A few Poynts on government data handling

So the long-awaited Poynter Review has finally made its judgement on possibly the biggest data loss incident ever faced by the government - the loss of 25 million child benefit records by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. The more world-weary and cynical of you will most probably be thinking "so what", and, to be honest, there was not that much in the report to really set hearts racing. Government-sponsored reviews of this kind rarely find out anything that we don't already know; although it was unusual and a little bit heartening to see the extent to which Poynter laid into the HMRC.
In the end, after several months and heaps of taxpayers' money, the review found that a lack of training, support and guidance by management in the HMRC, and an ignorance of good information security practices lead to a "muddle through" ethos in the department. No single individual was to blame then, more a culture of failing to recognise the value of data, or protecting it.
I wrote something along these lines a few months ago and it's nice to see such opinions reinforced by someone with slightly more resources and knowledge on the subject than I. What the review won't do though is be able to change this "ethos" overnight. The government had pretty decent data classification practices by all accounts, although crucially the human factor was its undoing. Some McAfee research conducted recently illuminates this problem yet further - 25 per cent of office staff said they thought it was their boss's responsibility to protect data, and 98 per cent said that they didn't think it was their own responsibility.
A combination of ignorance, poor training and institutionalised bad practice is a pretty daunting set of factors to address. The problem will be in fully educating public sector staff about the risks of data loss and the value of certain types of data. In the private sphere of course the commercial risks and brand damage that a large data loss incident can lead to are pretty much front of mind for large companies.
The government has said it has already implemented more than half of the recommendations made by Poynter, and is giving HMRC staff additional training, but lip service is not enough. Interestingly, Justice minister Michael Wills just admitted that there needs to be a "radical change" in the way the government handles data - an encouraging sign. The first step on the road to recovering public trust and towards exercising better judgement on data storage and transportation matters is admitting it has a problem. The next step will be in doing something about it.

An unlikely hero

By Peter Williams.
In one notorious episode in the Blair era, as the Twin Towers burned, a spin doctor emailed colleagues to suggest this was a good day to bury bad news. The Brown government seems to have taken this lesson to heart and - let's be clear- given it a much more tasteful slant. It seems now that the lesson is that if you've got one bit of bad news you might as well deliver a whole boat load. After all there is only so much criticism that can be dished out on any one subject. So instead of "government cock up over data" story times four, this week saw a co-ordinated release across Whitehall of reports from HM Revenue & Customs, the Ministry of Defence and the Cabinet Office.
The result is that the government has gone from information losses to information overload in four easy steps. Information professionals probably feel compelled to read all the reports. But it is a big ask. However the one dispensable document is surely the Cabinet Office's Data handling procedures in government. This could be a benchmark for both the public and the private sector. It points the way to a better future. The question, as ever, is how government can be held to account to deliver on the promises it sets out so coolly and rationally. The answer? Step forward the information commissioner's office (ICO). This office - and it is an office as much as an individual-has become an unlikely hero in the government debacle over the cavalier treatment of data. It was set up as an independent authority to promote access to official and personal information. Over the years its remit has expended and it now fulfils a vital role in the digital age.
Based in Wilmslow - the prosperous Cheshire town better know for footballer's wives, rather than harassing government - the ICO is set to take enforcement actions against HMRC and MOD for their data breaches. Perhaps more significantly the ICO has promised to monitor the situation closely and will demand progress reports to be published every year for the next three years. While the data lapses by government have been a disheartening disgrace the reaction of this watchdog has been a pleasure to watch. Long may the ICO keep up the good work.

Global ebook survey reveals encouraging results

New findings from a study on e-book usage landed in my inbox earlier this week. Conducted by e-content providers, ebrary the study has been attempting to measure the changing perceptions and patterns of e-book usage among students. It is now in its third run through.
Working with 150 Higher Education librarians throughout the world to design the survey, nearly 6,500 students took part. Such a cross section of academic respondents is certainly respectable. While there is an obvious North American slant to the findings, generally half of the participants were based elsewhere in the world. Around 400 academic institutions took part say ebrary and admittedly the patterns between the US and elsewhere show similar results. So even if there is little in the way of UK eBook habits, the results are revealing all the same.
From ebrary's release, I have taken the following summary:
2008 Global Student E-book Survey key findings
• On research or class assignments, e-book usage is on par with print books, with almost equal numbers of students using each type.
• Fifty-one percent of students would "very often or often" opt to use electronic versions of books over print versions, compared to 32% who "sometimes" prefer e-books and 17% who always use the print version.
• E-books rank among the top resources students consider trustworthy, along with print materials such as books, textbooks, reference (dictionaries, encyclopaedias, maps), and journals.
• Google and other search engines are indicated by the highest number of students for use in research or class assignments. Other top resources include e-books, print books, e-reference resources such as online dictionaries, encyclopaedias and maps, and Wikipedia.
• Fifty-seven percent of students view instruction in information literacy as very important, compared with 38% who consider it somewhat important and only 5% who find it not important.
While the obvious trend for the 'Google generation' is to trust and use online sources and eBooks as source material. The use of traditional print works is still of value to the scholars. I also find it encouraging that while 38% of students believed information literacy as only 'somewhat important' the vast majority at 57% of those surveyed consider it as 'very important'. Perhaps the message about the value of information literacy from academics and information professionals is getting through.
Further reading
For further details on the study click on the links (registration is required)
2008 Global Student E-book Survey
Due later this summer is a version of the survey 200 librarians completed - will be interesting to see how the two compare: Click here to reserve a copy

Some things are hard to find

By Phil Muncaster.
Autonomy has just announced a new e-discovery solution to increase its presence in this burgeoning space. When it bought archiving and e-discovery vendor Zantaz last year, the firm clearly signaled its intent to expand into areas related to its core competency and heritage of enterprise search. And while it`s still best known for the latter - and while it continues to make oodles of cash providing big name clients like the BBC, Boeing and Coca Cola with search technology - the e-discovery space represents a massive opportunity, as firms look to overcome the challenges presented by an increasing raft of legislation and industry regulations.
In the US, of course, e-discovery has been driven mainly by the recently updated FRCP - Federal Rules of Civil Procedure - which lay down aggressive new rules for the discovery and presentation of electronic records as evidence in US courts. E-discovery, archiving, retention; they're all bound up in this area and with strict penalties for the destruction of evidence also part of the new FRCP, the stakes have been raised significantly for firms. Not that this is just a US problem either - just as SOX was felt in other countries, so the FRCP could have an impact elsewhere, including this side of the Atlantic.
This new hosted solution features technology to accelerate the time it takes your legal bods to review electronically stored-information and classify it according to its status, and also to review the information and make an early assessment of the related case. As you'd expect from Autonomy, which I guess prides itself on being able to scale in the enterprise search space about as far and beyond what any organisation needs, the technology can process terabytes of electronically-stored info without blinking - in over 100 languages and 1000 data types. The filtering of information in such massive data sets can make it easier to gain visibility into that information, says Autonomy.
It remains to be seen whether this being a hosted solution causes any hesitation among enterprise buyers - after all, it's meant to dig out the most sensitive of sensitive documents; will firms prefer to keep this sort of capability in-house? In its defence on the security front though, Autonomy maintains that because all elements of the solution are maintained by a single vendor, this reduces the risk of data becoming lost or corrupted, and makes the whole process more auditable. Let's see what happens; e-discovery is certainly here to stay though, and you can probably expect more big name vendors on the content management scene trying to get in on the action with "holistic, end-to-end solutions".

Promises, promises

Promises like pie crusts are made to be broken. Or maybe we need to update that old saying to promises like data protection guidelines are made to be broken. I had made a half promise to myself that the best policy on the seemingly endless flow of news on data and information that had...whoops... disappeared was to ignore it. Maybe like unruly children various government departments, ministers and civil servants would just stop making embarrassing data breaches if we all looked the other way and pretended they weren't doing it.
But the events, hard on the heels of each other, of the Communities Secretary Hazel Blears having her laptop stolen so soon after south west trains were apparently overflowing with top secret documents was just infuriating and reignited the great data debate. What is puzzling is why so many people seem so slow to learn the lessons from the misfortunes of others about the necessity to take the most basic precautions to protect data.
I've got this image of the street value of juicy information falling faster than a stone as members of the criminal classes are overwhelmed by bits of kit and secret documents that they are trying to offload in dodgy pubs in Salford or near Waterloo station.
The situation has become so serious that after the Blears' laptop was taken (reinforced glass was smashed in the raid you'll be pleased to know, barely careless at all then) that, according to newspaper reports, Prime Minister Gordon Brown was forced to intervene urging ministers to enforce "procedures on the treatment of information".
Sounds like a good idea to me. And it takes a prime minister to tell everyone to follow the rules which they have drawn up.
The question which is intriguing me is what and how? As the habit of throwing sensitive data away is clearly a hard one to break, I want to know which government department will be the next culprit and how. I may call up Williams Hill and see if they are prepared to put up some odds. Is this a joking matter? No. Should we be taking this seriously? Of course we should and so should those who are losing the data. Come on boys and girls, it's time to stop. Promise now.

Is the Associated Press right to go after bloggers?

Eyebrows were raised around the office when we heard about plans from the Associated Press (AP) to start enforcing more rigorous controls over quotations from their news stories. Apparently they objected to the Drudge Retort (a popular left wing version of the Drudge Report) from using quotes from their news material. It asked for five news stories and a user comment to be taken down even though links through to the original source (the AP) were present.
Bloggers it seems are in for a rough ride if they engage in a similar practice.
I have linked to the press release which I assume is safer to quote than the NY Times article by the same author.
Tomorrow, the AP will be meeting Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association in an attempt to agree on a set of workable standards for bloggers to adopt.
From one point of view I can understand where the AP are coming from, they resent that their hard fought for news stories which belong to them and their paying customers are being reproduced for (non-paying) readers of some upstart blog. The bounds of fair use have been stretched too far they argue.
As Bernhard Warner says in his article in the Times Online, "nothing prepared him for the level of theft he would witness daily" when he worked as a reporter for Reuters, "It seemed to be every newspaper" he says that took the content he wrote and repackaged it, often without adequate credit being applied. Have a look at the story he highlights some of the questionable ways how material would be taken, well out of the concept of fair use. On this level I empathise with the AP's position.
But the key point he makes for me is that because the AP don't or can't (?) go for the majors they have instead opted to attack bloggers. This approach seems prehistoric.
IWR and our sister titles often experience similar problems. Sometimes the specialised news we break is also subject to rampant and outright plagiarism from bots and scrapers, but that isn't the same as people quoting us.
Being as balanced as possible, we should consider if a blog (however big or small) is just reporting on the news and giving full credit or are they simply lifting the content wholesale while making a buck out of it?
I hope that tomorrow's discussions remain sensible and the AP rethinks its strategy in trying to put the genie back in the bottle.

Facing up to Facebook fears

Have you been messing around on Facebook today at work? I only ask because one of the biggest barriers to corporates accepting Web 2.0 in the workplace appears to be a concern by top management that employees latest cunning ruse to spin the company into the bankruptcy courts is to spend every working minute on social networking sites instead of …well working.

Yesterday Web 2.0 Strategies conference held a panel discussion on the pros and cons of tools such as Facebook in the workplace (I would have posted this earlier but I was caught up on IM with a few mates discussing Germany’s shock defeat in Euro 2008, surprising huh?)

Anyway back to social networking tools. At the moment the vast majority of employers appear to put restrictions of varying degrees of ferocity on the use of Facebook et al. The most usual appears to be only use at lunchtime or before/after core work hours. At least that was the verdict from around 70% of the show of hands at the conference. Of course not all employers are the same. Those with Web 2.0 tools to promulgate are much more likely to encourage an open access approach to social networking. These firms proclaim the benefit of social networking as a business tool, such as a way to find information quickly - though like any other tool some training is usually required. They have common sense procedures (i.e. don’t reveal any data, corporate or social which could be exploited or stolen).

A leading London law firm recently banned Facebook and then was forced to do a U-turn as presumably desperate juniors who never see daylight because of the ridiculous working hours explained they needed some form of social life.

A lot of this angst has little to do with technology tools. If you can’t trust your employees to access Facebook in a responsible manner, can you trust them to make a sensible business decision in any other area? Maybe the recruitment policy and company culture need to be examined.

Web 2.0 is accelerating the blurring of the boundaries between work and the rest of our lives. We no longer necessarily go to work but work comes to us through mobile technology and communication tools. Social tools are here to stay: yes a small minority of employees will abuse these tools just as the unmotivated and poorly managed always have found methods to shirk. Much more significantly, management will gradually start to grasp the benefits as these tools are profitably integrated into the working environment.

See www.web2strategies.co.uk for more details.

Why Web 2.0? Why now?

A good question posed at another session at today’s Web 2.0 Strategies conference. Speaker, Simon Wardley, an independent consultant, explained the ins and outs of business competitiveness and how we now inhabit a world of web 2.0.

Apart from the humorous use of fighting kittens pictured within his presentation, it all worked to show us how we got here and where we might be heading next. While I would love to detail how Wardley laid this all out in his 200 plus slides (trust me - it worked) time does not permit, so I will outlined a couple of the more central points.

In a somewhat roundabout way of explaining why all of the web 2.0 phenomena is actually quite important to organisations, Wardley  outlined the process of commoditisation; “yesterday’s exciting hot things, becoming today’s normal, commonplace and boring items”. There is always a pressure for commoditisation to happen he said, as everyone wants that competitive advantage. To my mind its similar to those kittens all chasing after an infinite ball of unravelling string. If they stop chasing they inevitably get further and further behind and eventually go out of business.

Web 1.0 became commoditised said Wardley referring to Nick Carr’s ideas that whereas once IT was all about getting bigger and better tech than your competitors to gain advantage, it is now just an accepted cost of business. IT has/is shifting from product to service in its nature and this has had a massive influence on the innovation and evolution of technology within it.

Enter Web 2.0 which embodies the notion of service within it. The move of IT to service-based industry only serves to encourage innovative technologies that you see in what we call web 2.0. As web 2.0 becomes evermore commoditised and commonplace, consider what will be next. for example if you are playing with "web 3.0" technology which is still very much in it innovative stage you can identify three pointers about it. One, that at the moment there is a scarcity of information about it – no case studies for example, second there are a lack of competitors out there (or they are few and far between), lastly, anything new you do will be expensive and therefore risky.

As an information professional it may be of some worth knowing that the latest tech you have been playing with outside of work might just be the next thing your organisation needs to stay ahead of the game. Let them know, what you know about.

Good Morning from Web 2.0 Strategies

Opening this morning’s proceedings was Chair and social computing expert Euan Semple. Well known as a pioneer of blogging and for his work developing the BBC’s online assets, Euan began by asking how many of the days attendees were working on web 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 initiatives, a few hands were shown. We were either feeling a bit shy or more likely, adoption and uptake is still in its infancy. That seems to tally up with the majority of Global 2000 firms who are now buying and investing in Enterprise 2.0 tools this year. Interestingly, lag tends to come from the more nimble SME sized companies.

The first keynote session examined the strategic value of enterprise 2.0, how web 2.0 is transforming the world of business. Dion Hinchcliffe,  Editor in Chief of Social Computing Magazine and business strategist, talked about how social media and enterprise 2.0 is seeing interest on a global level, how wikis are generating a massive interest, growing significantly in the last 3 to 4 years despite being around for much longer than that.

Why should your organisation adopt Enterprise 2.0 tools? Well improved communications obviously, higher productivity, cross pollination and leverage of knowledge is also key. The ROI apparently comes from a greater innovation in the organisation although that kind of result will take time to become evident, let alone directly measure.

In 2008 all the big vendors (such as Oracle or SAP) are either already offering or developing enterprise 2.0 products. But be aware older products are out there being retrofitted and relabelled. I got the impression from Hinchcliffe that doesn’t have to be a problem so long as what is released works well.

Security issues, and cultural set-ups can be a cause of hold-up depending on the kind of organisation you work for. Sometimes you don’t want all your best ideas floating around out there when they can so easily walk out the door on a disk.

All the same, Hinchlciffe explained how communities of users (customers in general) are often some of the best people to tell you what works and doesn’t about your products and services. Consider too what Hinchcliffe referred to as the ‘Network effect’ which "occurs when a good or service has more value, the more that other people have it too.”

Now couple that with the background, internal expert knowledge worker and you have a valuable well of information to tap into.

From all of this I see an emerging role for the information worker, one who knows how best to encourage knowledge leverage by the workforce but also communicate with the end–user. They appreciate already the need to keep that knowledge and information secure. This role needs expertise but also creativity, energy and a voice. Is that you?

More from Web 2.0 strategies later…

Inspired by information

I have to admit a growing weakness for the increasingly imaginative ways people dream up for displaying information. A recent favourite was Google Maps Street View option. If you haven’t seen it already, it allowed you to not only zoom onto a specific street, but also get on the ground as it were and manoeuvre as if you were there. Finding my old apartment block outside Lafayette Park, SF which I haven’t seen for many years was amazing for two reasons; one that I could still vividly remember a city I lived in but hadn’t been back to in over two decades and secondly that I could go whenever I liked (apart from the cars, the street has hardly changed). Truly technology allows us the opportunity to know more about the World. In saying that, the potential for exploiting information in applications like this, can bear more fruit than my trip down memory lane.

From San Francisco and a bad pun, we move to London and the work of UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), with MapTube designed to share maps and data using GMapCreator software.

The idea is for people to share data by overlaying it on a map, in this case, of London. Information related to the city can then be visualised in a different way, but the potential for any geographic region is there.

Specifically, there are examples on MapTube showing a mashup of population density in relation to the layout of the tube network. Because we now operate in a web 2.0 world anyone can add a map of their own, the raw data they use on the map however remains safely offline. Yet everyone can view the results. It is all very revealing.

From what is already up there, contributors have created some pretty insightful ways of presenting data, want to know where the highest growth for new building construction is, or the areas with the greatest e-awareness are? Perhaps you are researching the dispersal of ethnic populations around the city? The pattern of secondary school locations throughout the capital is there for all to see.

At the moment its early days (I could only fine a total of 69 records up on the site), but I love how this is beginning to take form. There is nothing to say why more regional, national and international maps shouldn't start to appear and nothing to stop those with access to data like you from collaborating.

Exploring new and innovative way to harness the power of information is what the creative information professional is all about in 2008. If you have any online tools you think deserve recommending, please feel free to share.

Note
On Thursday IWR will be blogging from the newly launched Web 2.0 Strategies Conference in Covent Garden. Check back then for regular updates from our sister-show all day.

E-commerce and content management

If you report regularly on the e-commerce industry, it very soon becomes clear that there's pretty much only one story worth telling: online retail is booming. In fact, we've run out of superlatives to describe the inexorable progress of e-commerce as firms report bigger and bigger profits via their online channels – even the spectre of identity theft and other security concerns, and the constant problems with delivery, have failed to put a dent in the figures.

The latest firm to chart the progress of the channel was Verdict Research, which last week released figures pointing to a year-on-year rise in spending of 35 per cent to £14.7bn last month. Furthermore it predicted that the figure would reach £44.9 billion by 2012, as more people become comfortable with surfing the web, spend more per purchase, and shop more frequently.

A massive opportunity for firms then, and even for public sector organisations to create efficiencies by pushing services online. But badly managed content on many organisations' sites is still proving to be a massive barrier to achieving these goals. How many times have you visited a site and found that the products listed online don't tally with those in the firm's bricks and mortar store, for example? Or that some sales and promotions are still listed on the site when said promotional period has long since expired? Or even that items quoted as in stock on the site are actually not?

It's the kind of thing that will put off most customers, force them to a rival and convince them never to return. Customer expectations are so high in the wonderful world of the web, and brand loyalty so low, that the stakes are raised significantly. Yet many don't give their online strategy the time or resources it deserves, according to Robert Bredlau of web content management vendor e-Spirit. Yes, he would say that, you'd probably think, but that doesn't mean it's not true! Even in the public sector, if it's difficult to find content, or if content hasn't been managed and refreshed so that it's up-to-date and accurate, this could mean citizens picking up the phone, or using other less efficient channels – putting extra strain on staff and resources.

E-Spirit argued that even firms targeting a UK audience should cover all bases by offering multi-language support, and that they could also benefit from buying systems which enable them to integrate their channels more effectively. With mobile commerce on the horizon and slowly gaining ground, this is a complex affair, but a necessary step. Those that get it are making hay, but those that don't need to realise that an effective web content management system is an essential foundation for a successful online strategy.

Knowing what you dog knows

Caught in the gridlock in West London, part of the gloom that descended as I crawled along in the traffic mayhem caused by a burst water pipe, was the knowledge of the mounting unanswered emails that really needed dealing with before the weekend. Of course journalists are paranoid about information: we want as much of it as possible and when we’re not actually hacking out the words we spend a great deal of time reading whatever we can (online and offline) in a futile bid to ensure we don’t miss that vital story that will… well will make us what?

But whatever the reason, our ceaseless searching and reading has been made worse not better by the digital era. Alongside information professionals, I reckon journalists suffered information overload before any other segment of the working population. Of course, dedicated technologists out there would tell me that the thing to do about email traffic jams is to find a technological based solution. While I’m not that bothered about the government reading my emails (I object in principle of course but I can’t claim to be hiding anything anyone would really want to find out)  I don’t want to sub-contract the reading of emails to a machine. Hence my doubts over SNARF. SNARF, the Social Network and Relationship Finder, developed initially by Microsoft Research to deal with the post-vacation email deluge. “SNARF grew out of an exploration of how people triage their e-mail and whether social information would help,” says A.J. Brush, a researcher within Microsoft Research’s Community Technologies Group who was one of a small team who devised the project several summers ago. “We often say, ‘Your dog knows the difference between strangers and friends who visit your house; why shouldn’t your e-mail client?’ ” A.J. Brush clearly hasn’t met my dog but I get the point.The process on which SNARF is based is called social sorting. According to Microsoft, the concept has been around for a while and now it is meant to be simple. The tool, which has been deployed within Microsoft for a field study, simply counts e-mails, sorts them by sender, and draws conclusions about their relative importance from the intensity of the correspondence relationship.Microsoft says that when launched for the first time, SNARF indexes your e-mail. When indexing is complete, a window with three panes is displayed. The top pane includes a list of people who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed or cc’d to you. The middle pane includes people who have sent recent, unread e-mail addressed to anyone. And the bottom pane includes all people mentioned in any e-mail you have received in the past week.A configuration panel enables you to change the types of messages displayed and to sort them in different ways. Once you have the tool configured as you prefer, you can double-click on a contact’s name within one of the panes, then view a list of all recent e-mail from that person. It works with mailing lists, too, and you can organise mail by threads and read the entire thread in chronological order, top to bottom.Sounds right up my street. In fact in the traffic snarl up I promised myself I would try it for myself. Now sat in front of the screen I’m just not so sure. Perhaps I’ll clear these near-on 500 unread messages while I think about it.

Blogosphere: Information professionals guiding you to the best bits of the blogosphere

Much relieved Fulham FC fan James Lappin tracks the inspiration for his blogging career back to reading a Korean poem while waiting for a haircut in a barber's shop in Surrey

Q: What do you do?
A: I am a 39-year-old records management consultant and trainer,
working for TFPL in London.

Q: Where is your blog?
A: I am one of the contributors to the TFPL blog, at http://tfpl.typepad.com

Q: Describe your blogposts
A: I post about what I see as the big issues for information professionals in our age. Questions like

- To what extent can/should we integrate Web 2.0 tools and practices into the information mix of our organisations?
- How do we respond to the challenges and opportunities brought by the rise of SharePoint?
- How will the battle between Google and Microsoft affect our desktops?
- How do we strike a balance between our responsibilities for information governance, and the demand for collaborative environments such as SharePoint and Web 2.0 tools?

My colleagues have a range of interests, all centred on what is going on in the information professions. Like me, they post about events they have attended or organised, industry trends, and the questions they grapple with in their consultancy, training or recruitment work.

Q: How long have you been blogging?
A: I have had a personal blog at www.worldflapjackday.blogspot.com since New Year's Eve 2005. I still keep it going as a place for my drawings, for things that my kids say that make me laugh, and for my thoughts on contemporary art and Fulham matches. Val Skelton, our head of training started the TFPL blog in January 2007 and invited me to write for it.

Q: What started you blogging?
A: A Korean poem! I was waiting to get my hair cut in a Korean barber's in New Malden and saw a poetry book on the table. One of the poems compared the mind to a pond: many birds drop into your pond, but the white swan comes only occasionally. You should make sure your pond/mind is ready for the swan. A close friend had just died and it reminded me of him. I set up World Flapjack Day that night to write about it. Having written for my personal blog for a while, I realised I wanted a space to write about my thoughts on the world of managing information. I was inspired by the blogs of people like Euan Semple http://theobvious.typepad.com/blog and wanted to get in on the conversation. Blogging on the TFPL blog has been ideal: it gives me a platform and helps my company too.

Q: Do you comment on other blogs?
A: I don't comment on other people's blogs nearly as much as I ought to. By posting a comment you are showing the blog owner that you're interested in what they are writing about, and you have something to say about it too. You have made a connection, and something might come of it: they might look at your blog, they might like it, they might leave a comment or link to it. All good stuff! I love it when people comment on our blog. A comment on a post of mine alerted me to the existence of Pageflakes www.pageflakes.com which is a fantastic combination of a start page and an RSS reader.

Q: How does your organisation benefit from your blogosphere presence?
A: I see it as the online equivalent of some of the networks we run for information professionals (such as TFPL Connect). It shows our friends and customers what TFPL consultants, trainers and recruiters are thinking about, what we know about, and what we care about.

Q: What are the blogs you trust?
A: In the records management field, the best blog has to be Steve Bailey's RM Futurewatch http://rmfuturewatch.blogspot.com Steve believes that traditional records management tools and practices won't scale up to the volume and pace of 21st century information creation and exchange, and advocates harnessing Web 2.0 ideas to records management. In the knowledge management sphere, I read Dave Snowden's Cognitive Edge blog http://www.cognitive-edge.com/blogs/dave

Q: Does it help your career?
A: Blogging keeps me sharp. It motivates me to attend events, to listen to people, to search out items of interest, and to capture my notes on talks that interest me. It all helps to keep my consultancy and training fresh and relevant.

Q: Which blogs do you read for fun?
A: The best Fulham blog has to be the Craven Cottage Newsround
http://cravencottagenewsround.wordpress.com I also enjoy reading the Forbidden Planet blog http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog It's my favourite comics blog, and is a superb example of a company using a blog to showcase the knowledge and passion of its staff.

Q: Which bloggers do you watch and link to?
A: The first blog that I put on the TFPL blogroll was the Librarian's
Guide to Etiquette http://libetiquette.blogspot.com because it made me laugh.

The ReadWriteWeb blog http://www.readwriteweb.com is invaluable for developments in technology and Web 2.0. And Johnny Moore http://www.johnniemoore.com/blog blogs about facilitation and the uses of Web 2.0.

Small and perfectly formed?

The new features could be an attempt by the firm to improve its standing among smaller enterprises, and extend the success it has had with the Mini in public sector and education verticals into new areas. It’s also pretty clear that with rivals IBM and Microsoft both offering competing products at this low end which unlike the Mini are free (IBM Omnifind Yahoo Edition and Microsoft Search Server Express) Google has had to offer something more than basic enterprise search to get the attention of corporate buyers.

Google has just updated its Mini enterprise search appliance, as some of you may have noticed. Now there are myriad enterprise search vendors knocking about and they are all trying to differentiate – some, like Autonomy and Fast, are purely targeted at the high end large enterprise market, while others, Google, Microsoft and IBM included, have a range of products to meet the needs of different sized organisations. With the Mini, Google is really targeting the small to mid sized market, probably firms with no more than 2000 users or so – its Google Search Appliance range takes it from there into the larger sized organisations.

The firm USP seems to be in trying to apply its mantra for web search to the enterprise space, that is to democratise access to information – to enable all employees to reach the info they need, in a safe and secure manner. Implementation and maintenance is also a differentiator for the firm, Google believes; the box can be up and running in a matter of weeks not months, although the vendor’s UK head of enterprise Robert Whiteside stressed that this shouldn’t be firms’ main reason for buying the appliance.

So why should firms invest in the Mini? Well, Google certainly seems to be ramping up the feature-set in its low-end appliance. The latest to be added, aside from the obligatory extended language support, are the ability to index content on shared files, as well as date and source bias capabilities. As the name suggests, this means customers can give greater weight to older or newer documents as they wish, and can also specify by source which types of content they rate more highly.