If you are like many readers (and this author!) your may first need to find out “What the heck is ESI?” Electronically Stored Information is what the lawyers call all that stuff we knowledge workers produce that lives on our local machines, in the corporate network, in the cloud, and these days, on wearable devices.
Google Plus has been out widely for a week, and already, there are numerous articles speculating on its usefulness for education and training. We at Q2 are skeptical. Don’t get me wrong – we’re big Google aficionados here. We actually PAY the good people at Google for hosting our staff email accounts and Google Apps.
My email box is full these days of messages encouraging me to attend seminars about how to leverage Social Media in my professional life. Wikipedia observes that “A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.” What of value is being
Much of the Web 2.0 phenomenon has featured applications which are “people-centered.” Ning, Facebook, Twitter and others feature interfaces which center around individuals, and branch out from there. I’ve written in this space before about my concerns that people-centered interfaces present some unfortunate limits to application utility, so it will unlikely surprise anyone that I’m
The Wall Street Journal is famous for being one of the few newspapers to have successfully charged for online content from the very beginning of their web presence. I can recall downloading the personal journal over a dial-up line back in the early 90’s, and still, even in now, in 2008, when mountains of decent
A recent Wall Street Journal article offers this perky teaser for an article by Kelly Spors: Use Social Media to Bond With Consumers Social-media technologies can help small firms to better connect with and market themselves to consumers and others in their industries, and they’re often free. Spors’ article is a decent survey of current
Proposition: The house believes that social networking technologies will bring large [positive] changes to educational methods, in and out of the classroom. So opens this week’s debate in the ongoing series at Economist.com. I find myself in substantial agreement with both Ewan McIntosh’s pro position, and with Michael Bugeja’s con position. The two men have
The old saw suggests that if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We’re seeing a lot of that in the social software space. Apparently, now that every corporate executive has a kid on Facebook, more and more companies in the Web2.0, social software space feel the need to
Social Network or Community? I’ve been watching the rise of the social networking sites with fascination. There has always been a bit of fuzziness (or violent controversy, depending on in which circles one is having the conversation!) about what constitutes community in general, as well as about what constitutes online community. I think the rise
Educause has released their study of Students and Information Technology, 2007. There’s not much startling in this report, which the authors characterize as a detailing of evolution, rather than revolution. More students are using content management systems than ever. More have laptops than ever. Many have complaints about the unhelpfulness of the college help desk,