Team Collaboration

• What’s the Desired Outcome? … That question is important even for team projects (duh!). “This is even more pronounced for collaborative projects. Educating and energizing audiences through collaborative projects is an emerging tool for bringing about desired changes in their behavior. These projects can be successful – look at Wikipedia – but they require clear guidance. They need a well understood and very specific mission, prominent operational rules and code of conduct, and a highly defined end-product (or set of end-products). Setting up a project without this structure is a recipe for failure. If any activity does happen – and without the structure it may not even get this far – it will likely be confused or even contrary to the original goals. Take the time to provide guidance for online projects – it is an up front cost but will pay off in much higher likelihood of success.” INfluence
• What Enterprise 2.0 Isn’t … James provides a neat analysis of what Enterprise 2.0 isn’t. He’s got four bullet points, and concludes with this: “In summary – it is more than creating a read/write intranet, it has to be networked in a way that lets us tap into the internal wisdom of the crowds. On its own, all the open-source social software software in the world will not upgrade your organisation to Enterprise 2.0.” ChiefTech
• SMB Dislike SaaS … IDC released its projections for 2007 for IT spending by the SMB market. Key ideas: (1) SMBs don’t want dumbed-down products; in many ways they need smarter editions because they lack the resources to manage them. (2) rising energy costs and security concerns will fuel growth in remote meeting options. (3) SMBs prefer to own their stuff, not lease it, thus putting a dampener on software-as-a-service players. ConnectITNews
• Zoho Integration with Box.net … Zoho announced that Box.net released an integration with Zoho Writer, enabling people to open and edit Word documents directly from a Box.net file store using Zoho Writer. Box.net built the integration using Zoho’s API. Zoho Blogs

Mobility

• Palm LifeDrive Discontinued … Palm withdrew the LifeDrive Mobile Manager, its handheld PDA with a 4GB hard drive. Palm says that other devices have picked up the functionality previously in the LifeDrive. Charlotte.com
• ImNotify 2.0 … ImNotify released Version 2.0 of its text messaging service, which provides a Windows-based application for sending text messages to single or multiple people. Messages can be delayed for sending at a pre-determined future time. ImNotify
• Mobile Email for Consumers … The CEO of Synchronica projects that 2007 is the year when mobile email will take off for consumers. He’s even got self-serving analysis: “However, with this mainstream adoption of mobile e-mail, it will likely mean a shift in who the big players are in the area. While BlackBerry and Microsoft have been very successful in the business world, their proprietary products don’t convert well to the open standards realm of consumer smart phones, he said. What’s likely to happen is other vendors will step up to provide the mobile email services on open standards platforms. For instance, Synchronica offers products based around SyncML and Push IMAP, both of which are currently available on between 300 and 500 different devices worldwide.” eChannelLine

Productivity

• Today! … Today is the day, not next week, not tomorrow, not “Monday”. “What if today is the day and now is the time. What if you do it..even though it’s not convenient, comfortable, practical or easy? What if you do it just because you’re sick of almost getting things done and sick of mediocrity. Successful people deal without discomfort and adversity every day. Life is an uncomfortable, bumpy, lumpy, fantastic, amazing and scary ride. Strap in and hold on – you might just surprise yourself…” Craig Harper
• What Motivates You? … Figure out what motivates you, be that tangible/intangible or intrinsic/extrinsic. And then set in place a way of using that to motivate action. Daily PlanIt
• What Does “Success” Mean to You? … Steve challenges us to (1) think about what success means to us, and (2) to define it in our own terms, not in the terms of the expectations of others. All Things Workplace
• Three Lessons from Being Fired … Mike shares the three lessons he’s learnt from being fired from various jobs during his career: (1) don’t take your job for granted, (2) take time to clarify expectations, and (3) don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Michael Hyatt
• Commitment-Making and Fulfilling … Michael encourages us to “practice making great commitments and fulfilling those commitments“, which are keys to effectively completing projects. Book Yourself Solid