Since everybody seems to be doing a retrospective at this time of year, here’s some things I’ve come across and that I’ve started using/checking out regularly over the last twelve months:
eMusic – I’ve even upgraded my subscription. Maybe it’s just my taste in music, but I’m finding plenty I like.
last.fm – joined up but didn’t do a great deal with it until James Governor invited me (and everybody else in the world!) to join dorktunes, the Redmonk “group”. I not only started scrobbling more music, I’ve been listening the dorktunes radio via last.fm, and found some very interesting music.
VRM Project – Doc Searls and friends have set up a project around Vendor Relationship Management, with the idea of actually producing something which allows us as buyers to better control the relationship with people trying to sell us stuff. It’s the corollary of CRM
Linkedin – Cote’ still thinks it’s a roach motel, but it is getting better, and it’s just about reached a tipping point where it becomes unusual for you NOT to be on it for your professional networking. It hasn’t got me a new job, yet …
Freemind – I’d heard of mindmapping, but until this year not tried it. I use it mainly for outlining and problem-solving, but you can do lots with it – Cote’ uses it for all his note-taking at conferences. Freemind isn’t quite as pretty/functional as MindManager, but for free, it’s great value, and doesn’t give away much in functionality.
Attentiontrust – Fred Wilson alerted me to the attention/intention economy, and I loaded up the recorder to keep track of my web travels (There’s a widget below right showing my top clicks – provided by root.net). At some stage in the future we should be able to share (appropriately obfuscated) attention information with potential vendors, perhaps as part of VRM (see above).
Office2.0 – throughout the year, I tried a few web-based office tools. The latest is thinkfree, and it seems pretty complete (although more ‘mashability’ with other Web2.0 stuff would be welcome – it does allow blog posting). Props to Ishmael for his work digging up plenty of useful applications, and gathering enough momentum around the concept to put on a conference!
SOA/ESB – I’m not going to say much about this (there’s plenty of people saying it better anyway), but this is what excites me most about my job at the moment – and we’ve started a real project with it.
Flickr – we started using Flickr last year when one of my daughters was in the US for five months, so we could share photos between home and her. Now most holidays and special occasions end up there, some open and some restricted to family and friends. Although it’s not strictly this year, it’s worth mentioning.
del.icio.us – again, I had set up an account some time ago, but used it rarely. Three things changed that: the discovery of the “for:” tag, working out how to post saved links, and the great Firefox extension that replaces bookmarks and makes it easy to tag stuff.
coComment – Like the del.icio.us link blog posting, coComment is a great way to a) remember where I’ve commented and what I said; and using the blog widget , b) share comments with the world. Both have allowed me to show readers of this blog that I am alive and wandering the ether, even if I don’t sit down and write anything here!
thingamy – Sig is probably disappointed with my efforts, but I swear I’ll try and run Australia on 30MB real soon! This is an alternative take on creating active business workflows via modeling (not a description that does it justice BTW) – you should check it out if you are interested in delivering value to customers.
Redmonk – the RedMonk/RedNun crew are “first-reads” in the feed-reader every day (except when I’m on holiday AND disconnected!). Stephen and Cote’ are geeks of the highest order, James is damn sharp, a good analyst AND they managed to snag Anne (the “Nun”, because monks are male) as a recruit to round things out nicely (she was already in the blogroll via Anne2.0)
I won’t put links here, because they’re over there on the right – everything/everyone on my blogroll is there because they interest and inform. There is geeky stuff, marketing, lifestyle, music (and then there’s Evelyn, who’s a little of everything!) – thanks to you all for the great reading and teaching.
If you celebrate Christmas, then season’s greeting to you and your family – and to all of you, I hope when the new year rolls around it finds you well, happy and with plenty to interest you.
Technorati Tags: retrospective, 2006, links