Tuesday May 13, 2008
I love Mac Mail, I have used it every day for the last 2 years. And to date, I am still pleased with this e-mail client. But the only thing that I miss in Mac Mail is the ability for it to be integrated with a calendar service from Sun. I want to be able to view my mail and calendar in the same application, and so far I have not found how to do this with Mac Mail. And until today, I did not find how to do this on a Mac, period. However...
Today I found a link on Sun's intranet explaining how you can install a plug-in, or extension into Thunderbird that enables you to view exactly that: your mail and your calendar in the same window. Even better, if you change something in Thunderbird it is updated on Namefinder, and vice versa. Exactly what I was looking for! What is it called? Lightning :-)
In case you are wondering how to do this, I can only recommend to visit this link where all is explained.
Will I never go back to Mac Mail? Never say never, I got married for the 2nd time 9 days ago, and I always said I would never do that again ;-) But for the moment I will give Thunderbird my preference, and I will certainly let you know if I switch back.
Oh, and if someone from Sun IT is reading this, I would really love an integration with iCal, this would help calendar management on my soon to arrive iPhone as well ;-)
Thursday May 01, 2008
About 4-6 weeks ago I decided to plunge fully in everything that is social media: even more Facebook, del.icio.us, Twitter, started my own blog, started reading dozens of blogs, tried to get a collaboration effort launched within my team. What I realised is that the time spent online has changed quite significantly.
These days I spend a lot less time reading e-mail (apart from work e-mail of course, that continues to increase), and I spend most of my time on Facebook, LinkedIn, and reading all kinds of blogs. The site that I visit most often now is Google Reader, which allows me to follow the blogs, but also keeps me up to date about world events by following sites such as The Financial Times, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
E-mail used to be my primary source of contact with Friends (replaced by Facebook), and to be kept up to date via News Alerts (replaced by Google Reader), and I know find myself being surprised that I have not checked mail for a full day, which used to be unthinkable a few months ago.
So, I am curious if your online behaviour has changed as well. Where do you spend your time online?
Sunday Apr 27, 2008
One of the projects that I am working on is to put together a virtual community for our Top Accounts to interact with each other, and the Industries & Practices organisations. As this means working together within an Account Team, but also collaborate with other part of Sun's organisation, I thought it would be a good idea for people to work together on the collaboration strategy for our Top Accounts.
So I created this wiki page on our internal platform and invited my team members and stakeholders to jointly develop this collaboration strategy. This would not only lead to the development of an excellent collaboration strategy (Wisdom of Crowds, remember), but would in the same time demonstrate to any potential users, that such collaboration in the virtual world, using a wiki, is possible.
The problem I am seeing is that so far I have received very little feedback on this idea, let alone a lot of contributions via edits of the above mentioned wiki page.
I guess change really is difficult to implement at Sun, but I can imagine the same is true for other corporations and organisations. I do realise it's still difficult for people to see a wiki as a vital work tool, but I will not give up trying, as I am convinced of the tremendous value that such a collaboration tool offers.
So, now comes the "I Want You" part. If you feel that you can help us to put together this collaboration strategy, if you have any best practices experience or other suggestions that can help us to show how our Top Accounts can increase their productivity and sales successes, do let us know.
All comments on this blog are welcome, also alternatively, if you are a Sun employee you can directly access the wiki page, and make your edits there.
A big thank you in advance!
Tuesday Apr 22, 2008
OK, quick inventory of my Apple products: 1 PowerBook, 1 MacBook, 1 MacBook Pro, 1 Airport Express, 1 Time Capsule, 2 iPods and 1 iPod Touch.
Needless to say that I have an overload of cables lying around. This can lead to kind of embarrassing situations, as occurred this evening.
My iPod Touch needed some power, so I took one of the cables and plugged it into my MacBook Pro. To my surprise and growing annoyance the iPod Touch did not start loading. Tried another USB port, unplugged the power cord, plugged it back in. Nothing, so getting more and more frustrated. Until ...
There it was, the cable that was attached to my iPod Touch was tangled up with another cable, exactly the same one. So I plugged in the wrong cable into my MacBook Pro :-)
Who has similar stories to share, if you are bold enough to admit them that is ;-)
Thursday Apr 17, 2008
A full season, 81 games, and still the last game needed to decide places 3 through 8 in the West, that's something that I can't remember, and I have been following the NBA for a long time. Now that the schedule is fixed, let's try to make some predicitions.
East - who is willing to bet against a Celtics-Pistons Eastern Conference final? Not me, I don't see any team that is capable to keep either of the two teams out of the final. Last year was exceptional, I don't think this will be repeated. I don't see a repeat of LeBron and the Cavs, especially as they are up against the Celtics in the semi-finals. So I predict the Celtics to win it in 6 to progress to the Finals.
West - phew, do I really risk a prediction here? Sure, let me give you my take:
- Lakers-Nuggets: don't see how Iverson and Anthony can stop Bryant and co, Lakers win it in 5
- Hornets-Mavericks: will Dallas relive the first round nightmare of 2007? They will give it 200%, but I still think the Hornets will be the better team, Hornets win it in 6
- Spurs-Suns: for some reason I never liked the Spurs, and since last year's disgrace in the playoffs I hate them, so any team that plays the Spurs gets my support. Suns will take it in 7, with Stoudemire dunking in the last second to win it ;-)
- Jazz-Rockets: I think the Rockets are playing great, even without Ming, but I still think the Jazz will be the winner of this series, Utah to take it in 6
In the semi-finals the Suns will beat the Jazz, and the Lakers will conquer the Hornets to set up what I think will be a classic, one matchup that will be talked about for years to come. In the Western Conference final I think the Lakers will edge out the Suns, this time with a buzzer beater from Bryant from way-way downtown ;-)
As for the Big Winner, the Celtics will have played a lot less games than the Lakers, so I think they will be the better rested team, and take it in 6.
OK, that's my take, any comments? Who is your favourite team to take the 2008 NBA title?
Wednesday Apr 16, 2008
My cable company offers Prime Sports, with about 10 live soccer games each week, but more importantly 2 NBA games per week. Being a very big fan of basketball this subscription is a no-brainer.
During the broadcast of tonight's game (Hornets beat the Clippers), I heard the commentators talk about an interesting phenomenon of community building. The Hornets guard, Chris Paul, has other NBA stars stay over at his house if these players are in New Orleans. The mentioned LeBron James, Dwight Howard and others. If Chris and LeBron each have a night of, they will connect over the phone and start playing each other online.
The commentator mentioned that he could not imagine staying at another player's house when he was playing 20 years ago. His co-commentator rightly replied by stating that times have changed, and that connecting with other players has become much easier.
All in all, this is not something new that happens. People have been connecting with people forever. What is different now is that the way we connect is so radically different. 20 years ago I would connect with the neighbours, kids at school, at the snooker club. Now I am connecting with people all over the world, not only for work purposes, but also for fun.
Boy, have the times changed... I like it! Do you often feel nostalgic for earlier decades with no mobile phone, no internet, your Atari game computer? Let me know how you feel.
Tuesday Apr 15, 2008
The amount of press, and especially space on the social media blogs, that is currently allocated to Twitter gives a strong indication of its popularity and its user base, which is still continuing to grow. The blog article here asks the question whether Twitter has tipped. For those of you that are not familiar with the term "tipped", read the excellent Malcolm Gladwell book "The Tipping Point".
Since I started twittering myself, I have found it not only fun to connect with other people at Sun, but I have also become convinced of the business use, especially since the story I read about the Comcast Executive getting in touch with a disgruntled user as a result of a Twitter post. In the various blogs that I follow on social media, a number of Twitter apps get reviewed on a regular (let's face it, daily) basis, and one of them caught my interest. The service offered by Tweetburner is as such:
- allows you to shorten a url, which given the limit of 140 characters for Twitter posts is extremely valuable
- but it also allows you to track the number of hits for each url that you post
- and finally, on the Tweetburner homepage you can follow the urls that receive the most clicks at any given moment
- posting a new url can also be done by installing the Twurl this! button on your toolbar, very efficient and quick
Once this blog post is done, I will obviously add this to my Twitter account, and follow how many hits the post gets! My recommendation is to try it out, and have fun with it!
Sunday Apr 13, 2008
Saw a blog post this week on Techcrunch that talked about the Future of Social Networking, and I have to say this is beyond what I can currently imagine. I'm a bit of a geek, and I will try out any Apple gadget or thingie that they bring on the market. The same applies for web sites and tools, that's probably why the members of the team at work come to me for advice or if they have questions.
But imagining standing at the bar, waiting for subway, in line at the supermarket or anyplace else where we wait (and boy, do we wait in our life), and just being able to see which of my friends are around, that's currently beyond my imagination. The biggest value would be for singles (or the ones cheating), as this opens up numerous dating possibilities. Looking for a brunette for the evening, search your iPhone and there she is (might be).
Obviously this opens the question and debate around privacy. My take? As long as people sign up for any service, they need to be aware that their privacy just got a big hit. But I for one am willing to accept that hit on my privacy providing the return that I get from any tool or service is higher than the burden or worry about losing privacy. Any thoughts out there?
Thursday Apr 10, 2008
Ever since I started to delve deeper in the fascinating world of Twitter, Facebook, Second Life, del.icio.us and many, many blogs, I found that I spend almost all of my spare time in front of the laptop browsing the web, updating profiles, fighting space battles. As this is so much fun, I don't mind to invest my time. The big problem is that I recently had another burst of book buying, meaning I have a number of books that are on my book shelf, waiting to be read.
So question to my readers, which of the following books do you recommend I start with:
- The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
- Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner
- Legacy of Ashes - Tim Weiner
- Chaos - James Gleick
- Seeing What's Next - Clayton M. Christensen
Don't want to leave with two book recommendations, I found these excellent:
- The Wisdom of Crowds - James Surowiecki
- Made to Stick - Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Wednesday Apr 09, 2008
Reading other people's blogs does give you interesting ideas and cool sites out there. The Social Media Marketing Blog alerted me today to an interesting social media site. Linkory.com is currently in beta release, its tagline is: "Linking Memories - Creating Histories". The further statement says it all: "Everyone has memories. We share them with friends and family throughout our lives. Linkory.com is the only place that makes capturing, sharing and linking memories fun!"
Pretty neat idea, so I created an account and just posted my first memory. I have many, many more, so I will be adding to this site from time to time.
This is also an invitation for others, so let me know what your memories are!
Monday Apr 07, 2008
As I am currently looking at various ways to use social media and Web 2.0 tools and practices in Sun's sales teams, I am getting questions from a lot of people around what specific benefit such tools could bring to the users. Valid questions, as it is not always obvious what the direct business benefit is for Facebook, Second Life, Twitter and others.
This example does give a really good example where an executive from Comcast contacted a disgruntled user who complained about Comcast on Twitter. I don't know whether the Comcast user was still upset after the call, or whether the executive offered an acceptable solution, but it was a pretty powerful way of using social media to the benefit of an organisation.
The blog posts the question whether your (our) business is monitoring Twitter to check what is said, and I think the answer for Sun is yes, given the number of Sun users on Twitter.
Any other examples that you could share on how social media can benefit the business world?
Saturday Apr 05, 2008
Hmm, better make sure my wife-to-be does not reads this :o)
What do my readers think about this?
Having a husband creates an extra seven hours of housework each week for women, according to a new study. For men, tying the knot saves an hour of weekly chores.
View Original Article
Friday Apr 04, 2008
I'm so looking forward to the 2nd biggest social event of the year for me. Tomorrow I will participate, and co-organise, the Night of the Doubles snooker tournament at the snooker club where I play league matches. The tournament will be played with 39 teams, split into 3 groups of 13. Each team will compete against the other teams in a round robin format.
The tournament starts Saturday April 5 at 8 pm, we expect the qualifiers to finish around 10 am on Sunday April 6, and if all goes according to plan the winners of the tournament, and the 400 EUR cash prize, will be known around 5 pm on Sunday, so that's almost 21 hours of play.
This event is so special, I have competed in 5 events, and I can not count the number of times on 1 hand where I have been in stitches, with cramps from laughing, and this is per event. The level of play diminishes as the hours pass by, and the level of conversation follows the same schedule, it's so hilarious around 7 or 8 am. I will let you know how the tournament went for my teammate and me!
And if you're wondering what the biggest event is for me: it takes place on May 3rd, 2008.
Wednesday Apr 02, 2008
There are a lot of tools that form the overall web 2.0 set. One application that I wanted to cover in this post is what is called social bookmarking. This is in essence putting your bookmarks on a web site and share them with other people so that they can follow what you are reading on the web. There are a number of sites that offer this service. One service that I have started to use recently is del.icio.us. The primary reasons why I have begun doing this are:
- Putting together a reference database so that our Top Accounts can find news about their accounts and other accounts in the industry
- A list of news items for the companies in my portfolio
- To follow the news on one of the most important events in 2008
- And some fun stories, just to let you know I am thinking of you (not in Belgium yet)
This service really is dead easy to use: you install two buttons in your browsers, and every time you encounter an interesting page, hit the "post to del.icio.us" button, add tags to structure your bookmarks, and done. If you want to see an excellent and basic tutorial, check out this video.
Oh, BTW, in case you are wondering why I am still working at Sun, I don't have shares in all the companies on my del.icio.us page.
Wednesday Apr 02, 2008
I have always wondered what it would be like to have a weblog with many fans and followers, and since I have a number of great examples to look up to, I thought it was worthwhile to give it a shot too. Curious about some of these great examples? Check NonStick World and Web Strategy by Jeremiah.
So what it this blog going to be about? Basically about all things social, as this is general enough for me to allow to write about just about anything I want. If I have some exciting site to share, an interesting story about how the community building at work is going, or if the neighbour's kids were starting a small fire this afternoon, it's all social.
As a first story I just wanted to share a funny moment my fiancee and I had this evening. As we are both active members of Facebook, and enjoy a game once in a while, I decided to challenge Anja to a game of Four in a Row. As this is turn-based, I would make a move, then Anja would when she got home from work, and so on. On some occasions I would make a move on the MacBook Pro, then she would make a move on the MacBook.
This evening, I was getting close to victory, so when I came into the living room I asked her: "Ready to quit the game?" As she was not conviced, she decided to log into Facebook and check the game. So she made a move, logged out, I logged in, made a move, logged out. Then Anja logged in, made a move, logged out, I logged back in, made the winning move, and challenged her to a new game.
All this happened in the space of 5 minutes, and the laptop kept moving from ... euhm lap to lap. As I noticed that this is quite funny and strange, she suggested we might want to go to the store and buy the actual game. But then we would not be able to play if I was upstairs in my office and she downstairs in the living room, now would we?
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