The Water Cooler

With the world’s information at our fingertips begging for us to search for it, what could make this super-technological information age better?  How about information that finds you.  That’s what technologies created by Google and yahoo now do.  It’s now possible to use a web application that aggregates search results, filters and sorts RSS feeds, and allows the results to be displayed on your home page or any page you can edit.  Somehow this seems too good to be true.  No work research right?  Well not exactly, while these tools will save you time in the long run, perpare to spend some time up front setting all of this up.

To do this, here is a summary of what you have to do:

• 1. Subscribe to a web aggregator like Netvibes or iGoogle. You can use this tool to subscribe to regular RSS feeds and add fun applications such as Weather, email, twitter and even facebook.
• 2. Search Yahoo Pipes to see if someone has already made a pipe that gathers the information you are looking for. Keep in mind you can clone and tweak it if it’s not exactly what you are looking for.
• 3. If you can’t find a pipe, run a search for all of the blogs or news feeds on a particular topic. You might hit a gold mine and find that someone has created a list of all the blogs or news pages about a topic. Copy all the URLs onto a text page or spread sheet.
• 4. Create a Yahoo pipe that combines all the feeds into one. Paste the urls into a Fetch site feed module or a Fetch feed module. Be sure to add a filter that looks for the key terms you want and a sort module to put the newest posts first. You can also add a Yahoo or Google search feed into the mix. There may even be library databases that generate search feeds to add more scholarly articles to the mix.
• 5. Save and run your feed, then click on the “get as a badge” button, and click on the aggregator you use, if yours is not listed, click on the embed code. Copy the code and drop it into your favorite webpage or aggregator in an html box to create a badge that will always give you the latest information on the topic of your choice.
• 6. You’re done, obviously I have left out several complicated steps using Pipes, read the pipe documentation for tips on creating efficient pipes.

Now the filtered information comes to you.  No more sorting through hundreds of web pages looking for current news.  No more going to several sites each day to get your information.  Your information is delivered to your doorstep in the form of a fully customizable newspaper.  The best part is that no trees were sacrificed and no money was spent!

No I don’t mean booting your laptop when you’re en route to JFK or O’hare, I mean computing using web 2.0+ programs that have become more prevalent in our daily lives.  Combine this with the recent popular movement to compact portable underpowered devices used specifically for accessing the web.  Specifically, iPhones, Blackberry’s netbooks, compact tablets ect.   There is a real push to put data back onto the sever.  In a cloud computing world, very little content will be ran on the client pc.  Let’s face it, data on the client is dangerous.  Hard drives fail, computers get a virus or can be lost or stolen and files are often only accessible from that machine.  Also, files on client machines are hard to share with a team of authors.  These are all problems that cloud computing solves.  Files that are on the web can be shared with others and are backed up regularly.  They are not specific to one client machine and therefore the file is much safer from being lost by a client computer problem.  Google docs, Zoho, and others are already offering successful cloud computing productivity solutions that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and more that all are saved on the web and sharable for collaborative authoring.  The quality of these solutions is now beginning to rival professional client side options such as Microsoft Office or Open Office.  The drive toward cloud computing has caught Microsoft’s attention as they are now looking into integrating a cloud computing solution into future Microsoft Office projects.   

Also, with mobile computing options ever growing, people can use a device to access the cloud on the go instead of at their desktop.  With the cloud, one could take their office with them anywhere they want to.  The blackberry addiction that occurred recently before the iPhone took off, is an indicator of how people can become chained to the work even when away from their desks.  Now we can be productive while waiting in line to buy tickets to a movie, while we wait to get a table at our favorite restaurant, or even while we wait for our car’s oil to be changed.   Now, applications that connect to the cloud can allow us to do things with these mobile devices that even a desktop can’t do.  Examples include GPS specific searches, finding the artist and name of the song playing on the radio, and many more that are being developed all the time.

The risks:

Like every solution, new problems can often arise in place of those that were solved.  In a cloud computing world, data must be safeguarded.  The main way this is managed currently is through passwords and security questions.  Like most of you, I have nearly a dozen passwords that I often forget, and I feel uncomfortable choosing a canned security question that anyone who stalks me could figure out.  Therefore, for cloud computing to be the norm, we must find a better way.  We’ve all heard the risks of moving toward biometrics, but this could be part of the solution.  Perhaps if we had one central authentication system that was secure and could plug into different web applications, we could pull off a complete cloud computing system.  However, such a system will always be a security risk. 

Finally, with data in the cloud, can we ever be complete sure it is ours?  If it is on a server somewhere, can someone else access it and take our ideas?  These sorts of conspiracy theories definitely have some merit.  Do you feel comfortable having your personal diary in a place where everyone can see it?  Some might, but a good handful of people would prefer to keep it on their client computer even if it was password protected somewhere in the clouds.

The movement toward cloud computing has already begun.  This is why Microsoft is bleeding programmers and Google is growing.  However, until we mitigate the risks, cloud computing will remain, well where it currently is, out there in there in the clouds.

There has been some buzz about how to leverage different social networking tools to increase communication ties between people in a work environment.  This is especially a good idea when a department is large or spread out geographically and thus finds it difficult for people to meet at their conveniently centralized water cooler, conference room, or break room.  It can be very useful to know what a colleague is working on so you don’t duplicate her work, don’t interfere inadvertently with the goal of her work, and can share ideas and tips to make the outcome of her work better.  Public social networks such as facebook, myspace, and others could be utilized to share information between colleagues, however, they are more social and can be perceived as a procrastination time sink than a productivity tool. 

To make proper use of a social network for work, the tool needs to be separate from these well known web applications.  Many folks may be apprehensive to share their social network pages with employers or professional colleagues.  While I’m a firm believer that you should never post anything on the web that you wouldn’t want your mother-in-law to see, sometimes even benign information about your social life can be distracting toward the professional world you work in.  This coupled with the fact that a social network dedicated to work might be an easier sell to managers and directors who might see myspace and facebook as a procrastination tool rather than a productivity tool. 

I think we have to be careful, however, not to take ’social’ away from social networking.  Some fun information about colleagues should be shared so that we get to know each other.  It is always easier to work on a team when you know the teammates well.  Even something as simple as knowing their likes or dislikes is useful.  This information can give team members information that can be used to relate to each other and help build a more cohesive team.  There seems to be an invisible line between what’s appropriate for a work social network and what’s appropriate for other more general networks.  At first it might seem difficult to distinguish between the two types of networks, however, I believe the mores of a work environment, whether spelled out in policy, or assumed implicitly will govern the work network to keep a certain professionalism that may not be present in the general social networks.

Useful network tools within the social network could include many of the Web 2.0 applications we use every day.  An editable profile that list job duties and report structures is useful so that colleagues in a large department know who to contact for what.  A social network is often better than just a directory as the duties that define what our job is often changes dynamically depending on the tasks that need to be accomplished.  A micro-blogging system such as twitter is also a handy feature.  Using this tool, members could state what they are working on and how they are doing.  This feature is central to the network as it lets everyone know who is doing what at any particular time and if they have questions or need help.  This is much better than email because often times you don’t know who to email when you have a question.  Team workspace such as a wiki or discussion board also could be used to allow folks to keep meeting minutes, setup agendas, or discuss matters outside of the conference room.

Social bookmarking and public web aggregators could also be employed to share what people are reading.  Articles from these tools could spark discussions and direct members toward an important topic that might have been overlooked if it was not shared via the network.  Because we cannot always keep up on what’s up and coming all of the time, a sharable repository such as the bookmarks and subscribed rss feeds will allow for the whole team to keep up with what’s new in their fields.  

A work oriented social network should not replace face to face meetings, but augment them.  Small amounts of time taken to update wikis or discussion boards could have large benefits to the overall productivity of face to face meetings as many of the logistics could be worked out online.  If managed carefully, a meeting leader could create the agenda, ask for updates, and start a pre-discussion online so that when the face to face meeting begins, no time is wasted bringing members up to speed and the meeting can jump directly to the real issues that need to be worked out.

So this all sounds wonderful, what’s holding us back?  The biggest drawback toward a system like this is buy in. If members are not using the tools, don’t know how to use them, or don’t believe it will work, then it will not be successful.  A proper design and roll out and support structure needs to be in place before jumping in with both feet.  Also, like any network, it is only going to be as valuable as the number of people using it.  Therefore, a small department or organization will not be able to benefit as much.    

Sorry, this isn’t so much an idea as it is a grype with a sudo-solution.  I received an email that was in all caps and I needed to change it to lowercase to add the text to the web.  First of all, in case you are new to the web, all caps in digial communications means you are yelling.  Some people really do yell all the time and therefore it is appropriate for them to type in all caps all the time.  But all caps from a realatively quiet person just doesn’t seem right.  Anyway, to end the babelling, I needed to convert the all caps text quickly into lowercase.  I found through a google search that you can do this in word by selecting the text and pressing shift+F3.  However, words that needed to be capilized had to be changed by hand. Grrr, why can’t word be smart enough to capitalize all the words that should be capitalized?  It does it while I type, why not when I hit shfit+F3?  Anyone know if there is a keyboard short cut to let Word guess at how to capitalize all lowercase words that should be capitalized.  I guess what I need is a wordprocessor that can read my mind.  Perhaps that’s a little to creepy.  Anyway, that’s my watercool bubble of the week.  Let me know what your thoughts are!

The water cooler is a blog I use to open discussions on ideas that bubble up.  Just as you share ideas with a colleague while enjoying a cool drink, this blog allows the sharing of ideas around a virtual water cooler.  Posts, or “bubbles” are ideas that are usually related to the use of technology to solve a problem.  Please register if you have an idea you would like to share.

Thanks,

M. B. Gough