I must confess that I am a voracious reader. I regularly read e-mails and e-newsletters on my BlackBerry, as do many other smart phone users. I recently started reading books on the device – something I never expected to do – and I was pleasantly surprised by the experience. While waiting for a delayed flight, I discovered that I didn’t have any traditional reading material with me and I didn’t want to buy any. I had heard about Kobo e-book reader for mobile devices and I thought this would be a good time to try it.

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I love beta versions. They give you a ‘future today’ feeling at a low cost of having to deal with bugs from time to time. Some days ago, I downloaded the new Firefox Beta. It has many cool features, a fresh new look, it works really, really fast (try for yourself), but the one feature that drew my attention was ‘Panorama.’

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It is clear from speaking with clients and other thought leaders that there is a trend in many organizations to do a better job of putting data to work. Recent articles have sited selecting and integrating Data Analytics and Business Intelligence tools as one of the top priorities of many CIOs.

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Searching multilingual content poses interesting challenges for both customers and publishers.  Consider the approach of Google.  It automatically detects the customer’s location based on IP addresses, and selects a user-interface language accordingly.  For example, even though I am English-speaking, I happen to be writing this from Italy.

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As in all industries, the “new normal” in the legal economy requires that we do more with less. A recent report from the global law firm Eversheds found that 90% of general counsel were under internal pressure to provide better value, efficiency, and cost reductions, and 60% had already reduced their overall external legal spend. In another sign of the times, the Hildebrandt International Law Department Survey reports that, increasingly, law departments are adopting fee arrangements other than the billable hour to better align the interest of the firm and corporation.

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Tax, legal and regulatory professionals traditionally have interacted with text assets:  books provide text and professionals submit text searches to search engines for answers to their questions.  Video and audio assets, however, can supplement or even replace text assets.  There are several audios and videos relevant to tax, legal and regulatory professionals both from Wolters Kluwer and the Web, both for free and for a fee. Video and audio provide many types of value.  They can provide deeper insight into legislative history.  They can provide updates to text content.  They can convey mood and nuances that are not easily communicated in text.  Consider the following examples: Read further >

Tax, legal and regulatory professionals traditionally have focused on text information. That has always included graphical information. Tax rates appear in tables; line charts, bar charts, pie charts and photographs make the text come to life. Flow charts show processes for professionals to follow to help their clients comply with relevant laws. In today’s IntelliConnect, icons draw customers’ attention to editorially-created compliance tips, planning notes, observations, related interactive research aids, and caution notes. But more is possible.

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The demand for accountants in China is growing rapidly, alongside China’s economy. This shortage of accounting talent is one of the big problems the Chinese government is currently trying to tackle. I recently visited the continuing education and editorial departments of the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants (CICPA) to find out more about their strategy to address this.

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At the 2010 China CFO Forum’s roundtable discussion, which was organized by Wolters Kluwer China, moderator Zhao Ye, Technical Manager of ACCA identified that a CFO could be seen as a politician, a value adding expert, a fireman, a fraud preventer, a great player, a sway master, a computer expert and a scapegoat.

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Recently I wrote about my experience of being part of a panel presentation on mobile strategies at the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s annual meeting that occurred in San Francisco in June.  Two days ago I received two questions from one of the scholarly publishers in the audience. The first question was for a copy of the presentation, which you can link to here; The second question was about one of the statements I had made about some of our academic customers.

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