E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Why Small Companies Benefit from the Virtual WorkPlace (And Their Adoption of Social Software)

A few days ago Melanie Turek, over at CollaborationLoop, created an article that I thought was a good read since it provided some really good and sound advice to small businesses as to how they can adopt some sort of a virtual workplace in order to conduct business in perhaps a much more effective and efficient way. The article itself is titled Why Small Companies Benefit from Virtual WorkPlace and it is certainly a worth while read specially for those small businesses where a good part of their workforce may be remote employees or people working while on the road. I know that in most cases most of us always seem to be thinking about large corporations or enterprises, so it is actually quite a refreshing read to see things from other perspectives and think that there are other businesses out there trying to make money while they may not be that large after all. Still they, too, could enjoy the advantages of a virtual workplace.

And this is exactly what Melanie has managed to write about, quite successfully in my opinion, because she is listing a number of different good reasons as to why small businesses should consider having a virtual workplace. Here is the list of reasons:

• "Agility
• Collegiality
• Technology
• Growth"

While I was reading through the article I couldn’t help thinking how beneficial it would be for a small business that, while trying to establish a virtual workplace, they would be thinking about trying to put together a number of the different social software tools currently available out there to everyone who may want to explore them further. Small businesses are probably better positioned to indeed try out new tools for that virtual workplace and since Technology is one of those reasons Melanie talks about they may as well get exposed to a number of those different Web 2.0 tools as it would help them get a taste of the latest technology trends available out there and at the same time they would have a much better platform to evoke a successful collaborative environment as we have been able to see all over the place for the last few months.

We all know how beneficial it is the role of social software tools for larger corporations where those tools allow them to become smaller, to reach out to larger audiences and to get knowledge workers share their knowledge and collaborate with others much more easily than ever before. So imagine then when it is those small businesses the ones testing out those tools. There are great chances that they would be making those same businesses even much much smaller. They would become much more efficient in handling, processing and sharing knowledge with others. Their use of wikis, weblogs, social bookmarks, RSS, podcasts, tagging, etc. etc. is certainly going to get more people much more participative in that virtual workplace and initially something that started just as a test of different technologies may end up on becoming a mainstream tools adoption they would want to make use of on a daily basis.

So while those reasons that Melanie mentioned are certainly very valid, perhaps not only for small but also for large businesses, I think it would be a great opportunity for those who would want to venture into the virtual workplace environment to actually look at all of these social media tools and experiment with them because there is a good chance as well that they would probably be the closest thing towards sharing knowledge and collaborating as if it were in a real life environment. It is all about being social and collaborate with others as being part of the group, i.e. a community, a team, so if from the very beginning that the virtual workplace has been put in place there is an intention to try out all these Web 2.0 tools they would be bound to become much more successful than whatever they may have thought about in the first place. Wouldn’t you think so? Any small businesses out there who would like to comment further on their experiences at adopting social software at their workplace(s)?

Tags: Small Business, SMB, Social Software, Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Virtual WorkPlace, Workplace, Knowledge Sharing, Collaboration, CollaborationLoop

Performancing for FireFox Also Gets Another Upgrade

It looks like this is the month of the upgrades or first beta versions for offline weblogging tools because if yesterday I was talking about the recent upgrade from Qumana and the first appearance of Windows Live Writer today I am just going to mention something that perhaps is old news already, specially for the die-hards out there who have been sticking around with it all along. Yes, indeed, I am talking about the latest upgrade to the FireFox extension Performancing for FireFox and which you can find more details about it over here. One of the great things of this particular upgrade is that it adds some neat futures but at the same time it has kept one of my favourite ones; the fact that it is still compatible not only with FireFox but also with Flock, my default web browser.

Yes, indeed, Qumana may well be my preferred default offline weblogging tool but still that does not mean that I do not enjoy some of the others. In fact, I am using Performancing in Flock ever since it came out not only to post different weblog posts while I am working on several of them at the same time for the different weblogs that I maintain but also whenever I would want to post comments to other weblogs. So, for example, if I bump into an interesting weblog post that I would want to comment on I can bring it up, start typing my response on the WYSIWYG editor adding whatever other rich text features and once I am ready I can just cut and paste that information into the comment box and post away. That way there is no need for me to have a comment box with a rich text editor to be able to contribute into different weblog posts with a much richer experience. Performancing gets to do that for me and quite nicely.

Thus if you are one of those folks who gets to publish content in multiple weblogs and would want to work on different entries at the same time for an extended period of time and therefore need to have multiple offline weblogging tools or if you would want to use a rich text editor where you are in control while commenting away then I can certainly recommend you get to install Performancing for FireFox in rather FireFox or Flock and keep weblogging away. At least, that is what I have been doing myself all along with the three different weblogs that I maintain and having multiple offline weblogging tools available to you is just such a huge time saver. I doubt I would ever be able to just stick around to one single weblogging client, would you ?

Tags: Performancing, Qumana, Windows Live Writer, FireFox, Flock, Metablogging, Offline Blogging Tools, Blogging Tools

Qumana – Still My Default Offline Weblogging Tool

I am sure that by now most of you out there who are in the know of popular offline weblogging tools would probably know that there is a new beta release, v. b5, of Qumana ready for download. In case you haven’t seen it just yet, Jon Husband also created a great weblog post over at the Qumana Blog titled Qumana – A New Release where you would be able to read what some of the different new features are ranging from a couple of bug fixes, like the freezing of the screen while moving a picture around in the editor, or the (in)famous issue with the blockquote, to some really nifty and lovely features like the availability of fonts (Something I was missing very much given that other offline weblogging tools provided such functionality already) and a new Insert HTML… button that will certainly help along the lines when sharing HTML snippets for video clips (Like YouTube‘s, for instance) or whatever other web-based objects, whatever those may well be. Yes, indeed, a really worth while upgrade, to say the least. I am impressed.

In the past you would remember how I have been weblogging several times about my adoption of Qumana as one of my preferred default offline weblog tools (The other main one would be w.bloggar, which, by the way, I am not sure what happened to it but the official web site is currently down at the moment. It has been for the last few days…) and I must say that with this new release it is actually going to continue being the case. Even now more so, if w.bloggar is bound to disappear?!? (Let’s hope not). Either way, a couple of folks have actually been contacting me to ask me a question similar to what Jon also weblogged about over at Qumana – A New Release. What were my thoughts about the availability of Windows Live Writer?

Well, of course, before I could share my thoughts about it I had to download it and give it a try, which I did, and it took me exactly about 10 minutes to uninstall it again ! Ouch! Yes, I know, you would probably think that was way too fast, right? Yes, indeed, it surely was. After configuring it for the first time and having a look into the user interface and the ease of use when posting a weblog post I decided it was not meant for me. Too bulky, too clunky, too slow (Qumana sets up your weblog in a matter of seconds, Windows Live Writer just doesn’t), not very user friendly and still way back in its making. Basic features like working with tags, or working your way through pictures from other systems, or just something so simple as to connect with Roller is just not happening. At least, from my end, which I find a bit disappointing thinking that one of my weblogs is hosted in a Roller weblogging engine server. Sigh.

It may well be a good first attempt for its first beta version but having used Qumana (Or even w.bloggar for that matter) for a few months now switching over to Windows Live Writer is like going several steps backwards, something that I am not sure I would want to go through at this point in time. Qumana just fits in my needs perfectly all right and for as long as it does no matter what else would come up out there it would still be a winner. Right now and perhaps over the next few months, specially if they keep up the pace of releasing new upgrades packed with new features like they are doing lately. A big thumbs up for the Qumana developers!

Keep up the good work in delivering an impressive ease of use for offline weblogging tools because I very doubt there is anything much better than that for Windows than Qumana at this point in time, at least, for me. Kudos to Qumana!

Tags: Qumana, w.bloggar, Windows Live Writer, Roller, Blogging Tools, Offline Blogging Tools, Metablogging