Typically web conferencing services tout the money that can be saved by using web conferencing to replace business travel. But iLink is also highlighting the environmental savings by is offering a unique tool as part of their software - a green meter! Their green meter is an automatic calculator inside the iLinc Web conferencing software that tracks CO2, in addition to cost and travel reductions accrued by meeting online rather than traveling. The green meter appears whenever you have hold a meeting using iLink. The calculations are based on the location of all of the participants.
Hey, it's actually easy to be green! (Sorry, Kermit!)
I know vendors are using web conferencing extensively. But I'm curious as to how much it's being used in law firm libraries for training purposes; so that's the subject of this week's poll.
You can review the poll results at any time by clicking on the view results link.
I'm in the midst of preparing for my presentation at TRIPLL next month, and would like to ask you, my kind readers, to answer a series of questions relating to my topic, technology tools and solutions for point of need training. You'll be helping me focus my presentation appropriately, and in addition, I think the results will be of general interest. These questions are intended for law firm librarians only.
The web is all a buzz about Google's newest application, Google Sites. Google Sites is an adaptation of Jotspot, a wiki web provider that Google purchased over a year ago, and is now part of Google Apps.
Why aren't they calling it a wiki? Google Sites can be the basis for an intranet, a personal web space or an external web site. Wikis can be all of these things, too, but people decidedly lack imagination, and might pigeon-hole
a wiki app as a Wikipedia-type knowledgebase. While wikis are essentially an easy way to create a web site, for some, the label could be limiting. Google is aiming this at the general public, and by the way, not everyone knows what a wiki is! Anyway, that's just my guess as to the motivation, and I think it makes sense.
What I'm really liking is idea of 10 gigabytes of file storage. I've been on the lookout for a central location to store files of all kinds, including spreadsheets and pdfs, relating to our dog club. I've thought of using a wiki, but there's a limitation to the amount of space that is offered for free. Google has never been one to be stingy with storage space. So I plan to experiment with it sometime soon. And I'll bet our members won't mind at all that it's not called a wiki. :-)
Besides, apparently Google's eye is also on the enterprise market, with Sharepoint as the competition. So while Google Sites may resemble a wiki now, they obviously want it to become much more.
It's easy to create a wiki, but not always easy to get people to use it. Ben Sutton at Rosen Law may be on to something. He offered his employees a $1,000 cash prize as an incentive to use the firm's new wiki.
Rosen chose PBWiki as his platform of choice to replace a much more sophisticated and expensive Lotus Notes platform. All kinds of information is being collected on the wiki including phone lists and case files.
