March 2008

My del.icio.us bookmarks for March 17th through March 18th

March 18, 2008 Asides

These are my del.icio.us bookmarks for March 17th through March 18th: /Message: Microsoft and Yahoo: Here Comes Yesterday – Yesterday is so…yesterday YouTube – Placebo – Running Up That Hill – Awesome version of the Kate Bush classic ???? ?no? ??s?? o? ??? ?s?q pu? ?s???u ??? – A Counting School – Totally barmy but [...]

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On meeting Phil Hodgen

March 17, 2008 General

Last week while in the US, I had a chance meetup and coffee (in a Starbucks, where else?) with Phil Hodgen. If the name is unfamiliar he is a blogging, sometimes tweeting tax lawyer who spends an unhealthy amount of time wandering around the Middle East helping ludicrously wealthy people save tax. I’m sure Richard [...]

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Marketing isn't advertising, is it?

March 17, 2008 General

I was astonished to read that Deloitte’s marketing director Nigel Pyke believes that two million pounds spent on a national advertising campaign was money well spent: ‘External reaction has been positive; those that had seen the advertising were 22% more likely to consider using Deloitte services in the future than those who had not,’ he [...]

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Governance chaos

March 17, 2008 General

Last week I attended a conference on governance, risk and compliance that was in part organized by SAP. It was an illuminating experience about which I will write more later. Sadly, the general impression I came with was one of disappointment. Two great sessions, one covering the business value of going ‘green,’ the other dealing [...]

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Jive learning in the US

March 17, 2008 General

Last week I sat in on Jive Software’s customer advisory board meeting in San Francisco which includes representatives from Dell, Nike and Intel. Jive makes collaboration software for both internal and external styles of communication that is usually self hosted. The meeting was interesting at a number of levels. First, it is clear that Jive [...]

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Entourage import is poor

March 17, 2008 General

I recently downloaded Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac thinking I might use Entourage to help me organize the list of calls for which I’m getting n increasing number of requests. As with everything Microsoft, the install chewed up a lot of disk space: 1.1 GB to be exact but seemed to go reasonably smoothly. The [...]

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Wetpaint goes social

March 10, 2008 General

Last week I was briefed by Ben Elowitz CEO of Wetpaint who talked about the changes going on at Wetpaint. I’ve been an occasional Wetpaint user for some time but have recently noticed that companies are starting to pick up on it. Oracle for instance has 4,000+ members in its developer wiki and HP has been using it for promoting their printer technology to SMBs and home users. In the latest version, Wetpaint has progressed from being an easy to use wiki to include elements of social publishing that Friends Network, Custom Member Profiles, a What’s New site activity dashboard and Friends Feeds, Wetpaint has created the first truly integrated social publishing platform, empowering anyone to easily create a completely social and collaborative website. The ‘helper’ additions which include a sort of spell checker and expression finder help ensure that people don’t create unwieldy folksonomies (ie personal taxonomies). While Wetpaint is designed with the outward facing organization in mind, it can be restricted to invitation only participants. This would allow professionals to try out the idea of developing a collaborative workspace for things like tax libraries and the development of standard letters in a safe and very easy to use environment.

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Brain dead staff thinking

March 10, 2008 General

Jason Calacanis has stirred up something of a firestorm with his assertion that: Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz. In fairness to Jason, a number of the tips he gives for saving money are sensible but this one is way off the charts.

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Advertising doesn't work, content does

March 10, 2008 Featured

This is how it works: I’m using Newsgator’s widget creation tool (you need a premium account for this) to build a set of aggregated feeds…. Clever bit part 1 The exact position each sponsor occupies doesn’t depend on them paying a premium or haggling over sizes of ad block etc. They all pay the same so they all know what I am taking from the site…. Nah – they’ve got to come here to get the code for a start and maybe people will hang around and look at other stuff…. Clever bit part 3 All this means that readers are not being assaulted by adverts but presented with more content and links to other content…. Future stuff So the next question is how can I get even more content into the sponsored feed block but without it all disappearing under the fold?… Newsgator is happy because it demonstrates a fresh use of their tools and might even encourage a few people to get their desktop tools (which are also free) and maybe try this for themselves (which isn’t.)… One more thing Finally, I’d like to publicly express my thanks to the Newsgator people and especially my friend Jeff Nolan for making it happen and Dan Borrego for helping me iron out the wrinkles…. And to all the folk who have wandered past this site over the last few years, helped me shape content and got me to this point – I couldn’t have done it without you.

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Is there an Enron in the making?

March 7, 2008 General

VersionOne used a research study with 190 senior finance professionals (finance directors and managers) across a range of public and private sector organisations to pimp its electronic document solution. The study reckoned 76% of respondents believe electronic DM could be useful in preventing fraud. Lynne Munns, General Manager of Version One, said: “The false accounting scandal at Enron proved devastating to its reputation and was directly responsible for the company’s downfall. The lessons learnt from this case highlight the importance of managing risk by having effective document management systems in place.” OK – enough of the sales talk On the face of it, the argument is reasonable. No shredded documents, documents embedded as part of the systems of record – it all sounds highly plausible…. People who are determined enough to perpetrate a fraud will find a way. So while electronic DM is a laudable and useful thing – it’s also green – and may indeed help mitigate instances of fraud, it isn’t a foolproof response to the problem of fraud.