Zoho Discussions … Zoho released it’s first new product for 2009, Zoho Discussions. “Zoho Discussions allows organizations to create external and internal communities where problems are solved, topics are discussed and ideas are exchanged. Businesses can create a customer support forum where solutions to problems come not only from the company support reps, but also from other users in the same situation. Customers can make their voices heard and vote on what they like – and don’t like. Employees can discuss important topics in an environment that fosters collaboration much better than e-mail.” More

Tungle on iPhone … Tungle released an iPhone application for its meeting scheduling tool. “The Tungle app for iPhone brings the full scheduling power of Tungle to the palm of your hand. Even if you don’t know someone’s schedule, you can send them an invitation proposing as many times as you want to ensure it gets booked quickly and easily. Want to share? You can do that too. Send and receive sharing invitations, no matter what calendar system they’re using. Then see, at a glance, when people are free or busy, and get meetings booked even faster.” Available immediately. More

Wikis at Seagate … Seagate is using the Atlassian wiki to support interaction and communication between IT staff and beyond. “For formal project management, Brewer and his IT team use CA’s Clarity portfolio management system. “We use it to track programs, projects, dates, costs, etc.,” he says. Recently, though, Brewer has become a believer in the power of wikis. For the last year and a half, he’s been using a wiki-cum-blog tool called Confluence, from Atlassian. He’s set up a wiki — IT@Seagate — which he contributes to two or three times a week. “I use it as a forum to communicate with IT folk.” Brewer likes the informality of the platform, that it encourages interaction and communication among the team and provides a greater sense of knowing what’s going on. “Things become a lot more transparent,” he says. Yet the wiki has formal roles as well. For instance, the data center team uses it to post bulletins about potential outages, and a group within IT uses it to “talk about everything related to data warehousing.” The wiki/blog has expanded beyond the IT staff. Other corporate execs are using it to communicate with Seagate employees. Also, IT staffers have opened up the wiki so that they can use it to work with outside suppliers.” More

Lehman’s Problem: Too Much Collaboration (??) … Some comments on the problems at Lehman, including that it had one of the strongest cultures of collaboration. “Fuld set out to build a culture where partners would be agreeable and loyal, to the point they would enact Fuld’s vision together, embracing it as their own. In the end, it seems that Lehman’s management team became too agreeable — and too loyal, content to follow even when they knew better. In the months and years leading up to the most recent financial crisis, dissent wasn’t an option even for those insiders who had seen a trunk or a tusk (looming distress signals) but were afraid or insufficiently informed to identify the elephant in the room. In Fuld’s view, you were with him or against him, and nobody wanted to be against him. Of course, if you were with him, and if you made it into the top ranks, he took care of you, and you and your family became very wealthy.” That doesn’t sound like a “strong culture of collaboration” to me. More

iPhone at Logica … Logica’s consulting staff are using the iPhone for a range of tasks when on-the-go, and are now helping customers develop iPhone applications. “With iPhone in their hands, Logica consultants quickly became experts. Soon the consultants began requesting custom-built iPhone applications to help them work even more efficiently. In response, the internal development team built several apps using the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK), including an automated voice conferencing application and a timesheet tool that lets Logica consultants record billable hours in real time while onsite with customers …. Having streamlined its own operations with iPhone, Logica has begun creating iPhone apps for customers as well. “It’s a logical extension of our portfolio,” Lünstedt says. “We offer consulting services that optimize workflow processes. Now we can also tie in the right application for iPhone.” As a result, Logica’s iPhone development projects have increased revenues and revealed new business opportunities for the firm.” More

Telepresence Recordings … TC&C has released a tool for recording Cisco telepresence meetings. “The Carin Recording solution is a full session recording solution – it captures both endpoints of a TelePresence conference as well as the secondary audio/video streams used for audio conferencing and presentation sharing. The video is captured in raw full HD and then later can be compressed to a more portable WMV files for playback from a web browser on a PC, internet device or even mobile phone. The live video streaming module can be used to stream TelePresence Sessions to people who cannot attend the meeting via TP but still have access to an internet connection and this allows users to make them available to a much wider audience.” More

Yahoo to Dump Zimbra … There are some reports that Yahoo may be trying to on-sell Zimbra. “A Yahoo! spokeswoman declined to comment on today’s ATD story. But shopping Zimbra wouldn’t be out of character for CEO Carol Bartz, who’s working to slim the company down in more ways than one. According to ATD, Yahoo! is also shopping personals and online classified-ad businesses, but it’s the loss of Zimbra that would continue Yahoo!’s slow transformation from tech outfit to ad-obsessed media mammoth.” More
– At the time of the acquisition, I argued it didn’t make sense.

Other Items
– A review of Ubidesk, an online collaboration tool.