Informata

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Informata on Wordle

I'd tell you who pointed Wordle out to me except that I've seen it in so many places I don't remember who was first. If you're not familiar with Wordle, it generates "word clouds" from text or URLs. These are similar to tag clouds in that the more times a given term appears in the source, the larger it appears in the Wordle.

Here's what this blog looks like in wordle:

There is some type of timeframe involved, as I don't talk about the iPhone (or TIFFs!) that much. So one of the things I think will be useful is to re-run this on a regular basis and see how it changes.

The tool runs in Java, so it's not straightforward to capture the image, but it can be printed to PDF or saved as a URL. It does have some options to display differently and customize colors and layout. Check it out!

AIIM publishes Email ROI Calculator

AIIM announced yesterday the general availability of the Email ROI Calculator. Full disclosure: I am the primary developer of the calculator. It's an Excel 2003 spreadsheet that has tabs for calculating the cost of managing (or not managing!) email in the organization today, the TCO of an email management program including process and technologies, and the potential savings and ROI for implementing that solution.

The tool is only available to AIIM Professional Members; non-members can join AIIM for $125 per year and get access to the tool as well as several other toolkits, discounted local chapter meetings, discounts for AIIM Certificate Program courses, and many other benefits.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

iPhone 2.0 software available

The iPhone 2.0 software is not *officially* available yet through iTunes, but it is available (direct link). iTunes v7.7 is also available and required to access the App Store without using the iPhone itself.

First, note that the iPhone 2.0 completely erases everything on the phone - so definitely back the thing up first through iTunes. The upgrade was pretty straightforward and took about 15 min. Once I had it installed, the most immediate changes were 1) no more Installer.app (as expected) and addition of the App Store icon.

Go into App Store and it opens to Featured Apps; as I type this, it includes AOL's AIM client, the Apple Remote, and a number of other apps. Many of the apps are free, while others range from $0.99 to, well, significantly higher - $9.99 - $19.99 being fairly common. Games generally run $4.99 - $9.99. Some of the free apps are quite interesting: Facebook, Google Mobile, eBay Mobile, MySpace Mobile, Newsgator's NetNewsWire, and even Salesforce Mobile.

So I'm already adding apps to my phone - my initial apps include Erica Sadun's To Do; AIM; Facebook; Twitterrific (Twitter client, natch); and Erica Sadun's Light (flashlight-type app). I was able to restrain myself from adding the Phonesaber - so far. :)

More reports as required - looking forward to seeing what other apps are ported for iPhone 2.0.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

AIIM EMMM article available at SAA

The Society of American Archivists Records Management Roundtable has published my article on the AIIM Email Management Certificate Program in its July 2008 newsletter. It's a high-level overview of what the program entails and the designations. The article starts on p. 18 of the newsletter.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

PDF becomes official ISO standard

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced today the publication of ISO 32000-1:2008, Document management -- Portable document format -- Part 1: PDF 1.7. This marks the culmination of the efforts led by AIIM International to turn Adobe's PDF into a formal standard.

What does this mean to users and organizations? First, now that PDF is a formal ISO standard, organizations can create and use PDFs secure in the knowledge that they are no longer proprietary and subject to the types of compatibility issues that plague many other, less open file formats. It does not guarantee that future versions of Adobe Acrobat or other PDF-related tools will be able to read these files perfectly, but it certainly makes it more likely, and it will serve to further open the already plentiful market of third-party PDF solutions providers.

Second, longer term I think this is the writing on the wall for the TIFF format. Many scanners can already create PDFs natively; in some instances the process essentially results in a TIFF in a PDF wrapper, while in others the PDF includes a text layer generated from OCRing the image sometime during the process. PDFs are practically native to the browser thanks to the ubiquity of Acrobat Reader; TIFFs require a plug-in as well, but most casual users don't have one installed nor know where to find one (hence the requirement in most web-based imaging systems to convert from TIFF to GIF or JPEG). And like TIFF, PDF supports multiple pages and color.

So given all the pluses to using PDF over TIFF, plus PDF's formal standardization, it won't surprise me to see organizations move wholesale to PDF as support for ISO 32000 is built into the various tools.

The newly published standard is available for 370 Swiss francs and may be ordered through the ISO store.

Monday, June 30, 2008

AIIM 2009 proposals

I am proposing the following proposals for AIIM 2009.

Wikis in the Enterprise
Enterprise Blogging
How to Select and Implement an Email Management Solution
Managing Your Email Better - By Managing Less of It!
Enterprise RSS and Loosely-Coupled ECM
Introduction to Social Networking
Web 2.0 + Office 1.0 = Office 2.0!
You're Doing What? Twitter in the Enterprise

Let me know if you can think of anything else YOU'D like to see someone talk about that relates to email management, collaborative tools, Web/Office/Enterprise/Buzzword 2.0, or ECM.

AIIM extends call for proposals - again

UPDATE: Call extended to July 3 - that's this Friday, people. Full details on the call and how to submit can be found at http://cfp.questex.com/callforpapers/.

As always, vendors and consultants need end users - not that there might not be exceptions for well-known non-salesy-but-not-end-user speakers.

And as a side note, a colleague already received a rejection notice for not having an end user. If I get nailed for that despite speaking at every AIIM conference since 2003, it will be my last submission. Yes, you can call it hubris. But I know the reason for the rule and I have *never* violated it, whether I was with IMR, IMERGE, my own company, or my current employer, on whose behalf I spoke at AIIM 2008. I'd think by this point I'd be a known enough quantity to at least get the submission reviewed by the program planning team at Questex.

Congrats to Mimi!

Hadda read between the lines, *and* ask for clarification, but congrats to Mimi Dionne, CRM, CDIA+, CA, PMP.

This really raises the bar even higher for the rest of us "keepin' up with the Joneses" (Dionnes?) types - and it means that I really got to get hot on sitting for the CRM exam.

Friday, June 20, 2008

AIIM extends call for proposals

AIIM has extended its call for proposals to speak at AIIM 2009 to June 27. The conference is scheduled for March 30 - April 2, 2009 at the Pennsylvania Convention center in Philadelphia, PA. Full details on the call and how to submit can be found at http://cfp.questex.com/callforpapers/.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Retweeting ettiquette

On the Blogging Bits blog, AJ Vaynerchuk guest-blogs about "The Art and Science of Retweeting for Tweetaholics". He talks about what retweeting is, how it works, and why you might want to spend a precious 140 characters doing so. It's a very straightforward description and can really help you get more from your Twitter habit.

Hat tip: George Dearing (blog) (Twitter)

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Steve Bailey's new book on RM 2.0 available

Steve Bailey from the UK announced today on his blog the general availability of his new book, Managing the Crowd: Rethinking records management for the Web 2.0 world. In it, he argues for ten principles for records management moving forward:

Records Management 2.0 must be:
1. scalable to an (almost) infinite degree
2. comprehensive: with the potential to address all aspects of the management of information throughout its lifecycle
3. independent of specific hardware, software or physical location
4. extensible and able to absorb new priorities and responsibilities as they emerge
5. potentially applicable to all information
6. proportionate, flexible and capable of being applied to varying levels of quality and detail as required by the information in question
7. a benefits-led experience for users, that offers them a positive incentive to participate
8. marketable to end users, decision makers and stakeholders
9. self-critical and positively willing to embrace challenge and change
10. acceptable to, and driven by, the records management community and its practitioners

He also acknowledges that the book provides more questions than answers and calls for participation in a community to find the answers to those questions. I have already reached out to him and will keep readers apprised as to where this goes.

I'm looking forward to the book - available through Facet Publishing for £39.95.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Study Finds Instant Messaging Helps Productivity(!)

This doesn't surprise me at all, as I've been preaching at least the value of presence for some 10 years now. But it's nice to get some validation. :)

From the study abstract: "Analysis...indicates that IM use has no influence on overall levels of work communication. However, people who utilize IM at work report being interrupted less frequently than non-users."

The original study can be found at the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/garrett.html.

And as one of the commenters to the HotHarware article said, "Interesting for sure and it confirms what we've known all along. Now let's see if big corporate culture accepts the notion."

Hat tip: Oracle AppsLab via HotHardware.

Sunspots?

That's the only thing I can think of to explain. I've been heads-down on the email course trying to get it finished and live, interspersed with the occasional speaking engagement, and generally maintaining status quo. Yesterday I got a bunch of stuff done, both delivery and business development, and went to bed a pretty happy camper.

Today I have three separate and unsolicited opportunities in my inbox, including one local to me in Denver that would let me eschew O'Hell International Airport for the foreseeable future. I haven't done anything really high-profile lately, which leads me to the question in the title of this post: maybe it's sunspots?

Meh. I will follow up with them, see what brought me to mind.

Friday, June 06, 2008

CMSWatch releases Email Archiving & Management Report

Completely missed posting about this when it happened. CMSWatch has released the 2008 edition of the Email Archiving & Management Report (EAMR). This is the first release for this report and joins the extensive stable of other reports available through Tony, Alan, Theresa, and the rest of the crew.

The report provides guidance for making the business case for EAM, the different approaches vendors take to EAM, and a review of 14 products ranging from Autonomy Zantaz to ZL Technologies. Alan Pelz-Sharpe was the principal author of the report and had some very nice things to say about my minute, tiny, teeny contribution to the report.

The report is available today; you can also review the table of contents or get a free excerpt.

AIIM 2009 call for presentations

AIIM has announced its call for presentations for the AIIM 2009 Conference and Exposition, scheduled for March 31 - April 2, 2009 at the Philadelphia Convention Center. The call and all the details can be found at http://cfp.questex.com/callforpapers. Deadline for proposals is June 20, 2008.

Major email-related cases

Update from my request last month. Here's my current list - still very US-centric, still happy to receive other cases. Note that in these cases the tie to email is not so much that it is email-specific, although it is in at least one case, but rather that they illustrate common discovery issues that happen to relate to email.

Armstrong v. Executive Office of the President (the "PROFS" case) (Source: Public Citizen)

CIBC World Markets v. Genuity Capital Markets (Source: Canadian Legal Information Institute)

Coleman (Parent) Holdings, Inc. v. Morgan Stanley & Co., Inc. (Source: K&L Gates)

Lorraine v. Markel Am. Ins. Co. (Source: Indiana Law Blog)

PSEG Power New York, Inc. v. Alberici Constructors, Inc. (Source: New York Lawyer)

Qualcomm, Inc. v. Broadcom Corp. (Source: American Bar Association Law Technology Today)

Scott v. Beth Israel Med. Ctr. Inc. (Source: NY State Unified Court System)

Victor Stanley, Inc. v. Creative Pipe, Inc. et al (Source: Legal Technology News and Law.com)

Zubulake v. UBS Warburg (Source: Kroll Ontrack)

AIIM updates website

If you haven't been out to AIIM's website recently, it has been radically updated. Check out all the gooey goodness at http://www.aiim.org.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Liveblogging ARMA Central Iowa

This is a post from ARMA Central Iowa Chapter and should be retained as such.

Friday, May 09, 2008

Top email-related discovery cases

What would you consider the most important email-related discovery cases? Full disclosure: I am asking both for the AIIM Email Certificate Program and for some presentations I have coming up. I have a list, but I don't want to share it out of fear of prejudicing any potential responses. If you have a case or a list, post as a comment or send it to me via email.

Note: My list is all US cases; if you know of seminal, important cases outside the US, please forward those as well.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

OT: Chicken chicken chicken

Presented without commentary.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk