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The Enterprise Collaboration Platform features a corporate directory with social networking capabilities, including real-time voice and video communications, built on an open, standards-based platform. This allows for on-the-fly teammaking and integration of legacy business apps and Web 2.0 content, such as wikis and blogs. The product also integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange and the other Cisco products, Unified Communications and WebEx Conferencing.Cisco Bows New Collaboration Software - 3D TLC - 3D Training, Learning and Collaboration
Microsoft SharePoint Designer Team Blog : SharePoint 2010 List View Blog Series: Part 1 – Introduction to the new List View
In April of 2008, we released our advanced SharePoint workshop that describes how to offer "SharePoint as a service" by applying ITIL v3 to SharePoint. Alas, it's taken a while to start publishing this methodology in document form, but I just submitted the first paper on this subject. It's called "ITIL for SharePoint: Defining SharePoint as a Service using ITIL Service Strategy" and is due out in January....Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Countervailing Wisdom for SharePoint
- Trying to squeeze the most from your SharePoint investment is probably not good for the company
- Value is different than ROI
- Management is different than governance
- Offering SharePoint as a business service is fundamentally different than offering it as a set of technological capabilities
- Users of SharePoint shouldn't know what SharePoint is
- "Driving adoption" is a band aid for poor demand management
- Internally, SharePoint always has competition; users always have a choice
- The process of applying a service methodology has value for the organization beyond just the end result
So, Google is learning what collaboration vendors (and many IT strategists) have known for years: selling collaboration technologies is difficult. I am not saying that Google Wave will fail. However, I do not expect Wave to be as successful as GMail, for example, for a long time (if ever).Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Does Google Have Enough Patience For Wave?
BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft co-founder has cancerPaul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, his sister has said.
Jody Allen, the chief executive of Mr Allen's investment firm Vulcan Inc, told staff in a memo that her brother had begun chemotherapy.
Mr Allen, 56, founded Microsoft in 1975 with Bill Gates but left in 1983, when he was diagnosed with another form of cancer - Hodgkin's disease.
He survived that bout after receiving successful treatment.
"He received the diagnosis early this month and has begun chemotherapy," Jody Allen wrote to staff.
"Doctors say he has diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a relatively common form of lymphoma.
"Paul is feeling OK and remains upbeat. He continues to work and he has no plans to change his role at Vulcan."
She added that he was "optimistic he can beat this".
Share the Point: Did I call it? Twitter growth moves to stability after July?
Its Tianhe-1 computer, housed at the National Super Computer Center in Tianjin was ranked fifth on the biannual Top 500 supercomputer list.BBC NEWS | Technology | China joins supercomputer elite
twitter.com - Site Info from Alexa
BBC NEWS | Technology | Windows 7 borrowed 'look' of MacA Microsoft executive was quoted in an interview as saying "what we've tried to do with Windows 7...is create a Mac look and feel in terms of graphics".
The comments, by partner group manager Simon Aldous, appeared in UK computing trade magazine PCR.
Microsoft countered that Mr Aldous was not involved with the development of Windows 7.
Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc said in a blog that Mr Aldous's comments were "inaccurate and uninformed".
Suggestions that Microsoft has borrowed technology ideas has been rife for as long as the Windows and Mac operating systems have been around.
The very idea of who invented the "windows" on a "desktop" in Windows 1.0 was the basis of a 1988 lawsuit and remains a point of contention.
US software company Adobe Systems has announced it is cutting 680 jobs, almost 10% of its workforce.BBC NEWS | Business | Adobe lays off one in 10 workers
BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft disconnects Xbox gamers
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC NewsThousands of gamers may have been cut off from Microsoft's online gaming service Xbox Live for modifying their consoles to play pirated games.
Online reports suggest that as many as 600,000 gamers may have been affected.
Microsoft confirmed that it had banned a "small percentage" of the 20 million Xbox Live users worldwide.
Microsoft said that modifying an Xbox 360 console "violates" the service's "terms of use" and would result in a player being disconnected.
twitter.com - Site Info from Alexa
twitter.com - Site Info from Alexa
I am going to go on a ledge here, but some of my behind on the line and make a prediction based on my evolving concepts of the Internet. I think Twitter has peaked, that is its recent growth will suddenly come to a stop.Share the Point: Twitter future?
twitter.com - Site Info from Alexa
Virtual businesses: Going to the office in Second Life - CNN.com
London, England (CNN) -- As travel budgets are squeezed and slashed in the recession, companies are increasingly seeking innovative ways of bringing employees together for conferences and meetings remotely.
Virtual community Second Life is seeking to tap into that market by creating a new tool that allows businesses to have virtual meetings on their own computer networks.
The company's Enterprise tool will let employees' avatars -- animated alter egos -- meet in virtual worlds from the privacy of a company's own network, rather than the public networks used in standard Second Life. That extra security could encourage more companies to take up the technology.
The ability to collaborate effectively using virtual tools may now become an increasingly important skill as technology offers more options than, say, video conferencing.
According to Linden Lab, creators of Second Life, more than 1,400 organizations -- including large companies, educational institutions, government agencies and even the U.S. military -- use Second Life to hold meetings, conduct training and prototype new technologies more efficiently.
Linden Lab says 14 companies are currently using Enterprise in its beta phase. One of those companies is IBM, which is an old hand when it comes to Second Life.
Rashik Parmar, IBM's chief technology officer for Europe, told CNN that last year about 350 of its technical leaders from around the world met for 72 hours via Second Life to brainstorm about new technologies.
"We had a whole range of environments, from auditoriums and collaboration pods to social areas where the avatars could pick up a beer around a log fire, or walk around a sculpture park and talk," Parmar told CNN.
IBM sells its own virtual meeting tool, Sametime 3D, which allows businesses to share ideas and collaborate in a 3D world, and the company is currently testing a more advanced version of the product.
Parmar told CNN that he recently held a meeting with 12 technical leaders from across Europe and Asia. While that would typically involve flying everyone to a central location, he said the meeting was held using the new Sametime 3D.
"Not only did we save travel time, but because the environment was so engaging, a lot more ideas came through," he said.
But virtual collaboration doesn't only involve virtual worlds. Tools like "Dropbox" allow online file storage and sharing, while "Basecamp" lets users to collaborate on projects online.
"Google Wave" was announced in May, but is currently only available by invitation. It's a real-time communication tool that allows, among other things, multi-user conversations and file sharing, and it could become a staple of virtual collaboration.
But if companies are to make the most of virtual collaboration, employees will have to learn that what works a bricks-and-mortar workplace may not be right for the virtual world.
Surinder Kahai is associate professor at Binghamton University School of Management, New York. He told CNN, "I've seen people mess up completely because they think that what works in a face-to-face environment also works in a virtual environment."
He says one problem is that virtual teams may not share national and organizational cultures, and that virtual workers should make a conscious effort to see things from their colleagues' point of view.
Another issue is that virtual teams can't take advantage of the kind of impromptu "water cooler" conversations that occur in a real workplace, where colleagues can share information they may have forgotten to communicate in meetings.
Kahai says that lack of human contact can also lead to feelings of isolation, but adds that virtual worlds such as Second Life can help by recreating the water-cooler experience.
"Many companies are using virtual worlds, and these can give a sense of place," Kahai told CNN. "You can hang out, run into someone, and have ad-hoc conversations with people."
Even in this era of remote collaboration, it seems that we still need human interaction -- even if it's completely virtual.
Microsoft will offer an application marketplace within Sharepoint 2010 that shall integrate with third-party applications from its partner network. No date has been set for the marketplace lauch but it will evolve from "The Gallery" a feature that provides Sharepoint 2010 users access to templates.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft reveals new-look MSNMicrosoft's web portal MSN.com has been given an extensive revamp for the first time in almost ten years.
New features include fewer links, a column dedicated to social networking sites Twitter and Facebook, and a large search engine box.
The company hopes the new look will drive more traffic to its Bing search engine, launched as a competitor to Google in June 2009.
It will roll out in 2010 with a small group of US users getting access now.
Microsoft is pushing SharePoint's capability as an Internet-facing Web server, its new integration with Visual Studio development tools, its revamped SharePoint Designer, a host of new social computing features, a more secure runtime environment for application components and a set of cloud-based APIs that open SharePoint to technology's hottest trend. The results, however, are far from a foregone conclusion. "From an architectural standpoint, the proof is in the pudding and how it gets tested out by customers," said Scott Gode, vice president of product management and marketing for Azaleos, which offers a remote management service for SharePoint, Exchange and Office Communications Server. To emphasize the point, the company trotted out CEO Steve Ballmer for his first ever keynote rally cry to the SharePoint faithful and to any coder within earshot of his high-energy love for developers. "We are excited to have some developers, developers, developers jump right in there," Ballmer said mimicking his infamous rant during an exclusive interview with Network World earlier this week, as he grinned and rubbed his hands together in anticipation of the potential results. That testing will play out over the next six to eight months or so before the final release of the software ships in the first half of 2010. Experts are pegging the ship date as May or June, although Microsoft has not discussed specifics. When the new REST and ATOM APIs come in 2010, the suite will support calls out to other Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter. According to Gode: "Users will have to ask, 'What is Microsoft doing to go from departmental deployments to mission-critical applications?" But already the anticipation is building. "I think SharePoint is finally being architected as a platform," said Rob LaMear, CEO of fpweb.net, which hosts some 1.2 million seats of SharePoint. "The 2010 version is open now for building applications with an open UI and with APIs that have the ability to tie into other Web sites." LeMear's fpweb.net is rolling out in November a hosted offering called Quickstart Business Suite that will offer departmental and vertical applications that can be dropped onto the platform to create applications.
Unfortunately Microsoft doesn’t have a desktop virtualization story that supports 64-bit operating systems. The only Microsoft solution is to run Hyper-V which means you have to be running Windows Server 2008 x64 as the host OS. The other option is VMWare Workstation which can do 64-bit guest OS’. There are other virtualization options, but these are the two most common ones.#
Andrew Connell on SharePoint 2010 VMS.
Ubuntu 9.10 is causing outrage and frustration, with early adopters wishing they'd stuck with previous versions of the Linux distro.Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala • The Register
Blank and flickering screens, failure to recognize hard drives, defaulting to the old 2.6.28 Linux kernel, and failure to get encryption running are taking their toll, as early adopters turn to the web for answers and log fresh bug reports in Ubuntu forums.Reg reader motoh delivered a warning on moving to Ubuntu 9.10 from version 9.04 - Jaunty Jackalope - in comments on our review of the new OS here. "If you upgrade from Jaunty beware. You may have a rough ride. I made my mistake by trying too soon. Wait the usual month," motoh wrote. Angus77 at Ubuntuforums.org agreed: "This is so frustrating! Jaunty was a snap to install."
They're in good company, as more than a fifth of people upgrading to Ubuntu 9.10 have reported issues they can't fix, according to an Ubuntuforums.org poll here. Only around 10 per cent of those upgrading or installing reported a completely flawless experience.
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