Dave

Working openly on the web

dougbelshawThere was a nice guest post from Doug Belshaw from Mozilla on Brian Kelly’s blog last week.

Entitled What Does Working Openly on the Web Mean in Practice?, it told us a bit about Mozilla’s culture of openness and how it ties into web based working.

Here’s a quick quote:

Working open is not only in Mozilla’s DNA but leads to huge benefits for the project more broadly. While Mozilla has hundreds of paid contributors, they have tens of thousands of volunteer contributors — all working together to keep the web open and as a platform for innovation. Working open means Mozilla can draw on talent no matter where in the world someone happens to live. It means people with what Clay Shirky would call cognitive surplus can contribute as much or as little free time and labour to projects as they wish. Importantly, it also leads to a level of trust that users can have in Mozilla’s products. Not only can they inspect the source code used to build the product, but actually participate in discussions about its development.

But you really ought to go and read the whole thing.

Simple private mobile communities with Glassboard

gbGlassboard is a neat cross platform (iOS, Android, Web) app that helps people to communicate within teams while on the move.

You download the app – or use the web version – and create a ‘board’ which is where you post messages and files. Then you invite people to join that board, and only they and you have access to what is posted there.

Even better, you can choose to have people join by using an invite code rather than receiving a specific invite. This means that, for example, you could create a board for all the members of an email newsletter to join to be able to chat. Just include the invite code in the email, and all those who you want to have access can do so.

It works really nicely on smartphones – the web interface is a bit clunky, but then, it’s made for mobile I think. It also is a nice, more lightweight alternative to a Yammer network, which can sometimes feel like taking a sledgehammer to a nut, I find, when all you want to do is have a quick chat now and again with a group.

Glassboard is free for 3 boards. For unlimited boards and a few other features, you can go premium for a very reasonable $5 per month.

WorkSmart podcast – Episode 1 : The rough and ready first attempt

In this first effort at podcasting, I talk about podcasting. Oh, and audiobooks, and an actual paper book, too.

With thanks to Lloyd Davis for the inspiration.

Listen using the player below:

Or you can:

Here are some links to stuff I mention:

Hope it’s fun, or interesting. I’d settle for not a total waste of time, to be honest.

Add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets

Google has snuck out some rather cool new functionality to its cloud based productivity suite Google Drive.

Called add-ons, you can now use them to add extra functionality to your Google Docs and Spreadsheets experience.

Here’s a video explaining it all:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqX6ocwHWU]

So what are these add-ons and what do they do?

Lucky for us that Lifehacker has produced a list of the best ones. They include:

  • HelloFax, which lets you fax a Google Doc without leaving the app
  • Mapping sheets lets you take a spreadsheet full of address information and put it all on a Google Map
  • UberConference – lets you set up and run a conference call from within your Google Doc. Great for collaborating across distances
  • Track Changes – gives you reviewing tools a bit more like those you are used to in Word

These are just some of those currently available – it will be interesting to see what will come in time as developers get to work.

Five for Friday – 14 March 2014

linksFive for Friday is WorkSmart’s weekly roundup of interesting stuff from the week’s reading.

  1. About change, defaults and disruption – “large organisations are racing against start-ups to stay relevant”. Great stuff from Anne McCrossan
  2. Creating a minimum viable product using WordPress – Chris Lema on using WordPress to throw together prototype services
  3. 5 More Unexpected Ways to Work Smarter, Not Harder – useful ideas. Thanks to Dan Slee for the link.
  4. Is it time to quit your job and launch that new start up? – nice video from Bethnal Green Ventures via the Nominet Trust
  5. Forrester argues piecemeal digital transformation won’t work – interesting research. Lovely quote: “Dabbling with digital isn’t the route to success”.
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