Information Week carries a story about the British Education authorities deciding against upgrading their network of schools to Windows Vista and Office 2007. They cite cost and ‘unclear benefits’ as reasons and are looking at free Open Source alternatives such as OpenOffice.org, which is near equivalent and in many ways surpasses many proprietary offerings on the market.

“Upgrading existing ICT systems to Microsoft Vista or Office 2007 is not recommended,” said the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, also known as Becta, in a report issued this week.

Becta officials said a study the group commissioned found that upgrading school systems from Windows XP to Vista and Office 2007 would increase costs and create software compatibility problems while providing little benefit.

“Our advice is to be sure there is a strong business case for upgrading to these products as the costs are significant and the benefits remain unclear,” said Stephen Lucy, Becta’s executive director of strategic technologies, in a statement.

Becta also singled out for criticism Microsoft’s failure to support the Open Document Format — which is recognized by the International Organization for Standardization — in Office 2007. Instead, the software uses a new Microsoft format called Office Open XML.

Well, it had to happen sooner or later, but we are proud to announce our very own YouTube channel, specifically for Hogsback Media Networks related content.

In trying to build up features and content for this site, one of the obvious media modalities to consider is videos of things and subjects relevant to New Media 2.0, which is Hogsback Media Networks’ primary business focus. After considering all the options and doing the cost-benefit analysis thing, it was decided to rather go the YouTube route, than hosting videos on our own server infrastructure, which would cripple our servers and chow through the bandwidth, if and when a certain item or items or posts becomes popular.

So, the solution: Registering for a YouTube account, they are owned by Google, so they have the world’s biggest and best and fastest distributed data center architecture serving up streaming videos. And it is all free! Gravy!!!!

If you have a gmail account already or using any of Google’s other services (docs and spreadsheets, calendar, maps, reader, scholar, books, etc.) you can just log in with that and start creating your YouTube custom profile, channel, favourites, tags, etc.

Do a search for videos you’re interested in, say Web 2.0 or wordpress or blogging, and you are presented with an overwhelming selection to choose from. Set up a playlist and channels: playlists are really categories and you can set up how many you need for each subheading of videos you’re interested in, e.g web 2.0, startups, technology, venture capital, photoshop, linux, blogging, wordpress, etc. Click through to go to the video itself and you are presented with a menu to Share, Add to Favourites or add to Channel or Playlist.

In such a way I built up a selection of Web 2.0 and tech startup related videos in one place, created a channel for all of it and then used the Google code generated for this purpose to host on one’s own website or blog. The interface was a bit unsuited for the main blog to integrate with, so i created a subdomain on hogsback.net, appropriately named youtube.hogsback.net. Head over there now and see what I have loaded into the channel so far; videos range from Mike Arrington of TechCrunch interviewing many of the most well-known Silicon Valley startup founders on their understanding of the term Web 2.0 to a board room session where angel investors speak of what they need to see regarding your financial projections when trying to raise startup capital.

All that and more and new videos will be added after I have chosen more that is relevant to Hogsback Media Networks and it’s clients. This is of course also part of the portfolio of value added services we can incorporate into a client’s marketing strategy. Whether you choose videos on YouTube uploaded by others and sharing and commenting on them, or whether you have your own created videos illustrating your message or brand or poduct, this is a very valuable enhancement to any brand or product and it’s marketing and PR strategies in todays New Media world.

So please head over to youtube.hogsback.net and feast your eyes

NB. Fast broadband/ADSL  connection preferable. Click on Menu and each video with a short description underneath appear in the right sidebar, use the right arrow to scroll through the selection and read the captions, then click on which ever video you want to see, and that’s it.

The whole issue of getting all the different social networking/bookmarking sites’ profiles into one page has now become a sort of personal mission for me, both because it makes it easier to manage and also because of the potential it has of becoming a personal publishing platform.

Like your own personal media network, where you decide what content from which sources you want to share and how and when and where and why such sharing should be taking place at all.

I have been trying to do this for a while now with Facebook, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, digg and basically just testing out all the different capabilities and functions and special features of each service. I will post more detailed uses of each site after a bit more testing and using and research.

Then of course comes the part where all of this has to be linked and connected up together and I find that Facebook works best for that purpose. There are of course whole tech startups devoted to exactly this, but I find the idea of yet another social networking service to aggregate all the other social networking services on one page a bit silly. I have received my Beta Registration acknowledgment for Twine though, and if all the reviews and write-ups about it so far are true, it should be exactly the kind of thing that is needed to make sense of all the disparate and scattered SNP’s (social networking profiles) into one profile to bind them, one profile to rule them all and in an intelligent manner binding them into One profile to rule them all. (apologies to JRR Tolkien)

For all of this of course you need a good web browser and here, without any hesitation or dispute, i will recommend Firefox, and the stumbleupon, del.icio.us and facebook add-ons (toolbars). Unfortunately Firefox has become a bit bloated of late and freezes regularly and uses too much processing power, so I switched to Seamonkey, which is more lightweight and very fast.

It is easy to, from within Google Reader, click on a link of a news article you like or find interesting, photoblog it with stumbleUpon, bookmark it with del.icio.us, and all of it is updated and cross-updated on your Facebook, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us and digg blogs all at the same time or however you have configured or set it up. Our company of course specializes in exactly this as a service to our clients.

Gmail is every web worker’s number one ally, then there is Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Reader, Calendar and Maps etc to collaborate on projects with those that share your interests or guest posters/contributors etc. And if you log into secure encrypted SSL Google mail (https://mail.google.com), your Docs and Calendar and Maps are also automatically through encrypted SSL tunnel. And it is all free!!!

With Google Reader you keep track of the most important feeds from around the ‘blogosphere’, specifically those in your own field or sphere of interests and tastes.

What you highlight or bookmark or share depends entirely on your ability to pick newsworthy or interesting items that other people would be interested in seeing or if you have a certain story or project or slant, this can form the basis for the theme of ‘your own personal publishing empire’. With regular, quality content you build up regular and loyal visitors and with more and more regular visitors comes the ability to charge premium rates for ads (custom designed animated ad banners of advertising partners).

For more info on any of these strategies for your company or brand, feel free to mail mario [at] hogsback [dot] net

A very informative post over at Web Worker Daily about possible opportunities for entrepreneurs online. Our company presents the perfect solution for hosting any of these methods. These are just some of the possible ways, I am sure there are countless other tried and true methods for presenting quality content centered around your message/mission/vision or product.

http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/03/01/5-web-based-

entrepreneurship-experiments/

5 New Jobs of the Web 2.0 Generation

Entrepreneurship is a craft. But given the risky nature of starting one’s own business are there opportunities to practice the skills involved? Absolutely. Below I’ve taken five online opportunities that would be a natural extension of a web worker’s daily routine. Each does require certain skills and, in some cases, a small amount of capital. However, all are purposely picked to have the lowest barriers to entry. The goal is to learn. If something doesn’t work it’s possible to iterate until it does; the only major cost is the time invested. The exercises below probably won’t make you a Rockefeller. However, they will help hone those entrepreneurial chops and give you a greater appreciation for the issues and effort involved.

The experiments:

1. New Media Producer
As reported on New Tee Vee last month Ask a Ninja, a popular comedy video blog (or vlog), signed a six figure advertising deal. Ask a Ninja could be summarized as a rapid fire series of non-sequiturs, a funny premise, and not much else. Production for another notable vlog, RocketBoom is equally as sparse. For as little as a webcam, the free editing software that comes with your OS, and a YouTube account, a person can produce their own show. You do need something to say and better production does require better equipment (cameras, microphones) and time (post-production editing). However, the number of places to distribute (YouTube, MySpace, iTunes, etc.) and sources of monetization (pre-roll, post-roll, product placement, revenue sharing) has never been greater.

2. Clothing Label Crafter
Third party fulfillment services for items like t-shirts are nothing new: Cafepress launched in 1999. But given the explosion of blogs dedicated to the subject and the now universal acceptance of purchasing things online, small boutique shops can thrive. And a degree in graphic design isn’t necessary to make something that sells. The Lactivist is a T-shirt shop founded by Jennifer Laycock as part of a 30 day business experiment (a recap of her experience is available in a free PDF). The shirts that you’ll find there are text only. Jennifer is able to sell them because of her wit and unique audience. The fulfillment behind this type of site – companies like CafePress, SpreadShirt, or even Threadless – handle the mundane things like printing and shipping. This leaves you free to focus your entrepreneurial energies on the bigger business picture: finding an audience and best serving them.

3. Micro Investor
When most people hear the words ‘investing’ they think of power ties, ticker symbols, and wads of cash usually reserved for lotto winners. However, there are web sites that allow geographically diverse investors to aggregate small amounts into meaningful returns. Prosper.com and its U.K. equivalent, Zopa.com enable direct borrowing and lending on a person to person level. Thousands of dollars aren’t required to get started. A person can take a tax return or unexpected bonus and begin creating a unique investment strategy. This entrepreneurial experiment does require more capital to start than the others listed here. However, the time investment is less and you’ll be learning about diversifying portfolios and acceptable risk while funding people that you can believe in.

4. Publisher
The web is a publishing medium. However, reading a full length novel on a laptop is still a sub-optimal experience. For those that have something to say LuLu.com is a solution. LuLu will print and ship your treatise for a percentage revenue cut. Can’t think of what to say? Intimidated with the prospect of writing a few hundred pages? Take an example from Carolynn Duncan’s most recent business experiment: in exchange for stories about entrepreneurship the contributing authors are getting recognition in a highly publicized way and a free copy of the finished product. It’s just one way of building both an audience AND a product. Your experiment may find others.

5. Community Curator
The final entrepreneurship example is to build a community. While not directly creating a product, by providing the impetus for people to come together you can create opportunities for monetization. Whether it is incorporating appropriate affiliate advertising or facilitating transactions between members, this is probably one of the most difficult and time-consuming projects to pull off. However, if done successfully, it can be the most rewarding. Sites like Ning.com simplify the software setup for your social network. All that’s left is creating a site that’s sticky; a place where what’s shared is valuable and worth coming back to again and again.

The web is not only revolutionizing the way we work; it’s also creating opportunities to experiment with what that work might be. Have you tried any of these five things in your time online? What was your experience? More importantly – what have I missed?