Avanquest CallXpress 8 … Avanquest released version 8 of CallXpress, its unified communications system. “CallXpress works with your existing voice infrastructure, pulling the technologies together so you can receive all email, fax via email, phone and SMS messages in one place – your email environment. And because it is voice enabled, it listens to what you say! The integrated hands free Speech Dialler, which is a new benefit in CallXpress 8, is a speech recognition and voice user interface which allows you to access and manage your inbox and connect with the person you want to communicate with (be that by voice, email, fax or text) without manual intervention.” More (PDF)

LotusLive Connections … IBM released LotusLive Connections, a hosted edition of its Lotus Connections platform. “Featuring the LotusLive Dashboard, social profiles, networking with others inside and outside your organisation, groups, project management and activities, Sametime instant messaging and social file sharing, LotusLive Connections is designed to a low cost online collaboration solution for small to medium businesses and corporate departments. Taking many features from the on-premise Lotus Connections social software product, it provides an integrated and easy-to-manage cloud-based solution that offers fast deployment and excellent value for money, starting from less than $10 per user per month.” Available immediately. More

Collaborative Networks … Aaron outlines his vision of “collaborative networks” in business, as opposed to social networking in business. “Rather than focusing on socialization, one to one interactions and individual enrichment, businesses must be concerned with creating an information fabric within their organizations. This information fabric is a federation of content from the multiplicity of data and application silos utilized on a daily basis; such as, ERP, CRM, file servers, email, databases, web-services infrastructures, etc. When you make this information fabric easy to edit between groups of individuals in a dynamic, secure, governed and real-time manner, it creates a Collaborative Network. This is very different from social networks or social software, which is focused entirely on enabling conversations. Collaborative Networks are focused on groups accessing and organizing data into actionable formats that enable decision making, collaboration and reuse.” More

NZ Web Design Survey … Andrew is looking to understand the different tools being used to design web sites and applications in New Zealand. “The Great New Zealand Web Design Survey explores the different tools, technologies and resources used by the New Zealand web community.” More

Work at Home Skills … Kristi outlines the key skills for working from home: confidence, perserverance, unique and marketable skill set, and ability to wear multiple hats. “If you’re like most people, you have a strong desire to work at home but you may wonder if you really have what it takes to be a successful work at home professional. After all, working at home requires a specific skill set that traditional workers don’t necessarily have. In this article, we’ll discuss how to tell if you have the skills to work at home. Are you ready? Let’s begin.” More

OffiSync … The OffiSync add-on for integrating Microsoft Office and Google Apps will enter general availability in July. “Once installed, the plug-in appears as a new tool bar in Microsoft Office applications and allows users to save their Office files online for access from any desktop or laptop computer using Google Apps and Docs; find specific files with Google search; and collaborate on documents with coworkers through Google Docs.” There will be a price for enterprise users. More

Collaboration and BI … Jeff writes about the combination of collaboration software with business intelligence tools. “The next frontier for collaboration software could be its convergence with business intelligence (BI) applications. Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis, vendors and industry analysts agree, have the potential to dramatically expand the reach and effectiveness of BI and data analytics throughout the enterprise …. With BI embedded in collaboration portals, the thinking goes, workers will no longer have to email reports to dozens of people and then spend hours or days aggregating and analyzing their responses, which come at different times and could be spread out among different branches of an email chain. With collaboration software, they can share the same report on a blog or in a wiki and instantly see their colleagues’ input.” More

LiveTechDocs … Will looks at LiveTechDocs, a new service for collaborating on technical documents. “LiveTechDocs supports both DocBook 4.x and DocBook 5.x as its standard formats. It’s simple to use: Upload your documents to the repository and then publish them. After publishing, it is ready for reviewers via the “Documentation” tab. Using LiveTechDocs, authors and reviewers can review all of your XML-based documentation online. LiveTechDocs helps you manage the review by structuring the process, helping it be completed on deadline. Review comments are all accessible from the dashboard. Document authors and management can also respond to reviewer comments from the dashboard, opening up a dialog between reviewer and writer.” More

Other Items
– Rudy Giuliani on grace under pressure.
– Microsoft will be sharing its pricing and licensing plans for Azure next week.
– Lawrence says that collaboration is a benefit of social media (the first is marketing, though).