Blogs, Wikis and Newsfeeds : Keeping Us in the Loop

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Blogs, Wikis and Newsfeeds Keeping Us in the
Loop

• Joel M. Gottlieb
• Macrosoft, Inc. / ATT Labs
• joel.gottlieb_at_gmail.com
• January 31, 2007

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Information Sharing 1994-2006

• Email
• Individual and small group
• Blast emails large lists
• Forums list servs
• Web sites
• Static pages
• Some dynamic approaches Web meetings
• Teleconference calls
• Videoconferencing

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Problems with usual approach

• Email
• Hundreds of relevant emails/day cannot sift and
  cannot provide timely replies
• Spam very tough to filter out
• Reply all leads to email storms lasting days
• Static Web Sites
• Content goes out of date way too quickly
• Complicated, buggy Web tools (Web meeting, etc.)
• Teleconference calls
• Large groups make problem-solving impossible
• Cannot really pass useful information this way
• Videoconferences
• Bandwidth limits make it a frustrating experience

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Presenting a new approach

• Weblogs for projects
• Wiki sites for metadata
• Newsfeeds
• Reduced reliance on email and phone
• Some benefits
• Users better able to choose what they need to pay
  attention to
• Reducing multiple what does that mean?
  discussions by posting everything

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Managing an Internet backbone

• We will explore the new approach by considering a
  business task management of a large Internet
  backbone network
• New technologies will be presented with possible
  uses
• Beyond this talk Google and books discussing
  technical topics
• RSS and Atom in Action, Dave Johnson

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A large Internet backbone network

• Provides Internet connectivity for businesses and
  other Internet access companies
• Level3, ATT, UUNET/WorldCom/MCI, GlobalX
• Owns large number of routers special-purpose
  computers that forward Internet traffic (usually
  Cisco)
• Often owns or leases optical cable connecting
  routers (OC-3, OC-12, OC-48)
• AOL and Microsoft (Internet Service Providers)
  are customers of large IP backbone providers

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Challenges of managing an Internet backbone

• Employees in remote locations (Asia, Europe,
  etc.) multiple time-zones
• Huge number of routers (100s and 1000s)
• Tremendous pressure to install state-of-the-art,
  inadequately tested equipment
• Real-time data very expensive to collect (space
  and processing)
• Explosive nature of Internet traffic (bursts,
  DDOS attacks, etc.)
• Very technically difficult to identify whats
  going on (requires substantial expertise)
• Information from field comes in slowly
• Router configuration is technically challenging
  field (certification is entire industry by
  itself)
• Extremely competitive marketplace and no customer
  patience

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Example problem 1

• Customer calls Tier 1 support at 230 am, says
  lost connectivity
• Tier 1 support tech reboots router does not fix
  problem Tier 1 tech emails and pages Tier 2
  support
• Tier 2 support tech reboots interface does not
  fix problem Tier 2 tech emails and pages Tier 3
  support
• Tier 3 expert gets out of bed diagnoses
  incorrect BGP policy on customer-facing router
  Tier 3 expert emails and pages Tier 2 support
• Tier 2 support responsible for modifying BGP
  policy on customer-facing router
• So problem is solved BUT
• Post-mortem analysis of Customer Care must
  answer
• How long did outage last?
• What caused the outage?
• Can it happen again?
• Who is to blame? (Customer is very angry)
• How is the information about the problem, and its
  solution, going to get circulated to the people
  who need to know? (historically 100s of emails)

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Example problem 2

• Customers in a city complain that theyve lost
  connectivity
• Tiered process leads to realization that a router
  in remote location has dropped from the network
• Is it a cable cut, a router crash?
• If it is a cable cut, do we own it? (if we dont,
  does our provider know about it? If we do, do our
  support folks know about it?)
• Can someone investigate? (Taiwan earthquake)
• How long will it take to fix it?
• Same questions as previous slide how do we pass
  the information along about whats going on?

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Weblogs (blogs)

• Web page which is updated very frequently
• Typically updated with posts short articles
• May focus on single topic, or general area of
  interest, or
• Usually hosted by special-purpose blogging
  software (blogware) makes adding entries easy

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Examples of blogs

• Daily Kos, Drudge Report, Arianna Huffington,
  Wonkette politics
• Gizmodo new techie items
• Boing Boing cultural curiosities
• Seth Godin author
• Brian Lehrer private blog of NPR journalist
• Andrew Sullivan cultural issues
• Most of these are very popular (5000 people
  pointing to them as ranked by Technorati, a
  blog aggregator site)

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Blog software

• Bloglines
• Blogspot
• MovableType
• Wordpress
• All offer easy GUIs for creating new entries
• You host the site by yourself, or pay someone to
  do it for you and use the software to update the
  blog (more later)

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Wiki

• Server software which allows users to freely
  create and edit Web page content using the Web
  browser
• Each Wiki software provider has defined rules for
  adding pages and links
• Fantastic for sharing definitions, terms, etc.
• Best for pages which do not change very quickly
  (more in a moment)

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Examples of Wikis

• Wikipedia online encyclopedia (now 2M articles)
• Jakarta Open source software projects Wikis used
  to share version release information, download
  information etc.
• TigerWeb (Princeton) exploring use in academic
  environments
• Have found wide use inside corporations for
  metadata (data about data all those acronyms)

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Wiki software

• TWiki (freeware)
• JSPWiki (JSP-based freeware)
• MediaWiki (freeware)
• TikiWiki (freeware)
• Doku Wiki (freeware)
• Also many commercial options (often known as
  groupware)

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Newsfeeds

• Offered by Web sites blogs, newspapers,
  basically anyone
• You subscribe to the newsfeed using a newsfeed
  reader
• With a mouse-click, you can tell whether the
  newsfeed has any new postings
• Your newsfeed reader obtains (or has obtained)
  the desired posting
• Decent blog software will generate newsfeeds for
  you
• Examples
• New York Times Book Review
• A Progressive On The Prairie
• Gizmodo

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Finding Newsfeeds

• IE7 and Firefox orange button lights up when
  feed is available on Web page
• You subscribe to feed
• Browsers maintain Feeds along with Favorites
• Netscape RSS button shows up next to feed,
  will put the feed in your toolbar
• Safari indicates that RSS feed is available but
  does not seem to have subscription model
• What if my browser doesnt support it?

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Newsfeed readers

• RSS Reader (freeware, for PC)
• Alertbear (freeware, for PC)
• Feedreader (freeware, for PC)
• w.bloggar (freeware, for PC)
• NetNewsWire (commercial, for Mac)
• PulpFiction (commercial, for Mac)
• Zillions more
• What formats do newsfeeds come in?

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Newsfeed formats- XML

• RSS (Really Simple Syndication) 0.91, 0.92, 0.93,
  0.94 and 2.0 (Dave Winer)
• RSS (RDF Site Summary) 1.0
• Why did this happen?
• Disagreement over RDF (resource description
  framework)
• Atom (IETF, RFC-4287)
• Any decent newsfeed reader should be able to read
  any one of these formats

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Summary of 3 new things

• Weblogs daily journal/writing software
• Wikis collaborative software for sharing
  information that doesnt change that quickly
• Newsfeeds output from news sites and blogs,
  permits readers to grab headlines and read only
  what is of interest
• But this sounds like stuff for hackers and
  teenagers, not business people. Does all of this
  have to happen on the Web, in the Web browser?

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Blog and Wiki servers

• Software runs on top of container like Tomcat
• Software offers APIs for interacting with blogs,
  newsfeeds, wikis, etc.
• Examples
• Add, delete, edit blog entries from programs, not
  from Web browser
• Blog aggregation group blogs summarizing efforts
  of entire team
• Blog from email, blog from cell phone
• Blog to cell phone, blog to Blackberry

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Some blog server software

• Pebble (Open source, Java)
• Confluence (Commercial, Java)
• Roller (Open source by Dave Johnson, Java)
• Das Blog (Windows, C)
• SocialText (Commercial, perl)

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A few quick issues

• Before we get back to our Internet Backbone
  network, a few issues
• These tools are new, and frustrating at first
  (many moving parts)
• Wikis require tremendous editing diligence
  (Wikipedia had to institute rules, editors)
• Tendency to say too much, and overwhelm readers
• Learning curve is steep for your readers,
  initially

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Back to problem 1

• Internet backbone network needs way to pass
  information between tier support, then to product
  management, post-mortem
• Solution
• Create Wiki for terms, definitions, agreed-upon
  notions (e.g., router naming convention)
• Deploy blog server
• Give contributing access to relevant groups
• Teach interested groups to receive blog posts as
  newsfeeds
• Build easy-to-use process for submitting new
  entries to blog, even by people who have no time
  to access a Web browser
• Explore automated posting of vital information

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Blog 1 Network alarm blog

• Near-real-time detection software detects ongoing
  event, automatically posted to alarm blog
• Tier support can get relevant details on newsfeed
• Later tiers can add additional information via
  posts
• All information is then shared by product
  management and post-mortem analysis
• Response time would all be documented clearly

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Blog 2 Network statistics blog

• Network data (e.g., daily number of defects,
  etc.) automatically summarized and posted to
  history blog
• Groups like Capacity Planning and Product
  Management get up-to-date summaries
• Data jocks can access the raw data for modeling,
  design, etc.

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Resultz a small app

• Java app utilizes Tomcat, Ant on PC
• Uses Pebble as blog server
• XML-RPC API offered by Pebble
• Uses ROME XML parser for RSS/Atom
• Two main features
• File Depot (Johnsons term) access to raw data
  files for network data jocks
• Automated blog posting

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Conclusion

• Hot Technology not just for kids tremendous
  potential for improving communication in business
• Goal of reducing email and eliminating dreaded
  email storms doing better job of keeping us in
  the loop
• Future newsreaders will get smarter, tailor
  content for us (are we sure we want that?)
• Theres so much out there