Thursday, December 29, 2005

News Summary Applications- 'Socialize and Network with External News'

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I have no doubt that in 2006 i will continue to deliver Custom News Summary applications to my small/medium and enterprise global clients. There is a huge business need to improve the workflow around these important editorialized news deliveries that can help organizations build enterprise knowledge.

If my last year's theme around News Summaries was 'to End Carpal Tunnel as we know it in corporate communications and PR', in 2006 i think it will be to enable ‘participatory consumption’ to socialize and network with targeted external news more within the enterprise.

By now I have no doubt you have heard the term ‘Web 2.0’- there is a lot of buzz around this and any blog that is outlining 2005 in review and looking to 2006 is talking about it. Dion Hinchcliffe does a good job of providing a summary of resources about Web 2.0.

So do i see the Web 2.0 as affecting the stuff i work with? Yes. I see Web 2.0 applications as creating a framework that gives people tools that they can use- to express themselves and connect with each other. They take advantage of user-contributed content and see users as producers of intelligence. There is no reason that this shouldn't be happening within the enterprise. I see two-way interactions with external news as next steps for some companies that provide daily/weekly news summaries with external authoritative content and even providing two-way interactions with companies that for example have large sales teams collaborating on client projects and need to see news, financials, etc. as a team. I am already working with some companies that are incorporating them into collaboration applications (like Wikis) that allow users to comment and continue ‘conversations’ around each article/topic.

The exciting stuff is that even in 2005 i started speaking to you all about taking these custom news summaries a couple steps up. For example, in addition to collaboration, I have a handful of companies that are looking to add RSS and blog content to news summary applications to provide a more complete view ( for example a consumer products company that targets young consumers whose ‘hobbies’ are covered in indie websites that editor’s can select articles from).

The core need of ‘pushing’ highly targeted and hand-picked articles will continue because we are far away from having technologies that able to provide highly relevant views that incorporate individual companies’ enterprise knowledge. So let’s use technology to allow users more participation in conversing about external news and how it affects their organization, their competitors and the industries they cover.

Enterprise Content Frameworks - information strategies and service oriented architecture approaches

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Enterprise Content Frameworks - information strategies and service oriented architecture approaches- something dear to my heart and a clear differentiator for our consulting group.

Our experience of having a business based on aggregation and relevant delivery of content to over 1.5 million subscribers has provided our consulting group with over 15 years of experience in advising our clients based on best practices and implementations of information strategies within many of our Fortune 500 global customers. I personally think that the most valuable service our consulting group can offer is our expertise in exactly that.

In 2005 we have worked very closely with some of our clients during their assessment and design phases of building out new portals/knowledge/content systems and information strategies ensuring that the next release of their applications is sustainable and meets the information needs of users today and beyond. Focusing on key architecture principals of building a service oriented model, we have been able to explore the concept of an enterprise content framework.

Here are some key examples of things we have been helping with:

Corporate Research Portal
• Advise clients on centralizing the management of internal and externally-procured research, including license and access management, and integration into business processes and applications

Content Navigation
• Advise clients on improving the distribution of content and how users access that content
• Optimize content navigation
• Improve usability around content
• Maximizing Content Use
• Develop highly customize editorial workbenches to meet editorial workflow needs

Enterprise Content Technologies
Advise clients on the strategy, selection, or analysis of any technology that touches content. Examples include:
• RSS, Wikis, Podcasting
• Search Engines, Categorization Tools
• Taxonomy development, implementation and governance

These are things that as a consulting group we have been doing for a while and i envision that in 2006 those services are going to be in higher demand as enterprises look at builing solutions with forward looking principles such as SOAs. More to follow on this topic i am sure.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Text Mining and Visualization

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I won't bore you with my theory on text mining and visualization at this time. We can save it for later when we become better acquainted...I have been working on some things that are interesting and i am on the edge of diving in deeper and deeper (mining into the whole thing deeper. LOL.)


In 2005 we delivered some custom solutions which create a visualized, role-based view of the competitive landscape (like the Competitive Awareness Offering for SharePoint). For example i have two clients that use the CA Web Parts to display client specific news on a sales portal giving the sales team a collected view of what is happening with their clients, not just headlines but actually interactive charts. In 2006 we will be delivering more of those types of projects and also assisting clients with their internal data visualization projects as well.

From a product perspective, we have our Factiva Insight product suite and our upcoming Search 2.0 service is going to provide search results through visualization as well. I promise to share more on that when it is available for public consumption!

You can check out my Factiva colleague, Glenn Fannick's Read Between the Mines blog on text mining. He knows a lot more then me and is one of many of our experts in the field.

Company, Executive and Industry content integration- into more then Portals and CRMs?-- Email and calendaring applications, SAPs, etc.

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With the introduction of SalesWorks company, executive and industry content in jan 05, i have been extremely busy working with clients to create innovated ways to integrate this type of content into sales workflow.

Company, Executive and Industry content integration- into more then Portals and CRMs?yes--. In 2006 i hope to see more and more intergration into salespeople's workflow applications like their email and calendaring applications and sales tools like Strategic Account Planning templates.

On the product side which i see quickly bubbling over to the custom stuff late this year as well is our discovery technologies that we will be releasing in Q1. I really can't blog about it right now so call me if you are interested in hearing more. Let's just say that those sales reps that complain about infoglut and digestion will be extremely excited about our upcoming services.

I will definately add posts in the next few weeks on this topic. So come back and visit or subscribe to this blog using the FeedBurner link.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Bound for Glory - America in Color 1939-1943 Library of Congress

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Always forgetting about what a great resource the Library of Congress site is.

Found the following that is pretty cool. Color images from this era are usually not on display at exhibits. According to the LOC the Black and whites number in the 160,000 numbers while color more like 1,600 from this era.

Bound for Glory: America in Color 1939-1943

I made the 'juke joint' photo my desktop image but also liked the Women workers at Northwest Railway Company. Check out the red nails on the woman with the red on the left.