In general, An extranet is a private network that uses internet to securely share part of an organization’s information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers or other businesses. An extranet can be viewed as part of a company’s intranet that is extended to users outside the company.

Similarly, TWB Extranet is a restricted web portal for TWB customers to view sample project works, case studies, white papers, newsletters, news and press releases and to fill feed backs on completed/ongoing projects.

Advantage of having an extranet:

• The TWB Extranet gets us organized and provides a centralized solution for increasing our business efficiencies.
• Easy way to show sample works to customers.
• Show our quality and organized nature to our customers.
• Extends the relationship with the customers.

Here is the screen shots of TWB Extranet:

Wikipedia defines: 

“A podcast is a series of digital-media files, which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. The term is a portmanteau of the words “iPod” and “broadcast”, the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed.” 

Steps involved in Podcasting: 

Podcasting is considered to be an important technology which is simple and easy to use. Following are the steps that one must follow to create a podcast:  

• The first step for the users is to create an audio or video content, which may involve recording audio and editing videos. The contents of the same can be stored with portable devices and then uploaded to a computer or directly to a repository.  
• A user has to post her work to a web server, generally in an MP3 format. After this, the users have to publish an RSS file that contains meta information about the audio file for example, the URL, the file’s name and the text.  

Once created, these podcasts are available for downloading via the following steps: 

• Users have to download/open an application like iPodder (now called Juice), which will recognise the multimedia file and its URL.  
• The application downloads the podcast URL and synchs it to a media player.  
• The users can now listen to their audio or view their video file.

Why are Podcasts important?  

Podcasting is emerging as a significant tool in the field of education and technical writing. It is turning out to be an excellent teaching aid for teachers. They can use it to teach language intensive skills. It is now also seen as an alternative method of learning which can help improve a person’s listening skills. The main reasons for using podcasts are: 

• Often the producers of podcasts are educators who with the help of this technology communicate with their students outside the traditional classroom.  
• It allows individually paced learning and conveys ideas and case studies to students in an interactive fashion.

Podcasts/Podcasting as a Tool in Technical Writing 

Podcasts are now increasingly used in the world of Technical Writing too. It allows the end user to view the interview/guide/manual with videos/audio capabilities, enhancing the quality of the subject matter understanding. 

Some useful Podcasts for Technical Writers: 

http://www.idratherbewriting.com/ 

• Podcast: Flare 4 – Ten New Features, Interview with Sharon Burton 
• Podcast: What’s new in Technical Communication 
• Comprehensive Podcast Index – A List of All My Podcasts

 http://dmn.podbean.com/ (a weekly podcast for Technical Communicators) 

• Podcast: All XML, for around 20 minutes 
• Podcast: Talking wikis with Stewart Mader 
• Podcast: Talking about usability 
• Podcast: Technical Communications and India

 http://www.klariti.com/2006/11/podcast-re-technical-writing-in-india.html

•  Podcast re: Technical Writing in India – Sandeep Balakrishna

The transition of the Indian economy from a pure agricultural to industrial one has been a matter of acedemic and business interest over the years. What is interesting to note however,  is the transition of the industrial economy to a knowledge economy. Albeit, this one has been a more subtle one.

The move towards being a knowledge led economy has led to some hugely interesting developments, including growth of India’s intellectual economy and the supporting eco-system.

On one hand there is focus on knowledge creation and research, on the other is a whole eco-system that supports knowledge preservation and knowledge protection.

Patents and Intellectual Rights are a significant part of that very eco-system. It is this eco-system of knowledge preservation that will act as a catalyst to future intellectual and economic innovations.

A mark of these times is the fact that India has been granted over 15,000 patents in the last one year. This is almost five times more than the previous five years and double of last years. One can read more in this context here

This trend has been aided by the fact that India is viewed as one of the strongest emerging Research and Development hubs.

While there is a spurt in growth of the intellectual economy, there is also a need to build systems and value additions which will aid this growth and help sustain and maintain India’s intellectual innovations.

Some of the key requirments in this direction include:

1. A stronger system of intellecual property protection
2. Better trained workforce to manage India’s knowledge economy
3. Deeper research into knowledge preservation and protection
4. Interface with the global best practices - including countries like Japan, Germany and the USA.
5. Accent and recognition for intellectual property creators and knowledge innovators.
6. Last but not the least - a broad based framework of knowledge creation and maintainence spanning  the economic value creation lifecycle.

Today, the Web 2.0 is gaining wide acceptance all over the world and our daily routines are almost customized according to it whether it may be household chores, business, grabbing medical help or any other day-to-day activity. There seems to be a tremendous change in the way of doing everything. For example, talking about the IT industry, it has been under the total influence of Web 2.0 like Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis and others are being used largely to convey concepts and ideas. In a way, all this has brought about a big revolution. 

Automatically, there arises a question - What is next in store for people? 

The Web 2.0 has finally arrived and is now propelling us towards the Web 3.0. Outside India, there are many remarkable examples of the use of its techniques in the education, health, and real estate. 

Some instances as mentioned in http://threeminds.organic.com/2008/07/revolution_still_in_store_for_1.html: 

• One of the strongest examples is set by the U.K., where the Power of Information Taskforce has released gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information from the census, health care, and education with a very interesting challenge to the public. The site is named Show Us A Better Way, which calls for people to bring in mashup ideas for development funding. Meanwhile, from the realm of public discourse, there is SpinDifferent, which compares public policy from the U.K., U.S., and U.N., and CommentOnThis that provides an opportunity to the public to comment line by line on government documents.

• Besides this, freeing your data is supposedly one of the strongest commandments of Web 2.0, and the same could be said for sharing and dialog, and also the social factor in social media. Both the United Kingdom (They Work For You) and the European Union (myparl.eu) have developed social networks that make it possible for citizens to keep tabs on and communicate with elected and unelected government officials. The governments of Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand are using blogs, both for official and unofficial purposes. In the month of March, political blogging changed the outcome of the Malaysian election.

• In U.S., Web 2.0 is slowly seeping into government sites at all levels. The state of Virginia portal website features podcasts, a YouTube channel, and a series of blog/social widgets. The Maine portal supports microformats and mobile services. Meanwhile, USA.gov has a blog actually run by real people who use authentic language instead of PR voice.

 In India, the use of Web 2.0 has widely gained acceptance in the corporate world, educational fields and others. http://www.watblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/keytrends-2008.pdf brings you the latest developments and trends in International and Indian webspaces. Similarly,http://www.webology.ir/2008/v5n1/a53.html highlights the usage of Web 2.0 tools in Medical Librarianship to support Medicine 2.0; http://www.chintan-india.org/ brings you details about Chintan, an Environmental Research and Action Group. 

The present state is such that Gen Y is keeping a constant eye for all the latest developments to keep themselves abreast of the happenings and the youngsters are on the lookout for the latest methods/techniques available. These may include online communication, collaboration, and others. To summarize it in one quote: “Web 2.0 revolution continues to march ahead and it is creating more and more tools and options for one and all including governments, businesses, health care facilities, education and others.

For all you Madcap Flare buffs!

MadCap Software is presenting a new 1 hour webinar called “Importing FrameMaker files into Flare”. Learn Best Practices and discover what you need to be most effective as you move into the future with Flare. This webinar covers each step of the FrameMaker to Flare import process:
- what to select
- why to select it
- how these selections impact you when you’re done
Given by FrameMaker expert Sharon Burton, product manager at MadCap Software, this webinar covers real world issues to help you get the results you want.

Go to http://www.madcapsoftware.com/training/livedemos.aspx. Scroll down to the Moving from FrameMaker to Flare area. Click the demo for 21 July at 7am Pacific and follow the instructions on the screen.

The webinar is limited to the first 25 people or sites who sign up.

Today, the Social Media has a very big role to play in all business and marketing circles. Social media refers to bringing together of various activities which help in integrating technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio into a seamless entity.

It can take many different forms, including Internet forums, message boards, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over IP, to name a few. Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing) are some of the technologies used.

Social media is fundamentally different from traditional media like newspapers, television, books, and radio. The major success of all social media depends on interactions between people as the discussion and integration of words builds shared-meaning, using technology as a conduit.

It caters to a wide spectrum of topics. With reference to Internet marketing, Social Media means a collective group of web properties that are driven by users. Examples in such case are blogs, discussion boards, vlogs, and video sharing sites. Similarly, Social Media Optimization (SMO) is the process of trying to get a person’s content more widely distributed across multiple Social Media networks.

Social media marketing refers to the process of promoting a site or business through social media channels and is seen as a powerful strategy that will get you links, attention and massive amounts of traffic. This is the low-cost promotional method which will easily provide you with large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to a website again and again.

Most business owners and managers today are recognizing the benefits and huge potential that a ’social media marketing’ and ‘business blogging’ strategy can offer and are always on the lookout for implementing the same.   

The main advantages of social media applications are:

• they are user-created, developed or enhanced
• there is a community of interest built around them
• they do not require advanced technical knowledge
• multi-way communication is enabled
• they are participatory and interactive
• they are free or low cost to the end user
• they are infectious and fast-growing
• they are global

Some examples of social media applications include:

Communication

• Microblogs / Presence apps: Twitter and Pownce
• Social networking: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace
• Events: Upcoming

Collaboration

• Wikis: Wikipedia
• Social bookmarking: del.icio.us and StumbleUpon
• Opinion sites: epinions

Other/Specialty

• social ads  

 The following article is a cross post from CIOL.

Internet marketing continues to both expand and mature, offering several cost-effective strategies for entrepreneurs trying to build their business. These Internet marketing tips for entrepreneurs leverage the evolving online landscape, connecting entrepreneurs with customers and investors alike.

“Entrepreneurs understanding the nuances of interactive marketing and online networking are at a clear competitive advantage,” said Tiffan Clark, Marketing Vice President of JumpStart Inc., the venture development organization behind IdeaCrossing, a free online resource that connects entrepreneurs with investors.

Search Marketing
Online visibility is critical to entrepreneurs engaged in fundraising, marketing and management team building activities. Search engine marketing (SEM) is one strategy for increasing web visibility and connecting with customers. SEM includes both pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO).

PPC offers entrepreneurs a highly targeted, rifle-shot approach to online advertising. With popular ad platforms such as Yahoo! and Google, advertisements appear alongside search results based on selected keywords and phrases, and advertisers pay only when their ads are clicked.

SEO focuses on boosting website volume and traffic quality through better “organic,” or natural, search results. By incorporating keywords into a site’s content and structuring the site so that search engines can easily “spider,” or scan, the content. SEO marketers improve a website’s search ranking, and thus increase its visibility to customers and investors - all without paying a penny out of pocket.

Online PR
Ad gurus will tell you that brands and marketing “buzz” are most effectively created by public relations, and sustained through advertising. The Internet has revolutionized PR and the brand-building process: entrepreneurs can now publish their content directly to the masses using media distribution services such as PR Newswire. Bypassing the media gatekeepers, startups can easily push content directly to search engines, making their company news easily accessed through a keyword search.

Giving away free content in the form of articles and advice is a great way to gain consumer trust and carve out a niche as an industry expert. Just be sure to include links back to your website when publishing and distributing your content.

Social Media
The task of networking is becoming easier thanks to social media. Thriving Internet communities such as IdeaCrossing make it simple to connect like-minded business professionals, so it pays to seek out online niche business communities and become active members in them.

Blogging offers a unique way to facilitate communication with key audiences and create positive conversations about brands. The keys to creating and maintaining an effective blog are providing timely, useful content and building a community of conversation with direct channels for consumer feedback.

Other Internet marketing tips for entrepreneurs using social media include:

* Participate. Comment on other relevant blogs and link back to your site
* Bookmark. Share your content by submitting and categorizing it on social bookmarking sites such as StumbleUpon
* Offer subscriptions to your content using RSS feeds
* Don’t sell, educate. Consumers want dialogue and transparency, not sales pitches

Finally, take advantage of the Internet’s interactive nature and solicit feedback. Wondering what consumers are thinking about your business? Ask them through emails, newsletters and no-hassle forms.

This post is on the TWB Corporate Blog as well as the TWB Alumni Blog:

To possess knowledge an organization must have internal and external information exploitation capabilities. Internal knowledge capabilities can be defined as the collection of technology mechanisms that enable an organization to process information for decision-making. External knowledge capabilities are the collection of technology mechanisms that enable an organization to access and/or acquire information from outside its bounds to sense changes in its environment.

The challenge of managing knowledge across your team

It is essential for companies to capture the knowledge of employees because of numerous reasons: mobility, shifts, absences, retirements, etc. Concentrating only on electronic content generated by employees (such as presentations, reports, and processes) focuses on individual pieces of information only. Therefore, managers also need to better understand the invisible and yet key relationships that exist outside of the official organization chart. It is necessary to determine what issues existed with the way knowledge is currently generated, shared, moved, and managed within the organization. When an organization’s performance is heavily reliant on knowledge work then knowledge management is pivotal. Knowledge Management is not about managing or organizing books or journals, searching the Internet for clients or arranging for the circulation of materials. It is enhancing the use of organizational knowledge through sound practices of knowledge management and organizational learning.

The Process of Knowledge Management

Typically the knowledge management process involves:

• Capture

• Organization and Storage

• Distribution or, Sharing

• Application or Leverage

Surprising Old School Lessons in Reducing Knowledge Loss

In today’s job market, organizations have come to realize the impact of knowledge loss. More and more of their best employees leave every day. Several methods of reducing knowledge loss have been in practice for some time in the business world. A few of these methods are described below:

• Don’t let your best people leave. This seems like an obvious answer to this problem, yet it is the one that can be easily overlooked. The easiest way to reduce knowledge loss is to avoid losing it in the first place. By retaining people that have the knowledge, organizations can eliminate this. This can be achieved by offering adequate compensation, providing alternate career paths, transitioning an employee to a new position or offering job rotation to enhance skills and industry experience.
• Mentoring and Coaching. Mentoring and Coaching have become very popular methods of training and knowledge transfer in recent years. By matching new or inexperienced employees with more experienced senior personnel, the intangible, tacit knowledge of the organization can be passed on effectively.
• Sharing Best Practices. The sharing and use of best practices has become a staple of successful companies. The ability to use tested and proven knowledge of other organizations has helped others make decisions and improvements with greater speed and reliability. The goal is to begin sharing what works to generate new ideas and to benefit from the successes of others.
• Sharing Lessons Learned. Similar to mentoring and coaching, sharing lessons learned allows organizations to tap the experiential knowledge of its members. Lessons learned are simply statements by individuals or teams, identifying knowledge gained. They are merely opinions on cause and effect. Typically, lessons learned are shared in a larger group setting as opposed to one-on-one sessions between mentor and protégé.
• Documentation. This is likely to be the most tedious method of reducing knowledge loss. Tracking and maintaining information used in decision-making can help an organization retain the knowledge of the decision-maker. Unfortunately, it is easy to neglect documentation, but when compared to the time it takes to rediscover knowledge the amount of time it takes to document a situation becomes insignificant. Documentation needs to be updated and reviewed frequently in a dynamic and fast-paced environment with multiple authors.

Types of Knowledge Organizations

Depending on its proportion of internal and external knowledge capabilities, companies sort into one of four categories.

• A bystander - a company that is an observer of the industry. The firm has low external and internal knowledge capabilities, meaning that it neither collects nor processes much information about the industry.

• An information processor - a company that has good internal knowledge capabilities but lacks adequate external knowledge capabilities. It is constrained by inadequate information from its external environment.

• An information collector - a company with the opposite capabilities. Here the company has good external knowledge capabilities, meaning that it can access and acquire large amounts of information from its external environment; however, it cannot adequately utilize information to gain a competitive edge as it lacks the adequate internal capabilities to process and exploit the information.
• A knowledge power company - a company that has good internal and external knowledge capabilities, or possess knowledge power. It has an adequate internal information processing architecture coupled with good external information collection mechanisms, which work with one another to provide the company with superior competitive advantages.

 Next we’ll see the fundamental structure of the Knowledge Management process

Learning more about the future of e-learning, a lot of people think that e-learning is not about Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0, or computers, or a particular software package. It is all about a transformational concept. It shows the transformation of education.

Meanwhile, classifying the concept of e-learning, it usually indicates towards the fundamental application which is the ability to utilize a tool that can add value. Social Networking (Web 2.0) is considered to be classic.

There often exists a question - Is there any real difference between what tools one uses to create communication lines between two parties? Yes, there is a difference - the one that generates Results is considered to be the most beneficial. Measurable results in business means generating more money. Technology proves to be the path of continuous learning, with newer and faster technologies being available everyday. All this depends on choosing the right method of communication.

A number of ways are available like content control is an interesting concept in the 2.0 world. The use of Wikis are great. Using wikis internally to develop FAQs is a big exercise, but in some cases only specific people can update specific wikis. The enabling technology of “Web 2.0″ may also be useful to e-learning. Incorporating Web 2.0 concepts into many training processes holds great value. The Web 2.0 concepts can play a big role in the learning process.

E-learning is driven by simple technology framework for Learning Content Management. It puts more focus on the standards for learning content but not only on the basis of innovative learning and talent management processes. The Knowledge Lifecycle Management (KLM) addresses smart management of individual & collective knowledge assets, talent, learning, activity/project management and perfect management of all knowledge and knowledge-based processes. E-learning can be considered as a small part of KLM.

Also, it has been noticed that there will be more powerful things coming up in the next 15 years, which may further change the concept of e-learning and the use of present and future generation technologies.

Earlier Posts:

http://twb-dl.com/corporate/?p=41

http://twb-dl.com/corporate/?p=43

The Writers Block (TWB) invites research papers on “Implementation of Multiple Documentation Standards – OOXML and ODF – Impact on industry”

The paper will focus on the ratification and implementation of multiple documentation standards - OOXML, ODF and their impact on industry and user community at large. The accent should be on empirical evidence and logical conclusions instead of personal opinion. The paper should be 4000-5000 words long. The competition will accept electronic submissions only e-mailed in word or PDF format to lilian.dcosta@twb.in. The deadline for paper submissions is July 15^th 2008. Select papers will be made available on the TWB Alumni blog for comment and discussion.

Winners

Best Paper Award: There will be an award given to the best paper after recommendations by the TWB Research Committee. The winner will be announced on the TWB Alumni Blog, Corporate Blog and TWB Newsletters.

• The winner gets a Citation and an Apple iPod

• The 1st and 2nd runners up get Citations

• All complete entries get a consolation prize (if the shipping address is in India)

Sponsored Papers - TWB encourages organizations supporting research on Documentation Standards to sponsor papers. Sponsored papers will not be included in the awards selection process. Sponsor organizations will be granted 3 sponsored slots. For information on sponsored papers, please send a mail to connect@twb.in

Notes

Submission format

Do not send your paper in any format other than Word or  PDF form.

The importance of the abstract

We anticipate that the selection process will be quite competitive. Your paper will be anonymously peer-reviewed and scored based on the quality of its abstract and content. Personal factors such as your institutional affiliation, academic status, and history with TWB have little impact on the final ranking. Abstracts that do not include information about the theoretical and/or empirical contributions of the research will have significantly lower chances being accepted.

E-mail Contact

Since all communication with the participants is via e-mail, it is vitally important that you make sure we always have an active e-mail address for you. If we lose contact with you after your paper is accepted, you may be dropped from the contest, so please keep us posted of any changes to your primary email address.

Program Limitations

No participant may present more than one paper.

Language

The language of the content is English. All papers have to be presented in English; translation from other languages is not allowed.

Schedule of Dates

Deadline for submission of papers - July 15, 2008

Submissions after this date may be accepted only in the case of special justifying circumstances and at the discretion of the research committee.

The following information is required for submissions.

1. Name

2. Current institutional affiliation/ occupation

3. Title/position

4. E-mail address

5. Postal address

6. Telephone

7. Abstract of Paper (a summary of the paper of 200-300 words; abstracts longer than 300 words may be rejected)

8. A brief (100 word) biographical statement that contains introductory information including educational background (highest degree, year awarded, awarding institution, field of study, present occupation amongst others).

Team TWB