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Column Two
News and opinion on all things KM & CM |
James Robertson
Step Two Designs
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Written by James Robertson Step Two Designs |
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Articles by Category: Weblogs
Internal blogs written so farAs I've mentioned before, we established our internal blogging in Step Two about 4 1/2 years ago. As the most prolific internal blogger, I've now posted 2,500 entries, all with the goal of "sharing awareness". As a knowledge management strategy, it's been very successful, with every team member consistently posting on a daily or weekly basis. It's interesting to look at my top entry categories:
It's been busy, very busy. No shortage of work, and lots of gossip... ;-) Posted by jamesr at 09:53 PM
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Your blog, your nameRegular readers would be aware that a lot of my posts are links to interesting articles, resources, and commonly, blog posts. I confess: I do this primarily for my own benefit, so I can find these resources again later when I need them. I hope these posts are also of some use to others... But now to a common point of frustration: all too often when I go to link to a blog entry, I struggle to find the name of the author. You'd think this would be straightforward, but it isn't so. I hunt through the "about me" page, I carefully examine the footer of each post, I examine the home page of the site. Nothing other than a username! So my advice for everyone with a blog: make sure your name is clearly visible throughout your blog. Ideally, this should be listed on the sidebar of every page, perhaps even with a photograph and a brief bio. After all, a blog is supposed to be the voice of its author... Take the 60 seconds test: can you find your name on your own blog? Your time starts now! Posted by jamesr at 09:20 AM
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Structured blogging - enterprise only?Frank Gilbane has written an brief article on structured blogging, a term I confess I hadn't heard before. To quote: Structured blogging activity has accelerated, and has reached the important milestone where there is debate about whether it will amount to anything. If you are not familiar with structured blogging, the term itself should be enough to give you a good idea - think of structured editing, eForms, and blogging all mushed together. Posted by jamesr at 09:17 AM
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IBM employees play with podcastingStacy Cowley has written an article on the use of podcasting on IBM's intranet, as an internal communications medium. To quote: In August, IBM made its first official foray into podcasting by launching a series of programs called "IBM and the Future of...," featuring its scientists and other staffers discussing topics like driving, shopping, banking and urban planning. Postcasts are audio files designed to be played on PCs or portable music devices like iPods; listeners can use software to subscribe for automatic downloads of new podcasts in series that interest them. [Thanks to Toby Ward.] Posted by jamesr at 09:12 AM
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McDonald's dips toe In blogging watersKevin Newcomb reports on McDonald's piloting of corporate blogging (within the organisation). To quote: While the McDonald's Corporation has not jumped headfirst into blogging, it certainly is further along the path of acceptance than many companies of its size. Last week, the company began an internal program that introduced corporate blogs, available only on the corporate intranet, behind the firewall. While this is seen as a small first step, it's an important one in a company the size of McDonald's, said Steve Wilson, senior director of global Web communications for McDonalds. Wilson spoke to a crowd of bloggers and curious marketing folk at Monday's BlogOn social media summit in New York. [Thanks to Toby Ward.] Posted by jamesr at 10:56 AM
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Weblog usability: the top ten design mistakesJakob Nielsen has written an article on the usability of weblogs, providing some guidelines on better practices. To quote: Descriptive headlines are especially important for representing your weblog in search engines, newsfeeds (RSS), and other external environments. In those contexts, users often see only the headline and use it to determine whether to click into the full posting. Even if users see a short abstract along with the headline (as with most search engines), user testing shows that people often read only the headline. In fact, people often read only the first three or four words of a headline when scanning a list of possible places to go. Posted by jamesr at 09:58 PM
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Comprehensive guide to a professional blog siteMichael K. Bergman has written a guide to professional blogging. To quote: This Guide is the result of 350 hrs of learning and experimentation to test the boundaries of blog functionality, scope and capabilities. I myself began this process as a total newbie about six months ago -- which likely shows in gaps and naivete -- but I have been aggressive in documenting as I have gone. The learning from my professional blog journey, still ongoing, is reflected in these pages. This Guide addresses about 100 individual "how to" blogging topics and lessons, all geared to the content-focused and not occasional blogger. More than 140 citations from more than 80 experts provide additional guidance. The Guide itself occupies 80 pages. It is all free. [Thanks to IDM.] Posted by jamesr at 01:26 PM
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Now 3,600 internal blogs at IBMNeville Hobson has posted a blog entry indicating that there are now 3,600 internal blogs at IBM. To quote: Through the central blog dashboard at the intranet W3, IBMers now can find more than 3,600 blogs written by their co-workers. As of June 13 there were 3,612 internal blogs with 30,429 posts. Internal blogging is still at a stage of testing and trying at IBM but the number of blogs is growing rapidly -- and they are appreciated, with everything from water cooler talk to discussions about IBM's business strategies. [Thanks to Charlie Wood.] Posted by jamesr at 10:51 AM
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Blogging style: The basic posting formatsAmy Gahran has written an excellent series of articles exploring common blogging styles. She identifies seven basic blog posting formats:
[Thanks to Bill Ives.] Posted by jamesr at 04:34 PM
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Weblogs as an online community management toolLee LeFever has written a blog entry on weblogs as an online community management tool. To quote: Aside from participation in discussions, the community manager often needs a consistent and accessible place to have an independent voice to relate community news and information. Below you will see how a weblog may be used to fill this need. Posted by jamesr at 03:19 PM
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Blogs + Egos = Learning?Lou Rosenfeld has written a blog entry on studying the blogosphere, all very interesting. To quote: We rambled on about how much fun it would be to observe patterns in the use of comments, classification, cross-linking between entries, aggregation, and so on. We brainstormed a few metrics that could be tracked longitudinally against the growth of the system's content and usage. And we came up with some fun questions that could be investigated. For example, would a static set of general classification terms lose value as content grew? Would more precise terms be added, or would students naturally rely on other approaches, such as cross-linking, to make the content more accessible? Posted by jamesr at 12:41 PM
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How to use weblogs to create engaging learning experiencesMaish Nichani has written an article on using weblogs to support learning. To quote: In conclusion, I would like to stress that the informal and engaging attributes of the weblog format can be used even in the light of tightly scheduled and highly focused training situations. The simple alternatives outlined in this paper can liberate us from the tyranny of product-oriented delivery and help us build continuous, engaging and memorable learning experiences. [Thanks to elearningpost.] Posted by jamesr at 06:27 PM
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Blogs and CoPs: Can blogging replace communities of practice?A discussion on Knowledgeboard explores the relationship of blogs and communities of practice. To quote: Before the development of weblogs, "online community" tools like forums, mailing lists and bulletin boards were predominantly used for community building. Experience seems to show that weblogs are proving far more effective in creating meaningful interpersonal connections than centralized community spaces on the web. Can networks of bloggers be seen as the future of online communities? [Thanks to Jack Vinson.] Posted by jamesr at 11:52 AM
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Blogging behind the firewallChad Dickerson has written an article on InfoWorld's use of internal weblogs. To quote: Our internal use of Weblogs has greatly accelerated, and we're beginning to see more tangible benefits as we've begun to reach a critical mass of internal contributors. At the end of March, my team held an off-site retreat and created a rolling six-month plan for IT initiatives at InfoWorld, which we posted to a Weblog available to all employees. For each month in the plan, we created a checklist of projects we would be working on and noted which ones would be completed in that month. We also scheduled what we call "fire drills" -- our internal term for the intentional failure of a specific key system to test fail-over capabilities in the event of an unexpected outage of that system. [Thanks to elearningpost.] Posted by jamesr at 10:11 AM
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Legitimised theft: Distributed apprenticeship in weblog networksLee LeFever has blogged a reference to a recent paper published on distributed apprenticeship using weblogs. To quote: For a company employee weblogs can provide a unique opportunity to access usually invisible trails of development and flows of ideas, a window onto practice. It can serve as a learning resource for others, as well as providing a better overview of internal expertise and experts, and may lead to the speeding up of innovation due to earlier cross-fertilisation of ideas. Weblogs can be used as a technology for facilitating and extending existing apprenticeship and coaching programs or capturing stories of retiring experts. Posted by jamesr at 04:09 PM
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Internal bloggingIt's all very exciting. As of yesterday, all of my staff (including me) each have an internal weblog. These will be used to post small, ongoing reports of what we are up to, which clients we are working on, and what new deliverables we have created. By installing news aggregator software on each desktop, we can trivially keep up with each others blog entries, as well as external blogs. (I've been using this type of software for quite some time now, and I can't live without it.) The establishment of internal weblogs has been done in response to the huge increase in the number of different clients and projects we are working on, and is one of the ongoing experimental activities as part of our inwards-focused knowledge management efforts. It's not meant to replace face-to-face discussions, but rather act as a way of exposing the interesting things that are happening, so we can follow up on them with further discussions. Posted by jamesr at 07:52 PM
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Perfect Pitch Competition winnerThe results of the Perfect Pitch Competition for the best 30-second spiel on the corporate use of weblogs have been announced. To quote: And, after extensive tabulation by the men in the backroom (pictured in my last post on Saturday (spent most of the day Sunday tabulating results, checking and re-checking and integrating last minute judging panelist input,)) a Winner has been determined… Dat… da da dat dat da… Posted by jamesr at 09:58 AM
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Show value in K-logs to senior managementErik van Bekkum has posted a blog entry on showing value in k-logs to senior management. To quote: I would like to take this issue and turn it into a seed question. "What would be common ways to convince management to use lightweight, social collaboration tools for knowledge management?" Posted by jamesr at 07:20 PM
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MT driven policies and procedures FAQD. Keith Robinson has published a FAQ on how he has setup the policies and procedures are of an intranet using Movable Type. To quote: I get lots of questions about the hospital’s Movable Type driven intranet, especially the policies and procedures bit. Too many to keep answering them in individual e-mails. So I’m going to answer them here. I hope this is helpful. Posted by jamesr at 10:31 AM
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Gurus v. Bloggers, Round 1Andrei Herasimchuk of Design By Fire judges a "showdown" between the sites of the gurus versus the bloggers. To quote: I've gathered examples of web sites of a few well known -- and highly respected -- web, design, and technology Gurus, along with a few web sites of a few well known Bloggers in the design sector. While this is extremely funny (and very tongue-in-cheek), it does make some valid points about site designs. Hmm, must get around to my site redesign (which has been in the pipeline since January). Posted by jamesr at 01:02 PM
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Introduction to stocks and flows (2 of 3): Weblogs, wikis and RSSLee LeFever continues his exploration of stocks and flows, with the second article looking at weblogs, wikis and RSS. To quote: In the first section of this series, I provided a basic introduction to the terms "stock" and "flow" in the context of online communication. In this section, I’ll apply these terms to technologies that are quickly becoming standards on the web: weblogs, wikis and RSS. Posted by jamesr at 10:35 AM
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What conference organisers need to know about weblogsLee LeFever has posted a blog entry on weblogs and conferences. To quote: Over dinner last weekend, I had a discussion with some folks who run conferences for a software company here in Seattle. These folks were concerned about the weblogging of conferences. Their concern wasn't rooted in the fact that it was happening, but how to understand it and act upon what was being said. I think this is a really interesting perspective on the use of blogging at conferences. I only wish that Australian conferences offered wireless access, which is simply becoming assumed in the US. Sigh. Posted by jamesr at 03:34 PM
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The ‘perfect’ corporate weblogging ‘elevator pitch’ competitionThe socialsoftwareweblog has announced a competition to create the perfect 'elevator pitch' for corporate blogging. To quote: A business executive, with whom you have been trying to arrange a meeting, is available for a condensed pitch from you on a one minute elevator ride. It is your goal to convince this attentive business leader — who has heard about weblogs, and in fact reads a few regularly — to sponsor and resource a critical mass of weblogs in his/her organization so that their benefits can be demonstrated in a meaningful way. It’s a long elevator ride to the top floor of the Sears Tower in Chicago — [1,354 feet at 1600 feet/minute!] — visual aids are not available and your entry will be judged on your ability to present your pitch “on the fly” — just text. I think this is a brilliant idea, and I'm looking forward to the results... Posted by jamesr at 03:22 PM
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Supporting enterprise knowledge management with weblogs: A weblog services roadmapMichael Angeles has posted up his presentation slides and notes for his talk on knowledge management and weblogs. Should make for an interesting read... Posted by jamesr at 08:20 AM
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The prospect of the weblog as an information service in the corporate libraryMichael Angeles writes about using a weblog in a corporate library. To quote: Amazing. After years ago suggesting that our newsletter publications could/should be written more like newspaper or magazine-style columns or weblogs, there is now an interest in looking now at the weblog model to become part of our information services. If you weren't aware, I work for a corporate library/information services organization. Maybe this is because business literature about RSS is finally reaching business decision makers or because Gartner or Forrester said something about RSS. Could also be because people are noticing that customers inside the firewall are using weblogs to find/share sources of information with their peers. I don't know. Whatever the reason, RSS and weblogging have surfaced in conversations I'm being asked to lead. Posted by jamesr at 11:57 AM
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The role of a weblog inside an online communityLee LeFever has written a blog entry about weblogs and online communities. To quote: I've been thinking a lot about how weblogs can be used as a part of an online community -- and I think there are some real benefits. Posted by jamesr at 10:15 AM
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Movable Type for policies & proceduresD. Keith Robinson has written a blog entry on using Movable Type for policies and procedures on a hospital intranet. To quote: I've had quite a few requests for details and screenshots of the hospital's new Movable Type intranet. I'm going to do my best to fulfil those requests and to start off I’ll give you an overview of one of the more useful and innovative ways in which we leveraged Movable Type's technology for our intranet -- our Policies and Procedures pages. Posted by jamesr at 09:27 AM
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Integrating weblog aggregation data with enterprise dataMichael Angeles has created a diagram showing how to use HR data to connect people, using both weblog and enterprise systems. To quote: Specifically, how do you make aggregated data integrate with other views of enterprise information? The diagram below illustrates how employee data (HR data) can be leveraged to connect people to various types of interests, publications, etc. on the intranet. [Thanks to pixelcharmer.] Posted by jamesr at 01:05 PM
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A Movable Type intranetKeith Robinson has written a blog entry about using Movable Type to create an intranet, for a hospital. To quote: Down at the hospital we are in the process of moving a huge portion of our intranet into Movable Type -- about 90%. This includes departmental sites, informational sites, applications and just about a bit of everything else. [Thanks to John Robb.] Posted by jamesr at 08:34 AM
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Blogs on the Google intranetStefanie Olsen has interviewed Evan Williams, the creator of Blogger (which has since been bought by Google). Some interesting comments in reference to blogs and the intranet:
[Thanks to Simon Willison.] Posted by jamesr at 12:01 PM
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Classification and Movable TypeTanya Rabourn has written a weblog entry on Classification and Movable Type. This is of particular interest to me, and something that I am seriously considering implementing. To quote: Two new MT plug-ins have come into being since I posted about the way I use the category field here. They offer two different ways of classifying posts. MT-categoryfaceted by Timothy Appnel is a bottom-up method and MT-subcategories by David Raynes is hierarchical and a top-down method. Take your pick. Posted by jamesr at 05:45 PM
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Faceted Movable TypeTanya Rabourn has written a blog entry about combining Movable Type and faceted navigation, which is something that I've been idly considering for a while now. To quote: I made the decision to go with a faceted classification scheme for two reasons. The first reason is due to the limitations of category construction in MT. Each post can have any number of categories applied and one is selected to be the "primary" category. There's no way to make hierarchical relationships among them, though. Posted by jamesr at 12:55 PM
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How I would implement weblog in businessLee LeFever has written a short article on the value of weblogs to share knowledge. To quote: In retrospect- a Weblog could have been extremely valuable to me and the company. Using a Weblog, I could chronicle the daily activities, learnings, experiences and developments of the community. As the community grew and interest spread, the Weblog could have become the best single resource for understanding the internal workings of the community, why it works, what we'd learned, what the manager does, what the members think, etc. I could have reserved 30 minutes a day to post what I'm thinking, doing, learning. [Thanks to elearningpost.] Posted by jamesr at 01:29 PM
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K-Log productivity: Time to find and availabilityJohn Robb has written another weblog entry on K-log metrics (k-logs are "knowledge weblogs"). This one focuses on the time taken to find information in an organisation. To quote: An oft quoted statistic is that "knowledge workers spend 35% of their productive time searching for information, while 40% of the corporate users report that they cannot find the information they need to do their jobs on their Intranets" (source: Working Council of CIOs). The Delphi group estimates that this costs the average 20,000 person organization $720 million a year ($120,000 all in cost per employee equates to $36,000 per employee spent searching). Posted by jamesr at 03:00 PM
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ROI calculations: K-Logs vs. traditional Intranet PortalsJohn Robb has written a weblog entry that compares the ROI of enterprise portals and k-logs (k-logs are weblogs used inside an organisation). In it, he finds that k-logs provide similar benefits at a fraction of the cost. What is also very interesting are the ROI figures he has obtained from PlumTree for their enterprise portal software ($1.2mil per year in admin costs!). Posted by jamesr at 10:01 AM
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ZemptJust for interest, the last two entries were posted using Zempt. This is a nice multi-platform posting tool for Movable Type, that significantly improves on mucking around with the sometimes-slow web interface.So far, so good. I'll report any news (good or otherwise) as I continue using this tool. Posted by jamesr at 04:51 PM
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Case Study: Triple Point Technology, Inc.News Gator has published a case study of the implementation of RSS at Triple Point, a commodity trading company. To quote: Triple Point started with a simple goal: "The idea is to free some of our content, expose it via easily searchable XML and HTML via HTTP, and reduce the amount of information ?hunt and peck? that currently goes on, thus increasing productivity and improving the quality of our work," says Allie. They wanted to leverage the fact that employees already spend significant time using Outlook, and also build upon intranet work they had already done with SharePoint. [Thanks to the The Shifted Librarian.] Posted by jamesr at 10:48 AM
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Clever blogsI'm pleased to report that an article on weblogs, written by me, has appeared in the latest edition of Image and Data Manager. Titled "Clever blogs", it provides an answer to the question "what is this thing called a weblog?", and explores the potential benefit for organisations and individuals. I'll republish the full text of the article when I get a chance... Posted by jamesr at 11:51 AM
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Lists in CSSFollowing on from the last blog entry, Mark Newhouse explores a lot of ways of formatting lists using CSS. To quote: In this article, I'll demonstrate how to use CSS to bring unwieldy lists under control. It's time for you to tell lists how to behave, instead of letting them run wild on your web page. [Thanks to Simon Willison.] Posted by jamesr at 11:37 AM
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K-Logging: Supporting KM with weblogsMichael Angeles writes about the value of k-logs (knowledge weblogs) within an organisation, from a librarian's perspective. To quote: Web-logging software has received plenty of attention as a quick and easy way to post content to a web site. Web logs (blogs) tend to fall into two categories: personal web logs that function sort of like diaries, and informational blogs that target a readership with a shared interest. But web logging can also be used to support knowledge management (KM)?the effort within an organization to share knowledge and help the organization achieve its mission. This form of web logging, called knowledge logging, or k-logging, is emerging as an inexpensive alternative to large-scale KM solutions. [Thanks to ia/.] Posted by jamesr at 12:14 PM
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Weblog-based content architecture for businessDave Pollard has posted a very interesting blog entry on using weblogs in business. In it, he outlines an enterprise-wide architecture model for using weblogs as a source of intranet content (there is even a pretty diagram). To quote: As weblog tools become more powerful and flexible, open sourcing of weblog add-ons increases, and RSS and XML technologies advance and become standard, the justification for migrating centralized knowledge management systems to a weblog-based architecture will grow more compelling. In the meantime, leading-edge knowledge organizations need to be piloting and experimenting with such architectures, if they don't wish to be left behind. Posted by jamesr at 12:56 PM
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RSS Feed Reader / News Aggregators DirectoryHaiko Hebig has put together an extensive list of news aggregators, broken down by operating system. Love it! [Thanks to The Shifted Librarian.] Posted by jamesr at 03:02 PM
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MovableType pluginsA new website for plugins to MovableType (the weblogging software that I use) has just been released. To quote: Movable Type offers the option to create plugins for the program. These plugins allow for new external outputs, and thanks to a great group of plugin authors, we have a wide variety of things to try out! This plugin directory lists all known MT plugins and provide information for using thems. Posted by jamesr at 10:00 AM
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Switching news aggregatorsI've been using AmphetaDesk for a while now, but I've finally made the switch across to another system. While AmphetaDesk has many desirable features, what was crippling me was the inability to mark items as "read". When you are reading 40+ weblogs, not having the "new" items clearly marked starts to get really painful... So, as of last week, I started using Syndirella. While it's one of the new kids on the block, it's got a lot of potential. It also tracks new and read articles in a very nice way (just press "space" to go to the next unread item). It's evolving rapidly, with three releases in the last week, each one addressing something that I was specifically looking for. The only downside is that it requires the bloated .NET Framework to run (a 20meg download!). Still, at least it means the application itself is less than 250k... Posted by jamesr at 08:30 AM
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What is RSS?Mark Pilgrim (well known in the blogging community) has just written an introductory article on RSS. This walks through the various different versions of RSS, and provides XML examples. To quote: RSS is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites, including major news sites like Wired, news-oriented community sites like Slashdot, and personal weblogs. But it's not just for news. Pretty much anything that can be broken down into discrete items can be syndicated via RSS: the "recent changes" page of a wiki, a changelog of CVS checkins, even the revision history of a book. Once information about each item is in RSS format, an RSS-aware program can check the feed for changes and react to the changes in an appropriate way. Posted by jamesr at 08:45 AM
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TechnoratiI've just come across another weblog popularity service: Technorati. This provides a good summary of who is linking to your blog, and other useful information. For a little money, you can even get an RSS feed of the same details... Posted by jamesr at 02:19 PM
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Ensuring valid RSSInvalid XML in RSS feeds cause a lot of problems (this is something that I've written about before). Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby have now done the world a huge service by releasing a free RSS validator. This is a thing of beauty, and I can only hope that everyone will take the time to check their feeds with this. You can read the original announcement here. (I'm a bit embarassed to say that my feed doesn't fully validate. While it is valid XML, it a couple of fields don't match the RSS specification. Needless to say, I'm going to get this fixed...) Posted by jamesr at 10:48 AM
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Comparing weblog softwareI have just come across a very handy weblog comparison site. It works like this: you pick up to five different packages to compare, and it builds you a table of features, showing which package does what. Very, very handy. [Thanks to ia/] Posted by jamesr at 05:56 PM
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A historical look at RSSMark Pilgrim has written a very informative blog entry on the history of RSS, and how such a messy format has become so popular. To quote: The problem with that list of RSS deficiencies is that it is also a list of necessities—RSS has flourished in a way that no other syndication format has, not despite many of these qualities but because of them. The very weaknesses that make RSS so infuriating to serious practitioners also make it possible in the first place. This is very interesting from a purely XML perspective, as it calls into question how XML standards are developed and used. (See Mark's comments on RDF, for example.) Posted by jamesr at 06:15 PM
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Law librarians as newscastersSusannah Crego writes about the value of law librarians as a source of news. Librarians are skilled researchers, and are ideally placed to manage the selective dissemination of information that large organisations need. To quote: For example, as a librarian surfs the Web, he can instantly post information concerning newly discovered Web sites to the log. Later, as time permits, this information can be transferred to sections of the intranet as official, categorized and organized "links." [Thanks to The Shifted Librarian.] Posted by jamesr at 10:49 AM
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Introduction to RSSMark Nottingham has written an excellent introduction to RSS titled RSS Tutorial for Content Publishers and Webmasters. RSS is, if you were wondering, the syndication method that can be used to keep track of recent news, or weblog updates. To say that RSS is tremendously important is understating the case. It supports an amazingly large and diverse peer-group that spreads news and opinion very efficiently across the globe. RSS also has many interesting implications in how corporate KM and CM solutions should be built. Of course, like all good things, it started simple and became more complex. Particularly when politics became involved. This article also helps to clarify where the different versions of RSS are at, and how they relate... [Thanks to Simon Willison's Weblog.] Posted by jamesr at 06:59 PM
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New weblog initiativeYou may have noticed that I don't tend to post much on weblogs themselves (I feel it is way too "introspective"). That being said, a new initiative has caught my attention: BlogMD. This has the following aims: The guiding principle behind the BlogMD initiative is that by creating standards in the weblog metadata "problem space", we can enable greater collaboration and interaction between existing applications, as well as paving the way for future, currently unforeseen metadata applications by reducing or eliminating much of the redundant, "reinventing the wheel" work currently involved in creating a new weblog metadata application. I think this is a great idea, and I look forward to see what comes of it in the near future. [Thanks to Andersja's blog.] Posted by jamesr at 12:00 PM
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RSS problemsI know I am not alone in having problems reading RSS feeds. Almost every day, my news aggregator (AmphetaDesk) complains about XML parsing problems in one of my news sources. This is just not good enough. It's a problem that needs to be fixed in the weblog software itself:
If it isn't valid XML, it isn't RSS. It's as simple as that. Some other posts discussing this problem: Posted by jamesr at 04:49 PM
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Managing employee blogsRay Ozzie has released a draft of the Groove policy on employee weblogs. While encouraging personal weblogs by employees is an interesting and challenging way of connecting with customers, it does potentially expose the company to additional legal liability. This draft policy presents a sensible middle ground that spells out the responsibilities of the employee, instead of listing a huge set of restrictions and legal clauses. Posted by jamesr at 10:05 AM
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Weblog aggregation toolThere's a tool that I've been quietly using for the last month to aggregate news feeds from 36 different sites. It's AmphetaDesk, and I would recommend it for anyone who doesn't already have an aggregation tool. So what does it do? Well, you copy-and-paste the URLs for the RSS feeds into the system, and it goes away and collects the most recent articles. These are then assembled into the one results page, making it easy to scan through and identify items of interest. I haven't mentioned this up to now, as I wanted to give it a "road test", to see how well it peformed in practice. My conclusion: it's good, very good, even. It is still in an early form, and there are a number of extra features I would like to have, but it certainly meets my core needs. Best yet, it's free. (Although you can contribute to its maintenance, if you like.) Posted by jamesr at 01:14 PM
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