MindTouch unveiled MindTouch Deki, a business wiki implemented as a virtual appliance. MindTouch Deki is a business software that installs quickly, giving different workgroups in organizations the ability to share information and collaborate with colleagues almost instantly and securely on their own network. MindTouch Deki is a complete pre-installed, pre-configured application and operating system that runs on any Windows or Linux machine. Scalable from small workgroups to large enterprises, it runs atop VMplayer, a free virtual appliance player from VMware. MindTouch Deki enables users to create, edit, share, search and store documents, emails, files and images securely behind a company’s firewall. With an interface that looks and works like a word processor, MindTouch Deki offers a WYSIWYG rich-text editing experience in a web browser. With the Outlook Connector, a user can work in MindTouch Deki and pull all the necessary emails in one place, convert them to wiki pages in one click and share the contents. Every wiki page in MindTouch Deki is stored in XML, which enables content to be integrated into existing web services, knowledge management, web publishing or any standards-based enterprise application. MindTouch Deki is free for the first five users and is designed for on-demand scalability; customers simply purchase more user licenses online when they are ready. The free license does not include software updates and fixes, support or certain advanced features such as Outlook Connector. A full license (for five users) starts at $995. http://www.mindtouch.com
Category: Collaboration and workplace (Page 59 of 97)
This category is focused on enterprise / workplace collaboration tools and strategies, including office suites, intranets, knowledge management, and enterprise adoption of social networking tools and approaches.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced IBM WebSphere Portal Express Version 6.0, the collaborative portal solution that provides a pre-built intranet and extranet experience out of the box for immediate use. WebSphere Portal Express Version 6.0 is a new solution that allows businesses of less than 1,000 employees or departments within large organizations to be more productive and more responsive to their customers. WebSphere Portal Express provides integrated portal, document management, Web content management and collaboration capabilities in a single package with flexible pricing options. WebSphere Portal Express includes IBM Lotus Component Designer Version 6.0, a development tool that script developers, IBM Lotus Domino application designers, Visual Basic developers and others can use to create applications. IBM WebSphere Portal Express Version 6.0 will be available on January 30, 2007, and is priced at $2,300 per 20 user pack, limited to 1000 registered users, or $39,999 per processor (100 processor value units). http://ibm.com/websphere/portalexpress6, http://ibm.com/lotus/smb
IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced IBM Lotus Connections – a business-ready social software platform, IBM Lotus Quickr – a new Web 2.0 collaborative content platform offering, IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5.1 – featuring expanded unified communications capabilities and increased interoperability with Microsoft software, and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8 open beta program starting this February. The new Lotus Notes client includes major upgrades to core applications and expanded integration with the new collaboration tools. http://www.ibm.com/
JustSystems, Inc. announced plans to launch its “xfy adapter” for IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. The adapter enables organizations to handle data stored in Lotus Notes and Domino databases in xfy, an application development and mashup platform for XML data. The new xfy adapter can access data stored in a Lotus Notes or Domino database, allowing organizations to leverage existing infrastructure investments and information. By combining this data with XML data from an XML database, XML documents within an organization or through Web services, it unlocks the information by presenting it visually with the xfy platform. xfy offers a wizard-like process to allow users to access external systems and applications. The XML data obtained from these sources is analyzed automatically, and displayed in a visual presentation that also enables end-users to switch the view and analyze the data from different angles. The original data is not edited or altered, so it enables organizations to comply with data security requirements. The adapter is scheduled for availability later this year. http://www.justsystems.com, http://www.xfy.com
We marvelled when we saw the prestigious Encyclopedia Britannica usurped by Microsoft’s Encarta. It was a tribute to the clever utilization of multimedia and excellent marketing that leveraged Microsoft’s position in the software world. Given Microsoft’s incredible resources and market clout, it was assumed that the Encarta franchise would build and thrive to become the most heavily utilized fact resource. Therefore, it was even more shocking when Wikipedia burst onto the scene in 2001. And it’s continued evolution demonstrates that this project is no fluke. There are over 1.5 million articles and there are over 100 international versions. How is this possible? Is it simply because it is a free reference resource? I do not think so. Average consumers seem to have voted for breadth and currency over authority. More importantly, a large group of contributors and reviewers seem to feel a pride of ownership in the work of their collaboration. This phenomena has interesting implications for publishing firms.
Wikimedia now has a number of related projects including Wikibooks and Wikiversity. Wikibooks has generated 23,476 content modules for over 1000 topics in less than three years. Wikiversity is in its formative stages but plans to offer free course materials and may provide a platform for developing research topics into wikimongraphs.
It is sometimes difficult to get past the fact that all Wikimedia content is free to focus upon the powerful authoring metaphor that they have created and proliferated. These very same techniques could be used by commercial and corporate publishers. All School, College, and Professional publishers could use these techniques to refine and improve the quality of their publications. These techniques could enable publishers to keep their intellectual property much more current than is possible with today’s authoring approach. And the collaboration aspect could help learners and professionals grow by exchanging and debating ideas. In the corporate world, we need look no further than the communities established around Microsoft Sharepoint to see how valuable information can be rapidly developed and disseminated. These communities have relieved Microsoft of a tremendous support burden.
The Wiki modules are quite similar to open source code modules… More on this in a subsequent post…. Your comments are encouraged!!
QUMAS announced a partnership with PleaseTech Ltd., which adds collaborative review and authoring capabilities to QUMAS DocCompliance. The partnership provides out-of-the-box interoperability between the QUMAS DocCompliance software and the PleaseTech PleaseReview software. PleaseReview reduces version control issues and creates an audit log of changes to documents. The integrated solution is available now from QUMAS and PleaseTech. http://www.qumas.com, http://www.pleasetech.com
Nora Barnes, Chancellor Professor of Marketing & Director, UMD Center for Marketing Research at the University of MA Dartmouth, along with co-author Eric Mattson, have finished their study of the Inc. 500 and their use of social media. This follows-up an earlier study from Nora on corporate blogging.
The obviously interesting headline finding, which I’ve pasted from Nora’s email is:
The Inc. 500 are thoroughly involved in social media at an adoption rate more than twice that of the Fortune 500. Best yet, this is probably the most valid study on corporate blogging etc. done to date, with a very low error level of just +/- 3%.
A summary of the findings in PDF is available here. Nora will be publishing more analysis of the research throughout 2007, some of which she will talk about here as one of our guest bloggers.
BrainKeeper has released it’s Enterprise Wiki software. The BrainKeeper Enterprise Wiki enables the creation of community, and provides the features needed to manage corporate knowledge. As an example, creating training materials with BrainKeeper reduces the time needed for new employees or contracted staff to ramp up and become effective. These training materials can also be used to answer specific questions, be easily updated as the company grows and expands, and help to capture knowledge gained from outside resources. The features within the Enterprise Wiki are specifically designed and developed to work within established business processes. And getting knowledge out of the system can be done in a variety of ways: a search engine, content tags, shortcuts, and dynamic hierarchies. Free trial accounts are available at http://www.brainkeeper.com.
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