Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Collobration News & Articles

Google Drive is barely a day old, and it has already earned the ire of some of the biggest Internet audiences. Apparently China — or at least the authorities — doesn't like Google Drive, as with other Google services. The recently-launched cloud storage service has been blocked by the Great Firewall of China. But at whose benefit?

Last year, we marveled at the speed at which Wiggio, a Boston-based software company, gained the following of 400,000 users engaged in its suite of online collaboration tools aimed at managing social activity. This year, the folks at Wiggio are celebrating an impressive milestone of 1 million users.

Forget the Magic Quadrant, and say hello to the internet marketing map. WordStream, provider of best-in-class search marketing solutions, has released its 2012 Internet Marketing 150, which compiles the top software and SaaS providers currently doing business in 10 major business categories. 

For most of the day, analysts were downbeat on Apple's prospects, sending the stock price dipping 2%. Cometh the hour, cometh Apple's usual miraculous figures with a 151% rise in iPad sales.

In a half-billion dollar cash deal between two technology titans, Microsoft agreed to sell up to 70% of the patents it recently acquired from storied AOL just two weeks earlier for about twice that sum (US$ 1.056 billion) in cash. Terms of the Microsoft/ Facebook deal include ownership of 650 AOL patents and patent applications, plus access (via license) to the patents and filings that Microsoft will retain. 

With the growing popularity of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, not all websites are churning out mobile-friendly content, it seems. According to a recent study, poorly designed websites are probably killing your battery faster than they should be.

While the ability to gain access to content through smartphones or other mobile devices was a welcome step forward, it's just not enough any more. Workers are now looking for the ability to interact with that content and initiate business processes. SpringCM has introduced a new range of apps that does that with its content management software.

Dozens of products were launched on day one of the DEMO conference where the emerging technology companies were grouped together in cloud, mobile and enterprise categories. Day two featured social and consumer product pitches, and on both days, the DEMO 2012 team pulled together a group of investors to give some quick feedback on some of the apps and devices.

Nokia has announced its first quarterly sales since the launch of the Lumia 900, and there are mixed messages coming from many quarters. What does this do to Microsoft's chances of re-entering the smartphone race and Nokia's tenuous position in the market?

Apple and Samsung have been on an all-out war against each other for the best part of 2011, with either claiming patent infringements by the other. With some successes and failures in each one's patent claims, Apple and Samsung now appear to be willing to settle their disputes outside of costly court litigation and potentially damaging injunctions.

Read it Later, the popular iOS and Android app that saves content for when you're ready to view it, has changed its name to Pocket and simplified organizing and tagging items. Pocket is a free app, and anything saved can be viewed from other devices for super-convenient access to things you run into during the day, but simply have to put off until, er, later.

However empowered they may be, most organizations still worry about what their employees will do if given the ability or access to engage online. What started with intranets and social media will only continue to spin out of when you add user generated content to the mix — or so says the results of Qumu’s April 2012 Business Video Behavior Project, which looked at the topic of employee-generated content (EGC) in the enterprise.

Microsoft continues to leak information on what new features will ship with next year's major Office release, the latest being more cloud support and web-type extensions.

The social enterprise has the potential to transform the business landscape. New ways of communicating and collaborating are helping to break down the barriers between functional silos and geography. The end result will be more agile businesses fueled by better decision making and more efficient processes.

After the iPad 3 launch, things have gone rather quiet, with disquiet about its actual capabilities. Since any new iPad will struggle to push the tech envelope much further, is it time for the iPad Mini to step in and expand the brand?

Samsung has outed the date, ahead of an impending official announcement, for the reveal of its latest superphone, the Galaxy S3. The date will give it some headway against the presumed iPhone 5 unveiling in June.

Google is not exactly a fledgling company. But in the social networking business, the search giant is trumped by relative newcomers Facebook and Twitter in terms of popularity and acceptance among users. Google's social networking offering Google+ is constantly evolving, though, and the latest features introduced are reminiscent of some Twitter and Facebook highlights.

Hashtags are the new black. Twitter users roll them out for things like event coordination or easy following of upcoming conferences and product releases. Now there's a new simple app that uses the hashtag (pound sign #) as a way to interact with Twitter followers in a more useful way.

The world has been chapping our collective hides about metrics for social business. Customers want them, and not without reason. Our typical answers (ROI is irrelevant, What’s the ROI of your mother, it depends on the business problem) have some merit, but in the end, we still need to demonstrate the efficacy of social approaches to business challenges. Probably.
 

Photo courtesy of Stephen Harris (Flickr).

Citrix has acquired three-year-old collaborative-work platform provider Podio. Podio’s cloud-based system allows users to apply social media concepts to organizing work instead of being forced to use traditional, highly structured and static project management tools. Citrix is expected to integrate the newly acquired platform into its GoTo cloud services portfolio.