eWeek: After last year’s buyout of Scala Business Solutions, ERP and supply-chain vendor Epicor Software Corp. is now giving serious thought to more acquisitions, especially in vertical markets, said Epicor president and CEO George Klaus. Completed during the first half of 2004, Epicor’s purchase of Scala has turned out to be "a very, very good […]
Category: Workplace
Linux: A very different business model
For its 31 January edition, Business Week has an intriguing story online about Linus Torvalds, the Finnish creator of the Linux Unix-like operating system. The story has insight commentary on how the Linux open-source developer community works in conjunction with big-name ‘establishment’ companies, and the real threat Linux presents to Microsoft and its Windows family. […]
PeopleSoft job seekers try eBay
After a team of in-house creatives was displaced following Oracle’s acquisition of PeopleSoft, the group turned to eBay to try and find work, a report by Fast Company says. Not as individual job seekers, however, but as a complete team. According to a post on AdFreak, AdWeek’s blog, the team wanted to continue working together, […]
EPIC: The age of participatory communication
I’m blogging in the keynote presentation being given by Andy Lark that starts the second day of the New Communications Forum 2005. Andy advocates how the age of participatory communication that has already dawned will change forever the way we communicate. To illustrate this, he presents EPIC, an 8-minute video showing a concept of what […]
The Hobson & Holtz Report – Jeremy Wright Interview – January 27, 2005
Welcome to a the second Special Edition of the Hobson & Holtz Report, a 30-minute conversation with Jeremy Wright recorded live at the New Communications Forum 2005 in Napa, California, USA, on January 27, 2005. A high-profile business blogger, Jeremy authors the Ensight blog and is now focused on building his new venture, Inside Blogging. […]
The genius of Apple coolness
I had my first true iPod experience today. You know, the feeling of coolness as you’re out and about in public with those little white buds sticking in your ears with the white cables dangling down that disappear under your jacket. Yes, I did succumb to strong temptation when I was in the US last […]
Enabling happiness and productivity
Among the latest batch of new manifestos available yesterday from ChangeThis is this great one – How To Manage Smart People by Scott Berkun. A manager for nine years at Microsoft, Berkun draws on some of his experiences there in this 18-page PDF to provide a wide range of practical tips and tricks on managing […]
Google blogger firing highlights again why guidelines are essential
News yesterday that Mark Jen, a Google employee, had been fired for blogging serves to add yet more focus to a matter that has become increasingly important to companies and employees alike – establishing clear guidelines on blogging in the workplace. This subject is beginning to sound like an auto-repeat CD (yes, I have moved […]
Handling the email guilt trip
For me, managing email is one of life’s little chores that I never seem able to really keep up with. Outlook is my email program, but what I use as an indispensable tool to really manage it all is the excellent NEO Pro, a shell program that runs on top of and in tandem with […]
Leadership comes in many guises
When you think of the word ‘leadership’ and how you’d define it, you’re spoiled for choice if you look up that word in a dictionary on the net. Try this Google definition search, for example, and then decide which of the many choices fit. The definition really depends on what situation you want to apply […]
Intel COO blogs with employees
While some big companies have already taken a step into the public blogosphere with executive blogs, Intel isn’t one. At least, not yet. But they do have an internal executive blog, introduced in December. The San Jose Mercury News reported yesterday that Intel’s President and COO, Paul Otellini (who becomes CEO in May), began an […]
An open conversation with General Motors
A few hours ago, Shel and I had the pleasure of an 18-minute conversation with Michael Wiley, Director New Media, GM Communications, at General Motors. We interviewed Michael for the 21 February edition of our bi-weekly podcast show For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report. In our conversation, we discussed the GM FastLane Blog, […]
Good for your… er, health
News via irrepressible columnist John Dvorak of the latest aid to healthy and safe computer practice – the busty mousepad. Wonderful product description on the vendor’s website, ChestRest (love the name!): Kannazuki Mai, from the hentai series G-Taste illustrated by the artist Yagami Hiroaki is now immortalized in busty mouse pad form. Let her ample […]
IBM has 2,800 internal blogs
Like many companies, especially in the tech industry, IBM is no stranger to public blogs with more than 20 employees listed at the developer blogs’ portal. What I doubt is known at all is how deeply IBM has embraced blogging within the organization. According to Philippe Borremans, PR Manager at IBM Belgium & Luxembourg, writing […]
The globalization of English
Newsweek has an excellent feature article in the 7 March issue (this week) of its international edition on how the English language is evolving and changing the way we communicate. The article says "non-native English-speakers" worldwide now outnumber native ones 3 to 1. In Asia alone, Newsweek says, the number of English users has topped […]
CNET’s guide to blogging misses the mark
CNET News has published a guide to blogging in the workplace in frequently-asked questions (FAQ) style. Unfortunately, this is not one of CNET’s better efforts to address a topical issue (see this guide to RSS for an example of a really good CNET guide). The FAQ include some comments that are just plain wrong. For […]
Managing your information with tags
eWeek: In the quest to organize the web’s information, an emerging approach is putting the power to categorize everything from links to digital photos into the hands of users. In the halls and session rooms at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference [in San Diego], a series of talks this week explored the growing use of […]
Blogging policies: A couple made for marriage
Last week, Michael Hyatt, President and COO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world and the ninth largest publishing company of any kind, wrote about launching a ‘corporate blog aggregator site’ which would link individual employees’ blogs. Michael says: Like many companies, we have struggled with what guidance to give […]
The labour of love and tough choices
Reading Robert Scoble’s post this morning that he’s giving up doing his link blog brings home in a very direct way some harsh reality about this blogging caper. It takes up a lot of time! If you run a blog as a labour of love, you will face a crunch sooner or later as you […]
The ideas of individuals make a team effective
One of the blogs on my regular RSS reading list is Creating Passionate Users, a collaborative blog by five authors at Head First Books from O’Reilly Media. In a real gem of a post, Kathy Sierra talks about how one of us is smarter than all of us, meaning that it’s not the consensus decisions […]