April 15, 2008 | Comments: (0)
This is the most exciting week at InfoWorld since we launched our Save Windows XP campaign at the beginning of the year. Today, I'm happy to announce the beta version of InfoWorld Windows Sentinel, a joint project with the exo.performance.network founded by InfoWorld Contributing Editor Randall C. Kennedy.
Basically, we're offering you a free downloadable monitoring agent to check the system performance of as many as three Windows computers. The agent samples performance data once per minute and uploads it to the exo.performance.network, which bounces it back to you on a personal Web page -- or in little widgets that you can download for your desktop or mobile devices (you'll need to download Adobe AIR to run them). We don't intend to compete with professional tools here, although you'll find some advanced threshold settings and cool e-mail alert functions.
The ultimate value of this project will be the vast pool of Windows performance data we gather. Randall has already made his first post to the new Windows Sentinel blog, where he will provide ongoing analysis. (Note: The data will be anonymized; we will never attach individual system performance info to any participant's account.)
According to Randall, the main point is "to develop a more concise picture of the Windows computing landscape. We hope to create a dynamic, real-time image of Windows-based system performance and behavior, and to mine that data stream for common threads of knowledge and information which we can then share with our readers." In other words, here's one instance where community can yield real value you simply can't get any other way.
So I invite you to help us build that community and download InfoWorld Windows Sentinel. If all goes as planned, the result will be a mother lode of information about optimizing Windows systems. In the bargain you'll get a fun, surprisingly useful tool. In fact, I've already used it to convince InfoWorld's system administrator to upgrade my laptop.
Posted by Eric Knorr on April 15, 2008 03:00 AM
December 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A month or so ago I was sitting in traffic listening to an NPR interview with Jon Spector, co-author of We Are Smarter Than Me, a new book about the wisdom of the crowd. Not only was the book about that topic, it was that topic: Spector was just one of thousands of participants in the creation of wiki-generated book.
Rather than have this wiki-wielding mob rehash the implications of Facebook or Wikipedia, Spector and his principal co-author, Barry Liebert, herded this very large pride of cats in the direction of less trammeled ground: how businesses are using the wisdom of the crowd to garner ideas, opinions, and other valuable material. Not a bad idea for a story ...
Which is precisely where our new Social Media 360 blogger, Lena West, has gone with this week's big feature article: Mob wisdom means business. The plainspoken Ms. West has been stirring the Web 2.0 pot for InfoWorld since mid-October, turning a critical and sometimes scathing eye on social media, while highlighting best practices for business.
In this article, Lena digs into the business value of crowdsourcing -- and how Best Buy, Dell, Netflix, and others have used the wisdom of the crowd for product brainstorming, market development, and much more. And no crowdsourcing story would be complete without a close examination of predictive markets, and the uncanny accuracy they've displayed in forecasting everything from the outcome of elections to the right day for a product debut.
Crowdsourcing is even being used in journalism, a fact that has made more than one reporter I know uncomfortable. There are good reasons for that -- mainly to do with checking sources and other journalistic best practices -- but this radical democratization has also highlighted important stories that would have otherwise drowned in the mainstream media noise.
Mob wisdom goes further than closing the gap between producer and consumer. It turns the consumer into a stakeholder in the endeavor, be it a new product, a wiki book, a feature article, or -- who knows? -- the solution to global warming. The more you participate, the more you get back. In case you haven't guessed, that's an invitation to InfoWorld readers, too.
Posted by Eric Knorr on December 10, 2007 03:00 AM
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