Daily Report, Feb 7

Team Collaboration

• Product of the Year 2006 Awards at Intranet Journal ... Intranet Journal announced the winners in its "Product of the Year" awards for 2006, across six categories: Best Intranet Design Software, Best Hosted Intranet Solution, Best Blogging Software, Best Wiki Software, Best Document Management/Collaboration Product, and Best Enterprise Search Software. Intranet Dashboard won two of the categories, which they were thrilled about. Intranet Journal


• ConferTel i-Present ... ConferTel released i-Present, a Web conferencing service. Features: presentation/document viewing, application sharing, polling, audio and visual recording, integrated chat, and Outlook integration, amongst others. Per minute and per month pricing plans are available. PR


• Sendmail Partners with FaceTime and Voltage ... Sendmail announced technology partnerships with FaceTime and Voltage, which sees customers able to use Sendmail's messaging policy engine to control activity through FaceTime (instant messaging and file sharing) and Voltage (encryption). Sendmail (PDF) or BusinessWire

Mobility

• Rotating Keyboard on BlackBerry? ... Unwired View analyzed the USPTO database for patent applications from RIM, and found a couple of interesting ones: (1) a rotating keyboard, and (2) an expandable keyboard that comes out from the back of the device. Interesting ... Unwired View


• Synchronica Gateway 3.0 ... Synchronica released Version 3.0 of its Mobile Gateway, a piece of infrastructure for carrier networks to enable the offering of Push Email services to consumers. Mobile Gateway supports two standards-based ways of delivering mobile services: SyncML (primarily calendar and contact sync) and Push IMAP (mobile email). Synchronica

Productivity
Wow, lots of good stuff on the Mac platform today ...

• ghostaction Goes 1.0 ... ghostaction, a new Mac application for doing GTD was released as Version 1.0. It supports grouping next actions by context or project, and features full two-way synchronization with iCal (and therefore sync with mobile devices. Kewl. Ghost Park Software (hat tip, Pascal)






• FreeVerse Think ... FreeVerse released Think, a new Mac application to enable users to focus on a certain application and shut others out from causing visual distraction. It introduces an "illumination panel" to enable the user to choose the application for current focus. "Let's limit our attention to one application--any application--at any time. Let's make it easy to change focus when we have to. Let's allow ourselves to bring other apps up quickly if we need them, but put them out of sight again just as quickly." FreeVerse






• RTM Widget for Mac OS X ... There's a new Dashboard Widget available for displaying Remember The Milk tasks on your Dashboard in Mac OS X. Each user can select which task list to display. Yoel Inbar built the widget using the RTM API. Great work! Remember The Milk Blog


• See Things Differently to Be More Effective ... Steve wants more than "what" to do ... he wants the "why" and "how" so he can apply the ideas to his situation. And he recommends some great blogs to read to help with this, including at least two that I love too. All Things Workplace


• GTD Mastery List ... Duff published his "Checklist for Greatness" in using / applying / living GTD, breaking the process down into four stages: basic, intermediate, advanced, and mastery. Google Docs


• Reasons for Procrastination ... PlannerPads has a nice little piece of why we procrastinate (the job is unpleasant, we think it will take too long, we think it is difficult, and we're afraid of failure) and what to do about it. I really like the fourth suggestion for overcoming procrastination: "Discover the power of appointment with yourself. It's common for us to schedule appointments with other people. We record the day, time and place so we won't forget to be there. Why not do the same for yourself? Schedule time to accomplish important projects. Be specific about start and ending times. Scheduling legitimizes any activity. It reduces interruptions and increases the likelihood you'll actually do it." PlannerPads


• What's Your ROE? ... What's your "Return on Effort" for the various activities you are involved with? Is it enough? Why or why not? What could you do to improve the return you're getting? The New Long Term

Knowledge Management

• Inxight for Oracle ... Inxight Software released a version of its Inxight SmartDiscovery Awareness Server for the Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g offering. The Inxight offering takes search results from Oracle and "clusters search results on the fly, enabling users to filter their Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g result sets by the people, companies, places, concepts and other information contained within them. It augments keyword in context summaries with the “Top Mentions” contained within the full text of the document, making it easier to find relevant documents. In addition, personalized page and term alerts automatically inform users of new information of interest in their Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g indexes, open Web or other federated sources. This helps sharply reduce time to information and enables users to locate hidden information, such as an isolated mention of a potential person of interest or new competitor." I've held Inxight in high regard for a long time ... they have a neat set of technology on offer. Inxight

Other Stuff

• New Get a Mac "Security" Ad ... (giggle) or (snigger) ... or perhaps both ;-) Apple


• Vista ... the "Huh?" ... Mike continues his analysis of Vista, in particular the confusion multiple versions is generating. "It's obvious that Microsoft decided to extract maximum cash from consumers by micro-segmenting the market and trying to provide a different version for each. But they may end up with the opposite result. All this confusion over versions and upgrade policies will motivate unknown millions of consumers to simply stick with Windows XP or move to a Mac." ComputerWorld