Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Mashups

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"Mashups" (blended applications) showed up today in one of my listserv emails from the SLA Information Technology Division . I think? i had heard this term already but i might have been mistaking it with mash potatoes? Anyway i threw it into Search 2.0 and got some results including articles highlighting the theme from WSJ and NYT . Basically it is primarily combining online maps with lists of data that allow users to pinpoint anything in a very specific location.

I have delivered Global Maps that link to regional newsstands to customers for years so I am thinking these are pretty cool. Can't wait to get a chance to play with the different APIs out there. I can see various uses of these MAP APIs with news.

Here are some examples: http://www.googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ mostly fun things so far I like the Hills of San Francisco


Here is what my Search 2.0 results looked like- not many hits in the press but the top tier publications are all over it. Let's see how that coverage chart will change in the next few months.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Launch of Factiva Search 2.0 Beta

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I have to say that one of the things i like the best about working at Factiva in the last few years is the fact that we are always improving our products by releasing enhanced functionality using new technologies and listening to user trends.

Typically new functionality drives what i deliver to clients so i like to make sure i keep myself an expert in our core products. I think our newest beta product release will eventually slip into custom client deliverables but for now the destination product is pretty cool and useful!

Last week we launched a Beta of Search 2.0- so far to great reviews in the press and from information users and geeks like myself...the technology behind it is based on FAST Technologies (our products use various components of search and categorization software) and it is Powered by Factiva Discovery Technologies™, a suite of capabilities that leverage text mining technologies, advanced content visualization and Factiva’s patented taxonomy.

I agree with Clare Hart in her From the Hart Blog post "Like so many innovations in information technology, Search 2.0 is going to raise expectations around information management – external sources like Factiva’s, but internal information as well." (and not just because she is CEO ;-)


Click here to see a quick tour or if you are already a Factiva.com user you can try the search below. (or if you want a preview userid contact me)




Sunday, January 29, 2006

"Taking the waters” and Hearst Castle

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Almost a year full time resident of California and we finally got a chance to revisit the Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz coast.

We were supposed to leave on Friday but i had a client meeting that i didn't want to miss and our dogsitter was not available until Saturday anyway so we headed down first thing Saturday. Needing some hard core relaxation first so we took to the waters with some good, long soaks in a hot mineral baths in Avila Valley all day Saturday. Much needed i tell you(in Europe i understand that this is prescribed by physicians and paid for by health insurance companies)...

We stopped off at the Hearst Castle on the way back up on Sunday which we have been wanting to see for years.
Hearst Castle is very impressive, i am sure like any other visitor i imagined the days of getting an invitation to spend a week at the Castle. Below is a shot of the water in the classic Neptune swimming pool, an architectural masterpiece surrounded by fourth-century Roman columns, Italian bas-reliefs, and contemporary statues from Paris. Everywhere you look in this place is another painting, sculpture, and antiquity. What a wonderful thing it must have been to be able to buy art during that period!



Of most interest to me however was Julia Morgan (1872 - 1957). She was the main architect for Hearst's San Simeon, CA castle and worked for over 28 years on the castle (while working on many other projects)- She was the first woman with a degree in architecture, and she created more than 700 structures.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Creating Social Capital and "Glocalization"

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I have been keeping myself busy working on my groups 2006 goals- things are looking good but it sure has kept me busy!

Finally digging out so have found some interesting things in my news alerts and RSS feeds. Of interest this evening is the just release report by The Pew Internet and American Life Project on "The Strength of Internet Ties," (PDF).

The report focuses on personal use mostly, but like i have said before i think what we do at home or in the commercial world affects and forms the communications mediums we use in the workplace. As young workers come into the workplace they are even more inclined to 'subscribe' to these socialization/communication trends.

Some interesting points:

-The number of Americans relying on the internet for major life decisions has increased by one-third since 2002. Things like buying houses and cars, changing jobs etc.--Obviously this crosses over to the enterprise where many business decisions are being made with internet information.

-The internet plays socially beneficial roles in a world moving towards networked individualism.” Email allows people to get help from social networks and the web lets them gather information and find support and information as they face important decisions.---yep on the email and i will show you my work inbox if there is any doubt!

-Email is a tool of “glocalization.” It connects distant friends and relatives, yet it also connects those who live nearby. - "GLOCALIZATION" like it- i also just read an article in Business Week about the changes in the Publishing Media- one of the predicted changes is that newspapers will offer more and more local coverage, because the larger media players (major press/online/tv)will dominate global and business news. Local media is always important to some of my clients - local coverage at times can provide huge insight- the daily rag sometimes rules

Friday, January 13, 2006

From the Hart - Factiva's CEO Blog

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Clare Hart, Factiva's CEO has a new blog about the business information industry. From the Hart.
I look forward to reading Clare's insight on the industry. For the last seven years she has lead the transformation at Factiva from a traditional content aggregator to an innovative company that is changing our industry and it is a big reason why i work there.


If you are interested in hearing Clare explain a little about what we do and how we are ever evolving, in June 2005, Clare Hart was presented with the Rogen Award for Business Excellence at the 2005 American Business Awards ("the Stevies"). Michael Gallagher, president of the International Business Awards, interviewed Clare about Factiva and its innovation of new tools for sales and marketing professionals in this podcast.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Opposable Thumb

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Pondering the thousand pound gorilla got me thinking about gorillas as well as an article i saw a couple months back about the evolution of mobile device users-focused on the evident changes of the use of the thumb in high school aged teenagers and how these changes in interaction with technology will potentially affect the way they interact with others in the workforce.

Mobile use is of much interest to me and i briefly wrote about wireless access of content in one of my posts. Just today in a client meeting we whipped out our mobile devices around the conference room table(1 Blackberry and 1 Treo with the full QWERTY keyboard and 1 Blackberry with SureType layout)and talked about the differences in keyboards and functionary and the bottom line is we are all attached to our devices.

I couldn't find the article, but I did however find this activity that helps students understand what sort of human activities would not be likely in the absence of an opposable thumb. These are mostly modern activities. Interesting- i need my thumbs- please don't remove them.

The opposable thumb, the digit that separates primates from the rest of the animal kingdom, occupies what some call a special place in the evolutionary history of humans. Its presence in our anatomy has been linked to our upright gait and our bigger brain capacity. The ability to grasp objects and eventually use these as tools was pivotal in the development of the human species.

Will the 'extra' use of the thumbs with mobile devices, video games and such; affect our ongoing evolution?

What about how we design our enterprise applications? There are many articles about mobile UI design and if you are interested let me know i will send you some.

According to a eMarketer report dated July 2005 about mobile content and applications used by US mobile Subscribers, there was a 6.6% increase (July over June) in retrieving news and information via a mobile browser. Growth in photo messaging, which was consistently the highest-performing category in 2005, was strongest at 10.7%. These are consumer services but obviously will affect and influence the enterprise workforce.

As a company, Factiva has done a fairly large amount of R&D work around mobile delivery of content and some of our products are already wireless enabled. We have also worked with our customers to provide advisory services engagements based on our best practices of delivering relevant filtered news and company information configured for small screen. We have even built a fair about of custom solutions that are solely mobile enabled.

With the young workers coming on board, it is more important then ever to look at access requirements with new technology, they will expect it and might fumble in their communications and learning in the first few months if they don't have it!

Burning Sky

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Got home in time to see the sunset-the sky was on fire once it was all done.....So glad that winter hours are being chased by spring

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

What Do You Do With a Thousand Pound Gorilla?

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hey i didn't make this title up the guys (Joe & Mike) over at salesroundup.com (which i have been enjoying quite a bit over the last few months) did when they recorded a podcast on Strategies for Managing Large Accounts (the meat starts at the 8min mark). It is a tricky episode because i think? The majority of their listeners are not managing Key accounts but anyone can take pieces to heart and all in all a good episode that hits on some important things about how to develop and manage strategic account plans (SAPs) for Key accounts.

if i had to title the podcast it would be 'information is powerful'. obviously they are more creative than me.

(btw. i tried (and tried is the key term here) to listen to their newest episode recorded from their sushi holiday party this morning on my way to work. After the second song (i was having technical difficulties with forwarding on my iPod) i just couldn't take it any more (sorry guys) and switched to a Dave Alvin album for the rest of the trip, so i am not vouching for that episode....yet

there are certainly many Strategic Account Plan (SAP) Strategies and consulting firms out there and probably even more applications that produce account plans. This show focuses on how to gather the information for the strategic account plans and the value to the key account teams and the customer!

My focus?---nothing new, i will continue to work on helping customers integrate some of this important information (some of which i mention below) more and more into SAPs and other enterprise applications automatically- you know how i was going to stop 'Carpal Tunnel' as we know it last year for Corp Comun/PR?- well how about helping sales people increase sales by dynamically-updating account plans? This will probably reduce some of the Carpal Tunnel as well, no? Imagine all the billions we will save in healthcare.....

I have been managing enterprise and global accounts for over 5 yrs and have certainly used many of the tips and suggestions they mention on the show. of course i am super privileged because i have access to all the Factiva resources (a 30 yr archive, company, industry, executive information etc.)that makes this process much easier.

Some good tips that i use as well that they mention:

finding out about executives - what schools they went to, what boards they are on, their previous jobs, building 6 degrees of separation with people you might know that know them. Reading executive statements, missions, letters to shareholders, compensation etc. [i use a combination of Factiva SalesWorks which provides biographies from various sources including Reuters, Marquis, ZoomInfo, and obviously all our global content sets that you can search across. i also google people]

technical profile of the company - asking your contacts is always the best but i have set saved searches that i use with key software/application searches of things of interest to me (portals, ECM, CRMs etc). i plug in the name of the company and any press releases, articles from software and business trade journals, reviews of conference, transcripts from radio and tv shows are automatically presented (i also track specific companies so i can keep my knowledge up to date by getting email alerts). i also search job postings quite often like the show mentions and if corporate audited my laptop, HR would probably think i was looking for a new job.

On the show they talk about the document being a 'living document' inputting information as needed and automatically updating fields like last updated date. With Web Services we can now get to various types of data, from multiple sources (internal and external) and you can automatically update fields every time the document is opened to ensure the latest information is presented regardless of who sees it. This is data that a sales rep would have needed to copy and paste from various sites which is time consuming and repetitive thus providing more time for strategic thinking and thoughtful conversations with our customers.

want to talk more?....

Google Earth home base

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OK- i googlemapped (new verb perhaps?) using google earth my house and then layered with the very appropriate "bars/clubs" layer and got the following. My house is on the right where it says 581a , US 1 is the highway you see in the middle and the ocean is obviously West.


Click on the Map to see an enlarged version.

Come visit i will take you to Winter Taverns they just turned 100.

here is some Pacifica trivia- what hometown boy made it big (well some might call it big)?

Monday, January 02, 2006

What have I been doing all year?

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Hello friends and colleagues! First I want to start by thanking each one of you for all your time, support and encouragement that allowed me to have an extremely successful, satisfying and productive year. Thanks!

I hope you find this ‘Year in Review’ and 2006 focus posts useful and entertaining. Feel free to drop me a line with feedback and comments: daniela[dot]barbosa@factiva[dot]com.

As most of you know in early 2005 I moved to California with Factiva to start covering the West coast territory in the same role i had on the East Coast as a Solutions Architect with Factiva Consulting Services (FCS). And what an adventure and success it has been!

If you are interested in the personal trek across the country that my husband and i made, simply check out my blog entries from February 21st-25th. I attempted to blog my way across the country mostly with Blackberry access which was pretty cool. (FYI- Townes who i refer to quite often in my posts is a our Great Dane pup who wasn't even 1 yr old yet but weighed in at around 120lbs when we made the trek!).

So I certainly miss being at Factiva corporate in Princeton, NJ and have been back a handful of times in the last 10 months to ensure that i get headquarters doses in my veins to keep it real and moving. Everyone always told me how 'different' it was to be in a satellite office and it is true. I went from being in Princeton with over 350 other 'Factivites' to being in a sales office with under 10. Definitely cozier.

Even since i left there have been a lot of changes in Princeton all very positive in my opinion making me feel the love more and more in the field. A special thanks goes out to my buddies in Customer Service, Product, PTG, Sales Support, Content, and my core delivery team- You folks amaze and make me proud day in and day out to be part of the Factiva organization!

So far my interactions and engagements with West Coast based account teams and clients have been fabulous and very successful you will see snippets of things i have been working on in my various posts.

With my transfer i however got a chance to keep engaging with key East coast and global clients that i have been working with for years, introducing my new collegues to those clients but working closely with them to ensure smooth transition and/or successful project delivery. You will find some of those highlighted in my post as well.

In regards to my professional goals, i met and exceeded my revenue targets for 2005 and all my customer engagements had over a 4.3 customer satisfaction rating (on a scale of 1-5), which of course is testimony to our great delivery team and which makes me super happy to be part of the FCS organization. I was also made Team Lead for the Americas' Solutions Architects in November.

Personal goals, those of you who know me quite well know i am totally addicted to work. I continue to be so, but have found plenty of time to tear myself away and enjoy all the West has to offer. Some have even heard me state "I feel that i am on vacation everyday"...Yep the wild wild west will do that to you. Check out my June Posts for some of the enjoyment ;-)

See my post on "What is hot on my list for 2006?", you will probably find things that you and I have been talking about and i can't wait to kick-off the year and get these things all started!

Happy New Year to you and your loved ones- Power to the peaceful and dedicated.
-daniela

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Things i will as see across various solutions

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None of the items included in this post should be of surprise and many of you are already engaged with me on these topics, but i intend on having more and more conversations and engagements that at one point or another touch the following (in no specific order):

- RSS>>
>>> RSS as a delivery mechanism across applications that we deliver. Our destination products are already RSS enabled for personal clipping and more and more companies are asking us to feed our authoritative sources into their RSS delivery mechanisms. Blog content and RSS media outlets provide additional value add to news that is being pushed out to the enterprise and we continue to incorporate it into our solutions

- Service Orientation (SO)
>>> Service Orientation is not simply about IT, although the SOA buzz clearly looks like it, but i see it more about the enterprise as a whole from business owners to end-users. Encompassing people, processes and technology, Service Orientation is an approach to managing all of the resources available by representing functionality as services that business users can use within their existing applications and providing rich, dynamic interoperability regardless of platform or programming language. When looking at Enterprise content (both internal and external), the folks that manage that content (or at least the access to the content) are looking at our expertise to help them. Our experience from having a business based on aggregation and relevant delivery of content (over 9000 source, in 22 languages and delivered to us in over 700 formats) 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. See my post on Enterprise Content Frameworks


- Search vs. Discovery>>>
>>> Oh yeah one of my favorites. Remember i am a librarian, spending three years learning about searching, Dewey Decimal, cataloging, taxonomies, information architecture and yeah that one course i had that focused on user interface design that thanks to the professor turned into more on data visualization and clustering.
So 'Search' is the act of looking -- before something is found. 'Discovery' is the finding and comes after the search. What if we could use technology to help searchers discover things by presenting results visually and taking advantage of clustering technologies, etc. You will see more of this from Factiva in 2006 and i promise you and that you and i will be talking about it!! Just remember 'Search 2.0'---

- Wireless Access>>
>> About three years ago i had a managing director at a global investment firm tell me that the 'desktop is dead' while fiddling with his blackberry. Wasn't surprising to me then as i was already addicted to my crackberry and certainly isn't to any of you today. Over the last two years our consulting group has delivered various custom applications with wireless delivery. Our destination products including our new SalesWorks product is wireless enabled and we are seeing more and more companies enable their internal systems like sales portals and CRMs. We have also been consulting with clients to devise wireless delivery information strategies that focus on relevant delivery models, user interface design and access points.

- Taxonomy>>>
>>>Certainly not new on my list or even yours but still as important and will continue to be so in our information intensive world. Our consulting group has over the years assisted clients in developing custom taxonomies (for both external and internal applications), instituting maintenance and governance models and implemented our own taxonomy into various enterprise applications. Hey it is what we do for a living so why not leverage that expertise with our customers? In 2005 Factiva launched Factiva’s new Synaptica Knowledge Management System (KMS) for building and maintaining taxonomies and thesauri in enterprise applications.

Going back to my thoughts on Web 2.0 applications, Folksonomies are also of interest as we build applications that leverage the authoritative systems of a formal taxonomy, yet provide flexibility to encourage participation by users.

- Media - video/podcasts>>>
>>> No doubt that integrating video and audio content like podcasts into a user’s workflow is going to happen more and more. For example we have some customers that handed out iPods to their workers in order to push self-learning tools and even executive messaging from HR, how hard would it be to have for example a salesforce subscribe to weekly industry highlights from top global sources or a internal corporate communication podcast of the company news? We also already have clients that include media file links within their daily news summaries and post video files daily on their portals. I think the trickiest part is going to be figuring out the copyright issues.

- APIs >>>
>>>Everyone has them hitting different parts of their services : Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Ebay and on and on and on. Opening the API store for business is what it seems like. Mostly in Beta but there are hundreds of very interesting applications that people have built already. How can enterprise applications that deal with distributing information to end-users leverage some of these APIs in combination with the Factiva APIs? I intend on learning more and already have some thoughts on how to leverage some of these search APIs for users such as corporate research groups that use a variety of tools to compile research reports for clients.

- Collaboration applications>>>
>>> Ok i am not that old but see it already; our new workforces are going to insist that our enterprise applications have similar functionality as their personal gadgets. Hiring top notch twenty somethings now a days is going to take more then a good starting salary and promises of advancement. Some companies are struggling with the hiring process and are using their innovated internal applications like collaboration portals (e.g. SharePoint) as a way to show how the company embraces technology and values individual participation for the good of the group. Most new young employees will already have RSS aggregated sites that incorporate all their personal and business views of the world. Enterprises need to deliver something that is either better or provides more value that they can not get from the 'outside'.

- Integration into desktop workflow applications like e-mail, calendaring Word, PPT.>>>
>>> Yes. Yes. Yes. What do we have already? Outlook calendaring- make an appointment with a client- allow smart tags to figure out who the company is and have a automatic email with the top news stories on that company sent to you one hour before the meeting. Very useful, especially for sales and executives.

What else? In the Sales, Strategic Account Plans (SAPs) tend to be a very time consuming task that involves manual copy and pasting from various websites and subscription services like Factiva etc. Well using our APIs (which by the way our Factiva Web Services are MSFT Information Bridge-compliant Web Services) we have a way to automatically update certain fields within a SAP (in Word, Excel or PPT) allowing sales people to spend time working on strategy, focusing on what the information means that they have in their SAPs and focusing on relationship building rather then on manually inputting data.
See my post "Company, Executive and Industry content integration- into more then Portals and CRMs?-- Email and calendaring applications, SAPs, etc."

There are a lot more things i have brewing in my head, many even a bit more abstract then any of the above that are based on 'reality'.....i am certainly looking forward to being in the middle of this.

What is hot on my list for 2006?

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If you know me, you know by now that I approach each new project and opportunity like it is the most important thing in the world. Partially because I believe that it is, especially for my clients, but mostly because things are changing so fast that if we don’t get ideas from thoughts to -> paper to -> reality in a short time we all go on to other things, missing some great opportunities to create an immense amount of value in our organizations.

So in an effort to share with you all what I personally see as ‘Hot’ on my list please see my top list of projects and themes for 2006. Maybe i will inspire myself over the next few months and keep you updated on some of these items..i will let you know if i do. (yep making a commitment to updating my blog is NOT getting on my resolution list ;-)

- Continuation of Delivery of Custom News Summaries, integrating with RSS and Blogs and collaboration platforms like Wikis - See the post
- Enterprise Content Frameworks - information strategies and service oriented architecture approaches- See the Post
- Text Mining and Visualization - see the post
- Company, Executive and Industry content integration- into more then Portals and CRMs?-- Email and calendaring applications, SAPs, etc. - see the post

See my post “Things i will as see across various solutions” for items that i am sure to see across various conversations and engagements.