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The British Library is all a twitter about Yammer

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Although I like to think I have my finger on the pulse of Social Media, it took a colleague in our marketing department to introduce me to our Yammer page.

After a very short space of time we have 97 members and several hundred messages.

For those of you who are also new to Yammer, it is a micro-blogging tool for the enterprise, launched in September last year, and has already been nominated for the CNET Webware 100.

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

As employees answer that question, a feed is created in one central location enabling co-workers to discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced.

Anyone in a company can start their Yammer network and begin inviting colleagues. The privacy of each network is ensured by limiting access to those with a valid company email address. Information is never shared with third parties.

The basic Yammer service is free. Companies can pay to claim and administer their networks.

Yammer was founded by former executives and early employees of PayPal, eGroups, eBay, and Tribe. It is backed by venture capital firms Founders Fund and Charles River Ventures.

We have all worked at companies and understand the needs of companies to share information within a private network. We built the solution that we would want to use ourselves.

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Update to our first Free Live Webcast – Mothers of Invention

After a few minor technical hitches I managed to watch the webcast of our Mothers of Invention Inspiring Entrepreneurs event last night.

Although the image was small and a bit grainy the sound was excellent and it almost felt like being there, particularly during the question and answer session.

Highlights for me were Liz Jackson the founder of Great Guns Marketing who had left school with just one GCSE, but through the help her first boss who became her mentor and an unofficial apprenticeship, has become a leader in her field.

Her top tips were:

Gurinder ChadhaIt was also fascinating to hear how difficult it was for Gurinder Chadha the director of Bend it Like Beckham to get funding for the film, even with a previous success under her belt.

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Our first Free Live Webcast – Mothers of Invention

I am proud of the way my colleagues in the British Library have adopted and experimented with Web 2.0 and social media in the past three years.

We have activities in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linkedin, a free e-course on intellectual property, a good old fashioned monthly e-newsletter and of course our two blogs on business and intellectual property.

Our next venture is into the world of live webcasting starting on Tuesday 10 March 2009 at 6.30pm (UK time) with Mothers of Invention.

Not only will you be able to watch our Inspiring Entrepreneurs event online at website www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/, but also put questions to our panel of experts.

Gurinder Chadha Gurinder Chadha OBE is one of Britain’s most successful film directors, best known for Bend it Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice and, most recently, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Born in Kenya, she began her career at the BBC before making a huge impact with Bhaji on the Beach in 1993.
Liz Jackson Liz Jackson MBE started her telemarketing business Great Guns at the age of 25, with few educational qualifications and a £4,000 loan from The Prince’s Trust. In the first year of her business, she lost her eyesight, yet has gone on to build a £3m-turnover business with eight offices across the UK.
Laura Tenison Laura Tenison conceived her children’s clothes business in 1993 after a severe car accident in France; the woman in the hospital bed beside her complained about the standard of mail-order kids’ clothes. Today JoJo Maman Bebe is an award-winning multi million-pound retailer with stores across the UK.
Dee Wright Dee Wright‘s business The Hairforce is an innovative nit and lice removal service.  After just three sessions with one of Dee’s “lice assassins” both the nits and the lice are gone, and children are treated like VIPs in a massage chair; the whole experience is fuss-free. Dee supports female staff by providing a job which they can fit around school hours.

The British Library is bringing together four trailblazing British women for an evening of inspiration in celebration of International Women’s Month. If you can’t make the event, you can still join in the debate by watching our live webcast.

In partnership with HSBC, the world’s local bank.

Our speakers:
Gurinder Chadha OBE, director of Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice
Liz Jackson MBE, founder of telemarketing business Great Guns
Laura Tenison MBE, who runs award-winning mother and baby brand JoJo Maman Bebe
Dee Wright, the brains behind The Hairforce, an innovative nit and lice removal service

How to watch:
How: Visit the website www.inspiringentrepreneurswebcast.co.uk/
Date: Tuesday 10 March 2009
Time: 18.30 – 20.00 (GMT)

Don’t worry if you can’t make this time; you’ll be able to view the webcast after the event.

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Digitising the British Library one page at a time

Lynne Brindley the British Library Chief Executive has been campaigning hard for the cause mass digitisation of content in order to facilitate access for all and preservation – Dame Lynne Brindley challenges Government on Digital Britain

However scanning books to turn them into digital ‘assets’ is not as easy as might be thought. I was lucky enough to be able to visit the part of the library where the work is currently in progress, and was impressed by both the scale and complexity of the challenge.

Recently I came across a YouTube video from German TV which gives a revealing insight into the project.

[youtube=http://http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=FtgeelIbk3s]

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Network to success with Company Partners

Company Partners

I have noticed a recent boom in the number of networking sites for business start-ups and entrepreneurs. Something to do with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and the popularity of Facebook I’m sure.

I recently joined Company Partners which offers free registration with the option to upgrade to full membership from £14.95 a month.

I did a quick search today and found lots of potentially useful contacts already registered on the service.

About Company Partners

Entrepreneurs could you do better with a like-minded business partner? You will find that growing a business, getting great business ideas and having the confidence and skills to drive it forward is easier. Together you are able to motivate, brainstorm, plan and just generally get the whole process going quicker and with more chance of success.

Or are you are looking for Business Angel funding and have a great opportunity? Post your business summary on the site and let Business Angels find you.

Are you a Business Angel looking for interesting investments? You can have free access to all the business summaries, get unlimited contact and even our own Automatch service that will automatically notify you if a suitable investment comes along.

Mentors or Non-Executive Directors – as experienced business people, have you the time & skills to assist young companies? Put something back, get satisfaction from helping a growing business, maybe even equity shares.

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Let’s hear it for the blog

That’s not a quote from me, but is the title of a short but proselytizing discussion with marketing guru Seth Godin author of Purple Cow and legendary management author Tom Peters.

According to Tom, “no single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging”.

There are lots of other interesting and inspirational snippets on the Open Forum website courtesy of American Express.

Many thanks to Leon for pointing out this free resource for aspiring entrepreneurs.

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Protect your content against online plagiarism and theft

Many of my Business Advice clients are concerned about rivals stealing their on-line content, so I was pleasantly surprised to come across the free Copyscape service whilst researching a replacement mobile phone on the Mobile Phones UK: Reviews & Best Buys website.

All you need to do is post in your website address and see where (and how much of it) is appearing elswhere on the Web. Needless to say Copyscape offer a premium service with no monthly limit and batch searching for a fee.

Copyscape recommend you put a warning notice on your website to help scare off any potential content theives.

Defend your site with a plagiarism warning banner!

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Facebook backs down over controversial privacy policy

facebook_175x125Intellectual Property topics can come from all sorts of unexpected places. The headline above was the lead story facing me as I picked up my local free Metro newspaper this morning.

Firstly, I was surprised to see the social networking phenomenon making it to the forefront of ‘old media’, and secondly, surprised to see Facebook backing down in the face of user complaints so quickly.

The last major U-Turn from Facebook I am aware of was in November 2007 when they removed their online tracking of purchases after more than 50,000 Facebook members signed a petition objecting to the program. Facebook Retreats on Online Tracking.

This time the response from the company has been much more swift, and this evening when I logged into Facebook I was confronted with the message below:

Terms of Use Update: Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog. If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

Bobbie Johnson in the Guardian explains the background to this latest crisis facing Facebook:

Facebook has backed down on controversial changes to its terms of service that angered users and caused protests across the social networking site.

Two weeks ago the site altered its terms of service so that it continued to retain a copy of all a user’s messages, actions and updates – even if they left the network. Until the change, Facebook’s policy was to delete all traces of a user if they chose to quit the site.

After the potential scope of the new legal wording became clear, thousands of outraged Facebook users and privacy campaigners lobbied for the world’s largest social network to revert to its old terms of service.

On Monday it seemed these calls were falling on deaf ears after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg defended the changes in a blogpost, and suggested that users should trust the site with their data.

However, just 24 hours later the company decided to back down. In a message to users last night, Facebook said it would be reverting to its previous terms and conditions for the time being.

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Find out your favourite blogger’s Myers-Briggs personality type with Typealyzer

Thanks to Karen Loasby* and her Favourite Tipples from FreePint from 22nd January 2009 for highlighting Typealyzer.

The (currently beta) service is a text a text classifier that analyses any blog and assigns a Myers-Briggs personality to it based on writing style.

“Typealyzer.com is developed by the happy people @ prfekt.se. Illustrations are made by Sol at Accented. Please also visit our Typealyzer group at Google!. If you want API access for R&D, try free text classification or use psychographic analysis for commercial purposes – please visit PRfekt at uClassify!

How does it work? For a long period of time, we have been training our system to recognize texts that characterize the different types. The system, typealyzer, can now by itself find features that distinguishes one type from another. When all features, words and sentences, are statistically analysed, Typealyzer is able to guess which personality type the text represents.”

I have tested it on a some of my favourite blogs (and mine of course) and come up with some interesting results.

My colleague Steve van Dulken who writes about the world of inventions and how it interacts with business, the media and patents, is ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers. “The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right. Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks whatsoever. The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to work int heir own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do it.”

Stephen Bury  (Curator of the Breaking The Rules exhibition and blog) is ISTP – The Mechanics. “The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.@

SurprisinglyEuan Semple a leader in the field of Social Computing with thousands of followers on The Obvious blog is also classified as ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers.

Stephen Abram previous President of SLA and thought leader for Libraries 2.0 through his blog Stephen’s Lighthouse, will be pleased to hear he is INTP – The Thinkers. “The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.”

Finally, I am rather pleased to be able to report that this blog also falls into the the INTP category… remembering of course that it is all just a bit of fun.

thinker

* Karen Loasby is an Information Architect for the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) and Contributing Editor of the FUMSI Manage practice area. Karen was previously Information Architecture Team Leader in the BBC’s Future Media & Technology department, managing a team of 16 information architects. She is a regular presenter at information architecture conferences and writes about information architecture and creativity at www.iaplay.com. Karen can be reached at karen.loasby@fumsi.com

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Airport Havens for frequent flyers

AirportHavens_logoAs a regular traveller to the United States I often spend many hours waiting for connecting flights at hub airports. My record to date was seven hours in Huston.

But now thanks to Springwise I have discovered AiportHavens, where I can find (thanks to fellow travellers) a nice quiet spot for a some work, a read or even a nap, away from the hustle and bustle.

However, it may not quite be up to the standard required for setting up permanent residence as exemplified by Mehran Karimi Nasseri an Iranian refugee, who lived in the departure lounge of Terminal One in Charles de Gaulle Airport from 8 August 1988 until July 2006. Merhan Karimi Nasseri at Charles de Gaulle airport, France, since 1988.

AirportHavens