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The NSA’s Global Surveillance Dragnet is Generating More Outrage in Germany Than America | Alternet.

Freeform Dynamics – Published Content.

Title: Raising your game with Software as a Service

A guide for Small and Medium Businesses

First published: June 2013

By Dale Vile

I wonder how others view this report. I should make a disclaimer. I don’t see things in absolutes and do see a layered future, where a significant portion uses the Web in ways quite different from consumers or students. And I don’t see any current “stage” (desktop, cloud, or any other platform) exclusive of any other; or at least, I’d hope it would not be.

Since we are still moving to the notion of thinking of information as something other than factoids and mostly haven’t found communal information as a medium of creation and production, it doesn’t surprise me that, at least for now, the same old persists.

SMBs are tumbling into the cloud? Oh get real • The Channel.

The thrust is that far fewer small and medium businesses are using the cloud than, evidently, IT vendors (and others?) seem to believe. The immediate, if unstated, point is that the desktop continues to prevail, despite the claims of the ease and goodness of the cloud. (And this also explains, perhaps, Microsoft’s continued power as a profit machine, despite its sometimes risible flops as a consumer visionary.) What it also suggests is that the selling points for the “cloud” and its portable gizmos, are by and large more speculatively interesting than actually useful, at least for those companies whose size precludes needless risk. (For the individual consultant, such as I, the situation is different: I need mobility and am happy with the convenience the cloud, snoops and all, offers.)

Small biz isn’t finding it any easier to bag govt IT contracts • The Channel.

Note, this study was done by Fujitsu. So….. Yet, let’s suppose that the conclusions are more valid than not. If so, I wonder if a strong programme promoting open source (and open data) would benefit SMBs… And I really do wonder that. It’s not a rhetorical question, though I wish it were, as I rather suspect that in some areas there would be a strong benefit. But as I don’t really know what the actual, primary issue preventing entrepreneurial (SMB?) growth, one can only wonder. (And even the whole concept of “entrepreneur” is as problematic as it is romantic and undefined.)