Friday, June 21, 2002

John Robb. How to boost employee productivity by using a news aggregator. [klogs] A small change in the way we work could shave 45 minutes off of the average workday.  That small change is to use a news aggregator to get news instead of gathering it by hand.  Applied across a 200 person company, that 45 minutes of savings could be worth $1,650,000 a year.  The wild part is that the cost to implement this is only $8,000 and requires little if any support from the IT department.  If we are going to really boost productivity, we are going to need to focus on those improvements that provide the most bang for the buck.   Small changes in work habits can have amazing results.  To get at these nuggets, companies need to spend time really watching what people do with their time.  If they did, they would find that much of the time they spend is wasted on simple tasks that could easily be automated.  Other things to focus on: 1) Auto-categorization of e-mail. 2) Integrated search (desktop, LAN, K-Logs, Web) with all proprietary doc formats revealed as HTML. 3) Voice mail on the desktop PC.  4) Accurate K-Logging of current activities:  status, thinking, plans, projects, etc. 5) Online presentations, to-do lists, project plans via outlines.  6) K-Log personal portals that integrate all connection info (e-mail, IM, phone, address, bio, resume, picture). Very simple stuff can yield big results. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub [Slashdot]

Rusty at K5 pioneers the non-profit model for collaborative Websites. Not a bad way to make a salary to do something you love to do. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Just a reminder.  The Google-it macro for Radio (that lets readers search Google for the titles to your weblog posts) has been out for a couple months (just in case you missed it).  Pretty much cut and paste simple. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Hey, thanks.  I keep getting success stories from companies that are using UserLand's Manila (usually with some light consulting time) to implement projects.  They opted for Manila instead of expensive solutions from Vignette, Interwoven, and Microsoft due to price and performance factors.  Reports are  that their sites have handled millions of visits without a glitch, took a small fraction of the time estimated to build them, and cost 1/10 the expected budget.  This is a perfect new economy story. On top of that, ongoing mx of the site is much less due to end-user control of the editing process (no need for special training or expensive designers to do text, picture, document additions/deletions).   One found that they decentralize editing of a complex set of directories using Radio's outliner and Manila in combination. I also have a couple of consultants that are reselling Manila hand over fist because it allows them to radically underbid competitors using the more expensive systems or open source. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]