Webinar on Colligo Contributor 4.0 … Colligo Networks is getting ready to release Version 4 of Colligo Contributor, and they are holding a webinar on June 30 to discuss the new version. “Join Barry Jinks, Colligo’s Founder and CEO and Dave Foster, Vice President of Product Development as they discuss how SharePoint is moving beyond the portal and how Colligo can help you respond rapidly with off-the-shelf client solutions. You’ll see a hands-on demonstration of Colligo Contributor 4.0 (to be released in June) and learn how to get more horsepower from your SharePoint investment.” Registration required. More

Google Sync for Outlook … Google announced a sync add-on for Outlook, allowing Outlook users to synchronize their Google Apps data with Outlook. “Today we’re excited remove another key barrier to enterprise adoption of Google Apps with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook lets you use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions. Many business users prefer Gmail’s interface and features to products they’ve used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we’ve developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail’s web interface to access their information when they’re not on their work computer.” More

Tutorial on Meeting Workspaces … Brien provides a tutorial on Meeting Workspaces in SharePoint. “A Meeting Workspace serves as a way to prepare for a meeting and a way to report the meeting’s outcome once it’s done. For example, suppose that you wanted to hold a meeting to discuss your organization’s latest press release. You would probably want to make sure that everyone attending the meeting had a copy of the press release. Instead of manually distributing hard copies of the release in the meeting, you could include it in the Meeting Workspace. This way, all meeting attendees have access to the press release ahead of time.” More

Sales Productivity and Social Collaboration … Nicky talks about using social collaboration tools to drive sales productivity, with a focus on the basics. “Social media solutions are no different. They need to be integrated with existing sales processes not sit outside them. So having a formalized sales methodology in place before incorporating social media and sales productivity tools (e.g. internal wikis and collaboration forums) will increase the chances of seeing success. Just 48% of Laggards compared to 66% of Best-In-Class currently have formalized and documented sales processes. 33% of Laggards plan to implement internal social media tools. They stand to gain an advantage if they accelerate the adoption of these tools.” More

Yuuguu for Skype … Yuuguu launched its Skype add-in for screen sharing as an open beta. “The Yuuguu for Skype Beta is the simplest and quickest way for Skype users to instantly screen share, and collaborate in real time with one or more of their contacts on Skype. Importantly, there is nothing to download or install for the session participants – only the host needs access to Yuuguu.” For PC and Mac. More

The Value of Teamwork … Patrick argues that real teamwork offers tremendous benefits to a firm. “I honestly believe that the single biggest competitive advantage that a company can pursue today is getting its leaders on the same page. I’m not implying that other disciplines aren’t important—they are. But the truth is that without effective teamwork, without a cohesive group of people leading an organization, a company cannot begin to tap into the potential that it has in any other areas.” He also talks about overcoming the five dysfunctions of teams. More

Tungle vs TimeBridge … Rafe, a long-standing TimeBridge user for meeting scheduling, comments on some of the positive differences in Tungle, a competing service. “For an Outlook user, Tungle is a little better than TimeBridge, for a few reasons. First, instead of requiring you to pick discrete blocks of time for your meetings, as TimeBridge does, Tungle lets you paint whole swaths of your calendar as available, and it lets attendees pick the best time for them inside those blocks. For example, if you select 1:00 to 5:00pm for a 30-minute meeting, an attendee can select 2:30. With TimeBridge, you’d have to create 8 different proposed half-hour meeting times to make that possible. Except you can’t; TimeBridge only lets you earmark five options for each meeting. Tungle also doesn’t clutter your Outlook calendar with tentative time slots you’re reserved for meetings, which TimeBridge does. Personally, I like seeing on my Outlook calendar what’s tentatively held for me by TimeBridge, but the Tungle view is neater.” More

Wiki for Project Management … Jason outlines how to use a wiki for managing projects. “This one page represents an excellent snapshot of the project at any given time and does not require a complicated symphony of document updates and email exchanges. Furthermore, if there is a question about the project or any specific line item, the user can launch a separate discussion that is linked back to this wiki page for context. Using wiki pages to manage projects is clearly a better way provided you don’t need the feature of something like project that include automatic dependencies, critical path calculations, etc. In my experience, few projects require these feature and even fewer project managers know project well enough to justify the effort of creating and updating the plans.” More

MemberToMember for SharePoint … SusQtech released MemberToMember, a social networking add-on for SharePoint. “MemberToMember increases the efficiency of team collaboration by giving team members professional social networking tools integrated with SharePoint’s out of the box features. In addition to the ability to comment on and rate content, create groups based on common interests, and provide colleague and social distance information, MemberToMember also utilizes an intuitive social media interface that anyone familiar with services such as LinkedIn, Facebook or MySpace will recognize.” More

Social Product Development … PTC says that more than 40 companies are using Windchill ProductPoint for collaborative product development. “The platform-called Windchill ProductPoint-uses the SharePoint collaboration engine from Microsoft to allow product development teams to share data stored in PTC applications-including its Pro/Engineer CAD package and its Windchill product data management solution. ProductPoint also incorporates Web 2.0 technologies such as instant messaging and wikis to make it easier for team members to initiate collaborative sessions.” More

Other Items
– David offers a tutorial on online social networking.
– Certus, a large IBM Business Partner in New Zealand, expanded into Australia by purchasing EoS Solutions.