power user of Gmail, gDocs, gTalk, gReader or g-Anything, Chrome may make more sense. Chrome is, I should note, only available for Windows Vista or XP at the moment. Guess they figure Safari will do the trick for a Webkit-based browser for Mac users and that the Linux crowd will be satisfied with Firefox and Opera for the moment.

To poorly paraphrase Lando Calrissian, Google’s Chrome is likely to allow all mobile users to truly surf with them amongst the clouds.

Aug 7 2008   4:31PM GMT

How you can watch the Olympics live online (and what sysadmins can do about it)

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, Microsoft, media, Technology, Web services, video, YouTube, Internet, multimedia, useful, cool, free, feeds, event, resource, participation, wiki, IPTV, interactive media, streaming, howto, Yahoo!, Sun Microsystems, hacking, communications, Web applications, government

After years of buildup, the Olympics are about to kick off tomorrow in Beijing. As Shamus McGillicuddy reports, streaming Olympics video will drain corporate bandwidth. This year’s games are going to put substantial, perhaps even unprecedented, strain upon the Internet backbone. NBC plans to to stream more than 2,200 hours of live video coverage online.

CBS took a similar approach to “March Madness” this spring, streaming all 64 games of the NCAA mens’ basketball tournament.  Network administrators have similar challenges now in deciding where and whether to block users from accessing NBC.com, capping bandwidth use or engaging in a little proactive traffic shaping.

Personally, I like the suggestion made in Shamus’s story by Eileen Haggerty, director of product marketing with NetScout:

“An IT organization could set up a PC with a large-screen monitor in the office cafeteria that would run streaming video of the games. Instead of having 15 people sitting at their desks sucking up bandwidth individually, a savvy network administrator could bring all those people together to watch the Olympics during their break.”

Let’s assume for a moment, however, that you aren’t a bandwidth-conscious CTO and would like to be able to keep current on the standings in your favorite events or athletes. (Or that you believe setting up a few televisions is a handy low-tech hack.)

Thanks to Gina’s post on Lifehacker,Watch the Olympics Online, I found Wired’s excellent How-To Wiki for Watching the Olympics Online. (As you might expect, this link has been climbing the charts on the most popular page at delicious).

As the wiki notes, you can catch up to four different livestreams and more than 3,000 hours of on-demand at NBCOlympics.com.

World-wide, there also many other websites streaming Games footage:  CCTVOlympics.com in mainland China, BBC Sports in the U.K., Yahoo7 in Australia or CBC Olympics in Canada.

There’s a catch, however, to the livestreaming, on-demand video goodness: In most cases, users in the United States will be blocked from viewing the footage on any site but NBC.

If you’re savvy enough to follow the advice at Metafilter by setting up a proxy server or using Anonymizer, you should be able to get around location restrictions.

It’s a cinch that the millions of broadcast viewers will be recording and uploading events to YouTube on their own, of course.  NBC has tried to get out in front of the inevitable wave by partnering with Google, with plans to provide 3 hours of highlights and wrap-ups to a dedicated channel onYouTube.

As the authors of the Wired wiki note (nice work, applian, apardoe, mosesofmason and snackfight!), BitTorrent is also an option for watching events after the fact, though P2P files sharing on your corporate network may land you in more hot water than simply streaming the video, given the various serious security risks involved.

What the wiki doesn’t note is what is lying under the hood over at NBCOlympics.com. NBC has partnered with MSN to stream the Olympics using Silverlight, in what will be far and away the biggest test for Microsoft’s alternative to Flash to date.

Anyone that wants to watch the Olympics will have to download and install the Silverlight plug-in, a process that certain to test out exactly how ready for “prime time” the technology is for streaming rich media online. Of special note is the fact that Silverlight encrypts a videostream, which will make recording the events considerably harder (if not impossible).

As a result, tech pundits, geeks and network executives will no doubt be watching the race to crack the streams and distribute unauthorized video nearly as closely as the games themselves.

Enjoy the Olympics!

Jul 16 2008   3:18PM GMT

What is the strategy behind Microsoft’s release of Hyper-V?

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, Linux, Virtualization, business, operating systems, enterprise, software, Technology, Windows

Will the virtualization wars of the ’00s parallel the browser wars of the ’90s?

Bill Gates may not be actively involved in pulling the levers at Microsoft on a day-to-day basis after his retirement earlier this month but the Redmond-based software giant is no less focused on “maximizing shareholder value.”

That has generally meant moving powerfully into new markets for software, often once other companies had proved the viability of such ventures.

In the 1990s, the threat of a network computer from Oracle and Sun and then a browser-based computer from Netscape resulted in an epic battle for the desktop.

Now, of course, Google is the Internet juggernaut that Microsoft is now confronting on multiple fronts, especially with respect to search and office productivity applications. You’ve no doubt come across the term “cloud computing” by now.

When it comes to virtualization, however, VMware is the story. VMware, easily the global leader in the server virtualization market, with more than 80% market share at the beginning of 2008, pulled in more than $1.3 billion dollars in revenue last year.

Redmond noticed. (So did TechTarget: SearchVMware.com launched in 2007.)

In June 2008, Microsoft officially released Microsoft Hyper-V Server. A chorus of industry analysts immediately noted that Hyper-V directly competes with VMware’s products.

In its initial release, however, the only non-Microsoft operating system to receive official support for virtual machine creation with Hyper-V was SuSE Linux. Xen-enabled Linux distributions can, however, be run using paravirtualization. Microsoft engineers are working towards support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux  in the next iteration. Other operating systems, like Ubuntu or Fedora, have been successfully installed by members of the development community using a variety of patches and workarounds. Unlike VMware, Hyper-V does not initially support “live migration,” a feature in which virtual machines can be moved from one server to another.

The massive install base of Microsoft users, substantially lower pricing plans when compared to VMware’s price points, integration with Microsoft products and (crucially) inclusion of Hyper-V with Microsoft Server 2008 are all likely to help Hyper-V gain traction.

Questions may linger about bundling Hyper-V with Microsoft Server 2008 if adoption soars to the detriment of VMware.

That the dismissal of co-founder and CEO Diane Greene by the VMware board earlier this month coincided so closely with the introduction of Hyper-V also no doubt reflects growing concern over increasing competition in the market, including Citrix’s XenServer.

Jun 13 2008   1:45PM GMT

What is Unity? Lockheed-Martin’s implementation of a social computing platform wows Enterprise 2.0 conferees.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Google, Microsoft, Networking, business, applications, Web 2.0, enterprise, software, Technology, search engine, search, innovation, feeds, portal, social bookmarking, social publishing, interesting, invention, collaboration, wiki, community, tool, howto, information, trend, social networking, CMS, blogging, communications, Web applications, buzzword, software development, conference, enterprise 2.0

One of the unexpected hits of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this past week was a presentation by Lockheed-Martin on Unity, its social computing platform. One of the world’s largest defense contractors would seem an unlikely candidate for early adoption of enterprise 2.0 technologies, or at least that was the impression when the session kicked off. By the end of the hour, audience members were asking “Where can I buy it?”

[Image credit: TechLuver.com]

Shawn Dahlen and Christopher Keohan talked at length about what they’d learned over the course of eighteen months developing the platform, kicking off their presentation by noting that there was a compelling need in government sector to collaborate through social media. Chris noted that embracing social computing at Lockheed Martin a major component of recruiting talented Generation Y IT workers, the so-called “millenials,” as showing the company’s prowess in the adoption of cutting edge tools was a key differentiator.

Before Unity was implemented, the state of collaboration at their enterprise should be quite familiar to most corporate workers : email, meetings and office docs like Powerpoint presentations emailed around as attachments. “Project Unity” was conceived as a way of applying Web2.0 technologies for “mission success.” To that end, the team resolved to provide a user experience employees would love, address “what was in it for them” and balance the need to share vs the need to know — crucial in a defense contractor. Unity’s designers wanted to foster a social computing ecosystem around a standardized platform, integrating blogs, wikis and other documents into their current platform. Over time, they added discussion forums, a social bookmarking tool called “uBookmark” and weekly activity reporting to capture usage and adoption patterns. They included a suggestion tool to solicit community insights on the project as it rolled out and created an internal homepage to aggregate popular content. Unity’s internal team of developers also made a priority of maintaining a cohesive user experience and to ensuring that all information could be both feed-enabled and integrated.

How did they pull it off? By integrating Google enterprise search appliance (GSA) , Microsoft’s Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) and Newsgator’s Enterprise Server. Take a look at this demonstration of Social Sites 2.0 to get a feel for what this looks like. They Unity development team took a close look at how to use social computing tools in an everyday business context and took the time to understand how they would integrate and evolve from the existing email/Powerpoint/meeting model.

The crucial question, asked over and over again this week, was addressed head-on by Unity’s designers: “What is the value of social networking in the enterprise?”

Their answer was, in the end, simple: Being able to watch what other people are doing, easily, and then being able to search it and ask questions raises productivity and leads to improved collaboration and knowledge exchange. Instead of tracking what your friends are doing on, say, Facebook with a “friend feed,” an enterprise derives value from tracking an activity stream of interconnected colleagues. At any point, a worker can see what others are working on, access shared documents and ask questions on shared virtual workspaces or directly to the relevant decision maker or technologist.

Lockheed-Martin built the basic Unity platform in 07 and then ran a beta pilot of it over the course of the year with 40 engineers building, testing and experimenting with the release. After the initial release, it took just six months for a second iteration that addressed both information security and legal issues.

A crucial question that they were asked to account for again and again will be familiar to CIOs: How did they quantify the return on investment (ROI) for the dedication of internal resources and purchase of software? Each time, the traditional productivity savings of a user finding information was a factor. What really sold them, however, was the soft case of customers interested in their social computing initiative. Unity helped in Lockheed-Martin’s bidding process, especially proposals that involved knowledge managememt.

As the project rolled out, a crucial component was the in development and distribution of a “collaboration playbook.” New standards for playbook and best practices were laid out in its pages. For instance, as a team member, you should ask questions on a group page, not wander over to ask or send a broadcast email; this helps to capture questions and answers for everyone. Adding to documentation whenever possible was crucial, along with teaching people the power of linking and understanding which communication type made sense for different business cases: blog posts, wikis, email, virtual conferences or in-person meetings. In the end, the Unity team created the playbook as much for themselves as they worked as for the company as a whole, “eating their own dogfood.” They used a project management office (PMO) blog to keep colleagues up to date about what the dev team was doing.

One of their other key discoveries was that pervasive enterprise search is key to keeping documents both relevant and accessible.

What’s next for the team? Adding filters to content that depend upon the clearance of those accessing it. In highly classified work, user-assignable taxonomies are crucial for opening up content for collaboration while maintaining information security. Also in the works are adding recommended content, similar to the Digg-model of social news, employee profiles, export control filters and network-based search.

If you’re looking for a great case study for enterprise 2.0 adoption, look up Unity.

Jun 12 2008   9:40PM GMT

What is Microsoft’s vision for social computing? Sharepoint’s Community Lead offers some perspective.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, business, interoperability, Web 2.0, software, Database, Web services, video, YouTube, social publishing, event, collaboration, CMS, Web applications, software development, the cloud, Windows, conference, enterprise 2.0

Lawrence Liu is a Senior Technical Product Manager and the Community Lead for SharePoint Products and Technologies at Microsoft. In the short video below, he talks with WhatIs.com’s Alex Howard on the demo floor at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston about the evolution of social software, the development of Sharepoint and the extension of the collaborative software’s capabilities and integration with Office products. Liu also discusses interoperability, support for ODF and PDF within Sharepoint and possibilities for Sharepoint online as part of Microsoft’s long term cloud computing strategy.

Lawrence was kind enough to take a few minutes to talk thoughtfully about what his team is doing. Many thanks!

Jun 12 2008   6:08PM GMT

What is Social Sites 2.0? Newsgator enhances Sharepoint’s social computing utility for the enterprise.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
Microsoft, business, applications, Web 2.0, software, video, YouTube, innovation, social bookmarking, design, collaboration, screencast, tool, Web design, social networking, buzz, Web applications, demonstration, enterprise 2.0

Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.0 integrates with Sharepoint to create a Facebook-like environment on an enterprise’s intranet. The video embedded below features Brian Kellner, NewsGator’s Vice President of Products, demonstrating the interface that the software adds to existing Sharepoint functionality.

Newsgator’s software was part of presentation by Lockheed-Martin on the results of its own 18-month project. “Project Unity” combined Google’s Enterprise Search Appliance (ESA), Newsgator’s Enterprise Server and Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS). Newsgator powers their feed management and reading experience. I’ll be writing about Unity in a future post.

You can hear more about Social Sites 2.0 from Brian in this Social Sites 2.0 podcast. (MP3)

Jun 10 2008   12:16PM GMT

What is enterprise 2.0? Cloud computing proponents mix with social software vendors in Boston.

Posted by: Alexander Howard
open source, Microsoft, Networking, business, interoperability, news, Web 2.0, enterprise, software, Technology, Web services, video, new media, Internet, innovation, useful, social bookmarking, social publishing, interesting, invention, event, entrepeneurship, startup, collaboration, participation, Development, wiki, conversation, streaming, productivity, spreadsheet, trend, social networking, buzz, communications, Web applications, interface, buzzword, software development, cloud computing, the cloud, word meanings, conference, demonstration, enterprise 2.0

The question of creating an agreed upon definition for enterprise 2.0 continues to come up here on the Boston waterfront, as hundreds of software executives, CIOs, software vendors, media and curious technologists mix and explore the latest in enterprise collaboration technologies at Enterprise 2.0. Zack Church and I collaborated last month to formulate this:

Enterprise 2.0 is the strategic integration of Web 2.0 technologies into an enterprise’s intranet, extranet and business processes. Enterprise 2.0 implementations generally use a combination of social software and collaborative technologies like blogs, RSS, social bookmarking, social networking and wikis. Most enterprise 2.0 technologies, whether homegrown, free or purchased, emphasize employee, partner and consumer collaboration. Such technologies may be in-house or Web-based. Companies using YouTube for vlogging or a private Facebook group as a modified intranet, for instance, are implementing a form of enterprise 2.0.

The conference organizers have formulated the following definition, loosely based upon Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAffee’s definition for enterprise 2.0:

Enterprise 2.0 is the term for the technologies and business practices that liberate the workforce from the constraints of legacy communication and productivity tools like email. It provides business managers with access to the right information at the right time through a web of inter-connected applications, services and devices. Enterprise 2.0 makes accessible the collective intelligence of many, translating to a huge competitive advantage in the form of increased innovation, productivity and agility.

So what’s the story? Buzzword akin to Web 2.0 or something “real?”

In a session exploring the state of Enterprise 2.0, however, Dion Hinchliffe offered up one of the best, most succinct definitions to date that moves beyond the specifics to a more overarching purpose:

Enterprise/Web 2.0 is made up of “networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects.” — Tim O’Reilly.

In this case, a network effect is “When a good or service has more value the more that other people have it too.” (Wikipedia)

Here at the conference, over 60 different vendors are demonstrated different kinds of communication and productivity software that creates such network effects by helping workers to collaborate more easily, efficiently and socially. We’ll be posting videos, articles, interviews and other content over the next two days, as long as the wifi allows. Livestreaming has been balky, due to heavy network use, but you can check in on WhatIs.com’s live conference coverage of Enterprise 2.0 at uStream.com to see if we’re online. Check back here for more coverage on cloud computing, Dan Bricklin on SocialText’s new social spreadsheet or demonstrations of new social software like Newsgator’s Social Sites 2.0, a plugin that turns MSFT Sharepoint Server into a Facebook-like environment.

If you’re at the conference floor and would like to demonstrate your software or talk about enterprise 2.0 and social software, feel free to email me at ahoward@techtarget.com or send me a tweet at @digiphile on Twitter.