Play to Learn … Phil recommends the use of a “sandbox” to encourage people and teams to consider new technology for collaboration. “The biggest stumbling block is getting your team comfortable with the new software or service and truly understanding the benefits it provides. In short, why would it make my life or job easier? Far too few companies provide training on these technologies – so you and your colleagues are forced to figure it out as you go along or after a very brief tutorial. This sink-or-swim mentality causes many of these powerful tools to go untouched and impedes productivity. The secret to turn this all around is simple . . . play!” More
– I agree! The same advice is in my SharePoint for Business White Paper (May 2007).

SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 Beta … Microsoft released the public betas of SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 yesterday, at the PDC 09 conference. “It’s been long awaited, but Office and SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 was finally announced today at the PDC keynote. What was announced was the general, public availability of Office and SharePoint so anybody can go and download the bits and get started—for MSDN subscribers the bits were released on Monday. This is super-exciting because we’ve been doing a ton of work around this release so to finally see it go public means that you’ll now actually get a chance to get started developing with Office and SharePoint 2010.” More
– ComputerWorld comments on the Office 2010 public beta.

Android Problems for Developers … Android developers are concerned about the fragmentation of the Android code. “A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models. For users, it means apps in the store could be buggy, might not work well depending on their handsets, and could deliver a frustrating experience. Unaware of the increasing back-end complexity, they would then be more likely to leave bad reviews for those apps — a potentially lethal blow for small businesses, say developers.” More

NewsGator White Paper … NewsGator released a white paper on microblogging in the enterprise. “Internal microblogging within the enterprise has become an increasingly effective and prevalent tool that organizations can use to promote faster problem solving, bridge silos, reduce email clutter and increase productivity. Indeed, with Gartner predicting that 80% of social software platforms will include enterprise microblogging as a standard feature by 2011, there should be little doubt about the future durability of this important enterprise tool. This NewsGator whitepaper will provide you with valuable information and insight into microblogging in the enterprise.” More

Google Chrome OS … Google tooks the wraps off Chrome, its desktop operating system. Steven has details, including a summary: “The take-away message is already there. Google Chrome OS will be a device-based OS that _must_ have Internet access to show to its best advantage. Thus, this isn’t so much a Windows 7 competitor as it is an attempt to provide a full-featured, operating system for netbooks and other mobile devices. This is, however, a direct slap in the face of Microsoft, which has tried with Windows 7 Starter Edition, to pen the netbook into only being low-end devices. Google is saying that the netbook needs to grow so that it can deliver a better user-experience with a fully open-source and net-based operating system.” More
– It’s Linux based, and will use a new windowing system
– Chrome OS is going open source
– Google thinks the time is right, due to the confluence of many trends
– It can handle peripherals, such as USB drives
– Acrobat is built in
– It will only run on specific hardware, with devices coming end 2010
– ComputerWorld has more.

Orchestra Auditions via TelePresence … Southbank Sinfonia in Britain is conducting orchestra auditions via telepresence. “Over 300 musicians from across the world applied to take part in the auditions, from countries as diverse as Taiwan, Sweden and Canada. Traditionally, musicians would have had to fly to London for the chance to undertake the 15-minute audition at significant cost and time. However, this year, two young musicians in Australia have for the first time auditioned using Cisco TelePresence suites in their own country.” More

MindTouch Cloud … MindTouch released a hosted edition of its collaboration software. “MindTouch Cloud enables your employees & managers to pull and aggregate business data from data silos like your CRM, ERP, accounts payable, file servers, email, databases, and others to gain visibility through mashups. You can mashup applications, such as Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, and Oracle, and integrate them into documents in team workspaces. MindTouch is targeting Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration platform and Google Apps, though these only offer traditional document and spreadsheet applications without blending in business data. Forrester recently named MindTouch the open source alternative to Microsoft’s hot SharePoint product.” More
– see cloud.mindtouch.com/

Other Items
– Netbook shipments increased 264% year-on-year.
– Stan Garfield shares 13 insights about KM.