Qantas Airways: a perfect storm for IT failure? | An article on failed IT projects at Qantas, it reads like a check list of of elementary mistakes that such projects are prone to – lack of proper project scoping and inadequate end-user involvement seem to be at the fore.
Google Sites | It’s live and making news.
Edit: I’ve been playing around with it and I have to say it’s kindda awesome – especially when taken as part of the Apps package . Someone recently spoke to me about rationalising the work-flow of his medium-sized, family owned business. Google apps, knowledge management and collaborative tools were part of this discussion. Using Google Sites as a product and client database would be a great solution for the help desk and sales team.
Social Media and Web 2.0 | A critical look at the way some (most?) business are approaching Web 2.0 and their web channel strategy. One part of it struck a particularly strong note with me:
“A tool-centric approach. It’s just so tempting to want to “build community around the brand” using one of the suite of over-hyped tools available today. Ratings, reviews, comment threads, wikis, discussion, chat, RSS, SMS, IM, blogs, vlogs, moblogs, podcasts, video podcasts, collective intelligence, affinity recommendations, prediction markets, and on and on. None of these is really community. The social Web is comprised of people, relationships among people, and the things people create and share. Marketers must think strategically about their offerings, not be swayed by the purveyors of technology “solutions.”"
Amen to that!
The Social Technographics Ladder | It’s become a very useful concept for a project I’m working on. I’m trying to map a sequence of actions to be initiated for each step on on the Ladder of Participation. A very basic example would be highlight the product review section to “collectors” in order to make them “critics”. It’s helping the admin staff of a site with how best to push features to users in a structured and coherent manner and do so in a manner that would benefit the end-user.
Design and the Elastic Mind | From the Museum of Modern Art. This is worth taking a look at for two reasons – the site design and the exhibitions themselves. I haven’t quite made my mind up about the design. My initial thought is that it falls under the category of being a one-off, designed to convey the spirit of the content. I wouldn’t recommend it for more conventional purposes.
The Thoughtful SEO’s manifesto / The Brash SEO’s Antifesto | Two articles, one in response to the other, which address some key SEO techniques.
