Announcing the IBM Connections Suite - Sweet !
Tue, May 15th 2012 6:18a Luis Benitez IBM has just announced its new social business offering: the IBM Connections Suite. The IBM Connections Suite provides the best of the best communications, content, and social capabilities in one package creating the ultimate social business offering.
How does a business become a social business? IBM has identified a foundational set of capabilities that—when implemented as a whole—can allow your business to become more social. To socially enable your workforce, improve customer care and ins [read] Keywords: collaboration
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New IBM Connections Plug-In for Symphony Demo
Thu, May 10th 2012 7:11a Luis Benitez A while ago, I blogged about all the different plug-ins available for Symphony which brought the social capabilities of IBM Connections into Symphony. For those of you who don't know, Symphony is a free productivity suite based on OpenOffice, which coincidentally shipped a new release on Tuesday.
Of course, I'm pretty much a month late with these news, but there's now a new IBM Connections plug-in for Symphony, as Ed Brill announced earlier. The new plug-in adds the following capabilities:
[read] Keywords: connections
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What It Means to Be a Social Business #socbiz
Mon, Apr 30th 2012 9:14a Luis Benitez As seen in our team blog, check out Heidi Ambler, IBM's Director for Social Software Product Management (and my boss), discussing:
What it means to be a social business
The trend on how business processes are changing
How business achieve business value by becoming a social business
Tools that help companies become a social business
What it takes to become a Social Business and how to start planning your own transformation.
You may remember that Heidi and I presented at SXSW and you [read] Keywords: ibm
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Demo: Blogs iPad App for IBM Connections, Wordpress, Blogger, and more
Fri, Apr 27th 2012 6:12a Luis Benitez Are you an active blogger using IBM Connections ? Do you work remotely? Do you want to create beautiful blog entries directly from your iPad ? If any of those are true, then you definitely will want to take a peek at Blogsy, the top rated app for blogging with your iPad. In fact, I am creating this blog entry directly from Blogsy. Blogsy also supports other blogging platforms like Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr, Drupal, Joomla and more! You may recall that I first blogged about Blogsy shortly af [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Develop Apps for IBM Connections
Fri, Apr 20th 2012 6:13a Luis Benitez The last few weeks, especially after SXSW, have been crazy with partners and ISVs reaching out to me asking how to get started developing apps for IBM Connections. I've probably repeated the same information enough times now that it warrants a blog entry.
First, for all things social business development, the start page is here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/social/ . There you will find information on how to create apps either for our on-premises product or cloud-based product.
If you ar [read] Keywords: connections
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How Social Business Can Increase Sales [WEBCAST]
Thu, Apr 19th 2012 7:15a Luis Benitez Still on the fence on whether or not you should embrace Social Business? Well, here's a webcast you can't miss!
LIVE FROM SUGARCON! How Can Social Business Increase Your Sales?
Date: Apr 24, 2012
Time: 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM (Eastern Time)
Social Business is real and it's about to change the world of sales as you know it. According to a new Nucleus Research report based on interviews with more than 220 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) decision makers, adding social features and mobile acc [read] Keywords: collaboration
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How To Add a Web Meeting Link to IBM Connections Profiles
Fri, Apr 13th 2012 8:18a Luis Benitez All credit here goes to Mitch Cohen for the idea. As I've been updating my demo server this week to record a video on it, it turns out that Mitch asked how to add an attribute to IBM Connections Profiles so that it would be a clickable link to a user's web meeting (whether it's SmartCloud Meetings, VSee, WebEx, etc).
The process for adding a custom attribute to Profiles is documented here, but let me just show you how to do it specifically for web meetings. In the example below, I'm going to [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Extend Search in IBM Connections
Thu, Apr 12th 2012 6:12a Luis Benitez I'm currently making modifications to my IBM Connections server to record a demo that I've been wanting to do for a week or so now. As I was making some changes, I realized that there was a new feature that was introduced in IBM Connections 3.0.1 that I may have not talked about.
Basically, the IBM Connections search box is extensible so that you can add 3rd party search providers. Say, for example, that you have deployed IBM Connections inside of the firewall and you want to give your users n [read] Keywords: connections
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The State of Community Management Report for 2012
Mon, Apr 2nd 2012 1:11p Luis Benitez For the third year in a row, the Community Roundtable has released it's State of Community Management report. Sponsored in part by IBM, the report is a must read for all community managers and those responsible for social business in their organizations.
What I like about this year's report is how it is organized into patterns of community maturity. Each pattern is associated with a list of resources (books, additional reports, and other references) for community managers to learn more. For ex [read] Keywords: ibm
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IBM Connections Plug-In for Windows Explorer Now Available
Wed, Mar 21st 2012 5:02a Luis Benitez Stop what you are doing immediately! If you've been heads down in the past 2 days, then you've probably missed some amazing news. First, over the weekend, IBM released IBM Connections 3.0.1.1. Immediately after on Monday, IBM released the brand new Desktop Plug-In for Microsoft Windows Explorer.
Check out everything that the plug-in can do:
Upload files for personal use or to share with others
Upload files to a community or attach them to an Activity
Share existing Connections files with [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM Connections 3.0.1.1 Now Available
Mon, Mar 19th 2012 1:14p Luis Benitez Over the weekend IBM released IBM Connections 3.0.1.1. I don't intend to cover all the new stuff here, but I figured I would highlight a few things.
First, the release adds new support for Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 9. Second, there's now integration with IBM Sametime 8.5.2 for presence awareness. Just as before with Sametime 8.5.1, users can see who is online in Connections without installing any additional software on their desktops. This is very cool because it rapidly speeds adoption [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Notable Video Interviews at SXSW Interactive 2012
Mon, Mar 19th 2012 7:28a Luis Benitez Now that things are starting to get back to normal I wanted to share some videos that the IBM developerWorks team recorded while at South by Southwest Interactive 2012. Thanks to Todd Watson and Scott Laningham for putting these videos together.
First, Omar Divina from Badgeville talks about gamification and how it can help companies measure and influence user behavior. Omar offers his definition of what gamification. If you are looking to learn how gamification could be used at your company, yo [read] Keywords: connections
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Recap of Day 5 at SXSW Interactive
Wed, Mar 14th 2012 7:39a Luis Benitez Happy Pi Day !!! And here we come… to the end of my first SXSW Interactive. After a long week of sessions, meetings, meet ups, tweet ups, and the like, it's time to return to reality. Today is a travel day, so as I can, I'll be posting and sharing more insights on what I learned at SXSW Interactive.
Yesterday, Tuesday, was the fifth and last day of SXSW Interactive. Now, it's time for the music part of the festival. I started the day by doing a sales talk with Suzanne Livingston where we ta [read] Keywords: ibm
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Recap of Day 4 at SXSWi
Tue, Mar 13th 2012 10:11a Luis Benitez Another beautiful day at Austin. Today was a day with a lot of meetings and interviews so I only attended three sessions.
First, I went to Sandy Carter's session where she was talking about her recently published book Get Bold: Using Social Media to create a new type of Social Business. The room was packed and it was standing room only. As a fellow IBMer, I decided to stand in the back and give my seat to other people. Sandy covered some interesting facts about social media and also talked abo [read] Keywords: connections
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Recap of Day 3 at SXSWi
Mon, Mar 12th 2012 10:32a Luis Benitez Finally, the sun has come out!!! Today was a beautiful day over in Austin.
The day started early where Stowe Boyd, Megan Murray and others were OMNI PRESENTing on how companies have become more and more connected. One thing that was interesting was a topic around community managers within the firewall. As more and more companies deploy social software internally one of the gaps that's often present is the lack of an internal community manager. Often, companies deploy social software internally [read] Keywords: blogger
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Recap of Day 2 at SXSWi
Sun, Mar 11th 2012 9:13a Luis Benitez Saturday, March 10 … Day 2 at SXSW Interactive (SXSWi). It was loooooong day and the rain kept coming down hard.
The first session that I went to was Top Chef: How Transmedia is Changing TV . This session was tremendous and I liked it a lot. It was moderated by Andy Cohen, host of Watch What Happens Live and one of the panelists was Tom Collichio, a judge in Top Chef. Others in the panel included various senior executives from Bravo. They talked a lot about Social TV and the transformation tha [read] Keywords: ibm
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Recap of Day 1 at SXSWi
Sat, Mar 10th 2012 6:42a Luis Benitez Yesterday, Friday, was the official first day of SXSW Interactive. It was raining throughout the day, but luckily the sessions that I had planned to attend where all happening very close to each other. It was a good thing that I got here on Thursday because I was able to pick up my badge very easily. When I went to the convention center on Friday, the line for badge pick up was almost a mile long, literally.
Even walking into sessions required a line each time since badges had to be manually sca [read] Keywords: blogger
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Demo: Monitoring Lotus Quickr Domino
Mon, Feb 27th 2012 8:42a Luis Benitez A while ago I got together with Steve Bystran from GSX who was here in Puerto Rico for vacation. Luckily, he was staying at a hotel that was very close to me and he offered to take an hour away from his vacation to meet with me. I had heard of GSX's monitoring solution for Quickr Domino at Lotusphere #ls12 but I hadn't seen it in person.
So we got together and I got to see a quick demo of how GSX Monitor integrates with Lotus Quickr Domino to monitor various metrics.
Today, you can use GSX Mon [read] Keywords: domino
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New Quickr Domino 8.5.1 FP Released - You'll Want This
Tue, Feb 21st 2012 7:26a Luis Benitez As promised at Lotusphere 2012 #ls12, we have now posted a new Quickr Domino fix pack for 8.5.1. You can find this fix pack in Fix Central.
At Lotusphere, we announced that the fix pack would be ready in the first quarter of 2012, and I'm glad that we were able to get this out the door today. The IBM Lotus Quickr Fix Pack 8.5.1.25 for Domino release delivers several features highly requested by Quickr users:
Addition of the Folder Navigator for libraries with deep folder hierarchies and the I [read] Keywords: domino
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Blogsy for iPad Now Supports IBM Connections
Fri, Feb 17th 2012 11:37a Luis Benitez Blogsy, one of the top rated blogging apps for iPad, has added support for IBM Connections, IBM's social software platform for business. For the last couple of weeks, I've been working with the Blogsy team in order to get support for IBM Connections added into Blogsy. It all started back in November when Blogsy reached out to me to understand our API. I got them an account to Greenhouse and they were off to the races.
They got a pretty final prototype working just before Lotusphere #ls12 and I [read] Keywords: connections
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Becoming a Social Business? Don't Forget About Social Business Etiquette
Tue, Feb 7th 2012 1:12p Luis Benitez Earlier this week IBM released a new short whitepaper on the behaviors required in a social business. While a lot of companies focus on how employees engage with others outside of the firewall, I haven't seen a lot of discussion of behavior guidelines in social media behind the firewall.
As more and more companies begin their social business transformation, most are testing the waters internally behind the firewall. One of the recommendations that often comes up as part of this transformation i [read] Keywords: ibm
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Want to Drive Adoption of IBM Connections? Check This Out!
Fri, Feb 3rd 2012 11:48a Luis Benitez From the Information Development team:
IBM Connections 3.0.1 has a new getting started experience to interactively guide users through steps for setting up and using IBM Connections. Each step lets you Learn more, Watch video or Do it. Want to see how other people are using IBM Connections to do social business? The new getting started walks you through the same steps others have taken to network with colleagues, join a community, start an activity, and share files.
Two ways to use Getting Star [read] Keywords: connections
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WebDAV for IBM Connections & Lotus Quickr
Thu, Feb 2nd 2012 5:44a Luis Benitez One of the things that was very exciting about Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 is how the ecosystem for both IBM Connections and Lotus Quickr is growing. One of the business partners that introduced a solution is Lialis. They introduced a WebDAV add-on for IBM Connections.
So what is WebDAV? Let's not get into the technical details. Let's focus instead on what it enables. As per Lialis:
Downloading synchronizing content from/to IBM Connections Files
Deliver shared drives connected to IBM Connections [read] Keywords: connections
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Enterprise Social Media Trends: What's Your Take? #SXsocbiz5
Wed, Feb 1st 2012 7:12a Luis Benitez I'm currently working on my presentation for SXSW 2012. I can't believe that I'm going to go to my first SXSW in just 5 weeks. I'm so excited.
As we get ready for our presentation, I was curious and wanted to see what most people are seeing in terms of trends. How are you seeing social media being used by enterprises and what are some of your most favorite examples ? Let us know in the comments section below!
And by the way, if you are going to SXSW 2012, I hope to see you there. Here [read] Keywords: connections
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Now Available: IBM Connections Wikis Tips & Tricks
Tue, Jan 31st 2012 7:35a Luis Benitez Recently, I've been working with a number of customers who are migrating content from other tools/platforms into IBM Connections Wikis.
Immediately, I started noticing a pattern in the questions and they were all trying to do very similar things. This gave me an idea to leverage the Best Practice sub-community of the IBM Connections Users community to share tips & tricks.
If you use Connections or if your company is in the process of deploying Connections, you MUST follow this community. I [read] Keywords: connections
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Lotusphere 2012: Thursday Recap
Thu, Jan 26th 2012 10:12a Luis Benitez And now we get to the last day of Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. Lotusphere 2012 was my 5th Lotusphere, but it was the first time that I actually stayed the full day on Thursday and left on Friday. Usually, I would head out to the airport Thursday at noon so I had never seen a Closing General Session or participated in a Blogger Open before. Like Sharon said, I'm surprised with the number of people who leave Wednesday night or super early on Thursday.
Thursday started like any other day with customer b [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Lotusphere 2012: Wednesday Recap
Wed, Jan 25th 2012 9:17a Luis Benitez Hopefully by now you've been able to read some of my previous posts on Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. I've already covered some of the media coverage, my recap from Monday, and my recap from Tuesday. So let's get on with Wednesday.
Just like Tuesday, I had to wake up very early to attend a Birds of Feather (BOF) session, this time hosted by IBM Champions: Sharon Bellamy, Stuart McIntyre, and Simon Vaughan. For some time now, Simon has been managing the IBM Connections Users community in Greenhouse. T [read] Keywords: connections
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Lotusphere 2012: Monday Recap
Mon, Jan 23rd 2012 7:13a Luis Benitez Last Monday was the 2nd day of the Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 and was the day that the Opening General Session took place. I was part of the demo team so for me this was the day that Lotusphere actually started as up until then we were backstage getting ready for the big keynote.
As you probably know, the keynote was live streamed. The main speaker was Michael J. Fox and the opening band was Ok Go which made Lotusphere trend in Twitter. Michael J. Fox did a tremendous job on stage and was very funny. [read] Keywords: connections
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Social Business Trends on Twitter Thanks To Lotusphere 2012
Wed, Jan 18th 2012 8:12a Luis Benitez At this week's Lotusphere 2012, Social Business became a hot topic. In fact, in the United States 3 of the 9 trending topics at Twitter were a result of Lotusphere '12 #ls12.
First, the band Ok Go started trending as they took the stage sharp at 8am to get people psyched for what some are calling the best keynote and demos ever! As they rocked the stage, some of their YouTube videos played on the big screen.
Second, Michael J Fox started trending on Twitter as he was announced as the [read] Keywords: ibm
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Lotusphere 2012 Live Streaming #ls12
Mon, Jan 16th 2012 6:11a Luis Benitez Straight to the point… here's the live stream for Lotusphere 2012 !!! Watch carefully and you'll see me briefly during the Opening General Session on Monday January 16th @ 8am ET.
If you want to know what will be showing when, check out the Lotusphere 2012 Live Stream Schedule.
Enjoy! [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Add Twitter Search Widget to IBM Connections Communities
Sat, Jan 14th 2012 6:07a Luis Benitez In my previous blog post, I shared how to add a 'Subscribe in iTunes' button to the Media Gallery in IBM Connections. In the video that I shared, you may have noticed a widget that I had added to my demo community in IBM Connections.
I've created a simple widget that exposes Twitter's Search widget inside of a community. You can configure this widget so that you can specify which hashtags to monitor. The widget updates in almost real-time every time someone uses the hashtag in Twitter. This [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Subscribe To IBM Connections Media Gallery via iTunes
Fri, Jan 13th 2012 11:07a Luis Benitez One of the new features that was introduced in IBM Connections 3.0.1 is the Media Gallery which Suzanne demos here. Chris Crummey recently asked me how could he subscribe to the items in the Media Gallery via iTunes. That way, when he's traveling he can catch up with the videos that have been added to the Media Gallery.
As you probably know, IBM Connections provides a very easy way to subscribe to each page via feeds. iTunes also has a way for you to manually add a feed to subscribe to a podcas [read] Keywords: connections
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ISW Introduces Gamification for IBM Connections
Fri, Jan 6th 2012 8:59a Luis Benitez What a great way to start 2012. IBM Business Partner, ISW (the same business partner that created iWildfire for iPhone and iPad and Wildfire for Notes) announced that it's now providing gaming capabilities within IBM Connections.
I caught a demo of the add-on yesterday and it looks very good. Out of the box, it comes with a variety of badges that users earn based on various metrics and achievements within IBM Connections. When you go to a user's profile, you can see the various badges that t [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM Connections Celebrates the Holidays
Tue, Jan 3rd 2012 7:54a Luis Benitez Happy New Year to everyone! As I catch up with emails and get ready for Lotusphere 2012 #ls12 I saw an interesting "card" from a business partner in Spain.
They loaded profiles for Santa Claus and the Three Wise Men. The card is of course in Spanish, but you'll probably get a kick out of it as well.
May 2012 be an AWESOME year!
Enjoy! [read] Keywords: connections
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My Lotusphere 2012 Schedule is Set!
Tue, Dec 27th 2011 9:11a Luis Benitez I've just finished setting up my page for Lotusphere 2012. Just like last year, you can use that to start planning your Lotusphere trip and figure out how to reach me / find me while at Lotusphere.
At the point of this writing, we are just 18 days away from Lotusphere 2012 #ls12. I'm actually going to get to Orlando on the 7th since I'll be taking the kids to their first trip to Disney. My oldest has a countdown going and is very excited about the trip (as well as with all the toys he j [read] Keywords: connections
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AppFusions Integrates IBM Connections and Atlassian's JIRA
Thu, Dec 15th 2011 6:11a Luis Benitez Earlier this week, AppFusions published a great video where they show integration of IBM Connections and Atlassian JIRA . If you are not familiar with JIRA, JIRA helps development teams connect, track bugs, defects, plan agile development and more. (I'm not sure if JIRA is an acronym or not, though)
Part of JIRA is an activity stream where you can see what's happening across the projects you belong to. As part of the integration, AppFusions has created a widget that can be deployed in the Conn [read] Keywords: connections
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LotusLive Connections Upgraded This Weekend
Wed, Dec 14th 2011 3:57p Luis Benitez Over this past weekend, we finalized some upgrades to LotusLive Connections, our multi-tenant IBM Connections solution in the cloud. This update adds some great new capabilities to Communities, Files, Activities, and Profiles. Here's a couple of my new favorite features:
Community business owner can give ownership to another person
Community file folders for communities that you belong to are now shown under 'Folders shared with Me'
Easily link to Files from Activities
Parity with IBM Conne [read] Keywords: connections
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Social Scheduling Now in IBM Connections
Wed, Dec 14th 2011 6:12a Luis Benitez IBM Business Partner Intravision has created a great integration point between OnTime Group Calendar and IBM Connections. If you haven't heard or used OnTime before I suggest you check them out. They provide an awesome add on with a powerful and very slick group calendar interface.
OnTime also allows you to work with group calendars even when you are on the go by providing mobile access from your favorite mobile device.
The new integration point brings the power of OnTime Group Scheduling int [read] Keywords: collaboration
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Yay, I'm going to SXSW 2012 !
Tue, Dec 13th 2011 7:05a Luis Benitez Earlier this year, I asked that you go out and vote for the various sessions we had submitted. Yesterday, more sessions were announced for SXSW 2012 and I was happy to see that the proposal Suzanne Livingston and I submitted was accepted.
Our session is titled Enterprise Social Media Trends: Are We There Yet? . Here's the abstract we submitted:
Social media has gone mainstream! But it's not everywhere yet. In this session, we'll explore case studies that showcase the trends and best practic [read] Keywords: collaboration
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New IBM Champions Announced
Thu, Dec 8th 2011 8:23a Luis Benitez Joyce Davis has just posted an announcement in the Social Business Insights Blog. You will remember that earlier this year, IBM announced 50 new IBM Champions. Joyce provides a great summary of what we look for in IBM Champions:
These individuals spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and resources evangelizing for IBM, sharing their knowledge and helping grow the community of users and business leaders focused on our solutions. As champions, they will receive an IBM Champion merchandise [read] Keywords: collaboration
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How To Add "Invite To Network" Button to an Email
Wed, Nov 30th 2011 10:58a Luis Benitez This is another posting from my colleague Romain Lienard. The first posting that I shared from him was a quick post that explained how to add a "Follow This Community" button to an email which helps accelerate adoption. In this post, Romain shares how to simply add a button to your email signature, for example, so that others can click it and invite you to be part of their network. This is another great example of using LotusScript with the IBM Connections API. And given I like to share a bunc [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Add a "Follow Community" button in an Email
Wed, Nov 30th 2011 10:50a Luis Benitez I saw this posted internally and just felt compelled to share. My colleague, Romain Lienard, He developed a way to quickly add a button to an email so that recipients can quickly follow an IBM Connections Community with a single click. I can see this being very very handy, specially when combined with the community email newsletter generator. This is a great example of using LotusScript and the IBM Connections API.
What follows is a copy of Romain's blog entry:
[read] Keywords: connections
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IBM Releases Glimpse into IT Future In The 2011 Tech Trends Report
Tue, Nov 15th 2011 8:12a Luis Benitez IBM has just released the results of its 2011 Tech Trends Report. The report provides insight into the most significant enterprise technology trends and is based on the input of more than 4,000 IT professionals and developers across 93 countries and 25 different industries. This report is unique as it surveys the development community, the people that are in the trenches everyday making IT work for countless businesses around the world.
Whether you are interested in social business, open s [read] Keywords: ibm
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Social Media Club Boston on The Evolution of Social Business
Mon, Nov 14th 2011 1:36p Luis Benitez Last week, the Social Media Club of Boston and IBM partnered up to talk about the Evolution of Social Business. While I couldn't assist in person for obvious reasons, I liked the ability to catch up via the uStream replay (below). The club celebrated its 5th anniversary and the outgoing president started the meeting with a re-cap of the club. This was very interesting to me in various levels. First, as you may know, I lead the Social Media Club of Puerto Rico so I like to learn about how other [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Get Twitter Feed Added to IBM Connections Profile
Tue, Nov 8th 2011 10:32a Luis Benitez IBM Connections Profiles is all about aggregating user information from various sources into a single place. To that end, IBM Connections includes a free plugin that lets users tie their profile in IBM Connections to their profile in LinkedIn, which I originally blogged about last year. The plugin brings your LinkedIn information to your profile, similar to the screenshot below.
Yesterday, I noticed that JustNudge, an IBM business partner (the ones who created the Profile Completion widget), h [read] Keywords: connections
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To Like or To Dislike: Is That The Question?
Tue, Nov 1st 2011 1:10p Luis Benitez A little over two years ago, I blogged about YouTube's decision to abandon their 5-star rating system and instead go for a Thumbs Up/Down approach. Yesterday, I blogged about Tom Raftery's keynote where he highlights IBM's use of binary recommendations in our blog engine. Then I stumbled on yet another article about Facebook prohibiting Dislike on their system from Mashable.
Mashable's Op-Ed highlights that developers were trying to use Facebook's new OpenGraph protocol to convert dislike i [read] Keywords: connections
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IBM Releases New Native iPad App for IBM Connections
Tue, Nov 1st 2011 4:27a Luis Benitez Several weeks ago, IBM released native apps for the BlackBerry, Android and iOS platforms for their industry-leading social software platform: IBM Connections .
With today's update, the new iPad app takes advantage of the iPad real estate and provides a great tablet experience for iPad owners that wish to connect to IBM Connections, which according to IDC is the worldwide social software leader based on market share. The update converts the previous iPhone app into a universal app which means t [read] Keywords: connections
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GreenMonk: IBM Have This Stuff Mastered
Mon, Oct 31st 2011 1:27p Luis Benitez Over the weekend, I stumbled upon a keynote given by Tom Raftery at the SAP for Utilities conference in San Antonio. For those that don't know, Tom works for GreenMonk the Energy and Sustainability practice of industry analyst firm RedMonk.
The keynote is interesting as it talks about the aging workforce which affects a lot of companies in the utilities industry. Tom mentions a a statistic from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics which says that in 10 years 30 to 40% of the utility workers are go [read] Keywords: ibm
blogger
blogging
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80
New Bundle Available: Connections & FileNet
Tue, Oct 25th 2011 9:06a Luis Benitez Today, IBM announced a new bundle where customers can buy IBM Connections + FileNet for a significant discount.
You may remember that one of the new features that was introduced in IBM Connections 3.0.1 was integration with FileNet. The integration brings the power, security, and scalability of an Enterprise Content Manager (ECM). With this integration you can use folders, check-in/check-out, workflow, document types and even round-trip editing natively within Connections (the last feature being [read] Keywords: connections
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73
10 Social Business Myths - Busted!
Mon, Oct 24th 2011 3:26p Luis Benitez Today, a colleague shared this video which was posted to YouTube a couple of hours ago as well. The video features Louis Richardson while doing a keynote in Denmark. I blogged about Richardson's presentation last week where he shows how to increase the value of email by embracing social software.
Richardson follows the format of the famous TV Show MythBusters. For those of you who haven't seen the show (which by the way is one of my favorite shows, always on my TiVo and one of my dream jobs!), [read] Keywords: blogger
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social software
twitter
85
Some Notes on Functionality Changes from Quickr 8.2 to 8.5.1
Mon, Oct 24th 2011 12:12p Luis Benitez This is a quick post to highlight a recently published article. Some of the notes that I've been receiving lately are related to how functionality changed between Quickr Domino 8.2 and the latest release which is Quickr Domino 8.5.1.1.
I've been working with the team to compile a list of the Frequently Asked Questions and came up with a table summarizing these.
I hope this document helps you as you plan your upgrade from 8.2 to 8.5.1. The document is here. If there's another way in which [read] Keywords: domino
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Email Driving Your Business Crazy? Dump It and Embrace Social Software!
Fri, Oct 21st 2011 6:19a Luis Benitez A lot of my colleagues express amusement when I tell them that I've been able to reduce my inbox from 100+ emails/day to ~20 emails/day. The first question they always ask is: "How did you do it?"
It wasn't easy and it has taken time, but I was motivated by Luis Suarez. Luis was was interviewed by Leo Laporte and Amber MacArthur in their Net@Night show last year and is living the dream: a world without email. It was one of Luis' webinars that introduced me to the concept of moving away from [read] Keywords: blogger
email
enterprise
social software
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48
How Social Business Tools Can Help In Disaster Situations
Wed, Oct 19th 2011 7:27a Luis Benitez Remember how last week I mentioned that IBM is actively looking at documenting success stories of organizations that are embracing social software ? Well, here's another one that I wanted to highlight. This is a great story of how social business tools can help in disaster situations such as the earthquake that occurred last year in Haiti. I think it's also a great example of how non-profit organizations can leverage social business platforms.
Colleagues in Care turned to IBM's social busines [read] Keywords: ibm
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35
IBM Connections Trade Up Now Available
Tue, Oct 18th 2011 1:53p Luis Benitez Earlier today, IBM announced the availability of a new trade up for IBM Lotus Notes customers. You may remember that earlier this month IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 customers were entitled to IBM Connections Profiles and Files.
With this new trade up, customers that were entitled to only IBM Connections Profiles and Files are now able to upgrade to the entire Connections suite to obtain all the benefits of the platform such as:
Access from your mobile device
Manage your projects
Blogs
Wikis
[read] Keywords: connections
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50
How To Access your IBM Connections Files Offline from your iOS Device
Mon, Oct 17th 2011 10:34a Luis Benitez Last week I attended a conference in Cambridge, MA where I got to see Andrew McAfee give the keynote. I never get tired of listening to Andy. He does a great job on stage keeping everyone engaged, he's funny, and definitely very passionate about this whole Enterprise 2.0 space (of course, since he coined the term! ).
That was my first trip in 9 weeks and it was a good reminder of how many people are still offline for most of their work days. Previous to my current role, I used to be part of the [read] Keywords: connections
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39
Social Business ROI ? Here's Yet Another Example!
Wed, Oct 12th 2011 6:25a Luis Benitez As you know, I'm one of the product managers for IBM Connections and one of my responsibilities is for our solution running in the cloud. I truly believe that one of the best ways to help organizations understand the value of becoming a Social Business is to learn from the successes of others. And at IBM we are actively documenting and highlighting the success stories of our customers.
One recent example is Newly Weds Foods, a Chicago based, global leader in food technology, needed an effective [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
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blogger
57
Demo: IBM Connections and Notes 8.5.3 Integration
Thu, Oct 6th 2011 12:02p Luis Benitez In the weeks prior the release of Notes 8.5.3 I helped a colleague create this video which shows the various integration points between IBM Connections and Notes 8.5.3. As a refresher, Notes 8.5.3 entitles users to free use of IBM Connections micro-blogging, profiles, and file sharing.
In the past 2 days alone, the video has amassed close to 1,000 views. The demo shows the importance of Social Everywhere and how critical it is to drive adoption of a social business platform. Here are the integra [read] Keywords: connections
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Notes Customers Now Enttitled to IBM Connections Profiles and Files
Tue, Oct 4th 2011 9:50a Luis Benitez As you may have seen by now in Ed Brill's blog, today IBM is announcing a new entitlement option for existing Notes customers. With Notes 8.5.3, customers are now entitled to use IBM Connections Profiles and Files.
Seems like most people are excited with this announcement, as they should be! To me, the biggest benefit will be seen by the Notes users who will now be able to leverage Connections directly from their Notes client thanks to all the awesome (free!!) Connections plugins we have in our [read] Keywords: connections
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43
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Mon, Oct 3rd 2011 9:49a Luis Benitez Last year, it was officially signed on IBM paper that I would be moving to the IBM Social Software product management team (even though the move was actually back in September 2010). Thus, I figured I would share a bit about the last year and what I'm looking forward to see in the next year.
The past year has been a tremendously fun one. Travel has been significantly reduced (so I can spend more time with the family) and I've learned a lot about how the IBM business runs. When I joined the tea [read] Keywords: connections
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62
Nielsen Releases the Latest Social Media Report [INFOGRAPHIC]
Mon, Sep 12th 2011 8:38a Luis Benitez This morning I was made aware of the following report titled: State of the Media: The Social Media Report Q3 2011
Nielsen has put together a fantastic set of info graphics where they share the latest statistics on social media. Here you will find things like:
How Americans spend their time while connected to the Internet
The demographics for the most active social networkers
Mobile social media use
Top App categories used by smartphone owners
The demographic [read] Keywords: blogger
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68
How To Socialize Microsoft Office and SharePoint
Fri, Sep 2nd 2011 7:41a Luis Benitez Earlier this week I re-emphasized the importance of a social everywhere strategy to accelerate adoption of social media in the workplace. I strongly believe that this is critical as I live this day in and day out. I've shared the story before that the main reason I use social software at work is because our platform adjusts to my needs and not the other way around. The tool simply integrates into my daily life and I don't have to do anything different to use it.
There have been many articles p [read] Keywords: connections
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SXSW Voting is Open - Please Vote!
Fri, Aug 19th 2011 12:08p Luis Benitez (originally posted in the Social Business Insights Blog -- resharing here so you can vote for my session!)
The staff at SXSW wants to know what kind of topics we want to hear at their event next March. So my team really needs your help in this year’s voting process!
But first - if you aren’t familiar with SXSW – (South By Southwest), it’s a set of film, music and interactive festivals and conferences in Austin, Texas. What started as a music festival that drew 700 attendees in 1 [read] Keywords: connections
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New Connections Usability Study - Help Us Improve the Product!
Wed, Aug 17th 2011 12:02p Luis Benitez The IBM Connections Information Development team is piloting the addition of filters to our installation documentation, so that you receive information that pertains to your specific database and operating system environment at the right time. This pilot is a direct response to customer requests and depending on your feedback, we may introduce filtered documentation in a future release of IBM Connections.
Currently, the installation documentation includes information on all supported operating s [read] Keywords: connections
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database
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71
Hands On with SocialBro - Twitter Analytics Made Easy
Tue, Aug 16th 2011 11:18a Luis Benitez A couple of weeks ago I learned about SocialBro thanks to Mashable. SocialBro, made by developers based in Spain, promises to be an app to manage and analyze your Twitter following. At first glance, SocialBro delivers, especially if you are looking to use Twitter as part of your Social Business strategy. When you first launch the app, it asks you for your Twitter credentials and starts to download tons of metrics about your following. This is nice because it allows you to work with your data off [read] Keywords: notes
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blogging
community
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92
New Quickr for Portal Integration with Connections
Fri, Aug 12th 2011 12:20p Luis Benitez A new widget for IBM Connections is now available which brings the Quickr for WebSphere Portal document library into a Connections community.
The widget augments the original Quickr widget because it maintains the user in the Connections environment, whereas the other widget would make the user switch back and forth. It's also nice because you can link to existing Quickr document libraries (or if you don't want to map a community to an existing Quickr library, you can make it so that a new doc [read] Keywords: connections
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Profile Completion Widget Now Available in App Catalog
Fri, Aug 5th 2011 10:06a Luis Benitez Two new widgets for IBM Connections are now available in the app catalog. The widgets are provided by JustNudge an IBM partner based out of the UK.
The first widget tracks the profile completion widget. This looks very similar to what LinkedIn provides. I believe this is great because I can see this as a way to push adoption of Connections. As people see that their profile is not populated, they also get hints as to what they can do to further populate their profile. Here's how JustNudge descri [read] Keywords: connections
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49
Why Should I Care About Social Media Behind the Firewall
Thu, Aug 4th 2011 12:19p Luis Benitez Last week, I delivered a webinar that was hosted by InfoBOOM. In the webinar, I talk about some of the reasons why social media behind the firewall is beneficial to companies of all sizes. As an example, I reference the value that I personally get by using social media inside the firewall.
Here's the description that we used for the webinar invite.
Social media isn't limited to external communications. It can be a powerful force for productivity improvement and morale building inside the fir [read] Keywords: collaboration
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How To Deploy Google Gadgets to IBM Connections
Wed, Aug 3rd 2011 8:46a Luis Benitez The concept of deploying Google Gadgets to Connections is not new. I've shown you how to do this several times (going back 3 years ago!!). There are even articles on that have been posted on IBM's webpage describing how to do this.
I recently stumbled upon an article written by Chuck Connell which describes how to very quickly develop widgets for IBM Connections. This is actually the approach that I usually take when creating my widgets. It's funny because when people ask me which IDE I use t [read] Keywords: connections
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73
Mac vs PC for College 2011
Tue, Aug 2nd 2011 7:02p Luis Benitez So turns out that I've received a lot of questions around Mac vs PC from family and friends who have kids going to college this fall. I also interview students for the college I went to and this question comes up (specially after they see me using a MacBook Pro to do the interview). I figured I would capture some of the thoughts on the topic and provide my take in the matter. This by no means is meant to be a comprehensive look at the options that are out there. If you are interested, there are [read] Keywords: lotus
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firefox
google
laptop
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openoffice
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49
Infographic: What Happens In The Web in 1 Minute
Mon, Aug 1st 2011 1:45p Luis Benitez Earlier this year I blogged about an iPad app to get the latest Social Media statistics. And speaking about the iPad, one of my favorite apps to launch every day and discover content is Zite. Using Zite, I stumbled upon this info graphic (and you know how much I like info graphics!). This particular one captures what happens in the web in 1 minute.
Neville Hobson blogged about it and suggests it might be good to include in a future presentation. I'll certainly try to include it in my next prese [read] Keywords: apple
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google
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IBM Connections Plugins Now Available for Mac
Fri, Jul 29th 2011 5:48a Luis Benitez Today, IBM released new plugins to make their social platform even more accessible for Mac users. Mac users now have two new plugins they can use directly from their desktop.
The first plugin is the Files plugin. The plugin allows you to access, share, and search all of your files. You can also view files that you have shared, files that have been shared with you, files that belong to a particular person, or all public files. Of course, having access to your files from your desktop is not a new [read] Keywords: connections
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68
Reto 2.0 2011 Awards
Thu, Jul 28th 2011 9:02a Luis Benitez Last Tuesday was the award ceremony for the Reto 2.0 competition. You may remember that I talked about this competition as well as last year.
The competition is open to all college students and is sponsored by IBM, HP, and Microsoft. The idea is to promote college students to build a web 2.0 application. The team built http://enterar.me which roughly translates to: learn . The goal of the site is to have a single view of news events that are happening around me and being shared by my friends. It [read] Keywords: ibm
application
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development
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microsoft
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How To Build Your Social Business on Twitter
Wed, Jul 27th 2011 6:47a Luis Benitez One of the podcasts that I like to listen to frequently is The Social Hour (previously known as net@night) with Sarah Lane and Amber MacArthur. It's a good show to keep up with some of the consumer oriented social media tools. To me, it's another way to keep visibility as to what's happening out there and hopefully get ideas on what we can add into our platform.
About two weeks ago, I was at the AT&T store getting my iPhone replaced (I could hear people, but they couldn't hear me) and as [read] Keywords: connections
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blogger
community
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Free Webinar - Social Media Inside the Firewall
Tue, Jul 26th 2011 5:25a Luis Benitez Last Wednesday, Business Insider last week featured a tremendous article where they named IBM the Future of Social Business "because they are willing to invest, test, fail and succeed in becoming a social business". The author of the article, Mark Fidelman, interviewed IBM's VP of Social Software, Jeff Schick. The article talks about IBM's road to become a social business. In the article, Schick highlights the importance of social analytics as we move forward and make it easier for more and [read] Keywords: ibm
application
blogger
social software
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Updated iOS App Now Available for Quickr 8.5
Tue, Jul 19th 2011 7:12a Luis Benitez iOS users re-joice! Snapps has just published an update to their SnappFiles application in the iTunes App Store. SnappFiles for Quickr is a business app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that allows you to access your Quickr places and files directly from your iPhone, iPod Touch and/or iPad. No modifications to your server are required at all; just point to the server, log in, and start browsing. The app is tremendously popular with reports that is being used by an elected President of a country. [read] Keywords: domino
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My First Infographic
Fri, Jul 15th 2011 7:15a Luis Benitez I am big fan of Infographics because they really help you visualize and consume data in an easy and appealing way.
Mashable, a social media magazine I like to read a lot, seems to like Infographics as well given all the articles they have with Infographics.
So I decided to create my first Infographic with the help of visual.ly and this is what came out.
Cool! [read] Keywords: blogger
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New 60-Day Free Trial for Multimedia Library for Quickr
Fri, Jul 15th 2011 7:15a Luis Benitez Today I have something new that's available that I wanted to make you aware. Lately I feel like all I'm sharing is news around releases and new software that is available. I do have to admit that It's very exciting to see all these new things happening around IBM Connections and Quickr. I think everyone gets excited when there's such momentum around something, no?
The ibm.com pages have been recently updated to announce a new program for the Quickr 8.5 Multimedia Library. So for those of you [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
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quickr
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sametime
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The Social Connections User Group Sucessfully Kicks Off
Fri, Jul 8th 2011 7:14a Luis Benitez Earlier this week, the first ever IBM Connections User Group event took place in London at the the Salvation Army's international headquarters just adjacent to the Millennium Bridge in the centre of London.
The agenda looks like it was a really good one and I really want to congratulate the organizers, speakers, and sponsors for putting together a really good event. As I catch up with all the tweets and blogs about the event, the sentiment is overall very positive. There's even a Lanyrd page [read] Keywords: connections
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Enteprise 2.0 Boston Conference 2011 Recap
Fri, Jul 1st 2011 6:30a Luis Benitez It's the end of the quarter and all the deals are pretty much done so I can now take a breather and do a quickr recap of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference which happened last week in Boston. IBM was represented very well at this conference which seems right given that IDC named IBM the world wide leader in social software platforms based on market share for the 2nd year in a row.
Monday
Monday was the pre-conference workshops. I think the highlight of Monday is the (now typical?) E2.0 Black Belt Pr [read] Keywords: collaboration
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quickr
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networking
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Is SharePoint 2010 is Ready for Social Business? Nope!
Fri, Jun 24th 2011 7:14a Luis Benitez Yesterday, I participated in the This Week in Lotus podcast along with Joyce Davis and the usual hosts: Stuart McIntyre and Darren Duke . Once the podcast is available, you'll learn a bit more about the IBM Champion selection process.
We also talk about a video posted by my colleagues recently. This video was posted in our internal Connections instance and it spread virally like crazy. It's the most downloaded and rated video in the last two weeks. It's a great video that compares Sharepoint [read] Keywords: connections
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enterprise
microsoft
podcast
sharepoint
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I love it! embed.ly in IBM Connections
Thu, Jun 23rd 2011 7:04a Luis Benitez The other day I was catching up on my podcasts and heard of this service called http://embed.ly. It sounded very cool because it promised to make content embedding very easy. It leverages the open format oEmbed to convert links in a webpage to embeddable content.
This got me thinking about whether or not I could use this to spice up the activity stream in Connections. That way if someone shares a link via a microblog, wiki, blog, forum, etc, the actual content would be embedded into the Connecti [read] Keywords: connections
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Congratulations to the New IBM Champions
Wed, Jun 22nd 2011 1:15p Luis Benitez Moments ago, Ed Brill just announced the new IBM Champions at PACLUG. For the past several weeks, I worked with a bunch of my colleagues as we went through and read all the nominations that were submitted. We worked towards a list 50 new IBM champions that are going above and beyond to evangelize solutions from IBM, especially within the last 12 months.
The IBM Champion program recognizes innovative thought leaders in the technical community — and rewards these contributors by amplifying the [read] Keywords: collaboration
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community
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IBM Once Again Leader In Social Software Platforms
Tue, Jun 21st 2011 7:17a Luis Benitez IDC, for the second year in a row, has named IBM the world wide leader in social software platforms based on market share. IBM was also the world wide leader in social software platforms in IDC's 2010 report.
The release of the report is very timely as the Enterprise 2.0 Boston Conference kicks off today. In this year's report, IDC looks at the social software market for the 2008-2010 period. In the report, you'll find revenue and market share for each of the vendors listed.
IDC reports that [read] Keywords: connections
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How To Create a Custom Icon for IBM Connections Community
Wed, Jun 15th 2011 7:14a Luis Benitez Inside IBM, the Rational is one of the teams that has done a fabulous job at creating some fantastic communities of practice. That brand has even created a set of community templates for all brands to follow as they create communities and sub-communities that are specific to the brand.
One of the community managers, Darrel Rader, created a video that he shared internally that walks community managers through the process of create custom community icons. I thought it was a tutorial that a lot of [read] Keywords: connections
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community
iphone
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IBM's Journey to Becoming a Social Business
Fri, Jun 10th 2011 7:14a Luis Benitez One of my colleagues who you probably have stumbled upon before, Ted Stanton, recently participated in the 2011 Dachis Social Business Summit. The summit, sponsored by IBM, occurred in 4 different places worldwide: Austin, London, Singapore, and Sydney. I talked about the summit last month when I highlighted Rawn Shah's presentation.
I also wanted to take the time and highlight Ted's presentation which he recently shared with me. In Ted's session he covers the IBM's Journey to Becoming a Soc [read] Keywords: ibm
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