Weekly digest of week 41 2009

This weekly digest is created to keep you informed about the latest
developments concerning the topics of our community of practice. This
week nice tools for PowerPoint to integrate Twitter in your presentations, top 10 web collaboration tools and a five minute presentation on how you can effectively visualize information.

Intranets – stop benchmarking, start leading
For a while now, of all the big analyst firms, Forrester has continued
to output some well thought out research and analysis on the
information management space. Along with this piece on workforce
technology adoption (summarised on ReadWrite Enterprise) and also
another on barriers to intranet use (discussed by Bill Ives on the Fast
Forward blog).
Social media gains importance to packagers and suppliers
Emerging forms of communication prove valuable for packaging professionals worldwide
Apple Tablet To Redefine Newspapers, Textbooks and Magazines
Several years ago, a modified version of OS X was presented to Steve
Jobs, running on a multitouch tablet. When the question “what would
people do with this?” couldn’t be answered, they shelved it. Long
having established music, movie and TV content, Apple is working hard
to load up iTunes with print content from several major publishing
houses across several media.
Facebook Cracks Down on Devs, Suspends Apps Over Bad Ads
In its first big move to implement the stricter ad guidelines it
introduced this summer, Facebook recently suspended applications that
served advertisements with deceptive content within them. The apps were
suspended without warning, leaving developers confused as to why
Facebook took this action and didn’t give them a chance to handle the
offending ads first, according to Nick O’Neill over at AllFacebook, who
first reported the story over the weekend. This confusion is likely a
result of a problem we discussed earlier: Facebook’s vagueness about
how its ad approval process actually works.
Podcasting Just Might Be the Tool to Revolutionize Education
Schools all over the country have flocked to podcasting as a new medium
to assist the teaching profession. Professors are using podcasts to
instruct students and get their messages out. Podcasting is not
restricted to one educational sector, professors at prestigious
colleges from Bentley to Purdue have flocked to this medium.
Powers of 10: Time Scales in User Experience
From 0.1 seconds to 10 years or more, user interface design has many
different timeframes, and each has its own particular usability issues.
Top 10 Web Collaboration Tools (That Aren’t Google Wave) – Collaboration – Lifehacker
You’ve probably heard about a hard-to-get, hugely new service called
Google Wave. Lest ye forget, there are plenty of web-based
collaboration tools that don’t require learning a new way of speaking.
Here are a few of our (mostly free) favorites.
FREE PowerPoint Twitter Tools | Based on SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius technology
A beta version of PowerPoint Twitter Tools is now available for
testing. Based on SAP BusinessObjects Xcelsius technology, the twitter
tools allow PowerPoint presenters to see and react to tweets in
real-time, embedded directly within their presentations, either as a
ticker or refreshable comment page.
Ident Engine – A JavaScript library that retrieves and aggregates profiles from across the web
Without much conscious thought, most of us have built identities across
the web. We’ve filled in profiles, uploaded photos, videos, reviews and
bookmarks. The Ident Engine uses semantic web API’s to bring together
these web footprints.
» Would You Please Block? Bud the Teacher
Ever since we opened up lots more of the Internet in our school
district earlier this year, the district has received several requests
from teachers and other staff to block resources that are distractions
in the classroom. I’ve written a stock response to those requests that
I thought might be worth sharing. It’s my hope that their requests and
the conversations that come from this response lead to changes in
classroom practice.