The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• One strategy to deal with rising fuel prices and highway congestion: 4 10-hour work days. “Some employers have noticed, and they’re giving their staffs the option to work four, 10-hour days instead of five 8-hour days, effectively cutting their commuting costs (fuel-wise at least) by 20 percent and putting a dent in CO2 emissions.“

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Traction Software released Version 4.0 of Traction TeamPage, its enterprise collaboration software. New features: personal profile pages, email notification of changes, page templates and forms, moderation of content, draft status options for wiki pages, page name management, and more. “TeamPage 4.0 comes with a front page and project workspaces that include hand authored links, as well as easily configured dynamic sections, capable of automatically surfacing what’s important or new. Each section can now show content events as well as tags, search results and timed-ordered content. Content event include recent page edits, drafts awaiting approval, recently published pages, and newly requested pages.” Government Computer News gave Version 4.0 a pretty solid review (“TeamPage is just the kind of wiki platform which can make an impact in Government“); eWeek also has a review.
• The Enterprise 2.0 Conference is on this week in Boston. It’s the first year in the four year history of the event that I haven’t been involved.
• nForm announced Midori, a project management application built on SharePoint (hat tip, David). It’s similar to Basecamp, but built on SharePoint.
• Box.net announced Box Mobile for BlackBerry, for access to a Box.net account from a BlackBerry device. “BlackBerry smartphone owners can use Box.net’s service to quickly and easily access content stored online. Box Mobile saves time for users who are on the road or out of the office and need access to their data – from documents to videos to photos – and want to share these files with colleagues, friends and family. Box.net also plans to develop and expand the functionality in future releases.” Available immediately.
• Robert looks at the question of which web conferencing solution a company should choose, and outlines a number of decision points, including (a) hosted or premises based, (b) software-only or hardware-and-software, (c) the need for pre-installed client software or not, (d) voice integration, and (e) integrating the offering with other products. He then looks at a number of tools, including Lotus Sametime Unyte, GoToMeeting, Microsoft Live Meeting, Acrobat Connect, and more.
• Microsoft is expecting 50% growth in sales of Windows Mobile devices this year. “Eddie Wu, the software company’s managing director of OEM embedded devices in Asia, said the company expects to sell 20 million “units” of its software in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, which ends in June, according to the article. And the company expects to grow at least 50 percent annually over the next two years, he added. Microsoft sold more than 11 million units of its Windows Mobile software in its 2006-2007 fiscal year, which ended June a year ago.“

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• The Boston Business Journal recently outlined 10 ways to reduce distraction and increase focus: (1) practice attention and train for paying attention, (2) be wary of interruptions, (3) send fewer messages, (4) focus on other people, (5) embrace “white space” in your calendar and in place, (6) cut back on multitasking, (7) eat mindfully, and more. The recommendations were based on a new book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, and readers voted on their “best way” to overcome distractions (#1 = cut back on multitasking).
• ComputerWorld lists 8 helpful tools for road warriors, including charging devices, wireless access services, wireless signal boosters, and device protection options.

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Apple announced the iPhone 3G and a major revision to the .Mac service, providing push email, contacts and calendar. MobileMe, the .Mac update, also supports Outlook on the PC. On the iPhone 3G, see InformationWeek and ComputerWorld.