Collaboration

Icelanders Give Crowdsourced Constitution Warm Reception
October 23, 2012

Voters in Iceland have responded favorably to the government's offer to let them participate in drafting the nation's new constitution. The idea to let citizens chime in online, namely via Facebook and Twitter, was hatched by 25 people on the Constitutional Council, which was tasked with devising a new constitution.

Box Embed Tools Tear Down Content Walls
October 09, 2012

Box on Tuesday unveiled Box Embed, a new HTML5-based framework, at its Boxworks 2012 conference in San Francisco. This lets users embed Box's various features -- uploads, search, comments, sharing and file edits -- easily in their website, forum or blog. The company also announced that 10 enterprise software partners, including Oracle, SugarCRM, NetSuite and Zendesk, will use Box Embed in their apps.

White House Mobilizes Devs for App Upgrade
September 05, 2012

The White House launched new versions of its mobile app Tuesday, releasing the app source code along with the new version in an invitation for developers to tinker with the revamped iOS and Android apps. The apps, which have been rebuilt from the ground up, now feature live video streams of White House events and access to 99 percent of the content on WhiteHouse.gov.

Salesforce.com Chatter Unlocks Doors to Enterprise Collaboration
May 25, 2012

Salesforce.com is adding more functionality to its Chatter tool -- in this case, real-time communication capabilities. The two new features soon to be available are Chatter Messenger and Chatter Screensharing. Chatter Messenger is an instant messaging application to be used within the Chatter application. When it launches as part of Salesforce.com's Summer release in a few weeks, it will give users live chat functionality.

Tiny Welsh Burg Paints the Town Wiki
May 21, 2012

Monmouth, Wales, has become the first "Wikipedia town," making it an area of international interest as it informally redubbed itself "Monmouthpedia." The Saturday event was attended by 70 to 75 people, said project leader John Cummings -- a sizable group for the area. That day, some 1,100 QR codes that Cummings, volunteers and city officials had placed on various points of interest around the town went live.

Sapphire Now: It's a Mobile, Social, Cloudy, Collaborative World
May 15, 2012

The Sapphire Now conference kicked off Monday in Orlando, Fla., with 60,000 customers, partners and employees of SAP participating, either at the conference facility or watching it online. The first day of the event offered the usual lineup of celebrity speakers -- corporate and otherwise -- with Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong featured in the morning and SAP Co-CEO Bill McDermott in the afternoon.

When Wikipedia Vandals Attack
May 10, 2012

If you've been involved in a project that has been documented on Wikipedia and has earned its own Wikipedia page, it can be disconcerting to visit one day and see the page vandalized, as happened to an associate of mine recently. This incident led to a frantic email exchange. One consideration was how to deal with the problem without getting tagged as the vandal -- Wikipedia is collaborative, after all.

Social, Mobile and Collaboration: 3 Tips for Getting on the Road
April 19, 2012

"You can't get there from here." That's the classic gag about New Englanders giving road directions -- that somehow, the route that needs to be taken is so convoluted and confusing that there's no way to negotiate between two points on the surface of the Earth. Logically, we know that's not true. You can get anywhere from anywhere these days -- especially if you can rely on transportation that doesn't need to stick to the roads.

Avaya Gives Sneak Peak of Upcoming Healthcare Apps
February 21, 2012

Avaya has provided a sneak preview of several healthcare IT-based mobile applications it will be rolling out later this year. These include Avaya Mobile Activity Assistant, Avaya Flare Communicator for iPad, and other collaborative service offerings in telehealth and social media. Healthcare is one of Avaya's chief verticals, said Sanjeev Gupta, general manager of Avaya's Healthcare Solutions group.

Assange to Test His Charm on Russian TV
January 25, 2012

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has plans to host a new TV show called "The World Tomorrow." The half-hour weekly episodes are scheduled to begin airing in mid-March on Russia's English-language RT channel. It will reach some 60 million global viewers. Assange sees the series as a vehicle to discuss the issues of the day with the people who are shaping the future.

What's Good for Social Business Is Good for Social CRM
January 19, 2012

I'm ensconced at the Swan and Dolphin Hotels at Walt Disney World in Orlando this week for IBM's concurrent Lotusphere/IBM Connect shows, and all the announcements here paint the picture of a company and a partner ecosystem that is going all-in on collaboration. Big Blue's fuddy-duddy reputation is being completely overhauled, it seems.

IBM Hones Social Enterprise Tools
January 17, 2012

IBM continues to carve out its own stake in the social enterprise app space -- a market forecast by Forrester Research to grow 61 percent each year to reach $6.4 billion by 2016 -- with the beta rollout of the next release of its enterprise social networking platform, IBM Connections.

Avaya Mobilizes Smooth Collaboration in IP Office 8.0
January 13, 2012

Avaya has released its IP Office 8.0 -- the latest iteration of its trademark unified communications platform for small and mid-sized businesses. The new application comes with a number of new features, some of which focus on the company's core competency of communications, collaboration and presence.

Preaching the Gospel of Kopimism, Over and Over Again
January 05, 2012

Sweden has recognized a new religion. This might not be headline news for the open-minded Swedes, save for the belief system's atypical focus: Kopimism is devoted to technology in general and free online file-sharing in particular. The church was registered by the Swedish governmental agency Kammarkollegiet, shortly before the Christmas holiday.

Jive Software Makes Snappy Debut
December 13, 2011

Jive Software has made its debut on the Nasdaq, following on the heels of other recent tech company IPOs such as Groupon, LinkedIn and Netflix. Jive, a maker of collaborative social media software for the enterprise, doesn't have the consumer orientation of those three, but it's apparently similar enough for the market: It raised a more-than-respectable $161 million in its initial public offering.

The Leader of the Social Business Pack
June 24, 2011

There's no denying that social media is migrating from the consumer realm to the business arena. What can still be debated is how quickly this technology is making its way into the core of the enterprise, and becoming something more than marketing and sales tools. Some people -- primarily analysts, vendors and media types -- contend social media already has a prominent place within the core of business enterprises.

OK, I'll Draw You a Map - on Google
April 19, 2011

Google is rolling out access in the U.S. to a tool that has already made a mark in other parts of the world: Map Maker. As the name suggests, Map Maker allows people to create and edit Google Maps. It debuted outside the U.S. because Google didn't believe there would be much demand for it in the states, where there was already a wealth of online maps and geographical data.

The Virtual Workplace: Lean and Green
April 12, 2011

When collaborating with others in the workplace, physically being there is nice. The fact is, though, that one's physical presence almost always leaves an unavoidable carbon footprint. As an answer to this dilemma, new and emerging collaborative technologies offer a way to be there in spirit, voice and mind, without having to hop on a plane, take a cab, or print out a document.

Google Jazzes Up Docs With Livelier Collaboration Features
March 17, 2011

Google has enhanced its Google Docs product with a next-generation commenting system it is calling "Discussions." The new feature builds on Google's already strong collaboration bona fides and brings a small level of credibility to its otherwise dubious social media creds. Discussions builds on the overhaul of Google Docs last April, when the search engine moved comments to the sidebar and allowed people to reply.

SocialEyes Lets Facebook Friends Chat Hollywood Squares-Style
February 28, 2011

Rob Glaser -- founder, chair and former CEO of RealNetworks -- hopes all eyes will soon be on an app developed by his new company, SocialEyes, which is designed to bring video chat to Facebook. Like all social media services, SocialEyes can be used both publicly, for groups organized around common interests, and privately -- but this time the experience is not about static text and pictures.