Jeff's Zone 2

New Bill.com Blog

We are starting a blog for Bill.com.... those of you who are interested, check it out and join the conversation!

NIce writeup on off premise vs on premise financial apps

Nice article by Randy Johnston of K2 Enterprises  that discusses Off premise vs. on premise financial applications. 

Upcoming webinar from WebCPA

Check out the upcoming webinar from WebCPA "One Step Closer To Paperless: Online Accounts Payable Solutions", Friday, November 14 at 12pm EST. 

Social Network Proliferation

Irwin Lazar commented on the recent influx of invitations to link to people on a new social network, Spock. I couldn't agree more. As soon as I got the emails I was turned off by the tone, and after visiting the site I couldn't figure out how this would do anything but further clog my inbox.

Right now I utilize three social networks: Facebook, Plaxo, and LinkedIn. In my view they serve distinct purposes and command different levels of attention.

Because I view these sites differently, I am trying to be very careful about how I view a "relationship" (or, friend). When Plaxo first introduced their "Plaxo Pulse" service, I noticed a massive increase in the number of requests to link to people ,similar to the "race" we have all seen by some people on LinkedIn to create massive relationship lists. While I like the new Plaxo Pulse service, I have avoided createing too many relationships on it because I use it differently than LinkedIn.

Here is a quick summary of how I use these sites and what to expect if you invite me to connect:

1. LinkedIn: I find this very useful for finding contacts through existing relationships. And, contrary to the original intent of only establishing "trusted relationships", I do tend to link to people I barely know (and accept link requests from the same). At the end of the day, the larger the network the better the chance of meeting someone that might be a valuable relationship in the future. So, if you want to link to me in LinkedIn, by all means do so!

2. Plaxo: I think Plaxo's ability to keep my address book current is fantastic. I am also loving the new ability to create synch points and synchronize address books across machines and platforms. I literally keep my address book at work, my work cellphone, my home computer, a personal cellphone, a yahoo email, and a google email all in synch automatically. It is truly a great service and enormously helpful. However, when it comes to linking (connecting) using Plaxo Pulse I am a little more selective than with LinkedIn. Why? because it seems that when you connect to someone they get added to your address book (and then synched with every other address book). I suspect there is a way to manage that using synch groups but that is more trouble than I am willing to go to. Bottom line: when I get a connection request, if I don't know you well enough to have you on all of my address books (including my cellphone) I wont accept it. Better to use LinkedIn if you want to connect to me.

3. Facebook: Other than the fact that my Facebook news feed is becoming so packed with sponsor adds and viral spam from applications that I haven't even loaded (but have been loaded by friends) I love the ability of Facebook to keep me connected to my friends (more on that in future posts). because of Facebook's security and privacy model, it is pretty much the only place I will upload photos and information about my family so I can share that with friends. Thus, the bar for me connecting to someone on Facebook is much, much higher than Plaxo. In fact, if I don't know and trust you well enough to let you know when I am not home, see pictures of me in triathlon gear, and see information about my family, I won't connect or accept a friend request on Facebook. I think this also has ramifications for the use of Facebook at work, but more on that later.

Not sure if others use similar guidelines but I thought I would share mine.

As for whether there is room for other social networks... I think so, but they have to serve a very specific niche IMO and ideally extend the other networks, not act as silos. I can think of a few areas where I would love to build a social network that would not overlap with the ones I mention above (and could even add value) but they would have to have a very specific purpose. To be frank, I am going to leave it at that... you never I know, I might try to build one of them some day. :-)

Exciting News! Microsoft to Acquire Parlano!

Today, Microsoft announced that it is acquiring Parlano. Everyone at Parlano past and present has worked hard to make persistent group chat a mission-critical part of how many, many people conduct their business every day. This acquisition will take the combined products to the next level and onto tens of millions of desktops. Nick has some great thoughts in this post. There will be much to say about this in the next few weeks and months as we move towards the deal close and eventual product integration but for now I just wanted everyone to know, and to thank you all for the continued support!

Persistent Group Chat in CRM

Here is another article published by DestinationCRM by Nick Fera on the value of persistent group chat in a Unified Communications solution. This time a little more focused on the CRM (sales, marketing, support) use case. We are seeing a lot of demand from global organizations looking to improve global, cross-functional, team communications in customer-facing roles as well as IT so this article is timely.

 

Article on UC by Nick Fera

Nick Fera has an article on TMC.net about ways that persistent group chat can help organizations get started with unified communications.

Microsoft Unified Communications in Wealth Management Scenario

Parlano MindAlign has a brief appearance (the part about "checking group chat") in the Microsoft Unified Communicaitons Wealth Management scenario on You Tube. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAVMU30hK-U

SLAM 2007

I am writing this from the plane ride home from SLAM 2007, a great conference in Denver focused on software licensing and marketing. Yesterday I presented at a breakout session on the value of blogs in marketing. My premise was that you don't have to have a top-ranked blog to create real value for your organization. As you know, I am passionate about the value and promise of social networking both inside and outside organizations. Blogging has enabled Parlano to have a much broader market conversation than we ever had before and it has delivered real results. Not to mention created many new personal and professional relationships.

I know many of the folks I met at the conference are now following my blog so I want to send a special thank you for showing all your enthusiasm during our session, asking great questions, and continuing the conversation well into all of the breaks. I really had a great time and learned a lot from you as I hope you did from me. Keep in touch!!!

Demoing video calls and Microsoft Tech-Ed

All of you know that Parlano is very focused on persistent group chat.  However, we also focus a lot of effort discussing our vision for how persistent group chat is a critical component of unified communications. While "unified communications" based on most industry definitions unifies technologies and people, persistent group chat unifies teams and groups.

An essential component of that vision is the ability of MindAlign 2007, which is built using the SIP/SIMPLE standard, to integrate and interoperate with other essential group and individual communications systems.

This week at Tech-Ed we are showing a sneak peek at what some of this will look like. We are demoing video calls launched directly from within MindAlign 2007 utilizing an early release of Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007.

If you are in Orlando for Tech-Ed be sure to stop by booth 1526! We will be raffling off a state-of-the-art XBox on Wednesday and XBox games all week long!