/blog When you communicate better, work's more fun (and productive) Fri, 17 Mar 2006 03:36:55 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A good, brief introductory article on COBIT at IT Manager's Journal: In essence, COBIT incorporates the control objectives observed by enterprises in compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and other international standards allows for coordination between control requirements, technical issues and business risks. COBIT's tool sets allow for practices that its developer, the IT ... /blog/2006/03/16/introducing-cobit/ The information architecture group blog Boxes and Arrows has a great post this week on the basic kinds of information-seeking behaviors by users of a web or intranet site, and how to design for maximum information retrievability. Most information architects already take "known item" (you know what you're looking for) and ... /blog/2006/03/16/helping-your-users-find-information/ Lifehack has a short, interesting essay on office politics, and on what conduct is both ethical and realistic in the modern workplace: Too often [office politics] smack of dirty tricks and the use of personal influence in the interests of a few, powerful individuals, conjuring up a picture of secret deals ... /blog/2006/03/15/ethical-office-politics-lifehackorg/ The IT Service Today search engine/portal just keeps getting better and better. Site manager Robin Yearsley has added links to ITIL-focused podcasts, sites and articles, and there's a hidden "Easter Egg" ... if you use their "Tell a Friend" feature to help spread the word to your colleagues, your ... /blog/2006/03/13/it-service-today-itil-and-it-service-management/ Google just went into the web-based office software business, acquiring the startup Writely.com. Writely produces a word processor that runs in a standard web browser: Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time. Pick exactly who can access your documents. Edit your documents from anywhere. Nothing to download -- your browser is ... /blog/2006/03/10/quite-writely/ Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can't figure out how to operate the devices, a scientist said on Monday. Product complaints and returns are often caused by poor design, but companies frequently dismiss them as "nuisance calls," Elke den Ouden ... /blog/2006/03/08/research-shows-complexity-causes-50-of-product-returns/ There is a new and insidious threat to the World Wide Web: a slowly rising tide of "original content" on Internet sites that is at best worthless, and at worst possibly even dangerously inaccurate. I should know; I've been writing some of the stuff myself. Understanding what's happening requires a lesson in ... /blog/2006/03/07/the-dumbification-of-web-content/ Do you secretly suspect that you're working for bozos -- or that, horror of horrors, you might have become a bozo yourself? Here. Take the GBAT - Guy (Kawasaki's) Bozofication Aptitude Test, brought to you by the nice people at Electric Pulp. Question one, true or false: The two most popular words ... /blog/2006/03/06/gbat-guys-bozofication-aptitude-test/ How many people think they've missed their opportunity to be a musician, or an expert golfer, or even a chess grand master because they didn't start when they were young? Or because they simply lacked natural talent? Those people are (mostly) wrong. According to some brain scientists, almost anyone can ... /blog/2006/03/05/how-to-be-an-expert-creating-passionate-users/ With this add-in you can permanently remove hidden and collaboration data, such as change tracking and comments, from Word 2003/XP, Excel 2003/XP, and PowerPoint 2003/XP files. When you distribute an Office document electronically, the document might contain information that you do not want to share publicly, such as information you’ve designated ... /blog/2006/03/05/office-2003xp-add-in-remove-hidden-data/