technology category archives

Activity Streams seem to be everywhere. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn. And now we have streams coming from business process applications, like your ERP or the shop-floor monitoring tools. It changes how we should think about the streams.
A tech firm has publicized their desire to phase out work email. That is a new way to reach Inbox Zero.
Enterprise 2.0 prides itself on social business and collaboration. But when the basic model of providing tools doesn't work, and when the HR models of organization don't work, we have a long way to go.
A definition is something people can work with. Without it they are often left juggling too many of the wrong things.
There is a problem with all these awesome social software suites.
An interesting story from ThoughtFarmer about their work at Mountain Equipment Corporation.
Attensa have published a white paper on information overload, and I have had a conversation with them recently. Some thoughts about the worlds of KM and information overload and getting things done at work.
A great paper from 1988 by Jonathan Grudin reminds us to pay attention to all the points of view when brining new technologies to bear in an organization.
If you are interested ideas about computer supported collaborative work (CSCW) and what might happen with smart technologies in everyone's pocket, have a look at Smart Mobs from Howard Rheingold.
Creating and consuming activity streams are different activities, but the tools I use had better make it easy to combine streams. And it needs to be easy to consume them as well.
Some interesting visualizations from NY Times research labs
I've had an iPhone for a year and a different smartphone before that. Things have changed, and they haven't changed.
New tools and technology are fun and all, but once you get beyond the experimenting stage, please decide how you are going to use that shiny new tool to do the things you need to do.
What's in it for me? This is the classic question that you want to answer as you are developing any change initiative. It seems to come u a lot in discussions of new technology, knowledge management and social business. Jem Janik has a great WIIFM matrix that looks at the question from several perspectives.
I've been learning and relearning some useful aspects of LinkedIn when connected to job hunting. Much of it has to do with reaching out to new people and refreshing connections that have grown thin.
Twitter is an interesting service. People can put you into lists, and that tells you something about how they see you. Maybe.
EWeek has a slideshow from Derek K Taft and a pair of articles that talk about IBM's current efforts in setting themselves up as a social business company.
My thoughts about Nick Bilton's book, I live in the future & here's how it works. If you enjoy technology, this may not tell you anything new. But it is a great collection of ideas and research about what it coming.
I'm in the midst of shifting from Windows XP into the Mac operating system. I am trying to find a keyboard launcher to replace ActiveWords and have been testing out Quicksilver to some frustration.
There are a number of changes afoot in my personal toolset. One of the big ones is that I am dropping MS Outlook for Google for my email, contacts, calendar, and tasks. Here are some thoughts about that transition. And it all works with my iPhone too!
An article from Communications of the ACM talks about "What do wikis, blogs, podcasts, social networks, virtual worlds, and the rest do for corporate productivity and management?"
I received a complimentary upgrade of PersonalBrain, and these are my comment in thanks for the upgrade. It has also given me a chance to review how I use PersonalBrain and if any of the new features are going to make sense for me.
With the next great productivity idea, don't just sell the thing itself. Bring in the larger picture. Thanks to Mark McDonald for inspiring these thoughts.
John Seely Brown and John Hagel are writing about "The Enterprise Value of Social Software." Specifically they look at how social software fits their new model of "Pull" (going along with their book).
I'm having a new look at RSS Bandit as an RSS reader. I really want to like it for threading, which may not be as valuable anymore. And the user interface has some differences that have me holding back liking the application.
Either RSS is dead, or it isn't, depending on who you follow. Here I give some thoughts on how I'd like RSS readers to work for me, rather than doing the simple job of aggregating everything into streams.
Most knowledge management discussions have to do with large organizations. What about small organizations? Does email serve all their needs around connecting and sharing and other KM topics?
What does good look like for a business website? I think part of defining good websites, is just like those other famous statements: I can't define it, but I know it when I see it. Here are some elements that I'd look for in a business / consultancy website.
Thanks to Harold Jarche, we have a fun meme for people who are into social media. Let's counter those "10 top reasons to ban social media in the organization."
When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Corollary: When you are sitting in the workshop, it's hard not to play with the tools, regardless of what you are trying to get done.
Simple instructions for setting your signature on iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Mobile smartphones.
Michael Idinopulos of Socialtext has a thoughtful reflection on the "Enterprise 2.0 conference, The End of the Culture 2.0 Crusade?". He's definitely in the Process camp, but we need to look at both.
During the keynotes this morning, there was an interesting mix between thinkers (JP Rangaswami and Andrew McAfee), companies that have done interesting things with E2.0 (CSC's Lem Lasher), and vendors doing demonstrations. And most of the time in the afternoon, I spent in the Expo hall and enjoying socializing in the conference-in-the-hallways.
I found Lisa B Marshall's podcast on "presetweeting" fairly clear on how to take advantage of Twitter during a presentation.
An article from CACM provides a discussion and critique of the current work on lifelogging. As stated in the abstract: Rather than try to capture everything, system design should focus on the psychological basis of human memory.
A Robert Scoble video interview with Lisa Petrides of ISKME, where they talk about education and technology and a pending revolution. A number of discussion elements touch on knowledge management too.
I've been enjoying Glen Alleman's rants about the proponents of "project management 2.0." This time he makes some interesting observations about the role of people talking to each other vs. doing status updates.
Even ten years ago, people were saying technology is only an enabler for knowledge management. Is it changing? Yes, and no. Let's see what Chris Collison has to say about the question.
A brief review of Digital Barbarism: Mark Helprin is one angry man. And he wants copyright to stay.
How often do knowledge management efforts get bogged down in the technology? Here's a current media example of the inevitable result. Toyota Europe knew about and fixed a problem a year before a US recall for the same problem.
Chris Brogan has an article that steps away from the minutia of social media and looks forward to when we us it to DO STUFF.
When you are looking for experts, you want to find out who the experts are and their areas of expertise. But you also want to learn how they know it and how they are at working with other people. How do they operate?
Maybe it is the turning of the annual clock, or possibly because CES* is happening in Las Vegas that I have seen several articles that say something like Weinberger's, "The future is a gimmick."
My friend, Shannon Clark has posted an article about the various media he consumes, which leads me to several new podcasts to explore. Here is my list of podcasts and some mention of other sources.
How in the world do you get MS Project to show you the calendar-day duration of a task when the "working calendar" of the project is a 5-day work week (or a two-shift, 5-day week; or a three-shift, 7-day week)?
Is email useful or not? This topic has gotten some energy lately from Luis Suarez and Andrew McAfee (and others). It's clear to me that email is simply not th eright tool for collaboration.
CommonCraft have published another informative video, but this time the interesting part (to me) isn't the subject of the video.
Sally McGhee has a piece on the things we tell ourselves about productivity at the Microsoft at Work blog.
After years and years of promises and science fiction and tons of money spent on artificial intelligence research (in which I participated), computers are still slow and not prone to learning from user behavior.
Well, not quite an easter egg of the hidden keystroke variety, but I did find something I wasn't expecting when I reinstalled Office 2007 on my computer.

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