infoarch

I've promised Bill Ives that I'd write a blogpost about Darwin Awareness Engine a long time ago. Finally, here's my post about this new and interesting service. Sorry it took so long... How do you keep up with the news, tweets, updates and feeds? We live in the wonderful world of information abundance. But many feel overwhelmed by the amount and speed of information. Some even talk about information overload. I described how I keep up with what's going on  in the world and in my area's of interest. But can't it be better? Yes, it can. This is where all kinds of new(er) solutions pop up. Like Techmeme and Postrank . There's even talk of Web Squared, Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web , which should help us filter through loads of information coming at us. Not just by highlighting 'the best tweets and feeds', but my semantically analyzing and summarizing the information. The Darwin Awareness Engine fits in this movement. And I think they're do...

Location-based services are very interesting, I find. And I see a big future for them. The fact that you can connect content to a location is intriguing. It's even more fascinating to realize that it's not just content linked to a location, but also the person sharing the content is linked to it. I've been using Foursquare since the beginning, checking in regularly (now 1379 checkins). I changed my location sharing strategies several times: from sharing everything on Twitter to sharing nothing and everything in between. Looking at the numbers location-based services are growing , but they're still a niche. It's great to see businesses experimenting with these services. Starting now will give them an edge when things go mainstream. But has it been useful to me? Has it made me more productive? Have I met more interesting people? Did I get interesting discounts? In short: No, it didn't. Let me explain. It's great to get badges every now-and-then, to s...

There are lots of good bloggers and blogposts out there. But every now and then I run into a post that is just great. This is one of them: A Brief History of the Corporation: 1600 to 2100 by Venkatesh Rao. It's a long post! So, make sure you have some time to read and process it. Why do I think this post is so interesting? Well, there's been lots of debate about what social media means for traditional business. Will it change or is it changing the way we do business? Is the traditional, hierarchical way of organizing companies sustainable? Is social media correcting the industrial revolution? Or should we say 'the industrial interruption', like 'The Cluetrain Manifesto'  says. Is this enterprise 2.0 or social business? Much has been and is being written about this topic. Just think of the books 'Wikinomics' , 'Macrowikinomics' and 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' itself. So, what is this post about. In it's own words: The Age ...

Maybe you've already seen this great video by Kevin Jones ? If not, go ahead, watch and reshare it! Great, eh?! It's something I say in my workshops about social media strategy. Yes, it's important to think about social media concepts and strategy. What do we want to achieve with social media? Which social tools are we going to use? Etc. But if thinking about these things keeps you from doing and experiencing social media, you're on the wrong track. So, I stress the trying, experimenting, doing part of social media. Hopefully this video will get you going! I loved it.

Social Media should support networks within companies and over its boundaries. It should break down silo's in companies. The same goes for the silo's in people's lives, work and private life. But does it really? I've been wondering about this topic for some time. I've been rereading The Cluetrain Manifesto  and found it's been mentioned there as well. And now with the arrival of Google+ people are wondering if this will be the social backbone (must-read piece BTW!). What am I talking about? Well, we have all these social tools that support parts of our lives. Some only work on the intranet, some only on the internet. Some are more for personal, private sharing, others are more work-related. Many have approximately the same functionality. So, you always get the question: Where should I share my information (without pushing the same information to all these services at once)? And where do I get an overview of all my social interactions? I was hoping somet...

I love my iPad ! What a wonderful gadget it is! When we got it (with a newspaper subscription) I was wondering: Is it really worth it? I have an iPhone and a laptop, what do I need an iPad for then? But, again I experienced that using is believing .The iPad (- I have the iPad1) fits perfectly between the iPhone and laptop. In lots of cases it takes over usage time from the iPhone and laptop. For instance, reading email is great on the iPhone and the iPad. Instant-on is a killer. Even my wife hardly fires up the (Windows) laptop to process email. Although typing longer emails is still done on the iPad, most emails can be processed by a quick and short reply using the iPad. Reading news and feeds is wonderful on the iPad as well. Apps like Flipboard are mindblowing. I'm amazed by how quickly I can go through feeds, tweets, etc. using Flipboard, compared to Google Reader or Twitter itself. And I love the way news is presented. It feels and looks right. And I'm sure we haven...

Writing reviews about the books I´ve been reading isn't easy I find. For some reason when I finish a book I postpone writing a review for a long time. I'm open to tips to posting it soon. Review while you're reading? Block the calendar, focus and type it out? Well, I hope to share my comments on a couple of great books I've read. Free by Chris Anderson, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, Macrowikinomics by Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Grown up digital by Don Tapscott and The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge. These books were an interesting and enjoyable read. Currently I'm reading two books and planning to read three more. I'm reading The Cluetrain Manifesto by Levine et al (actually re-reading it, with the 'Cluetrain-10-years-later-commentary') and What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. The other three books that are waiting on my desk are: The Living Company , The Information and The Power of Pull by John Hagel, John Seely Brown & Lang Div...

Yep, using is believing.  Most of the time at least. Try to explain someone why he/she should buy an iPad. Or should use Twitter. Or Google+. It's not very easy (but some are really good at it). Sometimes it's even frustrating, when your audience scrutinizes every sentence trying to describe the affordance of a tool. It's even one of the things I catch myself thinking when I give social media strategy workshops . 'They should just start doing  it (in a smart way)'. In the meantime, this doesn't keep me from talking, blogging, demoing to trigger people. Just like the first link in this post triggered me to write this post!

How do you evaluate your intranet? There are lots of ways to evaluate. Interviews with users, intranet analytics, internal polls, scan by a consultant, etc. Participating in an international survey is another way. For this reason I'd like to advise you to join Jane McConnell's Global Web Workplace Survey . By participating you get access to the survey results containing a huge amount of information about intranet trends but also the state of affairs of intranet in the world. Last year 440 companies participated. It would be great if even more would participate this year! Just to give you an idea of the survey results, check out my posts about the survey reports of the previous year. As you see the survey questions can be used to evaluate your intranet. Did we miss important features and/or trends? And what are other intranet managers doing that inspires us to do so as well? Jane also collected some statements from participant here as well. So I hope you will join, it's wo...