infoarch

Recently I was asked to blog for IT Executive . IT Executive is a Dutch magazine and website about IT to help executives in IT decision-making. I thought I'd give it a go and will be starting soon. Tags van Technorati: IT , blogging

Google Labs recently launched a cool tool: Google News Timeline . Google Search has a comparable feature too if you know what to type in . You can use Google News Timeline to search what has been said about a certain topic, person or brand over time. This is great for companies for instance, but also for research. It helps you get a feeling for the time period the topic was hot, how much was written about the topic at a certain time, etc. But what I was wondering is, isn't this also very interesting for inside companies as well? We all experienced old ideas coming back to life in companies over time. For some reason that great idea you had didn't really take-off. But now all of a sudden it does. The strange thing I've seen many times is that this new interest for a topic or idea, doesn't always relate to or build on the research that was done in the past. It looks like a new idea, fresh from the start. But in reality it isn't (-- and hardly ever is). A Google Ne...

Some time ago I started thinking about how long product data should be archived? I'm not finding clear answers. I've heard people say: "Store it forever". That's the easy way to 'solve' this issue. Other say: "Store it for (about) 20 years." This sounds more realistic. But then I wonder when to start counting. Is this after the data have been created? Or is this after the product has been released to the customer? Someone else said: "Well, you should keep the product data as long as you have to service the customer's product." Good approach, but how long does the law require me to service a product? Finally, I found there are differences between types of product data. Product data from medical machines is different from software code of a text editor, for instance. This made me wonder: Are there different archiving rules for different types of product data? Is there anyone who can help me answer this question? The standards t...

Yesterday, I blogged about the statement: Information is the lifeblood of enterprises. Today I'd like to use this metaphor to explain why structured and unstructured information should be managed under architecture. Or in an integral way. I've been thinking and posting about this topic for some time now - it's basically the core of my job. To point to a few posts. Just recently I posted about 'PLM (product lifecycle management) and enterprise 2.0' . And longer ago about managing unstructured and structured information under architecture . As I've said before: I distinguish between unstructured and structured information in organizations. But they are not distinct. Regrettably this is common practice in most companies. You have people working on Product Lifecycle Management and Enterprise Resource Planning on the one hand. On other you have those that are implementing the intranet, rolling out wiki's and blogs, building document management systems and...

'Information: Lifeblood of Enterprise' is an interesting thesis. It's an interesting way to look at how the company runs too. I don't think many managers and employees in companies would agree with this thesis though. Those that agree are in information management, IT and communications. And this rings a bell with the 'process people' in organizations as well. But I do find this to be true, for all or most companies. A consultant once said to me: If this thesis isn't true, then what are all those employees doing behind their computers? What are they working on? Indeed, what they are doing is processing information of different types, amounts and abstractions. Employees gets emails, with or without links and attachments. These emails contain assignments and tasks. Information from the emails and documents is used to create new information. Then it is shared on a wiki, blog or a collaboration tool. This information is sometimes related to product and/or r...

As you (may) know I work for a company that makes printers (and copiers and scanners too). I was browsing around on the Wired website . Then I wanted to print (to pdf) one of their articles and I saw this: That's a very interesting and innovative way to advertise! --- If You Read This and Like It, Tweet This to your Followers: Wireless Printing http://is.gd/qzJY Tags van Technorati: printing , oce