Knowledge Work

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Not too long ago, a senior manager asked me to write a short page of talking points explaining why it was a good idea to have professional communicators–in this case, technical communicators–on staff.  Here’s what I came up with. Maybe you can use it too (or refine it–comments are welcome!)
What do technical communicators do?

Research, […]

Apologies for the long blogging gap; I’m just back from a business trip where I had limited connectivity at best, and just catching up.
Since we’ve just come through performance review season, I’m pointing to this very good Christian Science Monitor article from January 31, on the topic of getting paid what you’re worth. Salary […]

Hiding confidential information with black marks works on printed copy, but not with electronic documents, the National Security Agency has warned government officials.
The agency makes the point in a guidance paper on editing documents for release, published last month following several embarrassing incidents in which sensitive data was unintentionally included in computer documents and exposed. […]

Here’s a good overview of how to avoid some all-too-common mistakes when constructing a PowerPoint presentation: 8 mistakes when creating PowerPoint presentations (SympleByte.)

I have long been a fan of O’Reilly Media’s technical books, and a happy subscriber to “Safari Bookshelf,” their online library; in its most basic form, for about $10 a month the Safari plan entitles you to read up to five O’Reilly books on-screen at the same time. It’s a tremendous bargain and […]

If you ever have to teach anyone anything–as part of your job, on a volunteer basis, for any reason at all–or if you ever give presentations, or write user documentation, you could do worse than spend fifteen minutes with this blog post:
…[H]ere’s a crash course on some of our favorite learning techniques gleaned from cognitive […]