This is where you say something clever
Shawn Blanc points out this nifty new feature in the iPhone 2.0 software, which we asked Apple for last year:
The .com button, when held, now offers three other TLDs: .net, .org and .edu.
He also points out this handy new feature:
iPhone can now take a screenshot by pressing (not holding) the home and lock buttons simultaneously. The screen fades to white, fades back in, and the screenshot is now in your camera roll.
Shawn Blanc points out this nifty new feature in the iPhone 2.0 software, which we asked Apple for last year:
The .com button, when held, now offers three other TLDs: .net, .org and .edu.
He also points out this handy new feature:
iPhone can now take a screenshot by pressing (not holding) the home and lock buttons simultaneously. The screen fades to white, fades back in, and the screenshot is now in your camera roll.
Got my iPhone 3g the other day and have been noticing that battery life seems shorter than on the original – this story in Apple Insider confirms that experience.
A couple of weeks ago I read a really interesting article by Jon Stokes in Ars Technica titled IT consumerization and the future of work where he talked about the impact that consumer IT services are having in the corporate enterprise IT world.
I posted a comment on the article noting how those same forces are having large effects in higher-education IT, and last week we had a chance to chat on the phone about it – it was a lively and highly enjoyable conversation. Now Jon’s published that conversation in Ars Technica.
There’s a related article that Trent Batson from MIT wrote in Campus Technology titled The Next Phase For Academic Computing. Trent talks about the impacts and uses of cloud-based Web applications can support scholarly work and how central IT units in higher-ed institutions are not always good at supporting innovation. While I’m not sure that I agree with his conclusion that academic technology needs a separate organization because of that (I think it’s likely to be the case that any central organization within a large institution will have similar difficulties in leading innovation, which will always come from the edges), it’s worth reading the two articles together for a picture of some of the thinking around the impact of consumer-based IT in our universe.
A couple of weeks ago I read a really interesting article by Jon Stokes in Ars Technica titled IT consumerization and the future of work where he talked about the impact that consumer IT services are having in the corporate enterprise IT world.
I posted a comment on the article noting how those same forces are having large effects in higher-education IT, and last week we had a chance to chat on the phone about it – it was a lively and highly enjoyable conversation. Now Jon’s published that conversation in Ars Technica.
There’s a related article that Trent Batson from MIT wrote in Campus Technology titled The Next Phase For Academic Computing. Trent talks about the impacts and uses of cloud-based Web applications can support scholarly work and how central IT units in higher-ed institutions are not always good at supporting innovation. While I’m not sure that I agree with his conclusion that academic technology needs a separate organization because of that (I think it’s likely to be the case that any central organization within a large institution will have similar difficulties in leading innovation, which will always come from the edges), it’s worth reading the two articles together for a picture of some of the thinking around the impact of consumer-based IT in our universe.
Microsoft today announced new packages bundled under the Microsoft Online Services name. Looks interesting. They’re talking about something called Exchange and Sharepoint “Online Deskless Worker” (targeted at people who only occasionally use a computer during the day) for $3 per month, whereas “information workers” are supposed to purchase the full suite, including Exchange, Sharepoint, Live Communicator, and Live Meeting for $15 per month.
I assume that there’s more difference between the two offerings other than just the addition of Communicator and Live Meeting, but there’s no way to tell that so far.
While the press release is enticing, the web sites that it links to make no mention of the new packages – looks like a case of right hands and left hands in Redmond not exactly meeting up on the marketing front. Compare that to Apple’s MobileMe announcements around WWDC, and you’ll see why people are so easily confused about what Microsoft is doing – even when they’re doing good stuff!
Is it mere coincidence that all three of the comments on the Defining Collaboration post were from guys named Jim? I think not!
For the past year I’ve been a member of a university task force looking at defining strategy around online collaboration tools. As we prepare the report of that group for the Provost, we realized that we hadn’t defined collaboration, which seems like a problem when you want to decide which kinds of digital tools help support that activity.
So I volunteered to define collaboration for the report.
To my surprise, I didn’t find a lot of useful definitions around the web or in print. So here’s what I’ve come up with mostly on my own – does this sound right?
What do we mean by “collaboration”?
While Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines collaboration as “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor”, not all group work is collaboration. When we speak of collaboration we mean work undertaken by a group of people acting as peers in order to accomplish an agreed upon goal, even if (as is frequently the case) the details of that goal are not clearly understood at the outset. This work is characterized by its informal and non-hierarchical nature, and by the lack of formal roles and controls. People cooperating in a collaborative activity determine the needed actions collectively and as individuals within that collective volunteer and commit to completing tasks to achieve the goal.
The lack of formal organizational structures in collaboration should not be seen as leading to a lack of accountability. Tasks are committed to and undertaken, and the collaborators need to be able to track decisions and assignments and monitor progress on tasks until the endeavor’s goal is achieved.
“The unstructured exchange of ideas to create value”. – Evan Rosen, The Culture of Collaboration
