As an invite to an international marketing congress, the following intro made an impression on me: “marketing has become blatantly intrusive, bombarding the retinae of consumers with a salvo of mixed messages that leave little or no impact.” Wow, I thought, that’s a way woo your audience. But what really first caught my eye though is the theme of this congress: “Return on Relevance.”

That same afternoon, I happened to stumble upon an article in ACM Magazine, about the concept of LifeLogging. Both things combined provided food for thought…and for this post. Read further >

In my last post, It’s All in the Play – Improving User Engagement Through Social Gaming, I looked briefly at the rapidly growing popularity of social gaming. Now let’s take a look at the underlying principles of their design and examine how they potentially can be translated into products aimed at professional markets. Read further >

In my previous post I introduced a concept of user-centric identity for online applications. Here I would like to introduce a solution to the problem that is already pretty much adopted by the industry: the OpenID standard. But let’s start with the question: Why do we care? Read further >

Thanksgiving is a uniquely American tradition. This year, we count among our many blessings the fact that the most contentious, most polarizing, most dramatic election season is now over. Read further >

As I have done most years since 1995, last week I attended the AMIA medical informatics conference in Washington, DC. Many of the presentations this year focused on methods to deliver clinical decision support (CDS) via web services. This approach differs from the somewhat more traditional approach of implementing CDS within each health care facility’s local environment. Read further >

I have always been interested in how general trends and consumption patterns can provide insights to opportunities that can be extended into our markets. In particular, understanding Facebook’s direction in how to best “own and manage” communities provides some of the most compelling insights in terms of the future of social media in product design. Their site and business models provide a wealth of ideas and serves as an ongoing source of inspiration for new product features and models that could be adapted for professional markets. Read further >

I borrowed the part of the title from a comment that Jerry Justice made on my last post. I think he and others that commented made some excellent points regarding where the IT professional stands within the firm. Those that lead will be accepted at the table as partners and principles while those that regard their positions as only being there to provide technical assistance will always be looked upon as support personnel. Read further >

Speaking about usability testing, we generally see it as a valuable, but expensive and time consuming, task. Is it always the case? Can we improve our web applications – and our customer satisfaction – adopting a simple do-it-yourself approach? Read further >

The Windows operating system and the various software bundles of Outlook, Word, PowerPoint & Excel sold as Microsoft Office continue to dominate the desktops of tax, legal & regulatory professionals globally. The software is either pre-installed on the hardware or installed by IT personnel. Microsoft does not entirely control the hardware, the PC’s and laptops, on which the software is installed. That lack of control over the hardware introduces some inconvenience in the process of purchasing and installing software. The model for a software purchase is to go to a store and purchase packaged software that is available on a CD-ROM or DVD. Updates typically are delivered over the Web. Read further >

“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don’t know.” Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Cloud computing is one of today’s hottest technology topics. If you’re in the technology business, you really don’t have to try too hard to hear the term. I even heard the phrase “to the cloud” in an advertisement for Microsoft Windows while I was watching a football game this past weekend! Read further >