This week again claims on why email is dead (or not dead yet), Sir Berners-Lee says the // in the URLs was a mistake and the complete history of Lemmings.

• Email is Dead? Oh Really?
  The WSJ is making the call—email on its way out. Dying. Dead. It’s an
  interesting conclusion, derived from the fact that both growth and
  absolute numbers are on the side of social networking this year. But we
  disagree.
• Twitter has lift-off: now you can tweet from 20,000 feet
  Even if you’re 20,000 feet above sea level there’s still no escaping
  the presence of social media, with the launch of a Lufthansa tool that
  automatically updates Twitter or Facebook with flight position updates.
  GE, enterprise 2.0 since….1989
  One of the most frequently mentioned enterprise 2.0 successful project
  is General Electric’s Support Central. It’s true that their numbers are
  really impressive even for those who usually criticize anything that’s
  about 2.0. So, inevitably, people wonder how they did it.
• Facebook fatigue sets in as growth slows
  Facebook’s growth slowed this summer, according to one report,
  suggesting that despite reaching the 300 million members milestone in
  September, the site’s growth may have hit a saturation point in some
  markets for the time being.
• The Complete History of Lemmings
  Lemmings started life as a simple animation back in August 1989 when
  DMA Design had just moved into their first office (which only consited
  of 2 small rooms), and were begining a new game called Walker (based on
  the walker that was used in Blood Money).
• Study: Firms still invest in social media
  Despite the recession, most companies are continuing to invest in
  social media tools and online communities, according to a new survey by
  Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research.
• Twitter and Facebook aid small firms
  Companies that have jumped on the Twitter and Facebook bandwagon are
  reporting a surge in customers while others struggle. With minimal
  marketing budgets available to many small businesses, social networking
  sites offer a quick and, more importantly, free means of promoting
  their wares to a global audience. In the face of stiff competition and
  a global economic downturn, it is a route more and more companies are
  going down.
• Web 3.0: The Building Block Web
  Some talk about the “real-time web” being Web 3.0, or the 2010 Web, but
  when you look at it “real-time” is just using the web as a platform,
  making it real-time.  The web still hasn’t really changed in essence to
  something else beyond the web becoming “the platform”.  The web needs
  to shift to something else for that to happen. I think that shift is
  happening in a form I call “the building block web”.
• The “//” in URLs was a Mistake, Says Sir Berners-Lee
  Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, modest creator of the internet, has a
  confession to make. When confronted with the question, “if you could go
  back in time and change anything along the way to inventing the
  internet, what would you change,” Sir Timothy hedged.
• Finland becomes the first country in the world to make broadband a legal right.
  According to YLE.fi, starting next July, every person in Finland will
  have the right to a one-megabit broadband connection, says the Ministry
  of Transport and Communications.

 Light reading:

• Why Desktop Touch Screens Don’t Really Work Well For Humans
• User interfaces for AR
• Comment Form Styling: Examples and Best Practices
• An introduction to HTML5
• From Social Tools to Social Business Design

tweetmeme_url = ‘http://www.capgemini.com/technology-blog/2009/10/weekly_digest_of_week_42_2009.php’;
tweetmeme_style = ‘compact’;

Rick Mans is a social media evangelist within Capgemini. You can follow and connect with him via Twitter or Delicious