Will Kelly

WWD Post: Access Office Live Workspace or SharePoint from Office 2008 Mac

Microsoft collaboration software is the typical corporate tool of choice, which, by extension, means that the Windows version of Microsoft Office was the office productivity suite of choice. However, a recent update to Microsoft Office 2008 for the Mac now enables Mac users to access both Microsoft SharePoint sites and Office Live Workspace.

via webworkerdaily.com

WWD Post: 5 Web Office Considerations: Beyond the Buzz

Recently, we covered the release of the Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps Technical Preview. While it was great to get a first look at this release, it was even more interesting to pull back and read the flurry of blog postings, pundit pontifications, tweets and articles that were all over the web, ranging from those stating that this was the end of Microsoft Office, to those saying that Microsoft Office 2010 Web Apps is going to wipe Google Apps and Zoho off the map.

via webworkerdaily.com

I am a regular user of Google Docs (in fact I wrote this WWD post in Google Docs) and have experience supporting the roll out of Microsoft Office in a major government agency. Additionally, throughout my career, I've had to resolve a number of document publishing issues rooted in Microsoft Word and templates.

Web Office suites do have their place and are examples of innovation in my opinion. However, organizations have a lot of things to consider before implementing a Web Office solution that is beyond the current buzz surrounding these services.

WWD Post: Corporate Telecommuting: The H1N1 Virus Edition

News of a possible H1N1 virus, or “Swine Flu,” pandemic is causing many commercial firms and government agencies to examine their Continuity of Operations (COOP) plans so business can soldier on during the crisis. The threat of an H1N1 outbreak is even prompting the United States Centers for Disease Control to recommend that small businesses have telework and business continuity plans in place.

via webworkerdaily.com

My latest post to WebWorkerDaily was inspired by one too many discussions about how an organization can extend their infrastructure in short order to maintain a continuity of operations in the advent of an H1N1 virus outbreak.

WWD Post: When Evernote Meets Twitter

Along with the addition of collaboration features, Evernote now integrates with Twitter. My first reaction to this news was that Evernote was falling into the “me too” trap that some companies get into with social media, especially with Twitter.

via webworkerdaily.com

My latest WebWorkerDaily post went live today. It is the second time I've written about Evernote and look forward to seeing what else is coming from their product roadmap.

Social Media, Internal Communications, and the Enterprise

Social Media is becoming an increasing requirement for communications in the enterprise. Web Journal 2.0 recently had a great post on this very subject:

Social Media Inching Its Way into the Enterprise — Social software technologies are exposing the holes in corporate communication and collaboration and at times filling them before the enterprise can fully grasp and control the flow. In a new study released this week, user-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group found that many of the most successful social media initiatives on company intranets start as underground, grassroots efforts led by front-line workers, and which later are officially sanctioned by the enterprise.

Deciding On My Next Primary Desktop PC

I am still one of those writers who uses a desktop PC. Reason being is that I like the fact I can have a lot of hard disk, heavy duty processing power, and two large screen monitors. While I use a MacBook Pro as my other primary writing machine--nothing beats a large monitor for my eyes.

The Intersection of Social Media, the Web Office & Technical Writing

I've been spending some of my downtime contemplating the intersection of Social Media, Web Offices, and technical writing. These technological and platform changes are going to overwhelm the technical writers who have been doing their job the same day from when they fired up their first employer's PC on day 1 of their first job out of college.

WordPress and LinkedIn

LinkedIn is really pressing forward with the integration of third-party applications and Web services into their platform. All in all, this is a prudent move for LinkedIn to keep pace with social networking and to do the best to augment their platform.

Their integration with WordPress means LinkedIn users can tie into their WordPress site and have their latest posts  show up in their LinkedIn profile.

Random and Recent Projects

I've been in a real tinkering mode as of late. Perhaps it's because I reread my copy of the Lifehacker book at the pool over last weekend.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 showing some love to the Mac?

When I was writing my post about building the better corporate instant messaging deployment I was using my MacBook Pro. A Google search on Windows Live Messenger turned up this very Mac centric page about Microsoft Messenger: mac and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007:

Zoho Office for SharePoint Launches

Zoho recently made a very strategic move by launching Zoho Office for SharePoint because of SharePoint's growing dominance in the enterprise. It seems everybody I am speaking to about potential projects these days is using Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 for secure document collaboration inside their firewall.

Box.net on LinkedIn

I've written before on this blog about the convergence of social networking, online collaboration tools, and the Web Office.

LinkedIn, a business-focused social networking site is jumping into that fray by offering up integration to a free Box.net account. This is a great vehicle for posting writing samples (that are in the public domain) and even Word or PDF versions of resumes to make them accessible on LinkedIn.

My SharePoint Site Pet Peeves

Through some previous contracts I've gained experience interacting with an administering SharePoint sites including managing document libraries, user access, creating lists and other site elements. In fact, I believe that today's technical writer needs to be fluent in SharePoint site administration.

During this time, I've inherited some SharePoint sites that made my job harder versus making me more productive.

Google Apps Sync Disables Outlook Desktop Search

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook disables Microsoft Desktop Search according to recent news reports. While early reports on the tool touted it as a simple way to migrate from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps the fact that the application breaks Microsoft Desktop Search is a major blow to this application in my opinion.

Building The Better Corporate Instant Messaging Deployment

While AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, and Yahoo Messenger have found a home on corporate desktops, often times an organization needs to have an enterprise class instant messaging solution like Office Communicator 2007 in place to ensure security and auditing of instant message that bounce around behind their firewall and extend out to customers and partners.

Building the Better Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 Deployment

During recent job interviews and meetings with prospective clients, the topic of my SharePoint experience came up more than once.  While I am a big proponent of Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007 in the enterprise, I am the first to admit that you shouldn't downplay the initial deployment because it can be a game changer and have a definite impact on business processes.

SlideShare Presentations and LinkedIn

Online presentation services and a professionally facing social media platform like LinkedIn are an ideal match as job seekers seek to differentiate themselves.

LinkedIn offers SlideShare Presentations as application add-in to augment your LinkedIn profile. SlideShare Presentations supports all the major presentation software formats including *.ppt, *.pps, *odp, keynote, *doc, and *.odt.

My Initial Impressions about the Palm Pre

I was a long time Palm customer dating back to the time that predates smartphones. In fact, I first started carrying a Palm PDA back when you could sit around a conference table and the meeting participants who were carrying a PDA where the exception rather than the rule.

Palm and I had a break up during the Treo 650 generation because they became irrelevant as they lagged behind in technology. When developments in the Treo product line grew stale, I became a Blackberry user.

Building The Better Office 2007 Migration

The Microsoft Office 2007 system seems to be catching on in my marketplace. During recent interviews and meetings with prospective clients, the topic of Microsoft Office 2007 and its many new features has been raised more than once. A lot of the Microsoft Office 2007 questions I've heard also deal with Microsoft interaction with Microsoft Office SharePoint Services 2007.

Organizations planning a migration from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007 shouldn't take the migration lightly. While it is easy to dismiss Microsoft Office as just Microsoft Office, it needs to be known that Microsoft Office can be the center of an end user's primary work and business processes.

Google Tasks and Google Calendar Integration

Google Calendar  is my calendar of choice for tracking my personal and professional lives because I switch back and forth between multiple Windows and Macintosh PCs during the course of my work day. This means that Google Calendar is always open in one or another of my browser tabs during most hours of my online/work time.

One of the many bright spots to come out of Google Labs is Google Tasks. While its initial integration with Gmail was uninspiring but Google made the right move and took the next and proper step to integrate Google Tasks with Google Calendar.