Team Collaboration Report

• Reports from the Office 2.0 Conference … I am gutted that I couldn’t be at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week, but have enjoyed reading the coverage others have written. Computer Business Review, Marc Orchant and Dan Farber.

• From Charlie Wood … “This week at the Office 2.0 Conference I expected to hear mostly about business-oriented applications of blogs, feeds, wikis, tags, and other Web 2.0 technologies. But what I actually heard was more about AJAX and SaaS as applied to old applications like spreadsheets, word processors, and calendars.“
• From Stephen O’Grady … “The question put to me a few days ago by a polite friend, upon hearing that I was going to an Office 2.0 conference, was simple: “What’s Office 2.0?” My equally respectful reply was: I really don’t know. This conference has done little to change that, which frankly is what I expected. Much as I can with its etymological progenitor, Web 2.0, I can tell you (probably) what Office 2.0 is not, but pinning down just what it is would be beyond my limited capabilities.“
• From PCWorld Blogs … Esther Dyson says that “doing all your productivity in a purely Web-based fashion makes no sense at all unless connectivity gets a lot better than it is today …. She says that as far as she’s concerned, Office 2.0 (the concept, not the conference) isn’t so much about Web-based word processing and spreadsheets as it is about a new task-based approach to productivity, one that incorporates stuff like word processing and spreadsheets but is organized around projects and processes rather than documents.“
• From Andrew McAfee … “The conference opened with [Dyson] being interviewed by CNET‘s Dan Farber. This was bad news and good. Bad because I was up next, and she is an incredibly tough act to follow. Good because one of her strongest themes around the future of IT-supported work (at least as I heard her) is also one that I find critially important, and that I stressed in my speech.“

• What’s missing from Exchange 2007? … Brien reminds us about the features that have been deemphasized or removed from Exchange Server 2007, for the purposes of helping people making informed decisions about upgrading or not. De-emphasized features include public folders, CDOEx, WebDAV, ExOLEDB, store events, and streaming backups. The discontinued feature list is even longer. SearchExchange
• Zimbra in Academic Institutions … Zimbra announced that more than 50 educational institutions have deployed the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. It is unclear from the press release whether this is the for-free open source edition, or the for-fee Network Edition. prnewswire.com
• Attunity InFocus 2.0 … Attunity released Version 2.0 of Attunity InFocus, for the development and deployment of “Workplace Applications” to help people get their work done. The products aims to help people “deal with, explore and analyze the unknown or unexpected; innovate or create new approaches, processes, products or market segments; and collaborate with others to help them do such things“. Available immediately. ThomasNet
• Google Docs … Google announced Google Docs, a combination of its online document authoring solution Writely and its online spreadsheeting application Google Spreadsheets. Google Docs is file-type compatible with Microsoft Word and Excel, but offers smoother collaboration amongst users. Documents are organized by tags, not folders. Available immediately; users require a (free) Google Account to log in. eWeek GoogleWatch, Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

• A writer for The Register-Guard likes what she sees, but warns that it’s not for everyone.
• Richard from ComputerWorld says “the Docs program … is so underpowered we wouldn’t recommend it even for casual use“.

• Zoho Projects 1.0 … Zoho shifted its Zoho Projects project management offering out of beta. Users can manage multiple projects via one of the for-fee premium plans. Available immediately. Zoho Blog
• Zoho Office … Zoho launched its integrated online office suite at the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week. “Zoho Virtual Office” includes Zoho Writer (word processing), Zoho Sheet (spreadsheeting), Zoho Show (presentations), Zoho Planner (task management), and more. Virtual Office is currently in closed beta; you have to request an account. TechCrunch, also Read/Write Web
• Tips on Dealing with Email Clutter … Stuart shares his secrets for dealing with the clutter that can accumulate in email. Ideas (given for Outlook, but these are generalizable): (1) use rules for filtering messages, (2) use flags to help sort messages in the Inbox (that’s non-GTD advice if ever I heard it), (3) get an anti-spam solution, and (4) if you have one, let your executive assistant handle some/many of your messages. (BTW Stuart, I have 0 messages in my Inbox right now!) Connect IT News
• What does “lock-in” mean? … Duffbert considers what the term “lock-in” means when applied to a range of vendors and products. Perhaps another way to phrase the term is “decision consequences” … “as a result of making Decision A, what else will be true and for what period of time?” Duffbert’s Random Musings
• Amicus Upgrades to Zimbra 4.0 … Amicus, a hosting partner for Zimbra, upgraded their Zimbra Collaboration Suite servers to Version 4.0. Amicus now offers these new features to its hosting customers: Zimbra Documents (online documents) and mobile device support with over-the-air sync, among others. Available immediately. PR Leap
• Don’t Rely on Internet Email in a Crunch … Don’t rely on Internet emai for “time-sensitive, mission-critical correspondence” write John. Why … (a) internet email isn’t engineered for guaranteed delivery, (b) an email message can get stuck on a server, and (c) spam and virus filters might mis-classify the message and put it into quarantine. For immediate communications, John says to use the … (see last sentence in article). Intranet Journal
• Near-Time Update … Near-Time rolled out an update to its hosted collaboration platform, adding enhanced roles and permissions functionality. “The roles and permissions feature allows four access levels, giving each the ability to perform different functions. The Editor level can create Wiki and blog pages and edit any content on the platform; the Author level can author pages and edit its own content; the Commenter level is only able to comment on any page; and the Reader level is only able to view content on the platform. The feature enables small groups to cost effectively benefit from the power tools of large organizations while applying the scale of the Web itself. Conversely, with the new feature, large organizations are able to manage multiple users with ease.” Available immediately. BusinessWire
• Wiki Adoption … Atlassian has some pointers on how to get wikis adopted by co-workers and colleagues, and has started a wiki page that requests ideas and feedback. Forced registration to view the page is not the best strategy for user adoption IMHO, but it will probably work … Atlassian Blog
• JotSpot Additions … JotSpot added three new features to its wiki/web office suite, that being a group directory, forums and to-do lists. Read/Write Web
• SharePoint Conference in Orlando FL … The SharePoint Information Worker Conference 2007 is being held in Orlando FL from January 31-February 2, 2007. “The three-day SharePoint Information Worker Conference 2007 is designed specifically for business professionals who need to stay on the leading edge of Microsoft’s Office System and SharePoint technologies. Conferees may choose from more than 30 sessions spanning three tracks, and visit exhibits from industry-leading providers of value-added SharePoint add-ons and services. Both SharePoint 2003 and 2007 will be covered.” Looks like this is timed and placed to start a few days after Lotusphere 2007 ends on the 25th. PRWeb
• Parlano Rules … Parlano announced that Basex, a NY research firm, gave MindAlign 4.46 out of 5 in a recent product analysis. A free copy of the report is available for download. Parlano
• Do Virtual Teams Work? … Recent research by Cisco found that an over-reliance on email plus bad virtualness habits can lead to diminishing trust in others on a virtual team. The study concluded that video conferencing would solve everyone’s problems. Silicon Republic

Mobility Report

• PeopleCube and Notify Technology … PeopleCube, the makers of the Meeting Maker enterprise calendaring solution, announced a strategic partnership with NotifyLink Corporation for the development of a wireless access capability for users. The resulting technology will permit access to Meeting Maker calendars from BlackBerry, Treo and Windows Mobile devices. Available November 2006. PeopleCube, plus NotifyLink‘s view.
• NextAction! 1.0 for BlackBerry … S4BB Ltd. offers NextAction! for BlackBerry, a replacement for the internal Task/To Do application on BlackBerry devices. The intention is to help users implement David Allen’s GTD system with greater ease. PDA Top Soft