SOA filling the Gaps

I am an Israeli. I am an Information Technology professional not a Politician . Mrs. Hillary Clinton  USA Secretary of State    was recently quoted saying Israel is becoming more similar to Iran. As far as I understand the three foundations of the current Iranian regime are: 1. Censorship of what people do, say and wear 2. No free and independent Legal System 3. No free  and independent Media (TV, Radio, newspapers etc.) Unfortunately, I agree with Mrs. Clinton. Groups of extreme Orthodox religious people (Not all  Orthodox religious people), are trying to bring us ten or fifteen hundred years back, as far as what we are doing or wearing (The first Iranian regime foundation). Israeli Parliament members (not all of them) are trying to limit the Israeli Court and the Israeli Media and to reduce their independence on the political system. They are trying to impose these limitations by new laws. Most of these laws were not improved yet by the parli...

Image source: Wikimedia On August 4-6 I participated in Wikimania 2011 in Haifa ! The participants were Wikipedian from many countries, including Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales and all of Wikimedia Foundation directors, except one. The organizing team headed by Tomer Ashur, Wikimedia Israel's chairman and Deror Lin, Wikimania General Manager, achievements were exceptionally good both in the administrative aspects and the professional aspects.  Wikipedia is evolving and changing. It is not exactly the same community it was when I described it in one of my Web 2.0 for Dummies posts in 2008.  However, the challenges described few years ago in my post titled: Wikipedia: The Good the Bad and the Ugly  did not vanish.  Wikipedia case The evolution and challenges of Wikipedia and Wikipedia's Community are very similar to challenges facing other Web 2.0 projects and communnities, including Social Networking Services . However, there are also unique aspec...

Borges in 1951, by Grete Stern Picture Source: Wikimedia Commons   On June 14th I attended the Israeli Wikipedia Academy 2010 conference in Tel-Aviv University. The interesting conference focused on Wikipedia and Wiki technology usage in Academic context and schools. Most of the presentations focused on Wiki or Wikipedia research, usage and projects. The main theme repeating in most presentations was that Wiki based Collaboration and Participation changes the Game's Rules. However, in some contexts changing the rules is very useful, while in other contexts the usefulness is questionable. Changing the rules implies new challenges to all process participants such as Users, Content Creators, Managers, Auditors etc. I already described these challenges in previous posts: Wikipedia the Good the Bad and the Ugly and Web 2.0 for Dummies – Part 7: Wikipedia. A Keynote Presentation on Remembering and Forgetting In my opinion, the Keynote by Prof. Viktor Mayer-S...

A new killer in town: Wolfram Alpha is the Google Killer. Is it really a Google Killer as dubbed by some people? Although, my knowledge of Wolfram Alpha is less than limited, I am sure it is not. Some arguments supporting my view: 1. Wolfram Alpha is not available yet for public use even as a Beta. People impressions are based on previous achievements of Stephen   Wolfram , Demos, an empty Web site and a blog. As far as marketing is concerned, it is a huge success: so many references in the Web before it was released. 2. Is it a Search Engine? A Knowledge Base? An encyclopedia? If it is not a search engine it is not competing directly with Google. 3. Frequently IT application Killers or Infrastructure Killers were doomed to death before their competitors they tried to kill. For examples, IBM's 9370 computers described in the nineties as VAX killers fade away about 10 or 15 years before VAX computers end of life. An article I read many years ago was titles: R...

In The 7 th post of Web 2.0 for Dummies I described Wikipedia. This post is dedicated to collaborators types named according to Sergio Leone 's famous film from 1966 The Good the Bad and the Ugly . The Good Most of community collaborators are included in this type: people who are trying to contribute to community project. Wikipedia's assumption as well as other Web 2.0 project assumption is that community members will contribute to the shared project according to the policy, guidelines and processes which were defined. In many cases this assumption is true and the Good guys are enriching and improving Wikipedia's content. However, as the old proverb says: "The way to hell is paved with good intentions", sometimes despite of the good intentions the deliverables are not good enough. I will try to support my argument by examples. Example 1: despite of a respectable reference I had to clarify a specific Configuration Management aspect, as part...

This post includes my Web 2.0 presentation which is the source for my Web 2.0 for Dummies posts. Web 2.0 Presentation