Collaboration Software's Failings, and Potential

Grok Headline matches for Collaboration Software's Failings, and Potential

Whuffie's mathematical failings

Whuffie's mathematical failings 08/22/2004 07:30 AM
Cory Doctorow: Interesting paper evaluates the mathematical flaws in reputation systems: if the right thing to do would seem suspicious, then reputation systems encourage you to do the wrong thing, to enhance your reputation.

Recall that an action is vulnerable to a temptation if when the short-run players participate, the temptation lowers the probability of all bad signals, and increases the probability of all others. In this case the bad reputation result requires the exit minmax condition, as demonstrated by the example in Section 4.4. Notice, however, that in the example the relative probability of g and r is changed by the temptation. If the temptation satisfies the stronger property that the relative probability of the other signals remains constant, then we can weaken the assumption of exit minmax. In this section we develop this result, and give an application to games with two actions.

(If the math is too dense, there's a good lay explanation here) Link< /a> (via Smartmobs)

Megawati apologises for failings

Megawati apologises for failings 09/23/2004 04:37 AM
Indonesia's President Megawati asks 'forgiveness for shortcomings', as she heads for election defeat.

Nursery failings revealed by BBC

Nursery failings revealed by BBC 08/12/2004 02:46 AM
An undercover reporter finds worrying departures from good practice in Ofsted-inspected private nurseries.

NHS failings hit superbug fight

NHS failings hit superbug fight 07/13/2004 07:00 PM
A lack of monitoring means the NHS does not know how many patients are infected - and killed - by hospital superbugs.

Failings in toddler rape bid case

Failings in toddler rape bid case 04/18/2005 08:30 AM
An inquiry identifies "systemic weaknesses" in the handling of a sex offender who tried to rape a toddler on release from jail.

Aznar admits Madrid failings

Aznar admits Madrid failings 05/03/2004 10:18 PM
The former Spanish prime minister admits underestimating the threat from Islamic militants.

failings in the administration and
intelligence and law enforcement
communities

failings in the administration and
intelligence and law enforcement
communities 12/18/2003 04:32 AM
9/11 could have and should have been prevented .. 9/11 Chair: Attack Was Preventable .. article itself .. :

cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/17/eveningnews/main589137.shtml
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overlook George’s … human
failings

overlook George’s … human
failings 06/11/2004 05:02 AM

tinyurl.com/3efkp
track this site | 6 links

Bank of Ireland fined over anti-money
laundering failings

Bank of Ireland fined over anti-money
laundering failings 09/03/2004 06:18 AM
Infomaticsonline.co.uk - Fri Sep 3, 09:11 am GMT

Edward Leigh MP: statement on failings
of Criminal Records Bureau IT

Edward Leigh MP: statement on failings
of Criminal Records Bureau IT 02/12/2004 04:08 AM
PublicTechnology.net Feb 12 2004 8:06AM GMT

Bradbury Software's RSS Feeds

Bradbury Software's RSS Feeds 09/08/2004 12:39 PM

I recently added a feeds page to my site which lists all of Bradbury Software's feeds. If you're using FeedDemon or another aggregator which supports the feed protocol, just click a FEED button to subscribe:

Blog Feeds

FeedDemon Tips
TopStyle Tips
Nick Bradbury's Blog
Nick Bradbury's "Dexter" Comic Strip
Comments feed for Nick's blog

Product FAQs

FeedDemon FAQ
TopStyle FAQ

Official Support Forums

Announcements
FeedDemon Feature Requests
FeedDemon Support
TopStyle Feature Requests
TopStyle Support

User-supported Forums

Web Authoring Forum
Open Discussion

Survival of software's fittest

Survival of software's fittest 08/16/2004 08:16 AM
In the flat enterprise software market, the message is clear: It's time to hunt or be hunted.

Free Software's killer applications

Free Software's killer applications 04/24/2004 03:40 AM
While GNU/Linux has gained popularity as an operating system, many criticize it for lacking "killer applications" capable of competing with their Windows and Mac OS X proprietary counterparts. Some killer applications, however, haven't received the recognition they deserve. Here's a short overview of some professional-quality Free Software applications that run under Linux.

Software's shrinking middle ground

Software's shrinking middle ground 06/14/2004 06:46 AM
ZDNet Jun 14 2004 11:18AM GMT

[H]ard|OCP - id Software's Official
DOOM3 Benchmarks

[H]ard|OCP - id Software's Official
DOOM3 Benchmarks 07/22/2004 05:01 PM
id Software's Official DOOM3 Benchmarks on [H]ardOCP .. the very first series of benchmarks .. benchmark DOOM 3 video performance

www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQy
track this site | 4 links

id Software's Official DOOM3 Benchmarks

id Software's Official DOOM3 Benchmarks 07/22/2004 08:14 AM

Veritas Software's Stock Plummets (AP)

Veritas Software's Stock Plummets (AP) 07/06/2004 03:30 PM
AP - Veritas Software Corp. lost more than a third of its market value Tuesday after the company warned of an earnings shortfall that amplified investors' recent disenchantment with management.

Alien Skin Software's Eye Candy 5

Alien Skin Software's Eye Candy 5 12/19/2004 03:40 PM

This entry was brought to you by Alien Skin Software's Latest Release

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Free Software's new audio heir apparent

Free Software's new audio heir apparent 05/04/2004 03:55 AM
While proprietary OSs have been blessed by an onslaught of competing audio players, the Free Software world has remained relatively stagnant since XMMS was released in 1997. Recently, however, there has been a lot of development work surrounding Free Software media players. I ran across several audio programs worth looking into, including mpd, muine, and musikcube, but the most promising program I found is Rhythmbox.

Interview with id Software's John
Carmack @ Beyond3D

Interview with id Software's John
Carmack @ Beyond3D 08/10/2004 03:48 PM

Son of SATAN? Weighing Security
Software's Risks

Son of SATAN? Weighing Security
Software's Risks 04/12/2004 03:33 PM

Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best
Friend

Brazil: Free Software's Biggest and Best
Friend 03/28/2005 11:33 PM
New York Times Mar 29 2005 3:55AM GMT

Software's game of mutually assured
damage - www.smh.com.au

Software's game of mutually assured
damage - www.smh.com.au 08/02/2004 03:22 PM
ramping up their patent efforts .. Quote:

smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/30/1091080437270.html?oneclick=tr ue
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• TRUE EVIL NEVER DIES: ID SOFTWARE'S
DOOM 3 FOR THE XBOX AND

• TRUE EVIL NEVER DIES: ID SOFTWARE'S
DOOM 3 FOR THE XBOX AND 04/06/2005 06:42 AM
Newshub.com - Tue Apr 5, 01:26 pm GMT

Joel on Software's favorite software
essays in a book

Joel on Software's favorite software
essays in a book 06/22/2005 01:50 AM
Cory Doctorow: Joel "on Software" Splosky put together a Best of Software Writing anthology filled with articles he's cadged from blogs and other web-writing (he kindly included my Boing Boing post on Notice and Takedown regimes in Canada). The contributor list is fantastic:

Ken Arnold, Leon Bambrick. Michael Bean, Rory Blyth, Adam Bosworth, danah boyd, Raymond Chen, Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi, Cory Doctorow, ea_spouse, Bruce Eckel, Paul Ford, Paul Graham, John Gruber, Gregor Hohpe, Ron Jeffries, Eric Johnson, Eric Lippert, Michael Lopp, Larry Osterman, Mary Poppendieck, Rick Schaut, Aaron Swartz, Clay Shirky, Eric Sink, why the lucky stiff

The book is out now -- I'm looking forward to getting my copy!

The software development world desperately needs better writing. If I have to read another 2000 page book about some class library written by 16 separate people in broken ESL, I’m going to flip out. If I see another hardback book about object oriented models written with dense faux-academic pretentiousness, I’m not going to shelve it any more in the Fog Creek library: it’s going right in the recycle bin. If I have to read another spirited attack on Microsoft’s buggy code by an enthusiastic nine year old Trekkie on Slashdot, I might just poke my eyes out with a sharpened pencil. Stop it, stop it, stop it!

Link

2 views bring software's 'other
billionaire' in focus

2 views bring software's 'other
billionaire' in focus 12/14/2003 04:37 AM
Boston Globe Dec 14 2003 3:20AM ET

Panda Software's Weekly Report on
Viruses and Intruders

Panda Software's Weekly Report on
Viruses and Intruders 02/01/2005 09:27 PM
This week's report on viruses and intruders will focus on the worms Crowt.A, Mydoom.AG, Cisum.A, Bagle.BK and Bagle.BL. [PRWEB Jan 30, 2005]

Bluespring Software's CTO to Speak on
'BPM Best Practices' at Brainstorm's BPM
Conference

Bluespring Software's CTO to Speak on
'BPM Best Practices' at Brainstorm's BPM
Conference 04/11/2005 11:30 PM
Market Wire Apr 12 2005 2:25AM GMT

Free tools and services for webmasters
at Panda Software's new website

Free tools and services for webmasters
at Panda Software's new website 03/20/2003 08:51 PM
IDGNet New Zealand Mar 20 2003 7:31PM ET

IWS Announces Strategic Selection of
Sonic Software's Enterprise Service Bus

IWS Announces Strategic Selection of
Sonic Software's Enterprise Service Bus 06/08/2004 02:41 AM
Integrated Warehousing Solutions, LLC, a leading provider of supply chain execution solutions, announced today that it has made a strategic selection of the Sonic Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) product from Sonic Software, a division of Progress Software of Bedford, MA. [PRWEB Jun 8, 2004]

Creative claims similar shadowing tech
as id Software's Doom3

Creative claims similar shadowing tech
as id Software's Doom3 07/28/2004 11:38 AM

Pooch Pro Unveiled - "Plug and Play"
Cluster Software's Pro Version Debuts

Pooch Pro Unveiled - "Plug and Play"
Cluster Software's Pro Version Debuts 06/28/2004 03:43 AM
While releasing version 1.5 of Pooch, Dauger Research, Inc., debuts Pooch Pro. Pooch Pro debuts new supercomputer-level capabilities to administrate and control cluster resources, providing an unprecedented and unmatched combination of powerful management and maintenance of cluster resources with a modern, drag-and-drop, graphical user interface. With its dynamic job queue and scheduling system, this new version of Pooch makes supercomputing capabilities accessible, maximizing the power of clusters for its users. [PRWEB Jun 28, 2004]

Top Ten Most Frequently Detected
Computer Viruses 2004 by Panda
Software's ActiveScan

Top Ten Most Frequently Detected
Computer Viruses 2004 by Panda
Software's ActiveScan 12/30/2004 02:47 PM
Investors Business Daily Dec 30 2004 6:09PM GMT

CES Software's SkillJam to provide games
for Golden Palace's online casino

CES Software's SkillJam to provide games
for Golden Palace's online casino 09/25/2004 11:54 PM
Iii.co.uk - Fri Sep 24, 11:46 am GMT

iWay Software's Smart Services Provide
Microsoft Office System Integration with
Major Enterprise Applications (TechWeb)

iWay Software's Smart Services Provide
Microsoft Office System Integration with
Major Enterprise Applications (TechWeb) 07/16/2004 03:42 AM
TechWeb - News - July 15, 2004

Instant Collaboration

Instant Collaboration 03/17/2005 03:09 AM

We've used SubEthaEdit to shave hours off projects -- from building outlines and ocnducting group meetings to revising articles. We think it's only the first of many programs that will promote collaborative processes. By Glenn Fleishman, Jeff Carlson and Adam Engst, Macworld

Innovation as Collaboration

Innovation as Collaboration 02/01/2005 09:04 PM

A few years ago a furniture company flew me down to their headquarters to talk to them about innovation, and to get my comments on a new product that they'd developed for the professional services industry. This was a company that had been honoured for years as one of America's most innovative companies, so I wasn't sure how much I could help them. They ushered me first into the R&D department where I met with some very creative individuals who obviously knew a lot about their business, and about product innovation. The department featured a giant furniture 'playroom', stocked with a variety of furniture components, where creative minds could serendipitously experiment and build makeshift prototypes on the fly. I was impressed. Being a consultant, the first question I asked them was about their innovation process. Specifically, I asked, how were customer needs, complaints and ideas routed from the front-line customer contacts (the sales and marketing people) to R&D. I got blank stares. New product ideas were developed in the laboratory, it seems, and the only customer input was from surveys and focus groups once the R&D people already had something to show them. An interesting discussion ensued. The gist of it was the company's argument that customers, not being experts in furniture, don't know what they want until they're shown something. If you were to ask them what they want, they'd just respond "what can you offer me?" My response was two-fold: First, I said, you shouldn't be asking people what furniture they want, because  it's not a piece of furniture that they're looking for, necessarily, it's the attributes and benefits that the furniture offers that people want: Comfort, orthopedic support, mobility, prestige, 'workability'. I described a company I had recently read about that had abolished chairs. All the work surfaces had been raised to a comfortable work-level while standing, and each employee had been given a lightweight, personal 'memory cushion' to stand on that clipped to their belt, and a pair of personal orthopedically-designed shoes designed to make standing for long periods comfortable. In this company, people were constantly on the move and an enormous amount of time was spent booking meeting rooms. Now, the entire office could be configured as ad hoc meeting areas, chairs (with their high attendant cost and floor-space needs) could be eliminated, and mobility was optimized. People even found that they were more productive standing up and constantly moving around. This was a company that understood furniture was a means to an end, and the end for them was mobility and flexibility, so they 'invented' tools (furniture, cushions and shoes) that had those attributes. Secondly, I added, you need to use an iterative process to elicit what people need, want and would use, a process Imperato and Harari (in their book Jumping the Curve) call "Thinking the Customer Ahead". This process entails a combination of visioning, asking a lot of 'what if' questions, and generally helping customers imagine the future state of their own organizations and needs, and how they would react if something new were suddenly available. This is an inherently collaborati ve process, as much as it is an innovative one. Just as asking people 'what would you like to see on the company intranet?' is likely to produce unimaginative (or no) answers, so would asking customers what furniture they need. But if you helped them to envision what the future of their business would look like, and then worked from that vision to ask an iterative set of 'what if' questions to elicit the kinds of furniture they could imagine using effectively in that future environment, and then collaboratively work with them to 'design' it, then you'd be getting somewhere. As it turned out, the new product they had asked me to evaluate was designed to solve a problem in the professional services industry that had been widely talked about for a generation. Now they had an answer, but it was an answer to yesterday's problem, for which effective work-arounds had been found and were still evolving. And they had designed a product that had several critical inconvenience factors that were show-stoppers, and which they could have known about by spending more time talking to customers much earlier in the process. One of my creative suggestions to them, as a customer, was that if they really want to sell their top-of-the-line ergonomic chairs to CEOs, they should give them away free to hotels and conference centres for their meeting rooms, where CEOs hang out and where the chairs are notoriously uncomfortable. The proviso would be that the name of the chair be conspicuously emblazoned on each chair. I don't think they ever took me up on the idea. I still think it would work, and pay for itself in no time. Specialization has created intellectual and imaginative silos in organizations, and a recent Wharton study written up in S+B Magazine has found, as I did on that trip, that these silos are a huge obstacle to innovation: "The most effective product development and commercialization processes encourage dynamic communication and idea sharing among engineers, marketers, and customers...Failure to incorporate the customer’s perspective often seriously limits the potential financial and competitive value of corporate innovation...Often, engineers are tucked away so far within a company that they don’t see firsthand what customers really need." Other key findings of the study: over-concentration on technology and under-emphasis of the emotional appeal of products leads to market failure better products result when employees are themselves customers of the product 'anthropological research' -- visiting customers to see how they actually use (and mis-use) products can provide huge insights on need and innovation opportunities when entering new markets, having local partners 'on the ground' can help tweak products to meet needs that are unique to that new market using cross-functional teams and having the R&D people 'get out more' can help reduce 'customer blindness' spreading R&D efforts around the world can help global companies enhance their 'environmental scan' and tap into ideas and adaptations that may not be apparent at head office surveys that gather data on customer behaviour are insufficient -- it's more important to know why customers do what they do, to determine their true wants and needs, and this usually requires face-to-face contact and collaborative effort to determine it's important to understand customers' aversion to change, and annoyance with having too many choices, when developing products key qualities needed of the facilitators of dialogue between R&D, sales and customers: humility and curiosity This study focused mainly on new product innovation, but the same need for collaboration with all the departments of the company, and with customers as well, applies equally to other types of business innovation. I like the Doblin Group's Ten Types of Innovation, an excellent way of parsing all the innovation opportunities open to a company: Business model: How you make money (e.g. Dell's pay-in-advance for a custom-made PC model). Networks and alliances: How you join forces with other companies for mutual benefit  (e.g. Sara Lee sticking strictly to branding and outsourcing all manufacturing) Enabling process: How you support the company's core processes and workers (e.g. Starbucks' premium wage and benefits packages to attract superior staff) Core processes: How you create and add value to your offerings (e.g. Wal-Mart's reinvention of retailing as shelf-space leasing) Product performance: How you design your core offerings  (e.g. the Mercedes Smart Car's unique and imaginative attributes -- pictured above -- pick up the new Feb/05 Fast Company for a fascinating discussion of why you won't see it in the US) Product system: How you link and/or provide a platform for multiple products (e.g. the Microsoft integrated productivity suite) Service: How you provide value to customers and consumers beyond and around your products (e.g. Singapore Airlines' thoughtful and pampering extras) Delivery Channel: How you get your offerings to market (e.g. Martha Stewart's multi-media ways of getting her 'home' stuff to your home) Brand: How you communicate your offerings (e.g. Absolut vodka's "theme and variations' advertising concept) Customer experience<>: How your customers feel when they interact with your company and its offerings (e.g. the Harley Davidson owners' community) Collaboration within company departments and with customers is absolutely essential to the success of any of these ten types of innovation. My sense, however, is that in most large organizations collaboration (as opposed to mere coordination) is antithetical to corporate culture, modus operandi, and hierarchical structure. That's why many innovation advisers think innovation is best done in a business unit separate from the main operating unit, where emphasis is inevitably on protecting the status quo. And that's also why I was surprised to see the results of a new study, by KPMG and Ipsos-Reid, of Canada's most innovative companies. Only three of the top 10 are small-to-medium sized businesses (Research in Motion, Westjet Airlines and Ballard Power Systems). The others include four of Canada's five largest telecom and broadcasting firms, its largest grocery chain, its largest engineering firm and its largest software distributor. And while this 'bias to big' is less noticeable in the Innovation category than in the overall Most Admired rankings (which are top-heavy with banks), it struck me as peculiar -- until I read how the winners had been selected: Only the CEOs of Canada's leading (read: biggest) corporations got to vote. It's not surprising, then, that they picked almost exclusively other large corporations. I wonder what the answers would have been if they had asked customers?

Arsenal R/T Collaboration (RTC)

Arsenal R/T Collaboration (RTC) 03/28/2005 04:10 AM
Arsenal v1.4 Mobile/J2ME Released

Collaboration Evolves

Collaboration Evolves 04/19/2004 11:15 AM
New offerings address diverse enterprise needs.
Grok Description matches for Collaboration Software's Failings, and Potential
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Collaboration Software's Failings, and Potential

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