NetObjects Products Find a Home. Website Pros, a provider of Web site design and support services, has signed an agreement to acquire the assets of NetObjects. NetObjects Fusion (a Web site building product) and Matrix (a hosted Web site-building platform) received high praise for their innovation and sophistication; however, when NetObjects ran out of cash… Continue reading NetObjects Products Find a Home
Author: Vince Kimball
Taxonomy Software to the Rescue
Online Journalism Review: Taxonomy Software to the Rescue. One way to manage problems of information overload is by using taxonomy software. Simply put, taxonomy can be described as an effort to incorporate a “categorization” mechanism that allows functional search and retrieval to extend beyond keyword results. [Tomalak's Realm]
WTC Attacks Have IT Rethinking Storage
eWEEK: WTC Attacks Have IT Rethinking Storage. Many companies are examining their preparedness in the wake of the disaster are re-evaluating digital scanning and archiving procedures and systems. IT managers and business leaders at those companies are asking if they are scanning the right documents and if they are being stored on a cost-effective and… Continue reading WTC Attacks Have IT Rethinking Storage
Preparedness Places Special Urgency on IT
Computerworld: Preparedness Places Special Urgency on IT. Dan Gillmor. But Sept. 11 boosted the rationale for decentralization of a more profound kind – including people and data – and it has absolutely forced a reassessment of the technology all companies will need to stay in business in tomorrow's changed climate. [Tomalak's Realm]
Patent 6,304,886
USPTO: Patent 6,304,886 [Scripting News]
Productivity: A major reason companies are cutting back on IT spending is due to a lack of measurable productivity improvements that can be linked to investments in technology. Why aren't knowledge workers more productive now, given that they each have a computer and lots of productivity software? A major reason is that most of the work people do with computers is done in relative isolation. This results in information silos that are difficult if not impossible to share and organize to productive advantage. The net result: people spend as much time getting value out of their technology than time saved using it.
What specifically do I mean by an information silo? Office suite documents. E-mail. Calendars. Outlines. PIMs and to-do lists. Have you ever seen someone with 10 k e-mails in their inbox (or the converse: how many hours a day does it take to keep e-mail organized in directories no one sees but you)? Have you tried to find a document on a file server and gotten horribly lost? Are people in your group writing reports that no one reads? These are some of the symptoms of technology out of control.
K-Logs provide some of the answers to these problems. They include:
1) Knowledge development. The ability to quickly find important information that has the necessary context for understanding. Knowledge rises to the top with K-Logs: good stuff is pointed to by other K-Loggers and can quickly be found by using community tools that map the K-Log knowledge network (hotlists, blogdex, etc.). Compare this to the needle-in-the-haystack approach with e-mail inboxes and document directories on file servers.
2) Shared organization. The ability to create an open archive (on the Intranet) of organized information, so other people in the company can benefit from one individuals effort to organize resources. For example: a Web accessible directory of important file and doument URLs that are project specific (so you don't have to remember convoluted path names on files servers), a directory of important e-mail conversations displayed as Web pages, or a simple well-organized bookmark directory. Contrast this to a situation where a well organized team member can't share his/her e-mail and directory organization with a co-worker sitting five feet away.
3) Connected content. The ability to make a post to a K-Log that eliminates the need to develop an office document. Also, to link that post to relevant directories or K-Logs that have additional relevant information that is accessible within the same environment (the browser).
4) Collaborative content. The ability to post to a project K-Log collaboratively with each team member making a contribution. Contrast this to the tug-of-war that often develops over who owns the latest copy of a project document.
5) Intelligent information routing. The ability to route information via RSS newsfeeds and categories to specific groups and individuals automatically. Compare this to ad-hoc way e-mail-bound information is produced and routed.
Let's not look for solutions that automate a broken process. Let's look for solutions that reinvent the process to achieve lasting productivity improvements for knowledge workers. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
Productivity: A major reason companies are cutting back on IT spending is due to a lack of measurable productivity improvements that can be linked to investments in technology. Why aren't knowledge workers more productive now, given that they each have a computer and lots of productivity software? A major reason is that most of the work people do with… Continue reading Productivity: A major reason companies are cutting back on IT spending is due to a lack of measurable productivity improvements that can be linked to investments in technology. Why aren't knowledge workers more productive now, given that they each have a computer and lots of productivity software? A major reason is that most of the work people do with computers is done in relative isolation. This results in information silos that are difficult if not impossible to share and organize to productive advantage. The net result: people spend as much time getting value out of their technology than time saved using it.
What specifically do I mean by an information silo? Office suite documents. E-mail. Calendars. Outlines. PIMs and to-do lists. Have you ever seen someone with 10 k e-mails in their inbox (or the converse: how many hours a day does it take to keep e-mail organized in directories no one sees but you)? Have you tried to find a document on a file server and gotten horribly lost? Are people in your group writing reports that no one reads? These are some of the symptoms of technology out of control.
K-Logs provide some of the answers to these problems. They include:
1) Knowledge development. The ability to quickly find important information that has the necessary context for understanding. Knowledge rises to the top with K-Logs: good stuff is pointed to by other K-Loggers and can quickly be found by using community tools that map the K-Log knowledge network (hotlists, blogdex, etc.). Compare this to the needle-in-the-haystack approach with e-mail inboxes and document directories on file servers.
2) Shared organization. The ability to create an open archive (on the Intranet) of organized information, so other people in the company can benefit from one individuals effort to organize resources. For example: a Web accessible directory of important file and doument URLs that are project specific (so you don't have to remember convoluted path names on files servers), a directory of important e-mail conversations displayed as Web pages, or a simple well-organized bookmark directory. Contrast this to a situation where a well organized team member can't share his/her e-mail and directory organization with a co-worker sitting five feet away.
3) Connected content. The ability to make a post to a K-Log that eliminates the need to develop an office document. Also, to link that post to relevant directories or K-Logs that have additional relevant information that is accessible within the same environment (the browser).
4) Collaborative content. The ability to post to a project K-Log collaboratively with each team member making a contribution. Contrast this to the tug-of-war that often develops over who owns the latest copy of a project document.
5) Intelligent information routing. The ability to route information via RSS newsfeeds and categories to specific groups and individuals automatically. Compare this to ad-hoc way e-mail-bound information is produced and routed.
Let's not look for solutions that automate a broken process. Let's look for solutions that reinvent the process to achieve lasting productivity improvements for knowledge workers. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
RSS news feeds and Weblogs: RSS newsfeeds in combination with Weblogs offers a very powerful solution for knowledge management. Many of the new CMS driven Weblog tools now offer RSS syndication for posted content. The increasingly ubiquitous small orange xml button on Weblogs tells you which sites offer this service. All you need to do to subscribe is click on the button, copy the URL of the page it takes you to, and paste that URL in the subscription area of your K-Log client software. From that point on, new content from the subscribed site is retrieved for you every hour.
What makes this particularly powerful is that you can now subscribe to the K-Logs of other employees and management automatically. Unlike the vast majority of news you normally get from external media, the news sent to you from K-Logs is relevant to getting your job done. It is even more powerful when you can easily take this content, annotate it, and post it to your own K-Log. In that way, simple information posted by another workgroup member can quickly be upgraded through additional insight provided by the posting author.
Here is an example: Say I am a new sales manager for Canadian sales at company X. One of the first tools I am given when I get to work is a K-Log tool. Instructions provided to me by the Intranet tell me to go to the subscriptions page of my K-Log client. There is a list of all the company's K-Logs organized by department. To subscribe, all I need to do is click on checkbox next to their name and hit submit. Further, the Intranet directions tell me I can also add subscriptions to other Weblogs by following the cut and paste procedure outlined above (sites like Syndic8 have a huge list of RSS newsfeeds available for subscription).
Now that I am subscribed (connected), I get new posts to all subscribed sites in the news section of my K-Log client. When I see something interesting, like a recent post by the head of sales in regards to how to sell a new product, I can quickly post it to my K-Log with an annotation by hitting a post button button next to the newsfeed. In fact, I have developed a presentation my team can use to sell the product, so I post a link to that presentation with my annotation (the presentation was sent to my Intranet K-Log by placing it in my K-Log upstream folder).
What did I just do? I took raw information from the head of sales and added improvements to it for my team via an annotation. My post is also a written record, posted my K-Log, of the fact that I told my team about this info on a specific date (this is very important for distributed work groups). From the perspective of the head of sales, I can now see who in my organization got my news and how they processed it (by looking at the annotation). I also can take a look at the linked presentation, and if it is good enough, may opt to include it as a general resource for the rest of the sales teams. Try this process with e-mail and see how quickly it breaks down.
Since RSS is xml it could be combined with other applications. Properly categorized RSS feeds (via author generated categories or automated search based on keywords) could be fed into a sales automation system and repurposed. It could also be used to populate group K-Logs in the marketing, PR, and IT departments. For example, an ad-hoc category dedicated to sales wins would be a fantastic marketing resource. Information on what combination of sales technique, presentation, product features, and collateral that made the sale possible is something that would be of unique value.
Features that could improve RSS for K-Loggers include prioritization, categorization, and control over the length of time the news is stored. However, the basic functionality should yield vast improvements over current information routing present in most corporations. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
RSS news feeds and Weblogs: RSS newsfeeds in combination with Weblogs offers a very powerful solution for knowledge management. Many of the new CMS driven Weblog tools now offer RSS syndication for posted content. The increasingly ubiquitous small orange xml button on Weblogs tells you which sites offer this service. All you need to do… Continue reading RSS news feeds and Weblogs: RSS newsfeeds in combination with Weblogs offers a very powerful solution for knowledge management. Many of the new CMS driven Weblog tools now offer RSS syndication for posted content. The increasingly ubiquitous small orange xml button on Weblogs tells you which sites offer this service. All you need to do to subscribe is click on the button, copy the URL of the page it takes you to, and paste that URL in the subscription area of your K-Log client software. From that point on, new content from the subscribed site is retrieved for you every hour.
What makes this particularly powerful is that you can now subscribe to the K-Logs of other employees and management automatically. Unlike the vast majority of news you normally get from external media, the news sent to you from K-Logs is relevant to getting your job done. It is even more powerful when you can easily take this content, annotate it, and post it to your own K-Log. In that way, simple information posted by another workgroup member can quickly be upgraded through additional insight provided by the posting author.
Here is an example: Say I am a new sales manager for Canadian sales at company X. One of the first tools I am given when I get to work is a K-Log tool. Instructions provided to me by the Intranet tell me to go to the subscriptions page of my K-Log client. There is a list of all the company's K-Logs organized by department. To subscribe, all I need to do is click on checkbox next to their name and hit submit. Further, the Intranet directions tell me I can also add subscriptions to other Weblogs by following the cut and paste procedure outlined above (sites like Syndic8 have a huge list of RSS newsfeeds available for subscription).
Now that I am subscribed (connected), I get new posts to all subscribed sites in the news section of my K-Log client. When I see something interesting, like a recent post by the head of sales in regards to how to sell a new product, I can quickly post it to my K-Log with an annotation by hitting a post button button next to the newsfeed. In fact, I have developed a presentation my team can use to sell the product, so I post a link to that presentation with my annotation (the presentation was sent to my Intranet K-Log by placing it in my K-Log upstream folder).
What did I just do? I took raw information from the head of sales and added improvements to it for my team via an annotation. My post is also a written record, posted my K-Log, of the fact that I told my team about this info on a specific date (this is very important for distributed work groups). From the perspective of the head of sales, I can now see who in my organization got my news and how they processed it (by looking at the annotation). I also can take a look at the linked presentation, and if it is good enough, may opt to include it as a general resource for the rest of the sales teams. Try this process with e-mail and see how quickly it breaks down.
Since RSS is xml it could be combined with other applications. Properly categorized RSS feeds (via author generated categories or automated search based on keywords) could be fed into a sales automation system and repurposed. It could also be used to populate group K-Logs in the marketing, PR, and IT departments. For example, an ad-hoc category dedicated to sales wins would be a fantastic marketing resource. Information on what combination of sales technique, presentation, product features, and collateral that made the sale possible is something that would be of unique value.
Features that could improve RSS for K-Loggers include prioritization, categorization, and control over the length of time the news is stored. However, the basic functionality should yield vast improvements over current information routing present in most corporations. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
MySQL 4.0 Alpha is Out
MySQL 4.0 Alpha is Out. The long awaited (alpha) version 4.0 of the MySQL database is now available for download at the MySQL website. The new version is intended as a platform for building mission critical, heavy load database solutions, and much effort has been put into providing a solid foundation for planned enhancements, some… Continue reading MySQL 4.0 Alpha is Out
Jakob Nielsen On How Apple Blew It, How Linux Will Blow It, And The Next Big Thing
Jakob Nielsen On How Apple Blew It, How Linux Will Blow It, And The Next Big Thing : Apple has decided to stop innovating. (The Register via Applesurf) [Applesurf]
Not-Invented-Here:
Not-Invented-Here: “When you're working on a really, really good team with great programmers, everybody else's code, frankly, is bug-infested garbage, and nobody else knows how to ship on time.” The best advice I can offer: If it's a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what. Pick your core business competencies and goals,… Continue reading Not-Invented-Here:
K-Logs provide some of the answers to these problems. They include:
1) Knowledge development. The ability to quickly find important information that has the necessary context for understanding. Knowledge rises to the top with K-Logs: good stuff is pointed to by other K-Loggers and can quickly be found by using community tools that map the K-Log knowledge network (hotlists, blogdex, etc.). Compare this to the needle-in-the-haystack approach with e-mail inboxes and document directories on file servers.
2) Shared organization. The ability to create an open archive (on the Intranet) of organized information, so other people in the company can benefit from one individuals effort to organize resources. For example: a Web accessible directory of important file and doument URLs that are project specific (so you don't have to remember convoluted path names on files servers), a directory of important e-mail conversations displayed as Web pages, or a simple well-organized bookmark directory. Contrast this to a situation where a well organized team member can't share his/her e-mail and directory organization with a co-worker sitting five feet away.
3) Connected content. The ability to make a post to a K-Log that eliminates the need to develop an office document. Also, to link that post to relevant directories or K-Logs that have additional relevant information that is accessible within the same environment (the browser).
4) Collaborative content. The ability to post to a project K-Log collaboratively with each team member making a contribution. Contrast this to the tug-of-war that often develops over who owns the latest copy of a project document.
5) Intelligent information routing. The ability to route information via RSS newsfeeds and categories to specific groups and individuals automatically. Compare this to ad-hoc way e-mail-bound information is produced and routed.
Let's not look for solutions that automate a broken process. Let's look for solutions that reinvent the process to achieve lasting productivity improvements for knowledge workers. [John Robb's Radio WeblogProductivity: A major reason companies are cutting back on IT spending is due to a lack of measurable productivity improvements that can be linked to investments in technology. Why aren't knowledge workers more productive now, given that they each have a computer and lots of productivity software? A major reason is that most of the work people do with… Continue reading Productivity: A major reason companies are cutting back on IT spending is due to a lack of measurable productivity improvements that can be linked to investments in technology. Why aren't knowledge workers more productive now, given that they each have a computer and lots of productivity software? A major reason is that most of the work people do with computers is done in relative isolation. This results in information silos that are difficult if not impossible to share and organize to productive advantage. The net result: people spend as much time getting value out of their technology than time saved using it.
What specifically do I mean by an information silo? Office suite documents. E-mail. Calendars. Outlines. PIMs and to-do lists. Have you ever seen someone with 10 k e-mails in their inbox (or the converse: how many hours a day does it take to keep e-mail organized in directories no one sees but you)? Have you tried to find a document on a file server and gotten horribly lost? Are people in your group writing reports that no one reads? These are some of the symptoms of technology out of control.
K-Logs provide some of the answers to these problems. They include:
1) Knowledge development. The ability to quickly find important information that has the necessary context for understanding. Knowledge rises to the top with K-Logs: good stuff is pointed to by other K-Loggers and can quickly be found by using community tools that map the K-Log knowledge network (hotlists, blogdex, etc.). Compare this to the needle-in-the-haystack approach with e-mail inboxes and document directories on file servers.
2) Shared organization. The ability to create an open archive (on the Intranet) of organized information, so other people in the company can benefit from one individuals effort to organize resources. For example: a Web accessible directory of important file and doument URLs that are project specific (so you don't have to remember convoluted path names on files servers), a directory of important e-mail conversations displayed as Web pages, or a simple well-organized bookmark directory. Contrast this to a situation where a well organized team member can't share his/her e-mail and directory organization with a co-worker sitting five feet away.
3) Connected content. The ability to make a post to a K-Log that eliminates the need to develop an office document. Also, to link that post to relevant directories or K-Logs that have additional relevant information that is accessible within the same environment (the browser).
4) Collaborative content. The ability to post to a project K-Log collaboratively with each team member making a contribution. Contrast this to the tug-of-war that often develops over who owns the latest copy of a project document.
5) Intelligent information routing. The ability to route information via RSS newsfeeds and categories to specific groups and individuals automatically. Compare this to ad-hoc way e-mail-bound information is produced and routed.
Let's not look for solutions that automate a broken process. Let's look for solutions that reinvent the process to achieve lasting productivity improvements for knowledge workers. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
RSS news feeds and Weblogs: RSS newsfeeds in combination with Weblogs offers a very powerful solution for knowledge management. Many of the new CMS driven Weblog tools now offer RSS syndication for posted content. The increasingly ubiquitous small orange xml button on Weblogs tells you which sites offer this service. All you need to do to subscribe is click on the button, copy the URL of the page it takes you to, and paste that URL in the subscription area of your K-Log client software. From that point on, new content from the subscribed site is retrieved for you every hour.
What makes this particularly powerful is that you can now subscribe to the K-Logs of other employees and management automatically. Unlike the vast majority of news you normally get from external media, the news sent to you from K-Logs is relevant to getting your job done. It is even more powerful when you can easily take this content, annotate it, and post it to your own K-Log. In that way, simple information posted by another workgroup member can quickly be upgraded through additional insight provided by the posting author.
Here is an example: Say I am a new sales manager for Canadian sales at company X. One of the first tools I am given when I get to work is a K-Log tool. Instructions provided to me by the Intranet tell me to go to the subscriptions page of my K-Log client. There is a list of all the company's K-Logs organized by department. To subscribe, all I need to do is click on checkbox next to their name and hit submit. Further, the Intranet directions tell me I can also add subscriptions to other Weblogs by following the cut and paste procedure outlined above (sites like Syndic8 have a huge list of RSS newsfeeds available for subscription).
Now that I am subscribed (connected), I get new posts to all subscribed sites in the news section of my K-Log client. When I see something interesting, like a recent post by the head of sales in regards to how to sell a new product, I can quickly post it to my K-Log with an annotation by hitting a post button button next to the newsfeed. In fact, I have developed a presentation my team can use to sell the product, so I post a link to that presentation with my annotation (the presentation was sent to my Intranet K-Log by placing it in my K-Log upstream folder).
What did I just do? I took raw information from the head of sales and added improvements to it for my team via an annotation. My post is also a written record, posted my K-Log, of the fact that I told my team about this info on a specific date (this is very important for distributed work groups). From the perspective of the head of sales, I can now see who in my organization got my news and how they processed it (by looking at the annotation). I also can take a look at the linked presentation, and if it is good enough, may opt to include it as a general resource for the rest of the sales teams. Try this process with e-mail and see how quickly it breaks down.
Since RSS is xml it could be combined with other applications. Properly categorized RSS feeds (via author generated categories or automated search based on keywords) could be fed into a sales automation system and repurposed. It could also be used to populate group K-Logs in the marketing, PR, and IT departments. For example, an ad-hoc category dedicated to sales wins would be a fantastic marketing resource. Information on what combination of sales technique, presentation, product features, and collateral that made the sale possible is something that would be of unique value.
Features that could improve RSS for K-Loggers include prioritization, categorization, and control over the length of time the news is stored. However, the basic functionality should yield vast improvements over current information routing present in most corporations. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
RSS news feeds and Weblogs: RSS newsfeeds in combination with Weblogs offers a very powerful solution for knowledge management. Many of the new CMS driven Weblog tools now offer RSS syndication for posted content. The increasingly ubiquitous small orange xml button on Weblogs tells you which sites offer this service. All you need to do… Continue reading RSS news feeds and Weblogs: RSS newsfeeds in combination with Weblogs offers a very powerful solution for knowledge management. Many of the new CMS driven Weblog tools now offer RSS syndication for posted content. The increasingly ubiquitous small orange xml button on Weblogs tells you which sites offer this service. All you need to do to subscribe is click on the button, copy the URL of the page it takes you to, and paste that URL in the subscription area of your K-Log client software. From that point on, new content from the subscribed site is retrieved for you every hour.
What makes this particularly powerful is that you can now subscribe to the K-Logs of other employees and management automatically. Unlike the vast majority of news you normally get from external media, the news sent to you from K-Logs is relevant to getting your job done. It is even more powerful when you can easily take this content, annotate it, and post it to your own K-Log. In that way, simple information posted by another workgroup member can quickly be upgraded through additional insight provided by the posting author.
Here is an example: Say I am a new sales manager for Canadian sales at company X. One of the first tools I am given when I get to work is a K-Log tool. Instructions provided to me by the Intranet tell me to go to the subscriptions page of my K-Log client. There is a list of all the company's K-Logs organized by department. To subscribe, all I need to do is click on checkbox next to their name and hit submit. Further, the Intranet directions tell me I can also add subscriptions to other Weblogs by following the cut and paste procedure outlined above (sites like Syndic8 have a huge list of RSS newsfeeds available for subscription).
Now that I am subscribed (connected), I get new posts to all subscribed sites in the news section of my K-Log client. When I see something interesting, like a recent post by the head of sales in regards to how to sell a new product, I can quickly post it to my K-Log with an annotation by hitting a post button button next to the newsfeed. In fact, I have developed a presentation my team can use to sell the product, so I post a link to that presentation with my annotation (the presentation was sent to my Intranet K-Log by placing it in my K-Log upstream folder).
What did I just do? I took raw information from the head of sales and added improvements to it for my team via an annotation. My post is also a written record, posted my K-Log, of the fact that I told my team about this info on a specific date (this is very important for distributed work groups). From the perspective of the head of sales, I can now see who in my organization got my news and how they processed it (by looking at the annotation). I also can take a look at the linked presentation, and if it is good enough, may opt to include it as a general resource for the rest of the sales teams. Try this process with e-mail and see how quickly it breaks down.
Since RSS is xml it could be combined with other applications. Properly categorized RSS feeds (via author generated categories or automated search based on keywords) could be fed into a sales automation system and repurposed. It could also be used to populate group K-Logs in the marketing, PR, and IT departments. For example, an ad-hoc category dedicated to sales wins would be a fantastic marketing resource. Information on what combination of sales technique, presentation, product features, and collateral that made the sale possible is something that would be of unique value.
Features that could improve RSS for K-Loggers include prioritization, categorization, and control over the length of time the news is stored. However, the basic functionality should yield vast improvements over current information routing present in most corporations. [John Robb's Radio Weblog
MySQL 4.0 Alpha is Out
MySQL 4.0 Alpha is Out. The long awaited (alpha) version 4.0 of the MySQL database is now available for download at the MySQL website. The new version is intended as a platform for building mission critical, heavy load database solutions, and much effort has been put into providing a solid foundation for planned enhancements, some… Continue reading MySQL 4.0 Alpha is Out
Jakob Nielsen On How Apple Blew It, How Linux Will Blow It, And The Next Big Thing
Jakob Nielsen On How Apple Blew It, How Linux Will Blow It, And The Next Big Thing : Apple has decided to stop innovating. (The Register via Applesurf) [Applesurf]
Not-Invented-Here:
Not-Invented-Here: “When you're working on a really, really good team with great programmers, everybody else's code, frankly, is bug-infested garbage, and nobody else knows how to ship on time.” The best advice I can offer: If it's a core business function — do it yourself, no matter what. Pick your core business competencies and goals,… Continue reading Not-Invented-Here: