Happy New Year

Regular blogging to resume soon…

Idea Exchange Rocks

A couple of weeks ago, I explained how Intalio is outsourcing its product management function to customers using a process we call Demand Driven Development. Following the release of this article, I have been exposed to the Idea Exchange, and must say that I am very impressed by the quality of the implementation that Salesforce.com developed for an idea quite similar to ours. [Continue…]

Feed Update

When we upgraded IT|Redux to its new design, we made some changes to its RSS feed as well, and more changes might be made down the road. So, in order to avoid any service interruption, I strongly encourage you to check that your feed reader is using the correct feed URL. [Continue…]

EveryTrail

From time to time, you stumble upon an new application that radically changes the way you look at things around you. Mosaic changed the way I look at computers, Google Earth the way I look at the world, and EveryTrail the way I look at my trips. Today, I had lunch with Joost Schreve, EveryTrail’s CEO, and got to use his application for one of my favorite activities: flying with friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. [Continue…]

Contact Managers Roundup

Here is the third edition of our Weekly Office 2.0 Roundup. Today, we will review 4 contact management applications, from Big Contacts to Xing. We will identify some unique features that might help your own selection process, and you will get a chance to cast your vote for the best online contact management application. [Continue…]

Who Are You?

On any given day, this modest blog receives about 500 visits, and is read by a little bit more than 500 subscribers to its feed. I get to know a few of my readers through the comments that are posted, and from the trackbacks that I gather using Technorati. For the rest of you, and you represent the vast majority of my readers, I have no idea of who you are. So how about you tell me? [Continue…]

Inferences for ‘07

Last year’s inferences lead to an unexpectedly high 83% success rate. This will be hard to beat, especially because my new batch of nine inferences will be stated in more measurable ways, leaving little room for history rewriting. Let’s give it a shot anyway, and meet again on December 31st, 2007 for our yearly performance review. In the meantime, happy new year to all! [Continue…]

Scorecard

364 days ago, I published my inferences for ‘06. A year has passed, and time has come to take a look back and see how good (or bad) I did back then. Tomorrow, I will publish a new batch, and review them a year from now. [Continue…]

Improved LinkedIn User Interface

The LinkedIn social networking service recently improved its user interface, following a major overhaul released in March and described in this past article. Among other things, the new user interface adds a hierarchical Inbox, and improves the way profile updates are presented. [Continue…]

I Need Feedback

As of today, IT|Redux has 415 subscribers, and a daily average of 355 visits and 880 pageviews, 44% of them by returning visitors. This makes for a regular readership of about 800 people. I estimate that about 100 people posted at least one of the 900+ comments that have been published on the blog, which means that I do not know who the 700 others are. I would love to hear from them, for it would help me better address your needs and expectations. [Continue…]

In Search of Stickiness

Some web services have stickiness, others don’t. The first will draw users to make use of the service on a regular and voluntary (pull) basis. The second will get infrequent use, most of the time in response to external requests (push). If two services compete for the same audience, the one with the higher level of stickiness eventually wins against the other. This is especially true for services that rely on Metcalfe’s law in order to deliver value to their users, chiefs among them social networking services. [Continue…]

Networking is an Art

As much as I like networking today, it is not something that came naturally to me. Instead, it took me quite some time to become comfortable with its basic principles. My education process included reading books, such as Keith Farrazzi’s Never Eat Alone and Malcom Gladwell’s Tipping Point, following Guy Kawasaki’s advice on The Art […]

New LinkedIn User Interface

Somehow, the LinkedIn user interface has always been quite confusing to me. I could never quite explain why, and a lot of users had similar complains, without being able to provide much more insight either. The good folks at LinkedIn diligently acknowledged the problem and came up with a brand new user interface recently. They […]

Things are Coming Together

Yesterday, someone reacted to my recent article covering jotForms and Wufoo, and asked me what the use could be for an online form builder that does not offer proper database support and integration capabilities. The short answer is: not much! But this should not let us discard such services right off the bat. Instead, I view them as fantastic proofs of concept that are demonstrating what Office 2.0 is capable of. Such attempts provide us with all the pieces we need, which we can then integrate into a broader framework. Initially, syndication interfaces and open APIs will let us build such mashups ourselves, but moving forward, most of the pieces will come together into unified platforms.

The World is Flat

I just finished reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times columnist and author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree. In his last book, Friedman identifies ten events and trends that are flattening the world we live in today. I agreed with most of the thesis, and tried to relate to it my own experience working at Intalio.

Office 2.0 Interoperability

My Office 2.0 setup currently includes 15 different services, 10 require a login and password, and 8 separate logins and passwords are used. This is one of the bugs that plague the concept for Office 2.0 today. It could be solved with single sign-on, which is one of the interoperability services that are needed to make Office 2.0 a truly effective computing platform. This article provides a first list of such interoperability services.

The Quest for the Perfect Bookmarking Tool

Beside online calendaring, which was recently featured by Michael Arrington on Techcrunch, no other application gets more attention than social bookmarking these days. Most of us started with del.icio.us, then played with BlinkList, Diigo, or Simpy. The last to date is ma.gnolia, for which I received a preview account today. As usual, Brian Benzinger from Solution Watch offered a great early review. Here are my own first impressions.

Getting Started with Blogs

IT|Redux has been live for two months now, and several readers have expressed their desire to start a blog of their own. If you are one of those, here is a list of tools that I have been using and have mostly good things to say about.

Upgraded to Simpy

I liked del.icio.us a lot, but two features convinced me to upgrade to Simpy: first, Simpy allows you to create private bookmarks; second, it provides a REST API that I intend to use to synchronize my bookmarks with the various links I store into Salesforce.com. Obviously, I must not be the first one to upgrade […]

For a New Etiquette of LinkedIn

Yesterday, what could be described as the first union of LinkedIn power networkers was created by Christian Mayaud, one of LinkedIn’s most connected users, and certainly its most articulate commentator. The LinkedIn Lions Forum was started among rising concerns that LinkedIn Corporation, the company that has custody of the eponymous network, was not letting power networkers grow and use their networks in ways they felt entitled to.

At the time of writing, 529 users had joined the group and 270 messages had been exchanged. The issue, masterfully presented in a recent interview with Christian Mayaud, is a complex one that deserves some explanation. What is at stake is the long term viability of LinkedIn as a tool for power networkers, and I believe that a new etiquette of social networking with LinkedIn is required for the network to remain as effective as it is today.