This is very interesting, now if it would tie into the New York Times iPhone app in a 2 way style, that would be great. Globe and Mail: please do something like this (or at least show that you are thinking about things like this!

QUOTE [From AVC:The Power of Profiles]

Talk about the feedization of the web user interface, we've got one now running at the New York Times. I think it's great to see the Times embracing social software concepts like profiles and feeds. I hope they take it a step further and connect all of this to the social web, beyond Facebook, to blogs, comments, tweets, and so on and so forth.

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Globe and Mail finally gets their story about WorkSpace's stolen computers being used to upload pictures to flickr at 6:43p.m. (all times are Pacific!), but of course blogs were faster: e.g. Tris Hussey blogged it well before noon, Global Nerdy at 11:14a.m. and Boing Boing at 11:52

From globeandmail.com: Mystery photo turns B&E into a high-tech whodunit:

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PATRICK BRETHOUR From Tuesday's Globe and Mail September 24, 2007 at 9:43 PM EDT VANCOUVER — For a week, the late-night burglary at the WorkSpace company was like hundreds of other robberies in downtown Vancouver, with little hope of recovering six stolen computers.

Then Monday morning, pictures from one of the stolen computers started showing up on the social-networking site Flickr – photo album to the world – turning a mundane B&E into a high-tech whodunit.

Dane Brown, manager at WorkSpace, received a call from a friend who told him about the mysterious photo on the company's Flickr web page of a heavily tattooed man peering into the digital camera on one of the stolen computers, an iMac. A second photo shows a man's back with intricate tattoo work.

Flickr, owned by Yahoo, is one of the biggest social-networking sites, an online genre that combines the deeply private with the entirely public. Internet Links * See the photos The Globe and Mail

The man seems to have been entirely unaware of the existence of that world – or at least of the fact that the iMac was set up to send photos directly to WorkSpace's account on the Flickr website once a user agreed to the innocuous request to upload.

Although the photo of the man is titled “Me,

Another howler from the Globe and Mail (please hire more technology writers like Matthew Ingram who are clued in and listening rather than people like the author of this article).

The prognostication that "Web 2.0 companies cost too much to be profitable in Canada" will turn out to be just as laughable as the 1990s predictions of Apple's demise. The whole point of Web 2.0 (the read write web or whatever you want to call it) especially with affordable infrastructure like Amazon S3 and EC2 is that anybody with a great idea and great implementation skills can build a web service anywhere in the world (not just in Silicon Valley) that is useful and scalable. Not convinced? Some Canadian examples: flickr (which was reportedly profitable before being acquired by Yahoo), dabble db, bubbleshare just to name a few.

FROM globeandmail.com : Quick out of the gate, with best days still ahead:

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"You'll notice that there are no Web 2.0 companies on the list -- they just cost too much to be profitable in this country," Mr. Behr said. "We're not looking for something you'll see on the Internet, instead we're looking for applications that make what you see work better."

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I am sure Nstein and Brandimensions have fine, expensive public image monitoring products but for most small to medium businesses you are better off doing the following:

1. Buy FeedDemon (Windows), NetNewsWire (Mac) - these programs cost less than $US 30!)
2. Subscribe to PubSub, Technorati and Google RSS feeds about your keywords of interest (company name, competitors name, etc) in FeedDemon/NetNewsWire (here's my HowTo specific to PubSub but generally applicable to Technorati, Google, etc.)
3. Check FeedDemon and NetNewsWire once a day for people talking about you, your competitor and your domain
4. Reply and/or blog as appropriate once a day

FROM Do you know what they're saying about you? - globeandmail.com : Globe TQ:

QUOTE

Initially involving the analysis of customer information contained on corporate databases, BI has spread to the Web. Using public image monitoring (PIM) or search-driven BI to stay abreast of consumer-generated media, two Canadian companiesNstein Technologies Inc. of Montreal, and Brandimensions Inc. of Torontoare gaining attention in the business world.

Putting a stamp of validation on Nstein, IBM recently started selling Nstein-based PIM applications that track content on blogs and websites. And Brandimensions counts major corporations such as Daimler-Chrysler, CBS and ABC among its clients. "The volume of information out there requires powerful analytics to find trends, patterns and relationships," says Mario Girard, Nstein president. "Our technology uses concept extraction to determine if content is positive, negative, or neutral." PIM can also track "the velocity of a story" in terms of how many web links are connected to it and how fast the story is spreading, says Bradley Silver, Brandimension's chief executive.

Nstein's PIM tools can gather data in 15 different languages and automatically contextualize the data. Brandimensions gathers data in English and Spanish and funnels information to more than 400 analysts who add context based on colloquialisms. For instance, the context of comparing a car to an animal can change. Calling a Ferrari a fox likely indicates a positive comment, while calling it a dog is probably negative. Using PIM reports, companies can monitor their image, react to what is being written, and take action to counter misinformation. "The Web is so important to sales and brand protection that it has to be monitored all the time," Silver says. "If a crisis emerges, you want an early warning system in place so your advocates can engage in the conversation."

But advocates of the brand are not necessarily paid employees of the company. They can be bloggers who like a certain brand or it could be web users who spend time discussing the product or service on review forums. However, there is a fear that companies are doing more than merely correcting misinformation that's out in cyberspace. There are those that engage in stealth marketing by paying marketers to pose as consumers to influence on-line discussions. In one of the better-known cases, a great deal of pre-release buzz for the independent movie The Blair Witch Project was created on-line using stealth marketing techniques.

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Flickr rocks but this piece really adds no information (the time to write about how great flickr is, what great people Stewart and Caterina are and how much money they got would have been in Spring 2005 just after the acquisition not Spring 2006). Instead of concentrating on yesterday's news, the Globe and Mail Report on Small Business should be covering today's Canadian small businesses i.e. EQO, Dabble DB, etc rather than last year's small businesses like flickr.

From globeandmail.com : Exit strategy: Cashing out, staying in.:

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Thanks to Yahoos traffic, Flickr membership has quadrupled to

2.5 million, and the site has emerged as the linchpin of its new owners social-networking strategy--that is, to reposition Yahoo as a venue for people to connect and share experiences, rather than simply as a place they go to search and shop.

Because of that shift, Yahoo is closing in on Google, the do-everything juggernaut a few kilometres down the Valley. Which raises the question: Given Flickrs strategic significance, did Butterfield and Fake sell out too soon?

If they did, they dont seem to be regretting it. Money is clearly not this couples primary motivation. Instead of blowing their cash on Porsches or a sprawling manse, they rent a modest house in San Franciscos still-gentrifying Mission district. "We have a Prius for the fuel economy," he says. "And we share it."

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