Notes and Domino 8.5.1 … IBM announced the beta of Notes and Domino 8.5.1, with new mobile device support, eg, the iPhone. “IBM designed Lotus Notes 8.5.1 with agile development practices using social media such as blogs and Twitter to collect and make hundreds of refinements suggested by people who want to work smarter. They include enhancements to the way people edit messages, work with widgets and calendars, and new options for customizing search. These enhancements allow people to work smarter by spending more time on finding, creating and sharing valuable information and less time modifying the way that it is presented.” More

Collaboration Definitions … Often used, infrequently defined … just what is “collaboration”? “Many people, we suspect, would define collaboration as any situation where people work together in a coordinated way to achieve common objectives and would include highly specified and synchronized coordination, such as traditional assembly line operations. But not all forms of collaboration are equally powerful.” The authors explore the tensions in collaboration: transactional vs relational, loosely vs tightly coupled, and static vs dynamic. They propose this definition: “People and institutions getting better faster working together in flexible but enduring relationships where collective performance rapidly increases and new knowledge accumulates over time.” More

FreshBooks Collaboration … FreshBooks added contractor collaboration capabilities to its online invoicing service. “Through the “Contractor” feature, FreshBooks users can create and share client projects across FreshBook accounts, with multiple users able to access different accounts. Formerly, FreshBooks users couldn’t collaborate on projects across the Internet. Of course, there are privacy issues to managing a project online. Businesses may not want to show a contractor the markup rate they are charging for services to a client. FreshBooks maintains that you can share certain information (like invoices, time sheets, billing) but also keep privileged client information private on the network.” More

Six Work Styles and Office Layouts … Steelcase recently did a research project, and discovered 6 distinct work groups: the concierge, the keeper, the processor, the broker, the player, and the specialist. Depending on which you are, dictates the type of office layout that’s best for you. Eg, “The Broker: This individual is responsible for distributing information. His or her work has a broad scope and is usually highly unstructured. Brokers are very interactive and they may have difficulty finding time to do individual work. Files are typically stored vertically while awards and trophies are often displayed.” More

SharePoint vs Alfresco … A high level review of SharePoint vs Alfresco. Ultimate conclusion: “There isn’t really anything in the platform comparison above that makes you think Alfresco is better than SharePoint. There’s also nothing to make you think that SharePoint is better than Alfresco. And we certainly aren’t believers in the open source vs proprietary bandwagon — there’s room for both. But the reality is, SharePoint is in there with a thriving ecosystem that Alfresco doesn’t appear to duplicate. Yes, open source is making more in roads into the enterprise, but they are still going to meet SharePoint at the door. It’s not impossible to push it aside and take its place, but it’s an uphill battle that won’t be easily won.” More

Groove in Office 2010 … In the Office 2010 wave, Groove is being renamed and repositioned to play better with SharePoint. It will become SharePoint Workspace Manager. More

FaceTime for BlackBerry and OCS … FaceTime added support for BlackBerry messages and logging of group chats from Office Communications Server into IMAuditor. For BlackBerry: “The new IMAuditor version 9.7 integrates with BlackBerry Enterprise Server to capture SMS and PIN messages (PIN allows users to send messages between BlackBerry devices based on their personal identification numbers). This enables managers to monitor messages sent by corporate BlackBerry users, an increasingly important requirement for companies in regulated industries such as financial services, healthcare and energy. For example, regulations in the financial services sector, such as the US’s SEC and the UK’s FSA as well as other regional financial services authorities, demand that all electronic records — including communication sent via instant messaging and SMS – be logged and archived.” More

Other Items
– There’s a new collaboration-oriented resource for cardiovascular physicans.
– Mike shares thoughts on group chat in OCS 2007 R2.
– Gabrielle’s looking for people who use mind mapping software in virtual project team contexts.