Social Network Aggregation (Pull yourself together with Netvibes) | Knowledge Management

“What is Ginger?” you may ask. It’s the new and improved release of Netvibes (the last release was called Coriander - there’s a spice theme going on here).

What is Netvibes? It’s an “ajax-based personalized [internet] start page much like Pageflakes, My Yahoo!, iGoogle, and Microsoft Live.” (see Wikipedia) It lets you bring in customized widgets and all types of other feeds or streams of information - everything from RSS news feeds to various web applications. The new release embraces social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. Last night, I tweeted from Ginger. I know that doesn’t sound good.

The Netvibes folks probably say it best: it’s a

“dashboard that’s updated live directly from all your favorite Web services (email, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, widgets) and media content (blogs, podcasts, video). Everything you enjoy on the Web, available at a glance, all in one place — spend less time surfing and logging in from site to site and more time enjoying your web, your way.”

As Doug at KM Space noted, this is about aggregating yourself (or your stuff) - and this type of thing can be used inside the enterprise. Ginger is yet another way to help you aggregate your stuff - to bring all of these streams into one place to access (and use) the various web applications via widgets.

The killer thing is that Ginger gives you a personal space and a public space - the public space is called your “universe” - and it’s there for all of your Facebook friends, LinkedIn contacts, Twitter followers (and anyone else you want) to see. There are also universes by companies and news providers, like Slate, USA Today, and others.

In addition to the private and public aspects of Ginger, you can see and “follow” friends’ activities.

I could go on and on, but your best bet: check it out here. Or see what Ars Technica had to say about it.

Here’s a link to the LawyerKM Netvibes Universe. It’s still in its infancy, but includes a feed of the LawyerKM blog, a KM blog search feed, the LawyerKM Twitter feed, and a wall on which you can write. I’m not crazy about the color, which I’ll likely change.

Please add LawyerKM as a friend. Use the Contacts tab at the top of the screen, search for “LawyerKM” and click the icon. On the following screen, click the “Add Friend” button.

Will I replace my iGoogle home page with Netvibes’ new Ginger? Not sure yet. But iGoogle, you’d better get in this game. You’ve been warned.

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management & Technology for Lawyers and Law Firms

To Blog or Not to Blog Inside Your Law Firm. That is… | Knowledge Management

When law firms blog to the world, it’s marketing, really.  Sheppard Mullin has some great blogs (and a sharp-as-hell web site).  So does K&L Gates.  Just Google “ediscovery” or “electronic discovery” and see how effective law firm blog marketing can be.   (To read more about external law firm blogging, check out Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs)

But some firms are using blogs to communicate internally.  We love the idea because (in theory) it can help cut down on mass emails that contain general, non-urgent information.  Those periodic case law update emails are a good example.  Blogs are also great because (unlike email) they create an automatic, searchable, taggable archive of content.  So, if you need to find that blog post about that certain case law update from three months ago, you can search the blog rather than your Outlook folders (how many Outlook folders do you have?).   You can also bring new members of a department up to speed more quickly – “Check the blog…”  The result: a real KM tool - a place to store our collective knowledge for quick and easy retrieval.  What’s better than that? 

SharePoint, which is all the rage lately at Big Law for portal platforms, offers a blogging component.  Other solutions include WordPress, Movabletype, and Community Server.  There are others, of course, but for enterprise-class functionality, these seem to be the leaders.  Let us know if you know of others. 

Here is a good on-demand webinar called Enterprise 2.0 Using Social Media in the Workplace from SixApart (the people behind Moveabletype) and Forrester Research about internal blogging. 

So, Big Law… do you blog (internally)?  

We see it this way: In a few years, external blogs will be as common at law firms as law firm web sites are today. Internal blogs will be as common as email or electronic newsletters are today.  While neither will likely soon replace their respective analogues, nobody is going to be asking: “what’s a blog?” 

LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers and Law Firms

Autonomy to supply IDOL software for Microsoft’s SharePoint Server 2007

Autonomy announced that it is delivering its Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) to customers of Microsoft’s SharePoint Server 2007.

 LawyerKM :: Knowledge Management for Lawyers