Category: Collaboration and workplace (Page 62 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.

Adobe & Microsoft headed for battle over PDF

June 2, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

The Wall Street Journal reported today that talks between Adobe and Microsoft over the inclusion of PDF creation in the upcoming release of Office have broken down, and they speculate that Adobe will file an antitrust suit as a result. The issue is that MS was planning to include PDF creation for free, which is obviously a direct hit at Adobe’s Acrobat revenue. If you have been following Microsoft’s XPS (XML Paper Specification) development as we reported here, you won’t be too surprised.

It is too early to know exactly how this will play out, but anyone with applications or workflows that depend on heavy use of both Office and PDF needs to keep this on their radar!

UPDATE: Mary Jo Foley has more info on this.

More on Microsoft

May 18, 2006 / Leonor Ciarlone / 0 Comments

One of the publications I find very useful and always relevant is Knowledge@Wharton, produced by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Check out this timely article, Microsoft’s Multiple Challenges: Is its Size a Benefit or a Burden?

Excerpt: “Microsoft announces that it will spend about $2 billion to fend off rivals such as Google and thwart Sony’s video game ambitions, and the company loses more than $30 billion in market capitalization in a day. Fair trade or overreaction?” My favorite quote? Wharton finance professor Andrew Metrick’s comment that “$2 billion to Microsoft is like a pimple on an elephant.”

Certainly true, but the investment demonstrates the range of rivals Microsoft faces in retaining its “titan” status for the long-term.

Microsoft’s XPS to compete with Adobe’s PDF

May 17, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

As this news item reminded us today, vendors are gearing up for the launch of Vista and Office 12. We are already seeing vendors announcing support for both in various ways, but this will continue to build to a deluge of announcements over the next 6 months. XPS (XML Paper Specification) is one of the new pieces of Vista and Office 12 that bears paying attention to. While it is not likely to displace Adobe’s PDF (certainly not in the near term at least), it will certainly be used instead of PDF for certain applications. What those applications will be is something worth thinking about. There is more info on XPS from Microsoft here, including links to the specification, developer blogs etc.

Blog posting from Word 2007

May 12, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 1 Comment

Looks like Microsoft is adding blog posting support to Word 2007 in a way that not only does not screw up your HTML, but attempts to take advantage of Word features bloggers care about without other features getting in the way. This is more appealing than it may sound at first, and may be useful when building enterprise blog applications where Office is entrenched and familiar. It will be in Office 2007 Beta 2. Learn more from the developers.

Enterprise Portal Report & Tutorial

March 22, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Our colleagues over at CMS Watch have published a new report on enterprise portals. As our earlier reports here and here on the portal market suggested, the list of vendors covered in the report shows the market is now dominated by infrastructure players. Janus Boye, the author of the report is giving a tutorial on Enterprise Portal Software: Architecture and Products – Intensive Review & Roadmap for Product Selection at our upcoming conference in San Francisco, and also speaking on Challenges in Integrating Portals & Content Management Systems. The report, tutorial, and conference session would be a great way to get fully up-to-speed on corporate portals and content management.

Onfolio

March 8, 2006 / Bill Trippe / 1 Comment

Onfolio, a company and tool I have used and liked, is being acquired by Microsoft. Onfolio is led by J. J. Allaire, one of the incredibly bright and hands-on entrepeneurial Allaire brothers who developed Cold Fusion. According to the Boston Globe, the entire six-person Onfolio team is moving from Massachusetts to Redmond. This is much like the case of Ray Ozzie’s Groove, where Microsoft is acquiring Allaire as much as they are acquiring Onfolio.

Also according to the Boston Globe, the Onfolio tool, which came in three retail versions ranging in price from $30 to $149, will be available for free, starting today, as part of the Windows Live Toolbar. However, I checked the Windows Live Ideas site quickly and couldn’t find it.
UPDATE: The Toolbar Beta is there now.

The Attention Economy

March 7, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Lot’s of talk about ‘attention’ here at ETech. Thinking of attention in terms of economics is fascinating and thought provoking, but I have not quite got the essence of the excitement – just saw Tim Bray who also said he was not sure he got it, and everyone at my lunch table squirmed and then said they didn’t get it either.

The last thing I want is someone managing or making money or even knowing about my attention allocation. I don’t mind some – I am not averse to sharing certain preferences and behavior – but it is mine to share or not, and mine to monetize or not. As a consumer, what is the return? I get more personalized ads? I get stats on my own behavior? I get more people and advertisers paying attention to me? I definitely am not yet interested in making it easier for others to try to influence me based on some attempt at interpreting my activity/interest – is this a matter of not just being good enough at it yet? Maybe.

Will Attention Trust make a difference? I don’t know.

I understand that some people have more intense desires to communicate everything they think and do and will buy into attention for that, but surely that is an edge group…?

Attention and its scarcity and therefore value are important to pay attention to when deveoping products or businesses – but it is not all in the user’s interest.

UPDATE:
Listened to Michael Goldhaber’s talk on the economy today at ETech. He’s the one who everyone quotes. Interesting talk, but I still don’t get it. I suppose the desire for attention might be as rational as the desire for money (although I hope not – it doesn’t seem as practical, you can’t simply bank attention over time without its value diminishing). Trading in “attention bonds” as Seth Goldstein wants, is a bit scary in that it depends on people who don’t think they get enough attention!? I thought Seth’s talk was the most enlightening on the topic.

UPDATE 2:
And this will be it for the updates. See Jon Udell’s and Doc Searls’ comments on this.

UPDATE 3:
Well, it is now 2018, and does this dated or what!

Continuous Partial Attention

March 7, 2006 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Linda Stone is talking about “continuous partial attention” a phrase she coined in 97 or 98. What is it? It is what I am doing right now, paying partial attention to Linda talking, partial to writing this blog entry, partial to those sitting around me rustling papers or not, I am also interspersing all this with thoughts of lunch, what session I will attend this afternoon, und so weiter …. We all do it.

It is not surprising. It is the way the brain has always worked (well at least for a while – remember all those cognitive science experiments in the 70s) – it is now just more explicit and we are getting better at it. Or at least some of us are; as much as I do it my daughter leaves me in the dust.

Apparently Linda has seen a backlash about the idea, but, as she said, “…continuous partial attention isn’t bad or good – it just is.”

Just as technologies are only tools that can be used for good or bad, our brain hardware can also be used for better or worse, to help or hinder. Our brain functions can be mis-used just like technology. As we get better with continuous partial attention, the result can be beneficial or rude. (e.g., easier to be rude and interrupt when you feel like it – it is not always OK) we have to learn the ethics as well as the efficiencies.

There are also some interesting challenges for product development. There are different tolerances for multi-processing, and these change even within one human unit, e.g., when you are tired vs. alert.

Category: Collaboration and workplace (Page 62 of 97)

Adobe & Microsoft headed for battle over PDF

More on Microsoft

Microsoft’s XPS to compete with Adobe’s PDF

Blog posting from Word 2007

Enterprise Portal Report & Tutorial

Onfolio

The Attention Economy

Continuous Partial Attention

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