Business intelligence

Programmers spend so much time configuring software to do utilitarian functions when the greatest advances yet to tap into our creativity have yet to be realised, (although photoshop was a good start). Business intelligence goes beyond the size of the audience. Mashups and mobile apps are a beginning not an end unto themselves.

Some online games employ complex analytics on a simplistic model (a game is complex but the real world more so) but those ideas could be extended to provide for business intelligence. For example predicting changes in the weather as they may affect delivery of goods, and planning ahead of that. Or personal assessment based on how much they are improving in their work and monitoring their health and communications. The Orwellian and complex web of intricately involved but not dependent web services await.

We used to speak of neural networks. But then the internet has evolved certain types of programming to create new breeds of environment. The challenge for software writers is to safely establish elaborately mathematical associations between abstract object methods along a non-deterministic path-finding randomised directional method, that evolves pathways like vines that grow in collaboration with each other.

The models of programming have been highly deterministic. The task is to use languages in a way that learns about its environment and grows new wings when it needs them.

Copyright © 2011 by Nicholas Alexander
ALL RIGHHTS RESEREVED

its interconnected process

the medium is not merely communication, it is process

twitter for example is an extended work of art by a large number of people and the more that it casually represents the threads of reality, the less use it may be. To make use of it in a traditionally advertising way seems logical, but is it?

the medium is defined by the activity people engage in

this appears self evident. Between online functionality and real world needs appears and opportunity, the process of which is financial benefit. If it fails to gather enough steam to effect change in its audience, it slogs. If the audience engages with it, it thrives.

Blogger

Blogger has upgraded its templating systems.

Emotions

No! Not those awful designed "emoticons" that were "popular" but seem to have become less so, at least on the services I choose to use.

Services like Twitter, where 140 chars or less is supposed to support a "conversation" seems to support something else - and its name is the clue. It is supposed to be a place where a meme can spread due to its inherent usefulness. It is promoted as "a place for conversation" but that is a bit like saying the training wheels on a kids bike are useful for transportation.

Treating Twitter like it is a conversation opens up its doors to its world of water cooler comments and useful links that you can respond to with your own links.

It is also a far better way to get curious eyeball traffic to websites. So all the mad marketeers love it, and get quietly unfollowed by most of the saavy accounts. I keep a few pet marketeers just to remind me not to fall into the squawking insistent enthusiasm that seems to be their art.

The limiting of the line to just text, just 140 chars constrains language to such an extend as to reduce meaningfulness. Conveyance of emotion by reaction is confined to ReTweets - repeating or supporting a view. It is designed as a cool medium, so that a real meme can only take off due to its inherency. Trending topics is an attempt to identify memes but it actually is a guide to being rather dull. Twitter is not a popularity context, more a voyage of tepid discovery and wonderful surprises like discovering Read Write Web.

See also:
Read Write Web

Knowledge

There are alternative models for thought storage and retrieval.

Knowledge is language based and can be stored as historic documents with providence, both electronically and physically. What we know about specific objects is enhanced when viewed historically, the artifact and the digital study of the artifact, plus all the collected strands of human experience, thought and academic reasoning that can be attributed to it, all available wherever and whenever required.

This is the model of the universe envisioned at first by Encyclopedias, which Microsoft modeled digitally as Encarta, available on CD, now discontinued. Along came the new model of shared information: collaboration. Wikipedia revised the printing press revolution that produced forests of expensive books of knowledge. The internet supercedes printing. The economics were turned inside out, and properly so. Advertising brochures are great, but we all throw them away.

Mobile phones hooked into storage retrieval is a far better personal model than lumbering PCs, even laptops are almost redundant around the truncated reality of a 3x2 screen. iPhones are the most perfect expression of the paradigm. Yet the majority of gadget-ware is like the almost magical Twitter application - it is functionality, not substance.

They provide vehicles for the carriage of knowledge. All these companies competing to tweet, it is really just a function. Google Wave is a smarter expression of a more in depth paradigm. Very few get it yet. As a programming development tool, it is far better than twitter which is universally distracting.



The sharing of information is a new model of commerce, espoused mainly by google and the Open Source movement.

Shaken, not Stirred

Programming is based on certainty. You can only write code if the layers that connect together do so without any holes in the logic. When you discover a method by which an infrastructure should produce a bunch of objects you do not need to be concerned that the infrastructure gets it wrong, that is why it is infrastructure.

When the infrastructure does not respond in the most wholesome way, crashes the server memory or simply seems to fails inexplicably and you have checked things, your confidence in the infrastructure may be shaken, but if, for example, the infrastructure delivers a set of objects cleanly, and also provides a method that sets a filter for that selection in the infrastructure but that filter method crashes badly, there are two approaches:

a) develop a work around that applies the filter at the higher (application) level

or

b) rewrite the infrastructure to do what is required without crashing

Always, always aim to do b), unless you do not have enough time, in which case always do a). Or of you are developing against a "code freeze" version, then never do b). The infrastructure could be incomplete and you can not reach your deadline.

Good software, infallible software is written in layers each of which can be separately monitored. If the infrastructure is broken, then a software team with a good architect will know what is going wrong and may rewrite the infrastructure.

The worst thing to do is to rewrite infrastructure incorrectly and allow untested bugs into the system. And if you are using a "version frozen" open source module, you may be in for a quagmire.

Suddenly you have 10 days work being added to the schedule already agreed, and there is no way
to do that. So, you do option a). The software gets delivered and it is slightly less efficient but it only affects the instance of the decision tree that it affects.

Now, you can upgrade the infrastructure, it will still work, but you can replace your workaround and test it on a staging site before you release it.

A new copyright model

Should original works be protected by copyright? I think there is merit in rewarding writers and originators of new ideas with financial reward. It encourages me to write more interesting and accessible articles, giving away years of experience and knowledge - there has to be a reason to do this.

Passing on knowledge makes it more valuable. Copyright law should never prevent the passing on of knowledge but should ensure that the rights of the owner are respected.

With the advent of the Internet, file sharing and republishing, the question of "enforcing copyright" is a major legal problem. Who to accuse? A fictional average individual who has perhaps ripped an average of 1 film or one album from the web really would not be able to front up with payment if sued for copyright for their brief career as a file downloader. In other words, the prosecution of users is counter productive.

We have the internet. It is the solution. Distribution of information can be tracked with meta-data that allows it to be attributed correctly. Any use of information should be rewarded with a right to pass it on to another. The old model suited the creation of artifacts.

The new model is more to do with the fluidity of distribution. Knowledge shared is knowledge that benefits people.

An international copyright register makes more sense than all these prosecutions. If we create the roads for data to travel on, then we should expect that people will use them. Subscriptions could contain a copyright tax that adds to the international pool and the number of times an article or item is copies could then allow an artist to make a claim for copyright.

This model has the intention of rewarding sharing.