Central Desktop Status Updates … Central Desktop added a Status Updates feature to its collaboration service. “Today, we officially launched and released a fully integrated micro-blogging tool into the Central Desktop platform. While the feature is influenced by the functionality of Twitter and Micro-Blogging, we are calling and describing the feature “Central Desktop Status Updates.” The Status Update feature accommodates our customers desire to integrate Twitter-like functions into their day-to-day activities, but for business, and more secure, and within Central Desktop. Business-centric Status Updates brings a new dynamic to how people communicate within a collaborative environment. Instead of a binary update that you would see in Recent Activity Log that “Isaac Uploaded a File” or “Isaac Completed a Task”, Status Updates allows the user to inject meaning and context into their activities.” Available immediately. More

Cisco on Collaboration … Cisco has released a report about the benefits it achieved through the use of collaboration and social networking technologies. “Cisco are releasing a 58 page report which details their 900 percent return on investment in collaboration and social networking and which details how they have successfully increased productivity, innovation and growth. The Report, ‘Creating a Collaborative Enterprise: a Guide to Accelerating Business Value with a Collaboration Framework’, shows how their best practices saved them US$691 million and increased productivity 4.9 percent in fiscal year 2008 against technology investments costing US$81 million. The framework, interestingly from a company with no skin in the social software sales game, provides a portfolio of structured methodologies that aims to strategically harness the rapidly expanding array of Web and Enterprise 2.0 technologies.” More

SharePoint vs Enterprise 2.0 … Chris talks about the challenges faced by startup Enterprise 2.0 vendors by SharePoint and its next release. “Analysts say the number of competitors will consolidate in the coming year as Microsoft captures greater market share. The start-ups that will survive must carve out a longterm place for themselves by building applications that are far more innovative and cheaper than those of the incumbent software giant. In addition, they must convince businesses that Microsoft SharePoint’s “good enough” strategy is not, in fact, good enough for today’s enterprise collaboration needs.” Chris quotes me on page 2. More

Box vs SharePoint … Box.net is asking SharePoint users to tell their horror stories about using SharePoint. “Here at Box.net we believe sharing should be simple, and we talk to people daily about how they share content. Over and over we hear, “I only use SharePoint because my company makes me.” So we thought we’d issue a challenge.” They’ve even taken out a bill board in San Francisco. More

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3D Conferencing … A university project is looking at the possibilities of supporting collaborative physical activities. “Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Intel have created a system that can support collaborative physical activities from different geographical locations. “We can capture motions of the human body in real time and bring them together on a big screen,” says Ahsan Arefin, a doctoral student currently involved with the project. The project called ‘Tele-immersive Environment for Everybody’ or TEEVE hooks up two off-the-shelf 3D cameras to a PC with a Firewire port. A gateway server at each site sends and receives the different video streams using standard compression techniques. A renderer is used to project the virtual interactions on a big screen monitor, creating a real-time virtual 3D effect. It’s like web conferencing, but with a virtual reality twist.” More (hat tip, Roger)

Mike Gotta on 2.0 … Bill took notes on Mike Gotta’s talk at about enterprise social networking at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this week. “Mike related a field study he conducted. Interviewed 21 organizations, interviewed 65 people, got 45 hours of conversation, and looked at 1,700 data points. Rather than guide the conversation with a lot of questions, he set a framework and let people talk and tell their stories. Good idea. Mike made a good point up front. It is all about adoption not deployment. Major findings include the fact that everyone thought they were behind, even if they were not. Everyone is at the starting point. Few organizations have made a organization-wide decision on social networking. They are still trying to figure it out. Even organizations that have a strategic vision are in the proof-of concept stage. It is not about the tools that is the critical factors. It is overcoming the cultural issues. Social networks do enable more adaptive organizations. This make intuitive sense so it is nice to see some validation.” More

Assurance not Governance … Andrew argues that the world needs better SharePoint Assurance, not SharePoint Governance. “The problem faced today is the term Governance has become a buzz word and is used to refer to a wide range of subjects, all of which leads to misunderstanding and miscommunication. No one really knows what Governance actually means. Often companies think that by creating a Governance Plan everything is covered and the SharePoint roll out will go without issue, much like the Project Manager who has to adjust the project plan to make it fit, just because you say it, doesn’t mean it’s true. The term Governance has been morphed into an all encompassing process, predominantly written by IT departments or consultancies, covering everything from the Information Architecture through to the type of source control system that should be used. Clearly these two topics are the domains of completely different areas of the business.” More

Governance Workshop in August in DC … Paul, Dux, Andrew and Ruven are offering a 3-day governance workshop in Washington DC in August. “Accordingly, we are planning a special “SharePoint Governance Mentoring” workshop that will run over a period of 3 days (August 19-21, 2009), prior to the conference itself. It will be a unique, one-off event and numbers will be strictly limited. We think that our combined skills cover the broad spectrum of the SharePoint universe very well, with a particularly strong governance underpinning. Participants will be able to delve into topics such as how to manage a SharePoint project, practical techniques in gathering requirements, achieving shared understanding and buy-in, information architecture, team dynamics and the root causes of organisational chaos that make SharePoint an attractive proposition in the first place. We will also cover making a great business case and understanding return on investment, how to approach application development on the SharePoint platform and above all, learning what governance is really all about, and applying the right sort of governance at the right time.” More

Other Items
– HP released the Mini 5101 netbook, an update on the Mini 2140.
– Boise State University talks about its transition to Google Apps.
– Alex points to a couple of new books on Enterprise 2.0.
– 7 pitfalls when adding telepresence to a current network.