Another article today on FAST COMPANY  — Kindle Killer  reports a partnership with AT&T and its 3G network.  Do you recall how we spoke about how these kind of “technology partnerships” are the current wave and the way of the future?  No new product is just a product, it is always a service, and coupling/connecting it with strong partners that lead to make it a service offering — with ease of use and ubiquitous availability makes this a formidable competitor to the apparent leader.   Sometimes “first” or even fast follower is not the best position. 

What do you think?

Thanks Drox for this referral.

From the following linked article ” It is hard, they say, to pinpoint the exact impact of social networking on the web. However, it is clear that individuals are increasingly using these sites to keep in touch with friends, find jobs and enhance their careers. Social networking sites drew 139.8 million visitors in April, a 12% increase from 124.4 million in March, according to comScore, a service that measures web traffic.”

Friendprints and Privacy from Wharton

Privacy seems to be less and less possible.  The more we interact online the more that we leave behind “friendprints”.  According to the linked article “Few of these users realize that the information they post, when combined with new technologies for gathering and compiling data, can create a fingerprint-like pattern of behavior. The information provides opportunities not only for legitimate business purposes, but also for the nefarious aims of identity thieves and other predators, according to faculty at Wharton and elsewhere. ”

So what are we to do?

Personally I think that RSS is one of the most under used, cool technologies of the internet age.  Notice I did not say new because it has been around for quite a while.  In fact, many people are already using the technology when they get news updates, weather updates, or just about any other notification through digital means.

HP has published an article that explains this technology/capability very nicely.  In “The Skinny on RSS Feeds “  we learn about RSS Readers and other capabilities.  (I have set up iGOOGLE with an RSS Tab).   From the article “RSS isn’t just for articles. Pretty much any information source that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: recent additions to blogs, details of special discounts, or alerts as to when new web content is available”.  This concept is the aspect of RSS we need to think about.  I believe, when used as part of a knowledge management system, especially as part of a new products management process we can develop tremendous competitive advantage.  Just my opinion.

What do you think?  How do you use RSS?

An article on Harvard Business School ’s Publishing website entitled “Will Plastic Logic’s Technology Trump Kindle’s Business Model?”  talks about a forthcoming product that is quite cool, but may have business model problems.  The article has a video (worth watching) linked where you can see the product in action.

What do you think of portable readers?  How will this change the world? 

Do you think the Kindle is THE portable reader that will prevail, or is there work yet to do?

How does this affect knowledge management practices?  Can we create value for our firms with products such as these?