OpenOffice goes Aqua alpha
The OpenOffice Aqua development preview is now available for download - there’s the usual hair-raising warnings about alpha test versions causing lost data and lowered sperm counts, but it’s worth a look.
I’ve been increasingly impressed with Open Office - it’s proved to be more stable than Office itself, particularly when working with files that originate from the Windows version. I’ve been running NeoOffice, so I haven’t really noticed the lack of full Aqua integration, but it’s good to see this step forward.
Filed under Mac, Technical stuff | Comment (0)Innovation-free zones
I’d like to say that I was surprised to read this (from Scott Gavin):
I was at a small conference/workshop recently called ‘Social Software in the Enterprise’. We were there to discuss how social software is changing the way businesses operate and innovate from within...
…The first response was from a guy opposite who quite bluntly said he was there to find out about this ’stuff’ so they can prevent anyone using/doing it. He then went on to say he worked for a company who does not encourage open collaboration and innovation and they didn’t want their staff ‘getting creative’ or wasting time. The bottom line was they didn’t trust their staff and felt that all innovation etc should come from management or above.
But unfortunately this type of attitude is only too common.
Allen & Overy (A&O) has been forced into an embarrassing climb-down after the firm’s IT department was bombarded with staff complaints following a firmwide ban on social networking website Facebook.
IT chiefs took the decision to block access to the website due to concerns that staff downloading videos from the site would compromise the performance of A&O’s IT systems.
However, a series of complaints from staff across the firm led IT director Dave Burwell to email the entire London office on Tuesday (22 May) saying the ban had been lifted.
Which is Euan Semple’s maxim in action:
Filed under Working smarter | Comment (0)The 100% guaranteed easiest way to do Enterprise 2.0?
DO NOTHING
And then your bright, thoughtful and energetic staff will do it for you.
Should I feel insulted?
Just before I left for Reboot, I got a confirmation email that I’d been “accepted” for the BBC archive trial. Then I went to Reboot, and everybody I talked to had been rejected. And now I’m not sure whether I should be flattered to be accepted, or insulted that I’m clearly so completely ungeeky and old that I hit their target demographic!
Filed under General | Comment (0)Ambient oops
This is topical - the CEO of Plazes was supposed to be speaking at Next Web in Amsterdam, but cancelled citing family problems. Then his own product showed him actually attending Reboot in Copenhagen, and the Next Web people got a bit upset. Eventually it turns out that it’s down to misunderstandings on both parties’ accounts, and some snarky blog posts get redacted.
The details aren’t really that important, but it’s a great illustration about how presence tools can lead to these kind of snafus. And it’s only going to get more common as we start to see tools that update your presence data automatically rather than manually - it’s only a matter of time before someone writes an app that takes GPS or cell location data from a mobile and streams it to something Twitter-esque. How long before the first cheating spouse gets caught out when they forget to switch that off?
Filed under Working smarter | Comment (0)Ambient intimacy, or ambient openness?
One of the best presentations I saw at Reboot was Leisa Reichelt’s “Ambient Intimacy“. She was talking about something I’ve been wondering about for a while - that as a result of blogs, Flickr and the rest of the social software tools it’s possible to know someone else far better than they know you. In one way, that’s the same as the relationship between a member of the public and a celebrity, but the point of ambient intimacy is that it’s now also possible to be the relationship between “normal” people.
It’s not just about basic stats, either - ASL and so on. If you add together all the social tools that it’s possible to use, you can end up knowing so much more - my Flickr stream showing where I’ve been, for example. And delicious is a very effective way of finding out what I’m interested in now, and what’s interested me in the past.
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Reboot
Reboot was amazing. I didn’t really know what to expect, and reading some of the reactions to previous years’ made me wonder if it didn’t sometimes verge towards the religious - but it lived up to the hype. If I’d spent the two days ignoring the sessions completely and just sat around in the sun talking to people, it would have been worth going, so the people and the sessions made for something unique. I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere with such a high ambient IQ (not to mention such a high density of Macs), so if the places for Reboot 10 were on sale I’d have booked one already.
Filed under Working smarter | Comment (0)