Showing posts with label collaboration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label collaboration. Show all posts

The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (Leonardo Books) Review

The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (Leonardo Books)
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The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (Leonardo Books) ReviewThe title of this collection gives a clue of what the reader is headed for - the term "dialectic" is most often connected with philosophical ponderings or Marxist manifestos - this is not just another puff piece exhorting the brave new world and global village of interconnectiveness, this is a series of eleven well written essays delving into New Media Theory.
Grouped into four sections: "The Real and the Ideal", "The Body and the Machine", "The Medium and the Message", and "The World and the Screen", this collection explores the new way of being and thinking that digital technology elicits. An important work that refuses to slip into pedanticism; thought provoking and entertaining. A must read for anyone who wants to be a subject rather than an object in the Information Age.The Digital Dialectic: New Essays on New Media (Leonardo Books) Overview

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ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking Review

ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking
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ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking ReviewThis is an excellent book for anyone contemplating the development of a social networking web site using ASP.NET, although you may find the cutting edge technology used to be a little too advanced if you are only familiar with the ASP.NET Framework. The most useful aspect of the application design will be the database schema which meets the project requirements in a well thought out manner.
There are a few social networking features that are not covered like threaded comments and user profiles that can be customized using CSS but other common features are implemented including tag clouds and content rating.
Although this is a thick book, 556 pages, most of the content is code listings so it won't actually take you too long to read it. Building a social networking web application is a huge project which a solitary developer could hardly manage alone so just reading this book is not going to get you there.
ASP.NET 3.5 Social Networking OverviewThis book will show you how to create a scalable, maintainable social network that can support hundreds of thousands of users, complete with multimedia features. This book is written for ASP.NET and C# developers who want to build an enterprise-grade Social Network, either for their own business purposes or as a contract job for another company. The book assumes you have prior experience of developing web applications using ASP.NET 3.5, C# 3.0, SQL Server 2005/2008, and Visual Studio .NET 2008; it focuses on topics that will be of interest to existing developers - not on providing step-by-step examples for each detail.

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Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete Review

Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete
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Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete ReviewI just finished reading the book Total Engagement. It's rare that I read a book that has me wondering if the authors have caught a glimpse of an unexpected future, and that ten or twenty years from now people will be looking back and be saying: that was the book that spotted this crucial trend. Having lived in Silicon Valley for many years, I'm used to having that experience of being exposed to the future ahead of its time. This could be one of them.
The thesis is simple. Millions of people pay each month to participate in massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). I've tried them, and I have friends (and kids) that have been totally sucked into them. They punch a bunch of psychological tickets for humans: the game designers know what they're doing. The book discusses how this is done:
* an epic story line(we're saving the galaxy from the Crumlons)
* clear paths to advancement, with transparency about your skills and performance
* intensely meritocratic societies called guilds that work together in groups to accomplish major tasks
* strong social interactions with other people
* the ability to try, fail and try again rapidly, learning quickly
* the option to try on leadership roles
For many people, these games are where they come alive and truly experience their potential to solve problems, meet challenges and lead a team.
And then they go into the modern workplace, which is frequently as stultifying as these virtual worlds are thrilling. Fail!
Read and Reeves are convinced that at least some smart workplaces of the future are going to adapt some of the ways of the games to more fully engage their employees and become more effective as economic organizations. They don't have a magic formula for how to do this, but do invest a great deal of time analyzing what makes people inside these games tick and how those concepts transfer to the workplace.
Fascinating ideas, and well worth watching and thinking about.Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete OverviewEvery week, millions of people including many of your employees spend hours playing multi-player online games with a level of engagement they don t bring to work. These aren t just adolescent video games we re talking rich narrative quests with 3-D environments, cool avatars, and compelling goals and rewards. Imagine the value if you could transfer key ingredients of game design and the gamer excitement and focus that come with it to the office. What if your employees could solve customer problems, design new software, or configure better shipping routes working inside a game environment at work?This isn t just possible, say Byron Reeves and J. Leighton Read; it s inevitable. As global competition intensifies and employee productivity and engagement become more critical, the user experience provided by game technology offers a tantalizing solution for business. This is far more than a quaint metaphor for business and it s way beyond training tools. Implemented in the workplace, elements of games can solve a host of business problems with morale, communication, and alignment all while honing skills like data analysis, teamwork, recruitment, leadership, and more. Based on extensive hands-on research, case studies, and the authors entrepreneurial ventures, Total Engagement convincingly outlines how games will transform work, from repetitive call-center jobs to high-level teams who must collaborate with members dispersed around the globe. The authors show why you must begin building a game strategy now and offer practical guidelines for how to:--Select the game design features that can address your company s pain points --Use avatars to increase engagement and productivity--Employ virtual currencies to help employees set priorities, share resources, and meet goals--Implement participant-driven communication systems to facilitate team-building--Discover untapped leadership skills by shifting collaboration to game-like environments--Mitigate possible negative effects of game applications at work Authoritative and provocative, Total Engagement shows you how to become a player to reckon with as the gaming revolution transforms the workplace.

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Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World Review

Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World
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Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World ReviewMy personal experience in key segments of the collaboration software market space stretches back about 25 years, pre-dating "CRM" even before it was called "sales force automation," with products such as ACT!, and later GoldMine (especially through the 90s) as they moved from desktops to networks.
It was a crowded, confusing marketplace then, and it's even-more-so now. But David Coleman and Stewart Levine have taken an often brilliant stab at the interesting challenge of looking at collaboration beyond the sales force, on an organizational level, in their new book, "Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World."
I've read two books in the past five months that will have a direct impact on my business, my sales and my life and Collaboration 2.0 is one of those. (The other being Sales Essentials by Stephen Schiffman.) Throughout Coleman & Levine's book they deal with people, processes, and technologies that best complement each other. I believe these two authors provide a first-class overview of collaboration technologies, how they can be applied and what the best behaviors are to help make "teams" work more effectively.
The authors cover a wide scope on a very fragmented and rapidly evolving technology environment and help the reader make sense of it.

Although the first part of the book written by David Coleman does give a great overview of current and emerging collaboration technologies, it also ties these technologies to specific business processes measured against what they call "collaborative leverage."

I think this is important in that collaboration without a specific place to apply it and without a specific goal is just software that can promote social interactions between people. But online communities, whether social or business, must meet some objective. And in the case of business users, collaborative efforts must be "dollarized."
The second part of the book, written by Stewart Levine, really looks at people and processes and deals with techniques to build trust and agreement. Most of Stewart's ideas are very practical, and often can be seen as "Communication 101." The fact that Levine applies these techniques to the new collaborative environments is one of the things that make this book so essential.
The final part of the book looks at how to apply the best practices of people, process and technology (for collaboration) and how to get the most from this application. The final chapter takes a somewhat "big picture" view and looks at the effects of collaboration on society, and in this case, how these collaboration technologies affect environmental sustainability.
To me this book is a "must-read" for people who sell or who market products and services for a living. It shows you how to work smarter and the bottom-line benefit is that you can cut the length of the sales cycle. This is the biggest bugaboo in the game. I need deals closed today, not tomorrow. Collaboration, done right, helps to make that happen. I don't have to always feel like I'm all out there alone.
Before I started my own company (sixteen years ago) my boss used to say to me daily, "Make it happen. It has to happen." I just wish I had collaboration tools and techniques back then, instead of nothing more than a pair of brass balls.

If you sell for a living, I highly recommend this book. If you are involved in any "project-type" work, the book is recommended. For students and professionals alike who have an interest in collaboration in the new millennium, this is a book that will benefit you in many ways!
Collaboration 2.0: Technology and Best Practices for Successful Collaboration in a Web 2.0 World OverviewWith the advent of Web 2.0, we are seeing dramatic changes in the way people interact with each other via the Internet. Blogs, Wikis, online communities, social networks, and distributed teams are just some of the ways these technologies are shaping our interactions.
David Coleman is an expert in the area of collaborative processes and technologies and Stewart Levine is an expert on how to get people to work together more effectively. Together David and Stewart encompass a holistic view of these new technologies and processes and help groups, teams, departments and organizations to work better and more effectively over time and distance.

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The Virtual Worlds Handbook: How to Use Second Life and Other 3D Virtual Environments Review

The Virtual Worlds Handbook: How to Use Second Life and Other 3D Virtual Environments
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The Virtual Worlds Handbook: How to Use Second Life and Other 3D Virtual Environments ReviewThe "Second Life" world has grown far beyond the original dreams and ideas of the founders. While it has primarily been a social networking site, the opportunity to use the virtual world as a teaching platform has been discovered, explored and developed by thousands of schools from elementary to university level. While there are several books on how to use Second Life, this book covers the use of Second Life with a specific view towards creating an educational environment.
The book begins with the simple steps of signing on to Second Life, creating an account and the basic rules of getting started. The second part of the book gets more into the teaching concepts the authors have developed and reports on what they have had their students do. Finally there is a CD-ROM that includes additional resources that are intended to help in teaching and training purposes.The Virtual Worlds Handbook: How to Use Second Life and Other 3D Virtual Environments OverviewStep into the world of virtual reality with your newly created avatar and begin to experience the tools that make this world interactive! During their infancy stage, virtual environments were largely based upon the gaming community and over time have been adapted to meet the growing number of users and educators. The Virtual Worlds Handbook, with CD-ROM, provides a user-friendly approach that will help trainers and educators create an effective and interactive environment within the Second Life virtual world. This book was written to help the novice user tackle the natural learning curve while providing the experienced user with tips, tools, and tricks to help any educator or trainer meet their professional goals faster. The opportunities using virtual reality are limitless and provide online students with a unique opportunity to connect both physically and educationally to one another, to faculty, to university, and to a worldwide market.

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Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds: How to Create Cost-Saving, Efficient and Engaging Programs Review

Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds: How to Create Cost-Saving, Efficient and Engaging Programs
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Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds: How to Create Cost-Saving, Efficient and Engaging Programs ReviewI work virtually, full-time, with multiple clients who frequently exceed anything resembling the normal 40-hour work week. Most of that time is spent in a virtual environment called Second Life where I am the Community Manager for a program called Metanomics ([...]) and the Director of The Epoch Institute. Epoch is engaged in supporting the community's use of the Virtual World platform through education and facilitation of events and presentations. Metanomics is broadcast weekly and hosted by Robert Bloomfield, the Nicholas H. Noyes Professor of Management and Professor of Accounting at the Cornell University Johnson Graduate School of Management. The Metanomics Community is composed of many business and education professionals, most of whom are creating innovative applications and programs. We are all very excited about the opportunities which exist here, and the publication of "Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds" is a most welcome event. This is an excellent, balanced discussion of virtual environment use for training programs and discusses the results which are possible for both standard training and complex, challenging programs which may well have proven very difficult if not impossible to implement otherwise.
The authors make excellent use of current research on learning but also present case studies from heavy-hitters, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and the World Bank, all of whom have been extremely pleased with the results of their virtual forays. Medical training with the University of Kansas is discussed as well as forecasts regarding how participation in Virtual Worlds will change business and education. The chapter co-authored by the lead on the Michelin project is particularly riveting, dealing with a global IS employee group, and a difficult, unpopular training on the firm's Enterprise Architecture. Participants gave the Second Life training a 98% approval rating, proposed that it be extended to other topics, and "User acceptance did not vary according to background or culture"(p.112.)
There are now many books on this topic, but this is very readable, well researched and makes a compelling case for this remarkable place called Virtual Reality, yet it also clearly reflects the author's extensive experience with the platform and the needs of new and veteran users. Those of us working there currently realize that it can be hard to imagine how an immersive environment can work for such projects, and that often conviction comes only from personal participation. But this book is now my top choice to recommend for those interested in this window on the future called the Immersive Internet. Read it, allow the authors to help you temper your skepticism and come see what is both possible and engaging learners now.Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds: How to Create Cost-Saving, Efficient and Engaging Programs Overview
Team Building and Leadership Coaching with Virtual WorldsNew collaborative technologies to keep your company competitive, productive, and efficient
With the business landscape changing every day, companies need training solutions that are not only cost-efficient, but engaging, quantifiable and global. Learn how virtual worlds can help you create training and recruitment programs that attract quality talent, build great teams, and connect a global workforce - all for less than your current training budget. Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds walks you through the available technologies, helps you match virtual tools to your organizational needs,and shows why these programs have already taken off at leading companies.
Learn why leading companies like IBM, TMP Worldwide, Michelin, Intel, Microsoft and others are going virtual:
Revitalize recruitment and new hire orientation to improve employee quality, productivity and retention
Conduct worldwide training in real time, minimizing costs and time
Reduce travel while efficiently managing geographically dispersed teams
Break down dangerous or complex training procedures into manageable simulations

Experts agree that within five years, the 3D Internet will become as important to companies as the Web is today.Training and Collaboration with Virtual Worlds will put your company ahead of that curve - with great results.
Access the latest information and resources on www.TheVirtualWorldsBook.com

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