Knowledge Work

SCOUT Corporate Blogging offers 10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger.
If you blog as part of your business marketing strategy, spend a few minutes and read this post.
SCOUT Corporate Blogging (Backbone Media)

Here’s a classic example of why you need writers and editors who understand the subject matter they’re writing about:
After almost 20 years languishing on the shelf, large companies are beginning to adopt ITIL, the Information Technology Infrastructure Library of IT services best practices guidelines (the British pronounce it “it-ill,” while Americans say “eye-till”). Forrester Research […]

A few updates have been made to the Knowledge Worker Free/Open Source Toolbox, which provides a list of freeware and/or open-source alternatives to popular commercial software.
Most notably, we’ve added a very good free, open-source functional replacement for Microsoft Project to the tools list: Open Workbench.
Open Workbench is an open source Windows-based desktop application that provides […]

Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly released research.
Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based […]

A new site called Nuvvo offers Web-delivered e-learning to both teachers and students.  If you’re an instructional designer, Nuvvo provides a pretty spiffy toolkit for course development.
Nuvvo is your way to teach on the web. Everyone knows a little bit about something, and this free, AJAX-enhanced eLearning web service is designed to bring out the […]

Jonathan Grubb describes “some personalities that come out in meetings, especially at big software companies”: 8 types of meeting attendees.
If you’ve done any time in project or staff meetings, you’ll recognize a number of these archetypes (The Talker, The Killer, etc.) as well as some contributed by Jonathan’s readers in the comments.
Personally, I have always […]

The dominance of English as the world’s top language — until recently an advantage to both Britain and the United States — is now beginning to undermine the competitiveness of both nations, according to a major research report.
The report commissioned by the British Council says monolingual English graduates “face a bleak economic future” as multilingual […]

Quick blogroll update: The Alchemy of Soulful Work has a new home on the Web (they’ve ditched TypePad.)

The anonymous blogger behind Dr. ITIL has resurfaced after a long absence with a new blog: IT Service Blog - ITIL Inside (and a related project, an ITIL-focused search engine.)
With the current corporate focus heavily on “do more with less”, customer complaints at records levels and the never ending global phenomenon in offshoring in India […]

Proof that the premier process management program in American business has crossed over into mainstream consciousness is that a rock band in Northern Kentucky calls itself 6 Sigma. Even those who know more about frets than fractions can explain that Six Sigma is a way of increasing efficiency. A less-alliterative management tool, ISO 9000, also […]

Today I want to talk about the all-out assault on the English language and the role technology plays in that unprovoked and dastardly attack. I especially want to talk about the ways dumbing down the language is not only seen as acceptable, but is tacitly encouraged as the status quo.Any number of my acquaintances excuse […]

After more than two years of rumor and speculation surrounding its plans to create a new suite of Office servers designed to complement its desktop Office offerings, Microsoft on Thursday revealed its final Office 2007 server packaging line up.
While the company is introducing several brand-new servers as part of its next-generation office-productivity family, there is […]

A new blog that will be of interest to the IT Service Management and Business Process Improvement folks: ITIL4Real, a blog which aims to document an actual ITIL implementation project from its inception.
ITIL4Real: An ITIL project in the real world

The globalization of work tends to start from the bottom up. The first jobs to be moved abroad are typically simple assembly tasks, followed by manufacturing, and later, skilled work like computer programming. At the end of this progression is the work done by scientists and engineers in research and development laboratories.
A new study that […]

Attention, web interface designers:
Yahoo! has released two resources, the Design Pattern Library and the User Interface Library, which basically give you access to Yahoo!-level design and code for free.
mediabistro: UnBeige

Oracle tried to acquire open-source database maker MySQL, an indication of the profound changes the software giant is willing to make as it adapts to the increasingly significant collaborative programming philosophy.
MySQL Chief Executive Marten Mickos confirmed the acquisition attempt in an interview at the Open Source Business Conference here but wouldn’t provide details such as […]

This is a mighty good idea: a new service called Campfire allows you to create private “chat rooms” for your business or enterprise. This would be a terrific adjunct to, or even in some cases replacement for, teleconferencing or videoconferencing.
Instant messaging is great for one-on-one chats, but it’s not optimized for group chats of […]

The most critical aspect of user-centered design, usability testing breaks down the wall between the designer and user, and allows us to see how real users do real tasks in the real world. There are many benefits of usability testing, including uncovering pitfalls in a current system before a redesign and evaluating the usability of […]

Laptop owners/users: LaptopLogic.com has a list of freeware resources that you really need to know about, including the invaluable Notebook Hardware Control utility (which allows you to prolong your system’s life by customizing the CPU, hard drive and fan settings to keep your laptop nice and cool, among other things.)

Let’s face it: never before has knowing about emerging consumer trends been as important as it is now. Luckily, finding out about trends has become much, much easier. In a world that’s fully connected, where tens of thousands of smart professionals and amateurs are spotting, observing, thinking, and innovating, and putting their findings online for […]