If you're like me, you've got data all spread out across the place on different machines (PC and Mac), smartphones and in the cloud. And you probably spend a lot of time trying to synchronise data, emails, contacts, appointments, bookmarks, browser state, RSS subs, documents, and everything else across all these devices, and invariably, when you actually need something important it's somewhere else. And of course, keeping all this stuff backed up is a nightmare - either it doesn't get backed up, or you end up with multiple copies of everything in several different places, with no sense of which is the canonical version. So, here's a list of the tools I find pretty essential to get over some of these problems.

• Gmail - sort of obvious, like.
• Foldershare - Groove's younger, more lightweight, and generally easier to use cousin. I've just realised that it has an OS X client as well, which means that you can transparently synchronise your files across your various PCs and Macs, and never lose those important documents again.
• Jungledisk - backup to Amazon's S3.
• Nokia N73 on 3's XSeries. Flat rate web access, and a pretty decent browser.
• OS X iSync - keeps contacts and events on your phone and mobile synced up. You'll need to do a little work to get your N73 hooked up - check here for a nice blog post, and here for the plugin.
• Lifeblog - syncing up pictures and SMS's between phone and PC.

So, basic strategy is to use Foldershare to keep your important bits sychronised and distributed across all your computers. Use Jungledisk on one computer to back everything up to S3. If there's stuff you don't want to distribute across all your computers just run Jungledisk and back up those particular bits to a separate bucket. Starting out, there will be an inevitable big hit as everything synchronises and gets backed up - but after that you can just let it all transparently tick over in the background, in the knowledge that as long as you ensure that you save everything into your synchronised folders, it will be safe and secure - that's gotta be good :) [tags]mobile, synchronise, synchronize, foldershare, jungledisk, backup, onlinebackup, n73, isync, lifeblog[/tags]

Jeffrey Walker, the President of Atlassian Software, wonders if Razorfish should have started with MediaWiki as the base for their new enterprise wiki.

It strikes me that if Razorfish invested all this effort and money, then the question needs to be asked: Is Mediawiki an enterprise wiki? Certainly not out of the box. One full-time intern and two part-time developers is at least $50-100K for one year! Probably the latter number. Mediawiki in this instance became an enterprise wiki but only after considerable work.

Shiv Singh, Razorfish's Enterprise Solutions lead, responds:

... Our wiki did not take a full year to build and the part-time developers were bench resources. In other words, it did not cost us $100,000 as Jeffery implied. Furthermore, enterprise 2.0 as coined by Andrew McFee is not about cost but about what the software does for its users and how they shape the software themselves.

I commented on his blog, but thought I'd post here as well:

Shiv - not sure I agree with you... I think you're lucky (or unlucky) in having bench resource available - a lot of companies aren't in that situation and have a constant battle to get developer time. So, faced with that situation - what is the cost of having 2 developers available, part time, to develop and look after your mediawiki instance over 18 months ? Secondly, would spending the relatively small amount on an unlimited license for Confluence ($8,000) or Socialtext, and getting out of the box AD integration, search and granular permissioning, represent better value than developing it from scratch ? Also, developing inhouse commits you to a codebase that with an audience of just yourselves (until you release it out to the community ?).

I should disclose that the company I work for - Headshift - does a lot of work with Confluence. [tags]confluence, atlassian, wiki, mediawiki, socialsoftware, enterprise, enterprise2.0 [/tags]

Irene Khan, the Secretary General of Amnesty International, is blogging from the World Economic Forum at Davos. I was involved in setting up the blog, together with my colleagues at Headshift - and it's something I'm particularly proud of - I hope people read her blog, and think about what she is saying. From her latest post - Terrorism: A comprehensive response, or an opportunity missed?

Across the world, governments are actively undermining human rights in the name of the fight against terrorism. How far has this process of erosion actually inflamed terrorism, rather than staunching it – particularly given that these measures have all too often targeted and discriminated against those very communities whose support is needed to fight terrorism?

[tags]amnestyinternational, davos, davos07, humanrights, irenekhan[/tags]

We at Headshift are on the look out for a few good people to help us deliver some really exciting projects during 2007. Lee sums up what we're looking for in this post on the Headshift blog:

• social software consultants
• project managers and implementors (especially with experience in deploying social software)
• designers
• developers (Cold Fusion, LAMP, Ruby, .Net and Sharepoint)

You need to be someone who is passionate about social software and its benefits. You don't have to be an expert in social software (although the more experience the better), but you need to have a good record of getting things done, and certainly be adaptable.

In return you get to work at the cutting edge of social software deployment, on a variety of projects both inside and outside the firewall (and sometimes both !).

We're in a great location, suits are not compulsory, and you get to set up your machine the way you want it ! Read Lee's post, and send in your application to us.

[tags]headshift, jobs, recruitment[/tags]

Well, the last 3 or 4 months have just whizzed by in a bizarre blur. Illness, lots of work, travel, Twitter, and a loss of my blogging voice have conspired to keep this blog empty of all but the odd link from del.icio.us, and no matter what anyone says, and even if I do try and add quick one line descriptions (a la Tom Coates), automatically posting del.icio.us links is not really blogging.

Anyway, I'm back, although still struggling to find anything really interesting to blog about - I wonder if my blogging spark is slowly fading away. I get sequentially (and sometimes simultaneously) inspired by and infuriated with the blogosphere, and especially irritated with the host of expert Web2.0 and Enterprise2.0 commentators that have suddenly sprung up around the fringes, with seemingly little experience but lots to say. One thing I have realised in my few months at Headshift, is that we're all still learning here, trying to make sense of these tools and how they can help shift from centralised to more distributed cultures, and help harness the inherent collective intelligence that is present in most organisations. There is no one solution to rule them all (and that road leads to the dark side of enterprise CRMs and ERPs), and we have to always pay attention to the most important ingredient in these systems, and that's the people.

Right..more regular posting for a while for sure. It feels good to be back !

[tags]socialsoftware, enterprise2.0, blogging[/tags]

ok...i tried to resist but have failed. twitter is fun.

[tags]twitter, socialnetworks, im, txt, social, web20, web2.0[/tags]