Confused by what Google Wave might be useful for?  Here is a nicely demonstrated scenario going through a business process modeling project.    I like the example of new members re-playing the Wave to catch up on the team’s progress — very efficient.  It seems to me that a workplace effort to encourage this type of Google Wave use would need some type of kick-off/introduction workshop.  Get a big group together, have some scripted collaborative tasks, and have them use wave to accomplish those tasks.  You’d teach the tool and also work on the general topic of effective collaboration/team work.

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Starting sometime early next year the New York Times will start charging for content on its web site.  Is this the start of a new internet business model, or the last gasp of a dying industry?  Times will tell (pun intended).  But it seems to me that they are on the right track.  The charge will only affect more active site visitors, who presumably see value in the content and would be willing to pay for that.  Occasional site visitors won’t need to pay.  Makes sense, but how do you track this?  Will those casual visitors still need to log-in somehow?  Enter your email here?  Or maybe limit how many articles can be viewed from an IP address in a day?   It will be interesting to see how they pull this off without scaring users away.

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Jon Mott and David Wiley have posted their paper on Open learning.  Well done, nicely argued, with good supporting references.  Bravo!  Their basic point is traditional Content Management Systems — i.e. Sakai, Blackboard — reinforce the the management side of teaching to the detriment to the innovative, student-centered, learning side of the equation.  And while I agree with much of their argument, I’ve come to realize that this approach also misses some important  points: Read the rest of this entry »

Some public agencies understand that their data is our data — some public, or quasi-public agencies has taken a different tack.  The New York Mass Transit Authority at one point maintained that transit schedules were copyrighted — nice to see they’ve come to a more reasonable attitude.  Whatever their misgivings, this will make their service, and customer relations/communication better.

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I attended an Apple sponsored presentation yesterday on using the Xcode IDE to build iPhone and iTouch apps.  It was a very well done presentation, and had me almost ready to rush out and buy a Macbook and iTouch to get started building cool apps — certainly easy to see why Apple App building has become such a popular past time (and big money maker for Apple).

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What features are needed in a workplace social network system?  And could BuddyPress, the WordPress multi-user collection of social networking plug-ins, be used to power it?  Yammer uses has recently taken off at my workplace, and its success here is serving as a real example of the types of communication and collaboration people are looking for in the workplace.  Here are a couple of thoughts, observations and opinions: Read the rest of this entry »