technology watch newsletter march08 v4

8/3/2019 Technology Watch Newsletter March08 V4

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/technology-watch-newsletter-march08-v4 1/10

Ingenuity Welcome – Johnson Controls Copyright 2008 ©

Technology WatchNewsletter 002March 2008

Knowledge Management& Enterprise Social Networking

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS NEWSLETTER IS ANILLUSTRATION OF SOME OF WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGIES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, BUT

DOES NOT REPORT ON ALL CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES. The workplace technologiespresented in this issue have been selected amongst a list of 30 different ideas and innovations.

Not all workplace technologies presented in this Newsletter are yet available on the market




Technology Watch

Newsletter 002Knowledge Management & Enterprise Social NetworkingMarch 2008

The role of Knowledge, Communication, Learning and Information Technology as resources insuccessful business and economy is fully recognised and embraced in organisations. Talk has nowturned to people – as a knowledge asset and individuals as knowledge workers.

According to Murray & Myers1

Knowledge Management (KM) can be defined as the “collection ofprocesses that govern the creation, dissemination and utilization of knowledge to fulfil organizational

objectives”. The approach of Kakabadse et al2

is more challenging as they argue "Knowledgemanagement is about exploitation whilst 'knowledge' is all about exploration." And that managingknowledge is more ‘multifaceted’ as managing the Intellectual Capital (IC) of an organisation and thedevelopment and transfer of the know-how. Lee & Yang

3proposed a simpler definition and argue that

KM is simply “a process that transforms information into knowledge” and innovation is a reinterpretationof this knowledge.

Knowledge is often used as a tool to stimulate performance gains and innovation and learning benefitsat an organisational level. With the rise of people connecting, creating and distributing user generatedcontent through social networking sites and knowledge management tools – it is predicted that self-organised, information production through social networks will challenge existing KM organisationalstructures based on hierarchy and control. The speculation is that the newest generation coming into

the workforce will force the change. Early clues that the new generation’s communication andcollaboration habits will not be seamlessly absorbed within organisations are the large numbers of

businesses banning access to social networking sites behind company firewalls4.

1 Murray, P. & A. Myers (1997) The facts about knowledge. Information Strategy, vol. 2, no. 7, pp 29-33

2 Kakabadse, N.K, Kakabadse, A. & A. Kouzmin (2003) Reviewing the knowledge management literature:

towards a taxonomy. Journal of knowledge management, vol. 7, no. 4, pp 75-91.

3 Lee, C-C & J. Yang (2000) Knowledge value chain. Journal of Management Development, vol. 19, no. 9, pp783-793.

4 The Guardian, Saturday 25.08.07




Connecting people to people within networks that exhibit trust, needs a mix of technology, peoplefactors, organisational commitment and employee support. KM and social networking is predominantlyabout people and their behaviour within the organisational structures.

Despite the predominantly negative response of businesses to social networking sites, informal socialnetworks have always existed in organisations but remained largely hidden. The emergence ofknowledge and social networking technologies now offers the possibility of making informal networksvisible. The future already shows how much the growth of web 3.0 will again bring another dimension tothe way we use, display and access data.

In this issue of TechWatch:

How to manage knowledge using technology and what technologies are available to support an

enterprise’s Knowledge Management strategy? This newsletter will provide you an overview ofkey technologies to support your business activities, including:

■ Widgets to personalise the web■ Web tool allowing the users to work seamlessly on and off-line■ Multidimensional cube, a new type of interactive search■ Intel, a new easy-to-use community based mashup tool■ Diigo to make browsing the web enjoyable, productive and interactive■ Paper tracking to tag, index and search electronic document formats■ Digital Pen captures what you write on paper■ The projection computer in your pocket

Behind the project:

• Marie Puybaraud, Director Facilities Innovation, EMEA, Johnson Controls

• Dom Sherry, VP M&A, Innovation & Strategy, EMEA, Johnson Controls

• Cedric Caeymaex, Principal Consultant WorkPlace Technologies, EMEA, Johnson Controls

• John Counsell, Principal Lecturer, UWE, UK

• Kjetil Kristensen, Principal Consultant, Kristensen Consulting, Norway

• Anne-Marie McEwan, Director of The Smart Work Company, UK

• Carmen Aguilera, Principal Consultant, ISOIN, Spain




Widgets enable the personalised webWidgets that speedily individualize your web-browsing experience

Widgets are, at their best, drag and drop objects that enhance or personalise the web-browsing experience.The Ad-blocker widget for Firefox has proved so successful that certain websites are now preventing accessto ‘paid for by advertising’ content by those using Firefox.

Repositories like Widgipedia, SpringWidgets, and Widgetbox contain thousands of Widgets. Widgets alsoinclude perhaps the tiniest nuggets of what is now being termed Software as a Service (SaaS).

Can we now regard the internet as a giant data centre, where a variety of firms compete to offer software asa service? A Forrester research report posted on the web in August 2007 states that “the impact Web 2.0will have on the way people work goes way beyond new collaboration tools. With Web 2.0 role-basedevolves into individualized.”

A similar tack is being taken by companies such as IBM. ITPro reports Ken Bisconti, vice president of Lotusmessaging "organisations are tired of the one-size-fits-all world of proprietary software and are demandingmore than search and simple e-mail capabilities to be productive at work."Sources:

www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

www.widgipedia.com

http://widgets.yahoo.com/

Application:

One Firefox widget selects and copies text from any webpage into your document, another allows downloadand local storage of You Tube and similar web videos. However whilst there is almost certainly a widget outthere which will just do as you wish, the usual caveats apply that you should consider whether by doing soyou risk breach of copyright!




Web working to go!Web work tool developers focus on enabling you to continue working seamlessly on and off-line…

Google and other web providers aim to deliver a trouble free transition from on-line to off-line and back,whilst using their web-server based word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and other applications.This sector is now termed Rich Internet Applications (RIA). It’s claimed that Microsoft and Adobe also seethe future lying in interconnected desktop and web applications.

Google Gears, in collaboration with Firefox, is intended to enable web applications to work off-line. Microsofthave recently entered this field and launched Silverlight with the intention of ‘altering forever the way weinteract with internet apps and databases’.

Adobe have Flex 2 and Flash Professional 9 as tools that support

RIA, although Flex is closer to Silverlight than is Flash, and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for off lineapplications. Sun Microsystems may also still seek to develop a more flexible Java via JavaFX.

http://silverlight.nethttp://code.google.com

Application:The general idea is that the browser will change from a passive display of web content where to see updates

the whole page has to be refreshed, to a truly active on-line experience. This will enable users to modifyelements dynamically as a desktop application. It will be persistent so it can be used off-line and re-synchronised next time you connect on-line.

New Disruptive Approach to Searching: Multi-dimensional CubeA new type of interactive search makes expert search capabilities available for novice users

Do you ever get tired of narrowing down a web search, to find exactly what you are looking for? Here isthe solution. Although most search engines have powerful search capabilities, these are often notaccessible for the average user. They require detailed search information, Boolean search strings or aseries of complex operations. The company Superaktiv has developed a search technology, based on aconcept called ‘multidimensional cube’, where all search objects have certain attributes or tags. Thisconcept dramatically simplifies powerful search functions for expert users and novices alike. Currently,corporations use similar technologies for even more sophisticated systems.

Application:With Superaktiv search technology, based on multi-dimensional cube concepts, all knowledge workerscan get access to high-performance searchcapabilities, previously only available to people withprofessional expertise in handling and navigatinglarge information and data repositories. A simpleclick sequence narrows down large amounts ofdata into a few manageable, high-accuracy hits.

Sources:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOLAP




Intel ‘mashups’ promise to make your web-browser into your notebookIntel’s new easy to use community based mashup tool to make the world your white board…

Intel is reported to have demonstrated a new, easy to use, community based mashup tool at the IntelDeveloper Forum on 20 September 2007. The tool promises to allow you to make personal mixes ofwebpages, and annotate or comment on them. The comments are stored on a web-server, so can beaccessed again or shared with others.

Intel’s new mashup tool claims to eliminate the need for coding, relying on users to tag the information on aweb page, so that matching categories can be combined. As you browse the web, the Mash Maker toolbarwill list mashups that might be useful for the current page. The user can click on one of these links to applyor remove it from the web-page. With the annotate mashup the user can attach a personal note to any itemwith a URL. The notes are stored persistently on the server, so your annotation will still be there if you viewthe same item again in the future.

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/150

5.htm

http://mashmaker.intel.com/

Application:Intel claims their tool also allows users to combinewebpages and/or selected webpage contenttogether into a single unified display. “One of themost common ways to combine pages is usingwhat people in the databases world call a join,except they do it with standard tables, and Intel doit with web sites. Use copy and paste to merge thepages as usual, but choose ‘select a particular row’from the paste dialog to specify the criteria bywhich data is matched.”

Sources:View Intel Mash Maker: Videos and ExampleMashups athttp://softwarecommunity.intel.com/articles/eng/1505.

htm




DiigoDiigo makes browsing the web enjoyable, productive and interactive

Diigo is a new Web 2.0 application that transforms the way users interact with web content in a trulycollaborative way.

The name ‘Diigo’ is an abbreviation for ‘Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff’. It representsan integrated suite of on-line research and social tools that transforms the web into a writable medium forinteractive knowledge sharing and for connecting ideas. Diigo enables seamless book-marking, highlighting,clipping, sharing, discussions and retrieval of information to deliver a new level of productivity whenbrowsing the web. Diigo Groups offers a new way for collaborative research; Diigo Community enhancesinformation discovery and social connections; and innovative annotation functionalities delivers on-the-pageinteraction and community capabilities to any website without any client-side installation.

Image: Diigo Image: Diigo

Application:Among many advanced features, Diigo lets youhighlight and annotate web pages directly, and youcan also see the comments and interests of otherpeople, making browsing the web a truly interactiveexperience. The system also allows you to searchfor the highlighted words on the web with any of thefour search engines, search for highlighted terms infour social bookmarking systems, and do a blogsearch. It improves both effectiveness andefficiency when working on the web.

Sources:http://www.diigo.com/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/08/02/diigo-is-a-research-tool-that-rocks/

Paper TrackingHave you ever been frustrated because you could not find a specific document, report or paperdrawing?

Electronic document formats can be tagged, indexed and searched – RFID (Radio Frequency ID) enablethis also for paper formats. IPR (Intellectual Property Right) regulations and sector preferences sometimesfavour paper formats over electronic formats. RFID tags with simple attributes can be attached to importantdocuments, to aid physical workspace navigation and extend electronic format functionalities to paperformats, including tagging, indexing and searching.

This way, knowledge workers can easily locate that specific piece of information that does not exist inelectronic format. The Rfid2doc concept developed by the ECOSPACE project is capable of automaticrecognition of a physical, printed document. This allows the user to gather extended information regarding

the document itself (e.g. the URL of the digital version of the document) and the history/evolution of thedocument before and after it has been printed (e.g. available versions, change history, etc.).




Image: ECOSPACE

Application:Any company which uses paper formats(documents, reference works, drawings, etc.) suchas architecture, construction and academicdisciplines can benefit from this. Application areasinclude simplified access to drawings, documents, journals, paper proceedings, books, brochures,reference manuals and historical documents.

Sources:http://www.ip-ecospace.orghttp://www.ami-communities.eu/wiki/ECOSPACE_Newsletter_No_4#RFID2Doc

Capture everything you write on paper with a digital penNew digital pen technology allows efficient data capture in a range of different application areas

Advanced pattern recognition allows efficient digital processing of forms and computerization of text anddrawings. Many people consider the old pen and pad to be superior for note taking in meetings, and forfilling in forms etc, especially when drawings and diagrams are involved. Still, computer forms are farsuperior when it comes to processing data. New interactive pen technologies can bridge this gap andcombine the efficient data capture of pen-based input with the efficiency of processing digital information.

Image: Digitalpenn AS Image: Digitalpenn AS

Application:Many sectors could benefit from this type of high-

performance data capture with simple means.Current applications include health, inspection,electro, construction, engineering, sales, retail, andfinance.

The company Digitalpenn AS is a system integratorof data capturing/ forms processing solutions. This

unique solution is based on Anoto Functionality – ade facto standard for digital pen and paper.

Sources:http://www.digitalpenn.no




Looking to the Future:

The projection computer in your pocket The ‘always with you’ smart phone is capable of wider and more versatile use….

The Nokia N93 and N95 Smartphones can already be linked to a foldup wireless keyboard, and to anynearby projector or TV display using TV-Out cables supplied in the box. These displays deliver a significantlyhigher resolution than on the phones’ own tiny screens. It’s claimed to be good enough to offer the potentialfor being used as an ad-hoc mid range video conferencing system, almost anytime anywhere.

However, looking forward a year or so, Microvision, a Redmond, WA, US company, has recently signed withMotorola to produce their Picovision mobile projection system. Their PicoP is a sugar cube sized mobilecolour projector small enough to fit inside a mobile phone casing. It is powerful enough to project a laptopscreen sized display on a wall close to the phone, or perhaps a larger but still acceptable display at adistance of about 1.5m (5’).

Source:

www.symbian-freak.com/news/007/02/n95_tv_out.htm

www.allaboutsymbian.com/features/item/TV_Out_on_the_Nokia_N95-Part_1_Will_the_smartphone_eat_the_PC.php

www.microvision.com

Application:Add a wireless (Bluetooth) foldup keyboard to your projection equipped smart phone for it to truly come intoits own as an ‘always with you’ lowest common denominator for computing and conferencing on the move.With an 8 gigabyte memory N95 data storage is also less of an issue. (This is similar in capacity to the AppleiPhone and the Sony Ericsson W960i). The 8Gb Nokia N95 is now in the stores (from 0

2in the UK).

Samsung and Toshiba are currently working on 64 gigabyte memory for phones and similar devices,predicted for release in 2009.

Microvision is also working on a stand-alone mobile projector accessory. “The PicoP accessory projector isexpected to be the size of today's feature-rich cell phones. It will provide consumers with a 'large screenviewing experience' by projecting multimedia content from their mobile phones and other devices”.




The Technology Watch newsletter informs JCI Global WorkPlace Solutions and our customers on thetechnological changes they should expect, the potential impact of these changes on the workplace andhow these changes will affect the business, the users, and overall our industry.

Enter any workplace today and you will find technology at the core of its operations. Whether it’s anoffice or industrial environment - wireless networking, automation, instant messaging and virtualmeetings are all playing a fundamental role in transforming how business is conducted globally.

Moving forward, technologies will create a faster support infrastructure, more flexible workplaces thatenable businesses to meet the evolving demands from their customers.

Businesses are increasingly investing in innovative real estate tools so they can leverage maximumstrategic advantage out of their property portfolios. Dynamic web-based tools provide completetransparency of how space is being used, what inefficiencies exist and where there is potential tomaximise portfolio efficiency and workforce productivity. What was once a pen and paper analysis, isnow a highly sophisticated operation, giving instantaneous data. This allows businesses to evaluate theperformance of an expanding property portfolio, and consistently manage it across internationalborders, cultures and languages.

The objective of this Technology Watch newsletter is to keep our business and customers informedabout any new developments and innovation in technology and how these new products and solutionsmay be applied in our businesses.

For further enquiries, please contact:

Dr. Marie PuybaraudDirector Global WorkPlace InnovationJohnson Controls Global WorkPlace Solutions+44 (0) 7966 563 167Park West One, Farnborough Aerospace Centre2 Woodside RoadFarnborough, GU14 6XR - UK

VISIT OUR GLOBAL WORKPLACE INNOVATION WEBSITE:http://www.globalworkplaceinnovation.co.uk

technology watch newsletter march08 v4

Documents