Friday, February 21, 2003

I know, I know: getting excited about intranets and dotcoms is soooo 1998... Yet what makes Intranets.com worth noticing - at least in my eyes - is that it not only seems to have survived the dotcom carnage, but also managed to significantly improve its product since the last time I took notice of it, in July 2001. For a very reasonable $3 per user per month ("corporate" pricing starts at $5/user/month), a nonprofit organization or an educational institution will get a pretty exhaustive package of hosted collaboration and "personal productivity" tools, including:

• File storage and sharing
• Group calendar
• Discussion boards
• Database creation tool (with templates)
• Announcements
• Member directory and personal address books
• Integrated e-mail (with access to external accounts)
• Task management
• Group polling
• Expense reports
• Ability to create teams
• Instant messaging
• Fine-grained access control

Some features (e.g. calendar, contacts) can even be synchronized with Palm and/or MS Outlook, or accessed from a Web-enabled cell phone. Interested? Take a look at the multimedia demo of Intranets.com or request a 30-day trial.

 

Thursday, February 20, 2003

John Seely Brown: "There is a new kind of digital divide now and it is the divide between faculty and students. Faculty, stuck in yesterday's analog world, are confronted with students who arrive nicely fluent in digital technology and the virtues of hyperspeed."

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In Collaboration Cure (InfoWorld, January 2003) Russell Kay appears upbeat about the collaborative potential of Tablet PC. Are his arguments convincing? You decide. I doubt that this is what will make this new platform sink or swim, but I'm glad somebody is looking at it from that angle.

 

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Global Information Technology Report 2002-2003 - Readiness for the Networked World benchmarks the performance and monitors progress in networked readiness of 82 countries. As the world experiences an economic slowdown, the Report highlights that the use and application of information and communication technologies (ICT) remain among the most powerful engines of growth. Here's a table of "Top 10" rankings:

The report is available (as PDF files) at the World Economic Forum's site, or in printed form from Oxford University Press.

 

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

The January 2003 issue of The Sophist - an online, quarterly newsletter devoted to "learning technologies and the nonprofit sector" - takes a look at Web conferencing and synchronous online training. In this issue a piece enitled, "Meeting in the Virtual World: A Look at the Benefits of Web Conferencing", contains a notable quote:

Unlike other technologies used to replace face-to-face meetings (telephone and e-mail, for example), Web conferencing allows for layered communication, combining the visual, the vocal, the aural, and the participatory. The different layers and forms of communication enabled by Web conferencing can appeal to different learning styles and promote more effective knowledge-sharing than other means of communication that rely narrowly on a single type of interaction.

The whole, relatively short, article is well worth reading.

 

Monday, February 17, 2003

Microsoft purchased Placeware, one of the "Big Three" providers of Web conferencing services (the other two: WebEx and Centra). It will be interesting to see whether Placeware survives the embrace of Microsoft and, if it does, whether it will finally get Voice Over IP capability that it staunchly chose to ignore.
(For more info on Placeware, please see the database entry.)

 

Sunday, February 16, 2003

FlashComStudio — A new website devoted entirely to the Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX features forums (both for newbies and experts), information about hosting, sample applications, links to other resources, etc. Not much there yet, but with a bit of luck and marketing it may become a major resource for people excited (as I am) about the new, promising development platform. For more information about Flashcom, please see the review in Spotlight No. 26