collaboration

Alfresco opens up SharePoint to Java, Linux, Oracle, and more

As an employee of Alfresco, I'm somewhat biased in reporting that Alfresco yesterday announced full SharePoint integration with the Alfresco 3.0 Labs release. Even so, I think it's highly significant precisely because of what it says about the importance of Microsoft's continued battles with the European Union over proprietary protocols.

Most that reported on the release missed this. OStatic, however, got it dead on:

As part of complying with the EU's demands, the company has released the specifications for the Microsoft Office interfaces, and now we're seeing some of the benefits spill over into open source. Alfresco, which makes open source enterprise content management (ECM) software, has added SharePoint interoperability....This looks like a good move from Alfresco and lets hope the EU's two-fisted stance toward Microsoft results in more of this kind of sharing.

Bingo, and bravo to Microsoft, whatever its intentions and pressures that resulted in opening up the SharePoint protocol. The net result is a huge win for customers. Why?

Well, for the first time enterprises can get the benefits of SharePoint-esque functionality and interoperability without having to adopt Microsoft technologies wholesale. This is the other big news in Alfresco's release, also mostly missed by the media. CMS Watch, however, nailed this aspect of the release, and points to the critical importance of getting out of the SharePoint thicket that Forrester criticizes before SharePoint and Office merge at the next release:… Read more

MindTouch Deki's new release integrates...just about everything

Disclosure: I am on the advisory board for MindTouch.

Double disclosure: I really, really like the latest release of MindTouch Deki (formerly "Deki Wiki").

MindTouch has always thought that a wiki should be about more than simply creating basic web pages. With its new "Kilen Woods" release, the company has significantly bent the rules as to what constitutes a wiki, and just which data sources can feed into a wiki.

LinkedIn? Yep. Salesforce.com? Sure. SugarCRM. Uh-huh.

MindTouch Deki enables businesses to connect and mashup the growing number of application and data silos that exist across an enterprise - including legacy systems, CRM and ERP applications, databases, and Web 2.0 applications....For example, MindTouch Deki can visualize content from a Microsoft SQL Server or Microsoft Access databases and mash it up with other services, such as Microsoft Live Earth or Google maps, LinkedIn and a CRM system - offering a common wiki and web-service interface for content and behavior from multiple sources.

eWeek and others have some good reviews. Me? I just like that I don't have to learn any wiki language to use it. Take a look for yourself:… Read more

The rise of digital nomadism

On the occasion of Independence Day, Steve Rubel reflects on the growing independence of knowledge workers in the network economy and predicts the rise of "Digital Nomads:"

"If you spend as much time on the road as I do, you're likely to run into Digital Nomads. This sector of the workforce includes both independents and corporate workers. They use web-based tools like Twitter, wikis, Google Docs, social networks and Skype to collaborate and work wherever, whenever and however they want.

(...)

The reality is that many of the tools that workers need to do their jobs are … Read more

Skype: The ultimate collaboration tool?

At Alfresco, we've stumbled upon an ingenious way to keep the company together. We're highly distributed, with no US offices. With everyone working remotely, people can feel a bit isolated at times.

I read in Businessweek months ago about how IBM requires remote workers to congregate (online, over-the-phone, or in-person) every three days to improve happiness and productivity. In trying to figure out how to apply this practice to Alfresco, I thought of Skype.

Being a company with employees spread across the United States and Europe, Alfresco has long used Skype to cut phone costs and as our … Read more

The Enterprise 2.0 mishmash of muddle

I didn't attend the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this year, but judging by Jeff Whatcott's commentary, I'm not sure I missed much.

It would appear that the Enterprise 2.0 world is still recycling the same froth in an attempt to stand out. Here's what Whatcott had to say:

I spent some time checking out the competition to benchmark our messaging and functionality. I was struck by how thoroughly undifferentiated the pitches were. Everyone was giving essentially the same demo, talking about the same functionality and use cases.

Internally, I heard from Jean Barmash on the Alfresco consulting team who echoed Jeff's comments:

Walking around the exhibition floor, it looked like everybody was offering very similar stuff--big focus on "communities"--creating them, managing them, etc.

It feels like we're in the early stages of Enterprise 2.0. Let's call it Enterprise 1.8 where everyone is showing the right slideware and demos, but few, if any, really know how to put it all to productive business use.

Until the money steps in, I think we're going to remain in a curious limbo where "shiny baubles" (a colleague's favorite term) get rolled out widely but for which few pay because no one on the enterprise side has really connected the dots between community, user-generated content, and enterprise productivity/business value.… Read more

Look who's blogging: Oliver Marks

I was really excited to see Larry Dignan's announcement that Oliver Marks has joined the ZDNet blogging team. I've known Oliver for a few years, first meeting him while he was managing the Sony PlayStation team's collaboration extranet.

He's a great person with deep experience in collaboration technology, having rolled out things like Jive and other tools. He also knows quite a bit about open source, having managed teams with heavy reliance on open-source technologies.

Check out his new blog on collaboration. Well worth a read. Where else will you read about the Crimean War, super … Read more

Google Sites for everyone: GeoCities 2.0?

Google announced on its official blog late Wednesday that Google Sites, its simplified Web site creation service, is now available to any registered Google user.

Previously, only businesses with Google Apps accounts and their own domains had had access to Google Sites.

Unlike the free Web site creation services of yesteryear (and by yesteryear, I mean 1998), Google Sites are collaborative, which engineering manager Andrew Zaeske said in the announcement makes them ideal for "team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it."

No HTML knowledge is required, and sites are hosted for free … Read more

Initiative pushes enterprises to share code, fight disease

Most of the software in the world is written by enterprises that never intend to sell it. They write it for internal use.

Think of all the good that would come by sharing that code between enterprises with similar needs. Think long enough and you'll come up with Stuart Cohen's Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI).

CSI hit the news this week for some intriguing work with the state of Utah, which promises to deliver the world's first open-source infectious disease management system and break down the walls between enterprises to introduce a new era of sharing code.

At least, that's the promise. It starts with one state. Where it goes next is what CSI (and open source) is all about. According to CSI's statement:… Read more

SFZero: A new interface for San Francisco

Remember the movie The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as unlikely brothers, shot before the backdrop of vertiginous San Francisco?

Well, here's a new interface for the city by the Bay: SFZero is "a new representation for the data that's already there. Your mind is full of inaccurate representations that are affecting the way you use the San Francisco data flow, steering you away from interaction and collaboration and toward unproductive reflexive data loops.

SFZero designers are working double shifts to engineer this next-generation interface that will bring you together with your cohabitants to experience … Read more

In a crowded market, Wetpaint's colors look solid

Short version: Wetpaint might be one to watch.

Long version: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has alerted us to a dark horse candidate in the race to dominate the land of wikis. It's Wetpaint, a Seattle-based service we haven't heard a whole lot from lately. The reason, Arrington says, is that it's positioning itself to be a player in niche social networks, not just mini-Wikipedias.

The easy-to-create wiki service pulled in 3 million page views in March, according to ComScore numbers, compared with 3.8 million for Ning, the well-funded social-network creator helmed by Marc Andreessen. Wetpaint also … Read more