Community Network Blogs As some of our hawk-eyed users have been quick to notice, we've now added support for OpenSocial - a common set of programming standards used by many social web applications. Supporting OpenSocial standards means that SAP StreamWork users will get access to a broader range of tools and functionality. If you've developed an application using the popular OpenSocial API, you'll now be able to register it with SAP StreamWork and make it available to users in the SAP StreamWork tools catalog. Several companies have already taken advantage: Atlassian Atlassian is offering issue tracking, collaboration, and software development tools to help teams of SAP StreamWork users conceive, plan, build, and launch great products. CS Odessa CS Odessa is offering ConceptDraw MindWave, a visual mind-mapping collaboration tool. Doodle Doodle will help SAP StreamWork users save time and simplify the coordination of appointments with its online scheduling service. Google Got Decisions MindMeister
SAP Adds OpenSocial API To StreamWork -- InformationWeek Apps built with the social Web development standard can be made available to users of SAP's collaborative decision-making software. SAP has expanded its potential base of application partners for StreamWork by adding support for OpenSocial, a common set of programming standards in use by many social Web application developers. SAP StreamWork is collaborative decision-making software, designed to make it easier for individuals -- both inside and outside an organization -- to work together. "If you've developed an application using the popular OpenSocial API, you'll now be able to register it with SAP StreamWork and make it available to users in the SAP StreamWork tools catalog," SAP said on its Web site. Already, at least six third-party developers have adopted SAP StreamWork, according to SAP. Atlassian integrates both its enterprise wiki-tracker Confluence and issue-tracker JIRA with SAP StreamWork, enabling SAP users to embed gadgets into an activity. More Insights
Apps for Science Happy 65th Birthday to the Doriot Ecology On January 12, I arrived in Austin to start my new career as Professor of Innovation at The University of Texas. Only two weeks later, President Obama opened his State of the Union address by proclaiming, "The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation.” Obama continued, “We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices, the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers, of Google and Facebook. And then he made innovation urgent: “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment. So, we professors of innovation had better get rolling. Yes, it can. Innovation takes various forms, and there are many taxonomies for dividing them up. Most people have rich and full lives in the not-innovative quadrant of this innovation matrix. Type III Innovation is the most difficult, using new knowledge in new ways – do not try this at home. Another huge coincidence might be that I turn 65 on April 7th. NVCA probably got the idea for our VC65 celebration from Spencer E.
Work Smarter With Online Collaboration Tools - PCWorld Business Center Budget constraints and limited technical support make it critical for most small and medium-size companies to work as efficiently as possible. An important first step in getting more and better work from relatively few people is to enable them to work together in real time, no matter how distant they actually may be. In this brief guide, I'll explain how to select collaboration tools to match your business's needs. The free Google Apps service is a sensible starting point for many companies. Google Apps If your small business is just getting started with online collaboration, the free version of Google Apps is an excellent place to dive in. With Google Apps or any other service, e-mail lies at the heart of your collaboration. Thrifty businesses may be able to get by with the free edition of Google Calendar. Google Docs stores and edits files. Additional tools can help businesses collaborate and communicate. Google Apps Premier Edition Google Mail jumps to 25GB.
Versly Versly Enters Private Beta Versly announced itself to the world and opened up a private beta. The company says the following about its new service: - "Follow relevant conversations and tasks right from within Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, email, and mobile devices." - "Versly syncs your docs to the cloud so the people you share with are always working off the latest version. Even better, if two people are editing at the same time we make it easy to merge your changes." - "Share a document with anyone in your address book and let them comment and update docs right from their inbox without ever having to register." The company is hiring a client / app developer too. My Comments 1. 2. 3. Novell Debuts Enterprise Vibe Cloud Collaboration -- InformationWeek The social media product combines activity streams and ad hoc collaboration with file sharing and group editing capabilities. Analytics Slideshow Calculating Cloud ROI (click image for larger view and for full slideshow) Novell introduced an Enterprise Edition of its Novell Vibe Cloud social collaboration product Tuesday, as Vibe ended its beta test phase. Novell Vibe Cloud is an enterprise social media product that combines activity streams and ad hoc collaboration with file sharing and group editing capabilities. While plenty of cloud services offer some variation on this "freemium" model, "we're fairly unique in being enterprise freemium," Andy Fox , Novell vice president of product management, said in an interview. Novell figures some small organizations might be perfectly happy with the basic edition, but enterprises will tend to upgrade fairly quickly so they can import accounts from their corporate directory and impose security controls on who can create or modify groups.
Teambox: An Excellent Open Source Collaborative Project Management Solution While there are approximately 3 million project management apps (I’m guessing. I lost count around 102,463), TeamBox manages to stand out from the crowd by being both open source and focusing heavily on collaboration. While many hosted web-based project management apps focus on collaboration, few of them are open source. Teambox has both of those covered. Dashboard When you first log in, the main focus is on all recent activity and comments made by other team members. Task Management Teambox’s Task Management page is very “social network-inspired” (think Facebook and Twitter). Charts, Reports, and Calendars Teambox makes it easy to view what’s due when, along with who’s responsible for what in whatever form is easiest for you to visualize — either Gnatt charts, reports, or on a calendar. Whiteboards Whiteboards are great for collaborating with a team. Conversations Email Intergration Mobile Mobile is a huge consideration when it comes to project management apps and Teambox has you covered.
“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham Summary Publishing is central to Academia, but its publishing system is outclassed by what Open Source software developers have in GitHubGitHub’s success is not just about openness, but also a prestige economy that rewards valuable content producers with credit and attentionOpen Science efforts like arXiv and PLoS ONE should follow GitHub’s lead and embrace the social web Publish or Perish I am postdoctoral fellow, and my academic department is currently running a junior faculty search. To anyone involved in academia, this overwhelming focus on publications is a given. Getting a paper accepted into an academic journal requires passage through the often opaque process of peer-review. Having editorial decisions made by established experts makes sense, since they draw on judgement born from years of experience. GitHubbing My training has spanned biology, engineering, and computer science. Published Versus Prestigious The Market for Prestige Hey Mr. Notes
Scientia Scripta, science and business copywriting, editing, project dissemination, Manchester, UK Collaboration is great for science, but it does make the job of trying to communicate the research and disseminate findings even trickier than normal. These days it seems that collaboration in the professional world is everywhere. What with screen sharing software, online document sharing through platforms like Google Docs, collaboration – especially international and multisite collaboration – is now so much easier. Of course, in the scientific world collaboration is not just recommended, but generally required. With FP7 and many national science and technology funding programmes, we see the pooling of expertise. Collaboration = challenge But collaboration brings a range of challenges, especially when it comes to communicating. The boss Who is in charge? Participants and the politics With numerous and culturally diverse project stakeholders it can be difficult for the contributions and identities of all parties to be reflected in the final output. The goals
Three Phases of SharePoint: What Type of User Are You? CIO — SharePoint, Microsoft's (MSFT) software program offering everything from online document management to Intranets to social networking sites, has over 100 million users and a majority of them are from Fortune 500 companies, according to Microsoft. But SharePoint is a sprawling piece of software and rarely does any business use it for all its features. Some organizations implement SharePoint for immediate needs like social networking or document management. Or it could be used as a platform to organize all your business apps and establish policies for content types and taxonomies. Some of the heavier SharePoint customers use it to plan their technology roadmaps. There are three phases of SharePoint enterprise use, according to Microsoft's research, and which phase your company falls in often depends on your IT department's vision and foresight. Phase 1: Ramping Up Companies typically start using SharePoint out of the box for team collaboration and portals. Phase 2: Building Momentum
Reuters Summit - VCs trade biotech for social networking Venture capitalists are shifting their attention to social networking companies and away from biotech companies, bankers told the Reuters Global Mergers and Acquisitions Summit on Monday. Venture capitalists, who make high-risk investments in start-ups, are tired of waiting years for biotech companies to generate real products and be marketable as initial public offerings, bankers said. They'd rather invest in companies that could go public in just a year or two. "Think of an IPO for an early stage biotech company. You're 5, 7, 9 years away from revenues and profitability. That's a big stretch today for most investors," said Frederick Frank, vice chairman at investment banking advisory firm Peter J. "The IPO market for biotech companies is close to moribund," he added. A quicker turnaround on an investment could be attractive. "A greater percentage of the dollars has moved toward technology investments," Birch said.
Wingu Makes Science Simple 'Google for research’ organizes info in one place. By Kevin Davies March 29, 2011 | What happens if you cross expertise in social networking and bioinformatics with semantic medical search and Cloud computing? The answer is Wingu, the bootstrapped brainchild of Brian Gilman and Nick Encina, which emerges from hibernation this spring after two years in stealth mode. “Wingu is a next-generation platform for scientific data management,” says Gilman, who previously founded Panther Informatics and SciLink (see, “SciLink Scours the Web for Connections,” Bio•IT World, Oct 2007). “We’re a data company. Gilman and Encina chose the name Wingu, which means “cloud” in Swahili, because as Gilman says, “we’re launching in the Cloud and have a commitment to lowering boundaries for research.” Functionality on the Platform But Wingu also borrows the concept of an Apple App Store. Encina’s background is in cell biology and computer science. “At a high level,” he continues, “we’re a data company.