October 2008 archive

Building webinar experience

I sat through a webinar hosted by UK trade magazine, Building, earlier today. Entitled Improving Business Efficiency in a Tough Economic Environment, it featured a presentation by Steve Masters of BT, and was chaired by Ray Crotty of C3 Systems (formerly of Bovis). Reflecting Steve’s role at a telecoms giant, most of his talk was …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/building-webinar-experience/

BIM, the project information cloud and an AEC ‘Cluetrain’

Sometimes one’s reading and writing can throw up some fortunate coincidences. Take this morning, for example. Via TenLinksDaily, I followed a link to an AECcafe.com article by Susan Smith: The Road to AEC Project Execution Success. Later, my feed-reader pointed me to a blog posting (and associated PowerPoint presentation) by Stress-Free’s David Harrison: Making digital …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/bim-the-project-information-cloud-and-an-aec-cluetrain/

Windows to go cloudy?

According to an article by Richard Waters in the Financial Times (Microsoft looks to cloud to open new windows – registration may be required), Microsoft may finally be ready to take a big leap into the world of cloud computing. He says the wraps are set to be taken off at a conference that the …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/windows-to-go-cloudy/

A SaaS code of conduct?

Phil Wainewright, one of my favourite SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) bloggers, wonders whether it’s Time for a SaaS code of conduct. He mentions another recent Gmail outage, and makes the valid point that SaaS outages tend to get much more publicity than internal corporate Microsoft Exchange outages (and “Microsoft only warranties the CD the software comes on. …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/a-saas-code-of-conduct/

CJ Twitters

No doubt inspired by their attendance at Be2camp 10 days ago (OK, I can be optimistic!), the good folk at UK construction trade mag Contract Journal are now on Twitter. Moreover, @contractjournal – laudibly – has so far resisted the temptation to simply splurge out a write-only feed of hourly, sporadically updated news links (like …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/cj-twitters/

Business and Web 2.0

An article in Information Age, Web 2.0 adoption faces workplace challenges (online here), says that while Web 2.0 technologies continue to penetrate the enterprise (see graph), many companies are encountering difficulties when trying to implement the disparate technology sets. A McKinsey survey of 1988 executives suggests that tools such as wikis, blogs and social networks …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/business-and-web-20/

Beware of the trolls

In the internet sense of the word, a troll, according to Wikipedia, is “someone who posts controversial and irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.” I have …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/beware-of-the-trolls/

SMEs under-estimate connectivity issues of SaaS adoption

A survey of over 270 small/medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by EasyNet Connect (see PDF) shows that, while many are ready to embrace Software-as-a-Service, they are often ignoring connectivity and security issues: One in four respondents plan to move to cloud-based services or applications within two years, with around half (47%) expected to do so within five …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/smes-under-estimate-connectivity-issues-of-saas-adoption/

The new ‘extranet’ battleground

In the past couple of months, there has been a sudden explosion in the number of construction collaboration vendors offering process management solutions. On 21 August, Aconex announced “a major upgrade to its Workflows module, which supports advanced document management in large or complex project environments”. The features apparently include “a wizard that allows users …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/the-new-extranet-battleground/

Junk the myths

For the past week or more, I have been carrying around a newspaper cutting from the 29 September edition of The Guardian: a Media Guardian article by Professor Jeff Jarvis of the City University of New York (and the buzzmachine.com blog). I’ve finally got round to reading it properly and it’s fantastic stuff. In the …

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Permanent link to this article: http://extranetevolution.com/2008/10/junk-the-myths/

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