What do you think about it? Let me know, cheers!

Well, how does Google Health works? Take a tour to check what does it actually offer.

In this post, I’d like to share with you the main reason why I like Google Health, which is a share profile feature enabling its users to invite others they trust (whether it’s a family member, a trusted care network provider, friends, and/or a doctor) to view their medical records and personal health information.  It’s pretty easy. If you have already signed up a Google Health account, click on “Share this Profile,” and type in the email address of the person with whom you’d like to share your profile. Google Health will send an email to them with a link to view your profile. The link will only work in connection with the email address of that person — your profile can’t be accessed if the link is forwarded on. You can stop sharing at any time, and you can always see who has access to your information. Those who are viewing your profile can only see the profile you share — not any other one in your account.

There are also some extra protections to make sure your health information stays safe, private, and under your control:

• The sharing link in the email expires after 30 days, but the sharing access itself does not expire — it will stay in place until the user decides to stop sharing
• Viewers can only see — not edit — your Google Health profile
• You can review a user activity report to see who has viewed your profile

In my opinion, I feel that Google Health can contribute as part of Government 2.0. But this is subject to the level of trust given by the government on a public listed company. Anyway, I hope this piece of information helps =)

As individuals, we use Web 2.0 pretty much, from keeping friends up to date about ourselves to completing a task given by our superiors. As organizations, we use Web 2.0 to promote our business, enhance collaborations, as well as achieve goals that are unimaginable before. Whereas governments, we use Web 2.0 to;

• make government information more accessible and usable — to establish a pro-disclosure culture around non-sensitive public sector information.
• make government more consultative, participatory and transparent — to maximise the extent to which government utilises the views, knowledge and resources of the general community.
• build a culture of online innovation within Government — to ensure that government is receptive to the possibilities created by new collaborative technologies and uses them to advance its ambition to continually improve the way it operates.
• promote collaboration across agencies with respect to online and information initiatives — to ensure that efficiencies, innovations, knowledge and enthusiasm are shared on a platform of open standards.

(source)

Right now, as citizens, we could think of the benefits that it brings to us such as;

• Improved social and economic outcomes.
• Balance between choice and flexibility on the one hand and fairness and the common good on the other.
• Higher levels of engagement, meaning educating and enrolling the public as co-producers of value.
• Improved accountability and transparency.

While the facts and benefits above sound perfectly desirable and can possibly be achieved, have you ever thought about the downside of Government 2.0? I believe many of you would have guessed it right. The main issue which concerns us the most would be, privacy. It is important to understand that there are several dimensions to privacy.  A well established typology of different forms of privacy is:

To sum up my understanding of the video, cloud computing is an infrastructure where application data is shared over the “cloud” or Internet. Computer applications can be used through internet browsers without the need to store them in your local computer.

People always say, “Picture worth a thousand words”. What about video?

I’d say, “Video worth a million words”.

Hi folks,

I’ve come across a very useful video-making tool, Animoto, in which I would like to share with all of you. It’s a service that combines your images, music and videos into a  60 seconds movie trailer. It’s fairly easy to make one. Firstly, you need to upload your images from your personal computer or source them from your social networking sites such as Facebook and Flickr. Besides, you also can add your video clips or add some text or personal message to customize your movie clip. Animoto has its own audio library which you can select from or you can upload your own audio. That’s it, and you will have the video created for you. Every video produced by Animoto is unique in its own  whereby no two videos being produced are ever the same. Then you can also upload the video to Facebook or your blog, or you can even download it and show off to your friends.

FAQ – Ever wonder if you can resell the videos to other people? The Terms of Service allow for you to re-sell videos to individuals, but not to other businesses.Each business using Animoto commercially must have their own Animoto for Business account. However, feel free to re-sell videos to individual people (for example, a videographer selling a video to a couple who just had a wedding).

Animoto for Business is loaded with features designed to support the unique needs of businesses. In addition to Animoto’s regular features, your account will be equipped with the following:

Well, these are the issues we would be concerned about in the past, right now, we have to worry about something else, which are the accessibility to the document processors anytime, anywhere and anyhow. In this face paced and ever-growing world, speed is essential to keep up to the others. In the past, we will go back to our office, or home, login to our personal/work computers, open the document processor and get started with our work. Do you still think we have to work the old way?

The answer is a big NO. Google Docs provides you the convenience to access to your documents wherever you are, as your documents will be stored online, instead of being saved in your personal computer. That’s  the good thing about Google Docs. The best thing about Google Docs is that it enables you to collaborate with other people in real time, in which, changes are noticed immediately, with the previous versions of the documents retrievable. This saves you the time to attach the document to your email to be sent to the intended recipient. With the real time collaboration, it gets rid of document duplications, in which can be clearly illustrated in the video below;

There are various advantages in using Google Docs, but there are two main things I love about it;

Storage: I love that these docs are accessible from whatever machine I use. I log in via my phone, my home laptop, and my office box and I never have to worry about versioning. I manage one doc in one place.

Collaboration: With Google Docs, I invite my colleagues into a document that’s hosted by Google and updates in real time. We can edit each others’ articles and even chat in real time on the document itself. This is essential and particularly useful in a business environment, whereby co-workers can utilize this advantage to achieve better results.

Apart from Google Docs, I’ve also came across another online document processor by Zoho. It separated the functions into different categories; Zoho Writer as word processor, Zoho Sheet as spreadsheet processor, etc. Personally, I’m using Google Docs, and I haven’t tried Zoho yet. But I do see significant similarities between both of them. To sum up the post, I want to stress that traditional document processors will still have its significant market and usage, but I expect online document processors like Google Docs and Zoho to be the next big thing for years to come! Try it out yourself, I’m sure you will have no regrets!

Right now, I’m sure there are some of you will come across Twitter. You’re right, Twitter is a microblogging tool which allows you to tell people “What are you doing” in 140 characters.  Besides, I’ve also came across a similar microblogging tool, Identi.ca which shares the similar concept. I’ve observed some significant differences between Identi.ca and Twitter;

• Open Source: Anyone can help develop Identi.ca by setting up their own “Laconica,” which is the underlying software. Identi.ca allows users to simply jump on the site and help enhance it into a bigger and better functioning service.
• Open Data: The fact that the data can be shared is part of the communicative and collaborative nature of web 2.o.

• It federates:  Users can set up their own servers running the Laconica software, and still subscribe to people with accounts on Identi.ca’s server.
• Groups functionality: Twitter doesn’t have its own group function, where as Identi.ca does. This isn’t a significant competitive advantage but Identi.ca users don’t need to use third party applications such as Tweekdeck to form groups in Twitter.

This means that it is built on an open platform that can be shared with anyone else who wants to host their own federated version of the software. So unlike Twitter, which hopes to monetize the service in order to turn a profit, I can host a Laconi.ca server, sharing ‘dents’ with my identi.ca account as well as with anyone else running the same software. This means no more down-time or server overload as the stress that services like Twitter have been crippled by are now spread-out amongst any DIY service-operators/providers.

In a business perspective, microblogging can be utilized to obtain such benefits;

• Allow companies to have a structured message system via microblogging message indexed and searchable archives
• Enable the same level of utility as IM, but with built-in controls letting admins keep the communications inside the company.
• Offer companies a tracking tool of sorts

There is another microblogging tool which interests me, Yammer. Unlike Twitter, Yammer focuses on businesses, and only individuals with the same email domain can join a given network.

David Sacks, the founder Yammer gave an overview about Yammer on stage at TechCrunch50. Yammer is an enterprise version of Twitter. If Twitter asks: “What Are You Doing?”, Yammer asks: “What Are You Working On?” Engineers at Geni created Yammer internally for the company’s own purposes, but Sacks liked it so much he decided to spin it off as its own company. He explains:

“The purpose is to allow co-workers to share status updates. You post updates on what you are working on. You can post news, links, ask questions, and get answers for people in your company. You can see the most prolific people and the most followed people. It is a good way to discover who is the most influential in your company.” (source)

To sum up the post, I’d say microblogging serves the same purpose as traditional blogging, but it uses a different approach. More importantly, microblogging seems to be more useful and beneficial to businesses, in which traditional blogging couldn’t offer such convenience. Tell me which do you prefer? Perhaps, I might consider making my posts shorter if you insist =P

• Real time collaboration – Concurrency control technology lets all people on a wave edit rich media at the same time.
• Natural language tools – Server-based models provide contextual suggestions and spelling correction (similar to dictionary algorithm in mobile phones)
• Extending Google Wave – Embed waves in other sites or add live social gadgets, thanks to Google Wave APIs.

The concept behind Google Wave is to “unify” communication on the web. It’s a hybrid of email, web chat, IM, and project management software. It features the ability to replay conversations because it records the entire sequence of communication. For instance, you will be seeing your friend typing “live”, character by character. It’s that incredible that you will be experiencing real time changes to the computer screen.

Attaching documents, like you do in email, is unnecessary in Google Wave as it supports the ability to drag attachments from your desktop into Google Wave. It loads that file and sends it immediately to anyone in the conversation. It’s also embeddable, so you can embed Google Wave conversations on any blog.

Well, talk about legacy, it still looks very similar to a Gmail inbox, except it’s more focused on your contacts, whose faces you can see in your contacts sidebar on the left. In sense of communication (chat or conversations), you can reply and add your thoughts anywhere within a message.

The obvious advantage of Google wave is the faster communication platform, which is in line with the purpose of Web 2.0, real time communication for better efficiency/performance. Real-time conversations and collaboration make it an ideal tool for business teams as well. Imagine an entire office having Google Wave open to quickly share and receive files. It combines some of people’s favorite aspects of many different web communication tools.

However, it was said that it will be only available for public on 30th September 2009. I’ve just requested an invitation myself, but I read about the long wait to be sent an invitation by the Google team. Due to the irresistable, attractive, yet stylish functions, it’s all gonna be worth the wait!

In conclusion, it sounds too irresistable not to use Google Wave. I didn’t jump onto the Twitter bandwagon immediately as I, myself, resisted Twitter for more than a year, which I have regretted about it. Yes I love Twitter now, and I definitely won’t repeat such mistake again. Let’s Wave, people!

note: I’ll be writing about Google Wave extensions (APIs) in my next post. Do come back to check it out!