Posts

Showing posts from 2008

Semantic Proxy

It's been way to long ago. But I was invited to try SemanticProxy . ReadWriteWeb recently had a nice overview post on Semantic web applications and Calais was one of them. Calais is: ...a toolkit of products that enable users to incorporate semantic functionality within their blog, content management system, website or application. Since launching the Open Calais API early this year, over 6,000 developers have registered with it and the service is doing more than 1 million transactions a day. We wrote about the launch of Calais' easiest-to-use service yet , called SemanticProxy , at the end of September. Version 3.0 was released earlier this month and version 4 is expected by January 09. RWW verdict one year later: Calais has really blossomed over the past year and it is one of the most promising Semantic services around today. We can't wait to see what's next! I finally had time to play around with SemanticProxy. I first tried the demo using the &#

Why Microblog in the Enterprise?

Lots of interesting stuff has been written and is being written on why we should use microblogging (or microsharing) inside and outside the enterprise. I've been collecting some of the posts I find most interesting and will share them with you here, with some personal comments relating to why I use microblogging inside and outside the company. On external microblogging: How to Use Twitter as a Twool by Guy Kawasaki. Great example of personal experiences with Twitter, but also how it can be/should be used by companies. Learned about search.twitter.com ,which is great. Already use Twitterfeed , which is handy to auto-publish bookmarks, etc. Why I love Twitter by Tim O'Reilly. It's unbelievable how many tweats he cranks out every day. How do you do that? I don't have a smart phone and use the web and TweetDeck to tweet. After reading this post I decided do regularly check my Twitter Grade . Just to see how I'm doing compared to others. 10 reasons why Twitter

Happy Holidays!

Image
Happy Holidays everyone! Hope you have some nice, relaxing days with friends and family. Wish you all a Happy New Year. I won't be blogging much the coming weeks. I'm definitely looking forward to 2009: in January I'm celebrating my 2 year blogging anniversary. Tags van Technorati: holiday , new year , life

Better Place

Just signed the petition of 'Better Place' and inserted a badge on the right-hand side of my blog. The venture to change the way we see mobility and use natural resources has gripped me over the last couple of years. I must admit this is largely due to some innovative colleagues I carpool with. Dutch TV has been broadcasting interesting documentaries on this topic and we've been discussing them and the implications of their statements. Then, recently, I ran into an article in Wired about 'Better Place' and the guy behind the company, Shai Agassi . 'Better Place' has this 'big hairy audacious goal' to change the way we approach mobility. And while 'Detroit' was sleeping and may go bankrupt, these guys are working hard to actually do what should have been done years ago: find alternatives for the way we make cars and make them run. I support this venture to make this world a better place and hope you will too.

Want To Publish a Paper, Review on Wiki First

My Dutch newspaper ( NRC , Dec. 18, 2008) had a nice short article with very interesting content (- no link available, so I'll provide source link). The Journal RNA Biology is now requiring papers to be peer-reviewed twice. Once on Wikipedia . And once by the journal's own review panel. A summary of the paper must be submitted to Wikipedia first, before the paper is published in the journal. I think this is good for the scientists wanting to publish an article. Who knows what kind of interesting corrections and extensions will be made to the central thought of their paper. And it's also good news for general public as well. Expert information (on RNA in this case) is published publicly and shared with us all. It would be nice to see other journals open up as well! I was also thinking this could or should be applied inside companies as well. In most companies employees write reports and they're submitted to an archive or document management system, after being fo

Social Media Addicted?

Not bad, eh?! 14% This quiz was provided by - Search & Social - Media Experts

Cultivating ba

Strategy + Business has an interesting interview with prof. Ikujiro Nonaka, "The Practical Wisdom of Ikujiro Nonaka" . Some nice quotes: In the act of creating, people argue. They have heated dialogue. They get upset! Without real exchange, you can't create knowledge. Knowledge creation is a human activity. (...) ... Nonaka's perspective ... runs counter to conventional corporate practice. Most companies assign knowledge management to their information technology departments, which focus on codifying best practices that can be captured, stored, indexed, and retrieved as efficiently as possible. Nonaka views all this data management as minor, almost incidental aspect of the capability development that enables business success. (...) Nonaka's concept of a knowledge-creating company resembles the kind of community in which generosity is prevalent, people feel recognized as distinct individuals, and informal, honest communication is commonplace. When d

Missing Security Features in Enterprise RSS Tools

[Note from infoarch : Peter Verhoeven is a smart colleague of mine. One of the things he’s working on is selecting and implementing an Enterprise RSS solution for the company we work for. Peter did deep research on this topic and found some gaps in what current Enterprise RSS vendors are offering. I asked Peter to summarize his thoughts in the guest blog post you find below. Enjoy! And we would love to hear what you think. Peter's LinkedIn profile can be found here and he initiated and maintains a popular website, Magnifiers.org .] Introduction Last months we evaluated two Enterprise RSS solutions: Attensa Feed Server (AFS) from Attensa and NewsGator Enterprise Server (NGES) from NewsGator , to replace our self-made Enterprise RSS solution. Both products are missing an essential feature for us, namely good support of “secured feeds” and options to share “secured feeds” with employees with the same permissions. What are “secured feeds”? A “secured feed” can be defined as

IBM and Numerati Revisited

Recently I posted my thoughts on 'IBM and Numerati' . I got several interesting comments on that post . And I was pointed to posts by Luis Suarez (mind you, an IBM-er) and Dave Snowden (an ex-IBM-er). I had already read them before posting my ideas on this topic, but didn't respond to their posts. But too be clear. I was just as surprised to read about this topic as Snowden. And funnily, an IBM-er like Luis says this is not common practice at IBM either... However, as I said, I do find the idea intriguing... and scary. True, like Luis and Ton Zijlstra commented , this is different from web 2.0. For me too, I like the web 2.0 approach more than the Numerati approach. But I do find this approach closer to web 2.0 than my commenters. Luis says: IBM is not routinely analyzing employees e-mail, calendars and chats without employees' permission or knowledge But how does this relate to IBM Whisper and the opt-in 'Social Network tool' IBM runs internal

Productivity Tip: Who's Going to Read It and Act Upon it?

Just was rethinking the way I organize my work while reading the 'Productive Magazine' . (Great magazine, by the way!) As a knowledge worker I do lots of work because I think it's good for me and/or the company I work for. After finishing a memo, report, etc I go off and distribute it. Of course I hope others will read it, use it and make good decisions based on it's content. I organize my work using the 'Getting things done' methodology . And it works great for me. In the Productivity magazine other methods tell us what GTD is lacking. I wasn't too convinced by their lists... But all of a sudden I did realize that I don't ask myself explicitly enough for every task: Who I am doing it for? Is someone really waiting for me to give them new insights and/or am I answering questions they have? This relates to what GTD calls 'desired result' of a task. I think I should focus on this more to hopefully become more productive than I already am (- at le

Wikipedia Becoming More User-friendly

Good news! Wikipedia is going to work on its user-friendliness. (Refer to Marie Jose Klaver's post (in Dutch), Wikimedia's post .) My first reaction was: great. Then I read some critiques on this move and thought: that's an interesting perspective. Making Wikipedia easier to use, could lead to lots of clutter and more edit-wars... Why I'm happy is because I'm thinking from a corporate perspective first. We are using the Mediawiki platform (on which Wikipedia is built) for our enterprise wiki's. Although they are much-used in R&D, we see that less-tech-savvy employees would rather have a more user-friendly (mostly relating to a WYSIWYG editor) interface. So, from a company perspective I'm really happy with this and hope this will encourage our employees (and other companies) to use wiki's more often. Tags van Technorati: wiki , wikipedia , mediawiki , enterprise 2.0

Taglocity for Files?

I forgot to post an idea on how Taglocity could become even more useful (for me). It would be nice to be able to tag/label files too (straight from Outlook and in Explorer). I know Vista supports tagging of files (I use Vista at home and XP at work), but I don't find the tagging very easy and user-friendly. Is Taglocity thinking of moving in this direction? Tags van Technorati: email , productivity , social networking

Tweating Bookmarks

Recently I decided to stop publishing my bookmarks to my blog . I wondered if my readers agreed with this idea. Some responded and urged me to continue to publish my bookmarks. So, I almost proceeded to do that and then I thought: why not tweat them? I proposed that option and it seems to do the trick. I'll be trying this and see if this is the way to go. You can follow my tweats (with bookmarks) here . And of course you can follow my bookmarks directly in Diigo en Delicious . Tags van Technorati: social bookmarking , twitter , microblogging

The Real Information Architect

Wow, this is a great presentation on the evolution of the 'information architect' role (- found via @dtunkelang. Thanks again! ). As you know I'm an information architect for Océ. I posted on my definition of 'information architecture' before . My definition seems to fit more with the 'old' definition than the new. Although this does depend on where you live. In The Netherlands, e.g., information architecture is more related to 'information management program development' than to 'web architecture/design'. Tags van Technorati: information architecture , information management

First Taglocity Experiences

Alright! Not too long ago I said I would start using Taglocity . And, of course, I promised to tell you more about my experiences using it. Well, here goes! The strange thing is not too many people seem to be using Taglocity. At least not the people in my network. Lots of them use Xobni , as I did too. I tweated my network , searched Twitter , Googled a bit and found their isn't a whole lot of buzz on Taglocity yet. Well I guess I'll have to create some and lead the way... ;-) Ok, now about Taglocity. As I said I really enjoy Gmail functionality. Taglocity brings this to Outlook. And it works for me. I really enjoy adding labels to my email. I still put mail in one of the 6 folders I have (of which the biggest one is 'Deleted items'). But I now also label them. This makes finding my email back much faster. And I don't have to be to anxious to put the email in the right folder. The search speed of Taglocity is good enough. In practice I switch between Outlook

IBM and the Numerati

Not too long ago I read Dan Brown's Angels and Demons' . This book introduced me to some people I've vaguely heard of, but didn't really know: the Illuminati. Actually I'm not really sure I know them after reading Brown's book. Are they real? Have they actually done the stuff Brown describes? And are they still active? The same kind of questions popped up when I recently ran into a new book by Stephen Baker, "The Numerati ". Actually I first read some of the buzz on this book and read an excerpt in Business Week . I plan to buy the book and read it soon. Based on the excerpt and other posts I read on this book, my first impression is: very interesting, thought-provoking stuff. As I understand, the basic question is: how far can you go with data, numbers, digital objects? If you have lots of them, what can you do, has been and is being done with them? What I like about this question, is the fact that it doesn't relate to the postmodern world w

Stopped Publishing My Bookmarks

As you know and can see: I have my new bookmarks published to my blog every now and then. I started doing this because I see others doing this too. I found it quite useful. For me, it feels like others are reading and recommending posts that I am not following and reading. Hopefully I could do the same for them. It's some form of social search. And I do see that friends following my blog copy posts from my 'recommended bookmarks' and share them with their readers. However, I'm stopping anyway. I find the amount of 'recommended bookmark' posts is cluttering my own (non-automated) posts. And you can follow my favorite bookmarks (with or without comments) on Diigo and delicious anyway. If you think this is wrong, please let me know. If you happy with this move, let me know too! Tags van Technorati: social bookmarking , search , social search

Recommended links infoarch 12/02/2008

Technology Review: 10 Emerging Technologies 2008 tags : trends Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/30/2008

YouTube - Networked Student tags : socialmedia , web2.0 , knowledgeworker Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/29/2008

Andrew McAfee tags : enterprise2.0 , adoption IBM: Talking Web Will be Commonplace in 5 Years - ReadWriteWeb tags : semanticweb , languagetechnology , internet , trends Anecdote: Collaboration requires fairness tags : collaboration My Friend Mr Tweet, and my new-found Friends on Twitter tags : microblogging SocialText tags : socialmedia , enterprise2.0 , adoption Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/27/2008

Beeline Labs » Blog Archive » Adopting social media for employees: biggest anchors + Conference Board preso tags : enterprise2.0 , socialmedia , adoption Launch of the Enterprise Social Network Strategy report: what senior executives REALLY think about social networks inside the organization - Trends in the Living Networks tags : socialnetworking Social networking in business study « Inside out tags : socialnetworking , business The AppGap » » Reviews - Web apps for work; reviews + commentary; Work 2.0, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 tags : enterprise2.0 , tooling The Unofficial Guide to Friendfeed Part 2: Getting Started tags : friendfeed , web2.0 , filtering Connect Faster And Learn More With Friend Feed tags : web2.0 , filtering , friendfeed Google SearchWiki is Not a Wiki - ReadWriteWeb tags : google , search , wiki Web 2.0 security? What a mash | Zero Day | ZDNet.com tags : web2.0 , security Executive Video Interview: Why Dell Continues To Use Social Media tags : community , socialmedia

Recommended links infoarch 11/26/2008

Fuser - Where Inboxes Meet tags : email , socialnetworking , productivity Intranet Focus Ltd - Blog Article 50 tags : sharepoint , intranet Is SaaS Cheaper Than Licensed Software? - ReadWriteWeb tags : business , IT , services , sharepoint Is Enterprise 2.0 about selling software or solving problems? tags : enterprise2.0 , adoption Will the Real Information Architect Please Stand Up? | The Noisy Channel tags : informationarchitecture Do Startup Companies Need Community Managers? - ReadWriteWeb tags : community , socialmedia Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Where Do I Share and Store My Information?

Image
Introduction Most companies have loads of tools to help employees share and store information. Because we have so many of these tools, it can be hard to decide where to share and store my information. The company I work for also has this problem. I was asked to explain the differences between the tools and help our employees decide where to share and store information. As promised, I would share this with you . This is what I came up with. Please keep in mind this is focused on our situation. But I think and hope this could be of help for other companies as well. If so, let me know. If not, also let me know! Situation Every employee within searches, creates, collaborate and stores information. Several methods and solutions support these processes. However many employees wonder where and when to share and store certain information and what solutions are provided to support the above-mentioned processes. This post gives our guidelines on storing and sharing information using these

Recommended links infoarch 11/25/2008

Introducing New Media To The Intranet - SlideShare tags : intranet , socialmedia , web2.0 Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/22/2008

Zoetrope: New Web Crawler Allows For Searching, Analyzing The Ever-Changing Web - ReadWriteWeb tags : search Grown Up Digital tags : millenials , web2.0 Twitter for Business Webinar - SlideShare tags : microblogging , enterprise2.0 , business Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/20/2008

Report: Millennials Will Route Around IT Departments - ReadWriteWeb tags : millenials , IT , socialmedia , socialsoftware Portals and KM: Four Examples of Wikis Working within the Enterprise tags : wiki , adoption , enterprise2.0 The real world for enterprise 2.0 - Knowledge Jolt with Jack tags : enterprise2.0 , adoption Intranet Blog :: Gartner’s magic quadrant for intranet portals tags : intranet , trends Xobni Adds Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, Hoovers, And The Kitchen Sink tags : email , productivity , informationoverload , socialnetworking User Adoption « Infovark tags : enterprise2.0 , socialmedia , adoption Main Page - Social Patterns tags : socialmedia , enterprise2.0 , adoption Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008 tags : socialnetworking , trends Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/19/2008

Web 2.0 Expo NY: Clay Shirky (shirky.com) It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure. tags : email , filtering , informationoverload The Email Problem and How To Solve It — Blogiculum Vitae tags : email , informationoverload Web 2.0 Expo In Berlin - Day 3 Highlights tags : web2.0 , trends Web 2.0 Expo In Berlin - Day 2 Highlights tags : web2.0 , trends Web 2.0 Expo In Berlin - Day 1 Highlights tags : web2.0 , trends Decho tags : informationarchitecture , knowledgemanagement , knowledgeworker Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Stop Using E-mail

Nice presentation (9 min.) by Luis Suarez to whom I've been pointing regularly on my blog. This is his presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin (added in below). It gives a good overview of how he's trying to stop using e-mail for the wrong reasons and what he experiences doing this. I've asked the question before, but I'd really like to hear more from Luis about the time he used to spend on email and the time he now spends on email and the social tools. (Something for the Sweettt podcast , Luis?!) Also relate to his posts on day 1 , day 2 and day 3 of the Expo. Tags van Technorati: email , information overload , web2.0 , enterprise2.0

New Blog: Fragmented Living

A colleague of mine (and ex-carpool-er) just started a blog I'd like to point you to. It's called 'Fragmented Living' . Thinking back of all the discussions we had about knowledge management, information management, innovation, living and complex systems and organizations, etc this blog should be interesting to follow! Good luck, Harold! Tags van Technorati: complexity , blog , knowledge management

EMC also Focusing on Personal Information

Ran into this interesting news via Michael Sampson's blog : EMC started a company that will focus on personal information management. I've always wondered why the large enterprise information management vendors never adequately addressed the personal information space. I found they basically said: use the enterprise system, even if it doesn't fit your personal way of working. Will Decho, the new company, truly address this gap? I'm really curious if they will and will follow this step. Also refer to EMC press release and Decho site (which basically tells you Decho now 'only' sells a backup service). Tags van Technorati: knowledge worker , knowledge management , content management , information overload

Recommended links infoarch 11/18/2008

The Future of Enterprise 2.0 Technologies - ReadWriteWeb tags : enterprise2.0 , trends Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Recommended links infoarch 11/16/2008

Beeline Labs » Blog Archive » Legal and social media tags : socialmedia , adoption , enterprise2.0 2008 Tribalization Of Business Study - SlideShare tags : community , enterprise2.0 Richard Dennison Jboye08 - SlideShare tags : socialmedia , enterprise2.0 , intranet , adoption Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Tribalization of Business

Just wanted to point to this very nice interview on the O'Reilly Radar blog with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs . This short (6 min.!)interview gets into all the key issues of communities and organizations ('tribalization of business'). That's really impressive. What I really liked was what Francois said about measuring the success of communities. Andrew McAfee recently wondered if we should introduce 'enterprise 2.0 metrics' . I wasn't sure if this was a good idea and suggested: Can’t we ‘just’ ask for stories and try to quantify them? Ask employees to tell managers how the tools helped them or others become more productive. Francois says the same for communities: the stories about the communities tell you their success. Again, great interview. I'm definitely following the Beeline blog from now on! Tags van Technorati: community , communities of practice , enterprise2.0

Recommended links infoarch 11/15/2008

Can social tagging improve email? « Jon Udell tags : email , productivity , informationoverload Manage This! » Blog Archive » Taglocity Workflow tags : email , productivity , informationoverload Intranet scent: best links are 7-12 words - Intranet Blog - FindTech Blogs tags : intranet , search Common wiki myths - Intranet Blog - FindTech Blogs tags : wiki , adoption How to blog the intranet - Intranet Blog - FindTech Blogs About starting a corporate blog tags : blog , blogging , enterprise2.0 Globally local - locally global : Mixing business with personality tags : socialmedia , web2.0 , enterprise2.0 , intranet Wikinomics » Blog Archive » How to build an amazing blog tags : blog , blogging Above and Beyond KM: Aspiring to KM Geekdom tags : knowledgemanagement Build Your Own Twitter With Twingr (Private Alpha) tags : microblogging Escape Your Email At Last (Really!) With AwayFind - ReadWriteWeb tags : email Email Management: Cure Enterprise Email Overload tags : email , productivity Is

Trying Taglocity: tagging Outlook

Well, just ran into Taglocity . I read through their site to see what they offer. I must say it all sounds very interesting. I'm curious how Taglocity compares to Xobni . I've been using Xobni for some time now and am pretty enthusiastic about the tool. Is Taglocity even better? So, I'm de-installing Xobni to try Taglocity. (I don't want 2 sidebars in my Outlook and I'm don't want to try them both at the same time.) One think I'm really curious about is tagging in Outlook like in Gmail. That would be great! (I use Outlook 2003 and heard that 2007 has tagging functionality.) So, I'll be using Taglocity for the coming weeks. I'll let you know what my experiences are. My evaluation questions are: how does Taglocity compare to Xobni in general? is Taglocity as social as Xobni? are the Taglocity tags as good as Gmail's? can tagged emails also be retrieved after they've been archived and/or moved? is Taglocity secure (als