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Microsoft SharePoint has claimed to solve team collaboration problems.  Here are a few comparisons of a structured implementation of Sharepoint versus simpler wiki solutions.

"We're planning on using SharePoint for formal office documentation and a wiki for more malleable IT documentation--the wiki seems easier to change.  I can administer a wiki largely without a manual; for SharePoint I need a book."  - Joel on software Discussion Group

"My experience with SharePoint is that it ends up being a fancy shared drive or file dumping ground with not nearly so much extra value as you would get on a Wiki. Most of the implementation I've seen end up having a nicely organized directory structure but are still only glorified file dumping grounds. If the wiki takes off, it turns into a more collaborative space or community white board and I have not seen that emerge on the SharePoint." - Road Warrior Collaboration

Michael Sampson has come up with a slightly different litmus test for SharePoint- a 7 point inspection

He sums up the test in access, location independence, real-time, calendaring, social features, action management, and auto-discovery.  Take a look at the 7 Pillars  whitepaper to see where SharePoint works and falls short for the enterprise. 

We often need to record conversations and interviews and upload them to Near-Time.
It's easy for you to set this up too.  Simply follow these instructions to get started.

1. Visit Skype.com and download for PC or Mac

2. Download Ecamm's call recorder for Mac or http://www.callburner.com/download for PC

3. Call computer to computer on Skype to computer to record

4. Upload the file and insert it into a Near-Time page

5. Enjoy your podcast!

Step 1.  www.skype.com

Step 2.  Download the call recorder software

Step 3.  Start Recording

Step 4.  Upload the mp3 file to your Near-Time space

Today Near-Time announced a partnership with AltSearchEngines to extend its leading web property with subscription based forums. CEOs of search engine companies, AltSearchEngine readers, and internationally based advisors can participate in private user-driven communities, enabling interaction among peers in the search engine community. Unlike current AltSearchEngine offerings, these new communities require membership access, and focus on high value content and conversation.

As a member of the ReadWriteWeb network, AltSearchEngines publishes a weblog with coverage of nearly every alternative and niche search engine - daily and globally. Their mission is to reveal "the most wonderful search engines you've never seen."

ReadWriteWeb is ranked among the top 20 blogs worldwide according to Technorati. "We hope to become a one-stop shop for those interested in alternative search engines," said Charles Knight,editor of AltSearchEngines. "Currently, visitors to AltSearchEngines can only read our posts, but for 2008, we want to take it to the next level. The goal is to provide search engine CEOs with a secure place where they can communicate and interact with each other. I made a diligent search of the forum products available, and Near-Time was the clear winner," continued Knight.

"The new, extended AltSearchEngines forum brings together two critical components of Near-Time online communities, paid content and collaboration. We're pleased to enable new business models and revenue sources for AltSearchEngines," said Reid Conrad, CEO of Near-Time. Powered by Near-Time, the interactive forums will allow members to further engage in discussion and questions related to alternative search engines.

At launch, two separate forums will leverage Near-Time Premium to charge for varying levels of subscription access. AltSearchEngine forum memberships will begin at $5.99/month for readers - or a special introductory rate of $49 per year and an equally appealing introductory rate of $49/year for Search industry authorship. Forum memberships are available immediately at http://members.altsearchengines.com/join

Most of us made a New Year's Resolution this year.    Keep the e-mail inbox clean, stay ahead of work, take more vacation, and maybe exercise before 7AM.  

We jumped ahead and wanted to make 2008 painless and trouble free by relieving the pains of e-mail alerts and notifications. 

E-mail notification from Near-Time now makes it easy for you to know when content in a space has been updated or modified. As a space member, you can have the following email notifications available to you in each space:

• Digest - A digest is an email summary of activity within a space. By default, the digest is compiled and sent out each Sunday. A space manager has the option to set the day of the week digests are sent out to members, and can set the frequency to daily instead of weekly.
• Alerts - Alerts are emails that summarize new or updated content in a particular section (news (blog), pages (wiki), tasks, files, forums, topics, etc.) Alerts can also be sent when there are updates to individual items.  

The Google Zeitgeist is out again.  2007 was the year of the iPhone, But enterprise IT departments may not agree .  Here are a few other noticeable trends in the Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0 realm 

We thought blogs and wikis were a big deal, but according to Google Trends , forums continue to hold out in the top spot.

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Digg and delicious are battling at one and two for the social bookmarking reign, but social bookmarking was so 2006.  

It looks like there's a new game in town. 

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Let's dust off the old peer-to-peer sites of the early web.

  You know-  the good ole' bulletin boards, forums... p2p

The most active early adopters of Web 2.0 were given a voice with blogs and the other 99% of the web became comfortable with a p2p forum around a profile context. 

Modern bulletin boards are built around a post, a profile, or a topic.  Forums are back in full swing in the form of comment threads and social networking.

Top 5 reasons forums were re-invented forums for near-time

1. Maintaining fluid discussions:  Sometimes people still try to quote other comments from 8 posts earlier.  Make it happen.
2. Tracking threads:  RSS and user dashboards allow you to watch and check the parts unread by you.
3. Don't do something.  Stand there:  Interactive communities are created and maintained by users as a whole.  You as a blogger, online community manager, or user can sit back and wait to respond when appropriate.
4. Analyze for a reason: Watch most active contributers for last 30 days, 90 days, and all time.
   
5. No more "Bueller...Bueller?":   Don't let your  comment get lost at the bottom of a thread.  Open a new topic in the Forum

 This is our first year as part of the EContent 100.  We are proud to be selected as one of the best and most innovative for 2007.

“We feel that wikis are taking their rightful place as one of the most easy-to-use collaborative tools in the enterprise, and Near-Time is one of the leaders in this space,” said Michelle Manafy, Editor-In-Chief of EContent.

Read More...

• Near-Time InFocus
• Complete EContent 100 List

• Publishing in Real Time: Wrox Stays Current with Near-Time

Could not generate link to image with ID: Social networking sites are often blocked by corporate IT and upper management.  What do we have to learn?  Are we actually planning our social calendar and losing productivity, or do we need an avenue for internal discovery?

Strengthening social ties 

Sociologist Mark S. Grannovetter published a theory in 1973 (The Strength of Weak Ties)  exploring phenomena of small-scale interactions that yield important large-scale patterns.   In a survey of people that recently changed jobs in the Boston area, he discovered that 55.6% of respondents received the job tip from someone they saw less than twice a month and 27.8% said they saw that person less than once each year.   He concluded that, "it is remarkable that people receive crucial information from individuals whose very existence they have forgotten."   Hmm. The value of social networking. 

Formal Networking for mutual self-interest 

-  Can employee A share information with employee #_____ informally across the "corporate graph"?

According to the McKinsey Quarterly review of Informal Employee Networks ,

"Professionals who want to work horizontally across an organization currently find themselves forced to search though poorly connected organizational silos for the knowledge and collaborators they need. In many companies these matrix and other hybrid organizations have become dysfunctional. The symptoms include endless meetings, phone calls, and e-mail exchanges, as well as confused accountability for results."

Busting the Silos & Creating the Network

Tools to create the network include all the standard collaborative pieces that we've been talking about for the "Interactive Enterprise."  Andrew McAfee  offered his suggestions for the leader in each category:

Collective Success

Much has been written about Google's 20% time for all employees.  At first glance, this would seem that those employees are distracted from the other work.  In practice, Google engineers will spend weekends and time well beyond the 20% of the workweek to develop new products for the company.

As a result, creative engineers and innovators are developing half of Google's new search products out of that 20% time.   

Every company, no matter the size, has large numbers of thinking-intensive and creative employees.  The winners will be the organizations that enable those groups to create more profits by putting their collective mind power to use. 

Beginning Active Server Pages 3.0 was published almost 8 years ago now, and remains to be one of the best selling web programming titles ever.  Partnering with Near-Time, WROX Publishing (a division of Wiley), released the entire contents of the 18 chapter book at http://asp3wiki.wrox.com

Here's what's included in the free online book

• All Chapters and Appendices 
  
• Updated and verified errata
• Standards for newer web browsers

Many books are still readable in the ebook formats.  In our opinion, the wiki enhances
the reader experience for  the following reasons:

•  All content is can be searched and bookmarked
• Content is separated by recognizable headings and indexed in multiple locations
• Related content can be discovered through the navigation controls

Wrox's ASP3wiki is available immediately at http://asp3wiki.wrox.com

I am excited to inform you of a major Near-Time update that provides integration with widgets and other Web services. This will enable you and your team to create "user generated solutions" on the fly. A widget is a micro-application that you can embed in your Near-Time wiki or weblog. 

Enhancements include:

• real-time chat from Meebo, Gabbly, and Skype widgets
• video and widget aggregators
• polls and surveys from SurveyGizmo, Poll Daddy, and Wufoo
• maps and mash-ups from Google and Trippermap
• news and information from Yahoo! Finance and Forbes
  
  

Near-Time will be certifying widget providers to ensure that you and your members have access to best quality widgets.  You can submit other widgets by clicking here

How do I find that lost image?  The image picker now allows you to search, view, and select a thumbnail of that image before it is inserted to the page.  Here is a quick snapshot from one of my wikis.   

Is it really 90-9-1?

The 1% Rule is a theoretical internet concept which states that the number of people who create content on the internet represent 1% (or less) of the people actually viewing that content.

(From Wikipedia)

Maybe closer to 50-50? 

Forrester came out other metrics in April on how web audiences consume and in

Judging from their survey- I think Web 2.0 participation is the swell of active participation.   Active participation includes collectors of RSS feeds, videos, social bookmarks and joiners who use social networking sites.

According to Google’s Search Product Manager:

The average number of searches per unique visitor
done in one day on Google:

  7 

The average number of pageviews on Facebook or
MySpace per unique visitor:

  100  Source: http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/04/forresters_new_.html 

Can marketers take advantage of this?

Marketers, Integrated Marketing, Advertising, and PR are all scrambling to figure out how to be involved in the conversation of communities like Facebook and use emerging technologies like blogs and wikis for their overall web-marketing strategy.

A McKinsey QuarterlyGlobal Survey just released a new study on "How companies are marketing online" that provides some insight into how top executives see coming for the Web 2.0 conversation. 

What are the emerging technologies marketing departments using?

McKinsey Quarterly’s Global Survey found the following adoption rate in the enterprise:

32 Blogs External blogs are available on the public Internet. Key employees can write about industry trends, product updates, the goings-on at the company, upcoming events and so on. It can be a way to create a dialog with customers, as well as build brand and increase search engine optimization (SEO).

15% Wikis Wikis are websites that allow users to simply create, edit and collaborate on content. 

15% Widgets- micro-application that you can embed in your webpage or blog

Most bloggers find that if their post has a digg, stumbleupon, or del.icio.us (delicious) tag, the traffic spike runs anywhere from 100% to 5,000% over other posts.   Here are some of the ideas I had. It’s just a start.

1. Be visual. Use images and titles that reflect uniqueness of your idea
2. Mention the iPhone.  Or better yet- demo on it.
3. Use a whiteboard.  SEOMoz and Common Craft have mastered this approach
4. Link in to other blog posts you’ve done before
5. Be orignial. Find interesting trends or mash-ups that are useful to your community
6. Don’t be the first.  Just focus on connecting the dots
7. Use sites like stumbleupon, delicious, newsvine, digg, and reddit because your readers will follow suit