From Web 2.0 to Gov 2.0, Tim is a champion of innovation in America. His view of cloud computing is not to be missed. Tim OReilly, Founder, OReilly Media – Discusses Cloud Computing

“What I think is so important in the Government Cloud Computing context, is to look at government data and make those crucial policy decisions of releasing data that will enable the future.” ~Tim O’Reilly @timoreilly

Thanks to my friends on Twitter for bringing this video to my attention! @dslunceford @corbett3000 I highly recommend following these guys on Twitter.

Gov 2.0: Government as a Platform

Smarty is a template engine for PHP. More specifically, it facilitates a manageable way to separate application logic and content from its presentation. This is best described in a situation where the application programmer and the template designer play different roles, or in most cases they are not the same person.

http://www.smarty.net/manual/en/what.is.smarty.php

Using Smarty with the Zend Framework

Every Enterprise 2.0 strategy should include a plan for the base code. Our base code should easily support our Web 2.0 needs on our Enterprise 2.0 platform. The Model View Controller structure of the Zend Framework automatically supports a built-in template system. The Framework is flexible enough to plug-in your custom template system or existing systems. Smarty is a very well documented and supported system. The strategy of using Smarty with Zend will provide a solid foundation for our Enterprise 2.0 platform. This is what we define as Strategy 2.0, leveraging the effort of crowds. Thanks to all the dedicated developers at Smarty for keeping our costs down and making our lives easier.

Connecting to Your Server

Connect to your server with a command line tool like PuTTY

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.

These steps are executed by super user (su) in your site’s root directory

Install Steps

1. wget http://www.smarty.net/do_download.php?download_file=Smarty-2.6.20.tar.gz (Note: Check http://www.smarty.net for the latest version.)
2. tar – zxf Smarty-2.6.20.tar.gz
3. rm Smarty-2.6.20.tar.gz
4. mv Smarty-2.6.20/libs /usr/local/lib/php/Smarty
5. rm -rf Smarty-2.6.20

Install Steps Explained

1. Get file package from site.wget http://www.smarty.net/do_download.php?download_file=Smarty-2.6.20.tar.gz (Note: Check http://www.smarty.net for the latest version.)
2. Decompress the file.tar – zxf Smarty-2.6.20.tar.gz
3. Delete the compressed file.rm Smarty-2.6.20.tar.gz
4. Move the library files to your standard location.
   Note: This is usually something like “/usr/local/lib/php”, but you may need to check your PHP Include Path to validate your standard location.mv Smarty-2.6.20/libs /usr/local/lib/php/Smarty
5. Delete the decompressed directory and all it’s contents.rm -rf Smarty-2.6.20

Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide

Amy Shuen has a firm grip on the long tail. Get your face in this book and don’t blink while she takes you on a fascinating journey to the tipping point fueled by the wisdom of crowds. My space on the shelf for this book is empty because her book is always in my hand. I bought several copies of her book as gifts for friends.

Amy Shuen is to the world of Web 2.0 as Ludwig van Beethoven’s influence is to the world of music. Her impact on web strategy is comparable to da Vinci’s impact on art. She is ahead of her time. Get her book before the ground swell from tribes of new influencers leaves you in a wikinomic downturn.

I have been in the web business since the early 90s. I am a professional technology consultant and thought leader. I have a huge collection of books, papers, & resources related to my industry and Amy’s book is my most prized possession. I recommend getting extra copies for you and your colleagues.

One snippet from this book clearly explains how a small strategy adjustment saved a tremendous amount of money for a well known company. Depending on your reach, this tiny snippet can help save you $1,000’s – $1,000,000’s. I would spend far more than the price of this whole book for this one snippet.

One last flckr of thought. What if your competition already has this book?

Get yours now.

Please feel free to check these youtube videos of Amy presenting some of the information in this amazing book.

WEB 2.0 A STRATEGY GUIDE
Amy Shuen on How Users Create Value

WEB 2.0 A STRATEGY GUIDE
Amy Shuen on How People Build Connections

WEB 2.0 A STRATEGY GUIDE
Amy Shuen on how Networks Multiply Effects

<a href=”http://jeff.example.org” rel=”friend met”>…

Learn more at http://www.gmpg.org/xfn/

XFN PLUGINS FOR WORDPRESS

There are a few XFN – XHTML Friends Network plugins already created for WordPress. You can find XFN plugins by searching Google for “WordPress plugin xfn” or you can see a list of the stored plugins at WordPress here http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=xfn

Here’s a couple of my favorite FXN plug-ins for WordPress.

Blogroll Links

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/blogroll-links/

Author: Rajiv Pant

For people who maintain their Web site or blog using the WordPress blog content management system, blogroll-links is an open source WordPress plugin that uses WordPress built-in Blogroll feature and presents links to friends’ home pages and own pages on social networking sites using XFN in the links.

Features of this plugin

• It can show the links by category in blog posts and WordPress Pages.
• It uses WordPress standard built-in Blogroll links database. There is no hassle of another list of links to maintain.
• It can be used to show only the links assigned to a particular category, by stating the category slug as defined in that category’s setting in Wordpress.
• It honors the Show/Hidden setting as defined for each link in WordPress.
• It displays the link in the same window or new window, as specified for each link in WordPress.

XFN Icons

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xfn-icons/

Author: Samuel Elliott

Adds Icons after links according to whether you’ve specified XFN or not. XFN (XHTML Friends Network) is a way of adding properties to links to specify relationships between the two sites, or the two subjects of the sites. Wordpress supports them by default, and you can add them by looking further down the page on the “Add Links” Page in the Admin Area.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project

http://www.foaf-project.org/

foaf project Friend of a Friend

FOAF is about your place in the Web, and the Web’s place in our world. FOAF is a simple technology that makes it easier to share and use information about people and their activities (eg. photos, calendars, weblogs), to transfer information between Web sites, and to automatically extend, merge and re-use it online.

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

Google’s Social Graph API

http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/

The public web is made up of linked pages that represent both documents and people. Google Search helps make this information more accessible and useful. If you take away the documents, you’re left with the connections between people. Information about the public connections between people is really useful — as a user, you might want to see who else you’re connected to, and as a developer of social applications, you can provide better features for your users if you know who their public friends are. There hasn’t been a good way to access this information. The Social Graph API now makes information about the public connections between people on the Web, expressed by XFN and FOAF markup and other publicly declared connections, easily available and useful for developers.

Google Social Graph