Knowledge Work

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 […]

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 […]

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

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.)

StopBadware.org is a “Neighborhood Watch” campaign aimed at fighting badware. We will seek to provide reliable, objective information about downloadable applications in order to help consumers to make better choices about what they download on to their computers. We aim to become a central clearinghouse for research on badware and the bad actors who spread […]