The U.S. Census Bureau has started mailing out its forms, so I would like to take this opportunity to announce a new demographic category for those of us who will be writing “journalist” in the “occupation” box: Old New Media Dogs. T-shirts and business cards are forthcoming. I’ve spent the last week attending a couple of conferences and speaking to a university class as a proud member of this cohort, and it’s been encouraging to see a few other ONMDs in the audiences.
In the Windows world, photographers looking for an alternative to Adobe Photoshop that will save them cash without skimping on power typically have turned to Corel’s PaintShop Photo Pro. The program has consistently kept pace with the evolving needs of shutterbugs over the years and the latest “X3″ version of the software continues that tradition. Among the new features in X3 are a number of improvements to enhance a photographer’s workflow. Workflow is important to shooters because once an image is captured, they are going to want to find it again eventually.
Today’s rising overhead expenses drive organizations to find practical ways to reduce costs. Profit-conscious executives face the challenge of either reducing headcount or reducing overhead expenses. Much of the time, either of these strategies can have a negative impact on productivity and morale. Every so often a strategy appears that can provide significant expense control and enhance productivity. One of these areas is office printing.
Documents drive business processes. That’s why an average of 1-3% of a company’s annual revenues are consumed by document productioni. To make matters worse, this expense is growing in many organizations. A Print Management Strategy allows you to control these expenses by outsourcing the management of your fleet of printers. In this type of usage-based model, you only pay for the prints you use. Best of all, no capital expenditures are required since the agreement is for the management of your existing fleet.
This paper presents the importance of a Print Management Strategy. Current economic, environmental, productivity and IT department impacts are explored. Benefits of implementing a print management strategy are itemized.
Complete the form below to access this White Paper from Xerox:
While Google was purchasing DocVerse this week, Mainsoft was releasing a free Beta that lets you access and share Google Docs documents from within Outlook. The tool isn’t from Microsoft, but it does put Google Docs users back in the Microsoft ecosystem, so I’m sure it’s a tool that must at least make the folks in Redmond smile, especially in light of Google’s recent actions.
In addition, users can also access documents found within Microsoft SharePoint from the Harmony pane. It enables users to share a single copy of the document instead of sending attachments to emails, and ensures that participants should have the most up-to-date copy of the document.
Since many business users spend a great deal of their day inside Outlook, this tool could be very useful. After you install Harmony, it creates a new pane in Outlook.
Matt Cain, research vice president and Gartner’s lead email analyst, thinks this tool provides users with a key function that’s been missing from email. ”We believe the ultimate role of the email client is to aggregate communication and collaboration streams from many modalities into one common interface. In this way, the email client becomes the communication and collaboration master console–a universal queue, so to speak.”
Harmony should provide a way to access documents from Google and SharePoint, providing users with a useful service for no cost. At the very least, it’s certainly worth trying out and seeing if it works for your organization.
For more information: - see the Mainsoft press release
Last week, Socialtext, the Enterprise 2.0 company, released version 4.0 of its product, which brings together a number of initiatives they have launched recently, including Socialtext Signals, which is their microblogging tool, and a spreadsheet they created in conjunction with spreadsheet pioneer Dan Bricklin.
Specifically 4.0 includes the ability to:
Create collaborative groups around a project, department or area of common interest,
Send a microblogging message to one of these groups,
Search microblogging traffic to find nuggets of information lost in the information stream,
Filter by group within a Signals stream,
And see who is available (as you can with an instant messaging tool).
Socialtext CEO Eugene Lee says these tools can help increase the likelihood of collaboration and knowledge sharing inside an organization. “Socialtext 4.0 takes that an extra step forward. It allows people to circulate information, ideas and updates in a targeted way with teammates, so they can move quickly to take advantage of new opportunities.”
You can purchase 4.0 as a hosted service or as an appliance you install behind the firewall. The product is also accessible on smart phones including the Blackberry, iPhone and Android phones.
A tool like Socialtext can help enterprises looking for new ways to collaborate and share information. These new tools provide the means to narrow the focus of the larger information stream and find the nuggets that are often hidden in the stream and that’s a big step forward. At the same time, it provides ways to share information via blogs and Wikis around a single issue that requires more space than a microblogging tools can provide.
The video below explains how Socialtext works in a larger context:
For more information: - see the Socialtext press release
