Once in a while its interesting to take a look at general internet trends. Its not banking specific in the short term, but it will be.  While FaceBook is all the rage at the moment, I am still on the fence, and here is why.  FaceBook is a walled garden determined to produce a private environment with sufficient numbers of participants that will drive advertising revenue. Google is the antithesis, and regards the entire internet as its garden.  This sets up the ultimate battle between control and openness.  Control:  FaceBook offers an engaging environment where people can interact with each … Continue reading Thoughts on Google, FaceBook, and internet evolution

As discussed last year, and related to the 5 computer theory, the ‘Office suite’ space just went red hot, with Google Presentation now live, and IBM stepping back into it, with the annoucement of Lotus Symphony (name from the past :-|). IBM Deals Itself Into Microsoft Office Space With Free Lotus Suite IBM has announced the launch of a free Microsoft Office competitor: Lotus Symphony, at the same time Google launched its final product in the triple play office suite Presently. Relevance to Bankwatch:If you haven’t looked at web applications, now is the time.  Two questions to ask: What are … Continue reading Note to Bank CIO/ CTO | Time to review web based Office Apps

I read this post yesterday, and it made me think. I had the opportunity to chat with Marcus today, and it really came home that there is an opportunity here to solve the classic problem that Banks live with. How do we move from product centric to customer centric. The new ‘database’ – or more correctly datamatrix, is an open spider, leveraging the ever changing landscape of datasources and dataservices for its purposes – while adjusting its internal relationships and properties to accommodate. Source: M7 Thinking back to my banking days, the perennial problem that has been generally accepted is … Continue reading Banks should think about datamatrix to move beyond legacy thinking

Nice post from Nick. Gears is a big deal because it kicks off the battle for ‘office’ applications that reside in the ether … on your hard drive AND on the network. This will drive bank IT fold crazy … welcome to Web 2.0. Gears, Google’s newly introduced set of software tools that allows web-based programs to continue to run even when a user loses his Internet connection, is a modern-day analogue to Reuters’ carrier pigeons. Rough Type Google Gears PS… if you want to see how this works, and you are a Google Reader user, go to home, and … Continue reading Online / Offline – Google just changed the paradigm (again)