Fantastic reading list

These are Jonny’s favourites, the manager over at the Oxford Street Waterstones. And it is an awesome list:

9780007141340 CHRISTIE, AGATHA - MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD
9780007242290 BALLARD, J.G. - COMPLETE SHORT STORIES
9780007247172 O’BRIEN, FLANN - THIRD POLICEMAN, THE
9780099430896 CALVINO, ITALO - IF ON A WINTER’S NIGHT A TRAVELLER
9780099540656 GRASS, GUNTER - TIN DRUM, THE
9780099842606 VONNEGUT, KURT - BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS
9780140443929 HOFFMANN, E.T.A. - TALES OF HOFFMANN
9780141031255 CHESTERTON, G.K. - MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY, THE
9780141180939 BARTHELME, DONALD - SIXTY STORIES
9780141184845 BORGES, JORGE LUIS - LABYRINTHS
9780141185262 NABOKOV, VLADIMIR - PALE FIRE

9780141439778 STERNE, LAURENCE - LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN
9780141441986 WELLS, H.G. - COUNTRY OF THE BLIND AND OTHER STORIES
9780715637715 KHARMS, DANIIL - TODAY I WROTE NOTHING
9780803296091 VIAN, BORIS - BLUES FOR A BLACK CAT AND OTHER STORIES
9780811218788 AIRA, CESAR - LITERARY CONFERENCE
9781564782113 MARKSON, DAVID - WITTGENSTEIN’S MISTRESS
9781590170519 COLLIER, JOHN - FANCIES AND GOODNIGHTS
9781590170571 BIOY-CASARES, ADOLFO - THE INVENTION OF MOREL
9781590173190 KRZHIZHANOVSKY, SIGIZMUND - MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE
9781841959283 BUZZATI, DINO - TARTAR STEPPE, THE
9781846590344 KARINTHY, FERENC - METROPOLE

9781847490735 QUENEAU, RAYMOND - EXERCISES IN STYLE
9781878972071 JARRY, ALFRED - EXPLOITS AND OPINIONS DR. FAUSTROLL, PATAPHYSICIAN

where are the Collaboration Tools now?

I’ve always been interested in collaboration as a working practice and collaboration tools – going right back to when I worked at Ernst & Young and was getting involved in all of the emergent Knowledge Management tools of the time. The knowledge-sharing and tracking aspects were great, but without the ability to actively build on that knowledge as a group I was convinced it would soon become stagnant and outdated. And that is indeed what was largely happening – there were few easy ways to keep information up-to-date, so that everything became a file-keeping system more than anything else.

The collaboration tools at the time were largely around virtual project management platforms like Groove, multi-location video-conferencing tools, and Group IM chats….  In some ways very little has changed, but new players have vastly improved the quality and spread of the tools. Skype for example!

I spent a lot of time exploring these tools, and used Groove the most frequently. It was a really nice platform, quite intuitive to use. But it got snapped up by Microsoft (along with Ray Ozzie , whose brain-child it was) and will soon be renamed Microsoft Workspace. It will certainly be interesting to see it become part of the Office Suite, and presumably it will build on a lot of the good stuff within MS Project, but I can’t help wondering how much of its potential has already been killed of by MS Corporate Think. They’ve kept the co-authoring aspects within the Sharepoint, which is very useful. And there is a help community around it, but it doesn’t look like they are pulling in any kind of true community support. Mind you I haven’t delved too deeply.

I don’t meant to turn this into a Big Bad MS rant, but the pattern of lovely little technologies getting killed off when acquired into huge corporates with lots of legacy products,  is just too blatantly evident to not point a wagging finger at from time to time. And of course there is the me-too aspect to trying to match the tools that Google has been making available which support virtual project teams – the benefit of the Corporate Office Suite approach may be that the MS tools are much better integrated into a flow of functionalities with a good dashboard on top. Google stuff just doesn’t flow. (Ok, maybe that’s what Wave is trying to address - I’ll have to check that out more fully News just in: Google is shutting down Wave.)

It has been a long time since my first foray into discovering these tools, but I’m going to be brushing the dust off that this month as I work on my latest project. As I discover cool new tools to use, I’ll be posting various notes here. Probably more of a repository for myself than any particularly interesting commentary that will add value to others’ search for such tools, but you never know!

over and out.

Contact Me

I can be followed on Twitter @MobileMaggie

You can connect with me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/margaretgold

You can usually find me out at Mobile Monday London events

Or you can send me a note at margaret at gold-mobileinnovation dot co dot uk

…here we go

I always felt a bit like the shoe-makers children going barefoot, not having a website – although I’ve had many attempts at blogging, I never had the discipline or burning urge to write which is required.

This one however serves a different purpose, it is to give people who are interested in working together with me a quick way to see the kinds of work that I’ve done, and the kinds of things I’m interested in.