And Now We Have An Official Widget Catalog!

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The Lotus Greenhouse team recently announced the availability of a new widget catalog. This catalog will contain widgets for both Lotus Notes as well as iWidgets that you can add to Lotus Connections and Portal. Some have even called it an App Store for Lotus Connections.

As you may know, I have already created iWidgets for Lotus Connections that let you easily integrate with MySpace, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, Flickr, iNotes, and others. These iWidgets will now be hosted inside of Greenhouse which will hopefully accomplish various things:

1. provide more visibility to these iWidgets
2. easier tracking of widget downloads
3. you can tag widgets
4. you can comment on widgets
5. you can test them directly on the Greenhouse!

If you are interested, the widget catalog is available here and the Lotus Connections specific widgets can be accessed from here. While all the widgets that are there right now are mine, you are encouraged to upload your own widgets and share them with the community.

CNBC's Squawk on the Street Features IBM Lotus Social Software

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IBM Lotus Social Software was just featured in CNBC during this week's series on Social Networking. Irene Grief, IBM Fellow, talks one on one about the benefits of enterprise social software. And our super awesome Suzanne Minassian makes a cameo as well.

CNBC starts the clip by saying that "in business there's nothing more important than relationships, but now say goodbye to face-to-face networking". There are two things that I want to highlight there. First, the value of relationships. As I blogged earlier, IBM was able to scientifically calculate the value of a relationship at $900+. Thus, one great reason to improve networking by using social networking software (a.k.a social software) in the enterprise (a.k.a Enterprise 2.0). The more relationships you can have, the more money you can generate.

Second, hmm.. did CNBC read my blog post from last week where IBM predicts that in less than 2 years social networking will be more popular than face-to-face collaboration?

And I really don't want to talk about it, but CNBC hints at the ROI of social software. In the clip, you'll hear how IBM invested $80,000 in a virtual conference to save over $350,000 in travel and productivity costs. ROI? 400%+

Here's the clip:

Enjoy!

Elguji launches IQJam

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Elguji Software, the creators of IdeaJam have just launched IQJam a new social space where users can ask, answer, tag, and rate questions. IQJam is a nice tool for those that want to capitalize on the knowledge of their employees. The concept is amazingly simple - people ask questions and other people answer them (think of streamlined, lightweight forums)

IQJam, built on the new XPages technology in Domino, lists questions and their answers can be voted up or down. Voting allows the IQJam community to identify questions that they would like to see answered. Voting on answers helps identify the correct answer as well as eliminate ones that may be incorrect. Once the correct answer has been entered, it is marked by the user as being "answered". As people rate and mark questions answered, the respondents get to build their reputation.

Here are some screenshots of their creation:

The Lotus community will have its own IQJam space later this year when Domino Server v8.5.1 ships and will be accessible at: http://iqjam.net . An IQJam iWidget for Lotus Connections is also ready for use.

Enjoy!

Kevin Spacey tries to explain Twitter to David Letterman

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I caught this on Twitter earlier today and I immediately shared it with the rest of the Twitter crowd. In case you missed it, I wanted to share it here as well. This video was originally posted in George Dearing's blog.

This video reminds me of another video where Jon Stewart tries to explain Twitter.

Enjoy!

IBM: By 2011 Social Networking will be More Popular than Face-to-Face Collaboration

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I'm not really sure how I missed this one, but 2 months ago, the following IBM video appeared on YouTube. The video itself contains various business statistics such as the one highlighted in the title of this blog post: By 2011, Social Networking will be more popular than face-to-face collaboration. Interesting, right ? And just think that 2011 is only 2 years away. Social networking is no longer fad, but here to stay.

The video positions social networking as a great way to improve productivity and effectiveness, especially in today's business environment where it's esitmated that employees spend 25% of their time looking for information, and 42% of employees use the wrong information to make decisions... ouch!

This video is part of IBM's Smarter Planet strategy, which you may remember I recently presented at a local event for it. I'll let the video talk for itself.

So in 2 years, social networking is set to take over face-to-face collaboration. Is your organization ready for this revolution?