Archive for the ‘software’ Category

Google Wave: go see the movie!

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

On may 28th Google unveiled its next big product, Google Wave, in a detailed preview demo at Google I/O Developer conference. The demo is available in video at http://wave.google.com/ . Go forth and watch it; if you have any interest in info overload, it’s well worth your time.

Wave represents a serious paradigm shift in the way people collaborate remotely. It merges the roles of email, IM, shared document editing, wikis, and more into a single dynamic hosted entity called a Wave, which is “equal parts conversation and document“.

It has to be seen to be understood. Go see it. Then start speculating, as I do, how this will impact communications in large enterprises, which are not agile in embracing new tools, yet have so much to gain from the availability of such an innovative tool…

Posted in IM, email, software | No Comments »

Interesting idea from IBM

Wednesday, April 8th, 2009

A friend pointed out an interesting patent application from IBM. The proposed system allows one to send people a calendar meeting invite that specifies no distractions are allowed during the meeting (an “exclusive attendance event”); after the attendee accepts, their computer will automatically suspend non-event related activities while the meeting is in progress. There are some additional refinements, but basically this is a computerized implementation of the seldom heard “everyone, close your Notebooks” at the start of a meeting.

Now, this is an idea with some merit; there are millions of meetings going on that are totally ineffective because everyone is “doing email” or web surfing instead of listening. It is interesting to  note, therefore, how the article in the Daily Tech where I saw it reported actually ridicules it as a case of “IBM Files Patent Application to Ignore Its Software”, which is like saying that installing a brake in its cars is a case of Ford “installing a device to ignore its own motors”. Whoever wrote this was ignoring the very real benefit such a system would have on meeting effectiveness. Strange…

Posted in software | 1 Comment »

That pesky RTA button…

Monday, February 2nd, 2009

One of our members sent a pointer to this article on TechCrunch. Apparently, the Nielsen Media Research’s management had taken action to remove the Reply to All button from the interface of all its 35,000 employees’ email clients, as part of a drive to eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency.

It is fascinating to read the comments to the post. As my own experience confirms, suggestions like this tend to stir heated emotions. And indeed, on one hand, it is easy to identify with the views that it would be better to educate people to act sensibly; on the other, with thousands of users, we know that will never suffice. My own take on this is that the more aggravating RTAs – the ones that are a clear result of thoughtlessness – may be solved even if you don’t remove the button, but simply  move it on the toolbar away from REPLY. Even such a tiny change might eliminate some of the reflexive use of RTA when REPLY would suffice.

What do you think?

Posted in email, software | 4 Comments »