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

OpenNTF – Bookmark Viewer for IBM Lotus Connections Dogear

I am sure you would agree with me that Social Computing, and, in particular, social software tools, still have got plenty of different challenges within the enterprise in order to provoke that massive cultural shift most of us have been looking forward to for a long while. One of those challenges has always been trying to accommodate the mobile workforce and provide something so relatively simple as offline capabilities from most of those social tools.

Yet, it is not happening as much as one would have hoped for, don’t you think? I mean, there are some Enterprise 2.0 Social Software applications out there that are starting to tap into the offline world. Alas, not as pervasively as what you would have hoped for. And that’s one of the main issues that most mobile knowledge workers have got right now as we speak with regards to their own adoption of social software in a corporate environment.

At IBM, where 50% of the workforce is mobile already, we are seeing this very same issue as well and the interesting thing is that more and more we are seeing how some of our various social software tools we are exposed to on a daily basis are making serious attempts to accommodate offline interactions. And the latest example is coming from one of my favourite social software tools: IBM’s Lotus Connections.

Actually, from one of the components I have started to rely very heavily on over the last couple of years: Dogear (Now graciously renamed Bookmarks after Lotus Connections v2.5 went GA). Check out "Bookmark Viewer for IBM Lotus Connections Dogear" by Hanspeter Jochmann, where you will be able to see how all of the bookmarks folks may have been storing in Dogear / Bookmarks can now be taken off into a Lotus Notes database that allows you to have a rich set of interactions, while working offline, and then synchronise them back to the server once you are connected again. Amazingly powerful! And something I was really looking forward to after having gone through some very bad experiences myself.

Remember Ma.gnolia? I was a big fan of it; I had several thousand bookmarks stored in it and was a rather heavy user all along… Till one day, I came to work, was on my way to bookmark a few sites and found out Ma.gnolia went through a server crash and LOST all of my bookmarks! Without a chance to provide a backup or anything. Just GONE! All of them! Ouch!! I thought I would have to re-create most of the work I put together in it, but lucky enough Dogear came to my rescue and allowed me to recover most of it.

Ever since that painful experience happened, I haven’t gotten outside and use any other social bookmarking site available out there. Not only because I haven’t been convinced that any of them would do what I would want them to do (Specially with the protection and backup of my own bookmarks!), but also because I don’t think I would feel comfortable going through that very same experience of losing my bookmarks once more, should they suffer from an irrecoverable server crash.

So I have decided to go internal and rely, almost exclusively, on Lotus Connections Bookmarks inside the firewall. And every now and then I synchronise them with my Dogear / Bookmarks over at ibm.com so that folks out there would have an opportunity to check the kinds of links that are of interest to me and that can be shared externally. For the internal ones, you know where they would go… hehe

Thus when Hanspeter shared this brilliant offline Bookmark Viewer for Dogear I just couldn’t help but giving it a try and all along to state I have been rather happy is probably an understament. It just works! My fellow colleague, and good friend, Luis Benitez, blogged about it and pointed out to a YouTube video that explains how that Notes database works:

And if you notice, it pretty much puts together that key concept of replication and "working offline" from traditional groupware tools into the space of social software, which, I am not sure what you would think, but I think it’s just pretty awesome! Best of both worlds in just a single application coming together nicely and allowing me to always be control of how I use it, whether I am connected or not. Just brilliant!

I just hope that plenty of other social software tools follow this very same trend, because otherwise we are going to continue missing out on a large chunk of the corporate workforce who are constantly on the road, disconnected, while at customers, and the last thing they would want to worry is try to figure out whether they can get connected to just bookmark a site. This Bookmark Viewer clearly shows the way it’s possible to accommodate those needs, because, after all, we all know what’s like being on the road without a live Internet connection, don’t you think?

(Oh, before I forget another special thanks to Hanspeter for helping make our lives much much easier with our own adoption of social software tools in combination with those other tools we have been using for a long while now! Talking about a nice, tight and smooth integration of the 1.0 and 2.0 worlds! Well done, Hanspeter! Thanks ever so much!)

Tags: IBM Lotus Connections, Lotus Connections, Connections, Bookmarks, Dogear, Social Bookmarking, Social Bookmarks, OpenNTF, Bookmark Viewer, Lotus Notes, Notes, Databases, Offline, Mobile Workforce, Workforce, Knowledge Workers, Mobility, IBM, Hanspeter Jochmann, Replication, Synchronisation, Ma.gnolia, Crashes, Data Protection, Data Ownership, Data Backup, ibm.com, Luis Benitez, YouTube, Videos, Screencasts, Groupware, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, Productivity, Productivity Tips, Tips, Hints, Tricks, Hacks, Hacking

Identity Management on Facebook by Josh Scribner

I guess it is inevitable, right? I suppose there is no way to stop it, either; perhaps it shouldn’t be after all. Who knows… We all probably realise though that the usage of Facebook as one of the most powerful social networking environments out there will continue to soar even more rapidly than right now, where it was just mentioned a couple of weeks back how it reached over 200 million users, as months go by and more and more people get exposed to social software in general. Yes, like I said, it is probably inevitable.

However, what most folks can do, but may not have realised about it just yet, is the fact you can establish, and control, how you would want to interact with it, specially if you are in the need of separating both your personal and your business interactions, because, as we all know, sometimes some things should remain just that: private.

So what can you do to tailor your own Facebook interactions to suit the various different groups you connect with in that social network, so that not only you can make sense out it, but also those personal and business connections you have in such powerful networking environment? I know that plenty of times folks have been talking about how you can protect your own privacy while using Facebook extensively. I could go ahead and share with you all some tips on how you can get things going, and start protecting some of those conversations, if you haven’t done so thus far.

Nonetheless, I am actually going to do something much better than that. If you need to take a closer look again in how you manage your identity in such social network so that you can split up interactions and define multiple levels of visibility, walk no further than a recent presentation that one of my team colleagues has put together and shared across in Slideshare.

Check out Identity Management for IBMers on Facebook by Josh Scribner. This is a slide deck that provides plenty of great tips on how you manage, and still make sense, of your identity in Facebook. It provides plenty of background on why we, end-users, need to watch out for what we share, how we share and with whom we share it. Because you never know how and where those interactions will turn up. Pretty much common sense, I can assure you all, but still plenty of sound advice on how you can improve your overall exposure to such social networking tool. Thus without much further ado, here you have got the embedded version, so you can take a look and judge whether it may be a good time now, or not, to re-evaluate how you are making good use of Facebook, both from a personal and business perspective. Worth while taking a look into Josh’s deck to get things going, for sure.

(A special thanks to Josh for sharing that lovely slide deck outside of the company’s firewall, so that other folks out there would be able to benefit as well from such nifty, and useful, presentation! Well done, Josh! And thanks for sharing!)

Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Media, Collaboration, Communities, Learning, Knowledge Sharing, KM, Knowledge Management, Remote Collaboration, Innovation, IBM, Networking, Social Networks, Conversations, Communication, Connections, Relationships, Productivity, Facebook, Privacy, Identity, Identity 2.0, Identity Management, Business Relationships, Personal Relationships, Josh Scribner, Slideshare, Presentations, Stream, Life Stream, Declarative Living

Mac Tip #3: TextExpander – Mac Typing Shortcut Utility Saves You Time!

Continuing further with the blog post series of Mac Tips I have been putting together over here on the good number of (social software) tools I get to use on a regular basis to help me be more productive, I thought I would cover today what, to me, is perhaps the biggest productivity tool I have bumped into on the Mac for the nearly two years I have been using my MacBook Pro as my main work machine.

It’s one of those tools that I would not classify per se as a social software tool, yet, it surely is helping me engage further in the social networking space much easier, and faster (As well as healthier!) than whatever I could have imagined so far. Yes, indeed, I am talking about the superb TextExpander, your next best friend on the Mac!

TextExpander "saves you countless keystrokes with customized abbreviations for your frequently-used text strings and images" and although initially it may not say much more about it, once you start watching your behaviour of how you interact with your computer you immediately get hit by the numerous ways you could make use this application itself. And from there onwards, there is no way back! However, I thought I would expand further on the topic and perhaps share with you five different reasons as to why you would want to consider this tool to, at least, give it a try at some point. Thus here we go:

1. Saving keystrokes: If you are one of those people that gets to type quite a lot of text all over the place, and if that text string happens to be rather repetitive sometimes, why should you type it again, right? Well, with TextExpander, a couple of keystrokes and off you go, it will add that text for you automatically, whether just plain text or rich text! Even images!! Amazingly easy!
2. Spell check: With TextExpander you will no longer need to use a spell check; the application itself will become your default spell checker for everything! And all of that thanks to the AutoCorrect group of snippets. A huge database of strings that will correct on the fly almost every single spelling mistake you make. Try it! I know you will thank me later! Yes, it is *that* good!
3. Filling out forms: How many times have you had to fill in an Internet form or a specific document, presentation, spreadsheet, regular text file, whatever, with the same information details over and over again? Far too many, right? Well, with TextExpander, a couple of characters and voilá! Your forms instantly filled in and ready to go! Priceless!
4. Wealth of macros: One of favourite reasons. While you get to educate TextExpander to include the regular (rich) text strings you will want to avoid typing again, there is already a wealth of group snippets that you can import right away and start seeing the benefits of using this tool. Right from the Snippets user preference you can rather go ahead and create your own or import those already existing ones! That way you don’t have to start from scratch! Nice, don’t you think?
5. Watching over your health: Repetitive Strain Injury anyone? In the past I have talked about RSI a couple of times and have shared a number of tips on how to help prevent it. Well, perhaps one of the most compelling reasons I can mention for TextExpander is how it helps you save time by not having to constantly be typing away the same text strings, which means that with a couple of keystrokes you are off to insert the text you need without having to type it and therefore freeing up your hands from your keyboard. To that extent one of the nifty features is providing you some statistics on how many characters you have saved, but most importantly how many hours you have saved in the end as well!

   And I can only say that in my case it has been plenty of them, so you can imagine how grateful both of my wrists are about the extended breaks I am enjoying from that all of that typing away! W00t!

I am sure there would be plenty of other reasons why you would want to make extensive use of the fantastic TextExpander application, so I encourage you all to perhaps share through comments what your favourite ones are. Yes, I do realise that there is a price tag for this tool, and, to be honest, considering the amount of time I have been saving already; considering as well how much less I get to type on a daily basis, I can certainly state that $30 is not that expensive. Quite the contrary! I consider it quite an investment not only for my time saved, but, most importantly, for my own health! And that’s what really matters, don’t you think?

Oh, to wrap this Mac Tip #3 blog post, I thought I would give a special thanks as well to Euan Semple, who first introduced me to TextExpander through Twitter and encouraged me to give it a try and from there onwards I haven’t been back and more and more by the day it’s becoming that essential tool for my Mac I cannot longer live without! So, thanks much, Euan!

Tags: Mac, Apple, MacBook Pro, MBP, Tips, Hints, Productivity, Productivity-Tips, Tools, Images, Text, Rich Text, Text Strings, Twitter, TextExpander, Smile on My Mac, Spell Check, Macros, Forms, Repetitive Strain Injury, RSI, Euan Semple