ThoughtFarmer has been cranking out the news lately, this one caught my attention since I helped build, rebuild, and throw my hands up in frustration several Intranets in the past:
Recently, IDEO embarked on a new project to empower their internal communities to create and manage their own online collaborative spaces. With more than 500 employees in eight offices around the world, they sought better ways to share knowledge and collaborate across physical distances.
“We knew that wikis promised much of what we were after,” says Gentry Underwood, project lead for the initiative. “But most of the tools on the market are …read more

ThoughtFarmer has been on my radar since Office 2.0 last summer.  I haven’t been a huge fan of wikis, but the ThoughtFarmer system isn’t really a wiki.  It is, well, a sophisticated, easy-to-use Intranet system.
 
This week ThoughtFarmer has released v 2.5 of their Intranet system, which focuses on using drag-n-drop for user control giving you the information you want when you want it.
You might think that the era of the Intranet is over, but actually it’s only beginning.  When SarbOx hit the scene user control and document management became a high priority item for public companies.  Now having tight control …read more

Dabble DB continues to help their users use Dabble DB better with all their applications.  Today’s tip/tutorial is–Checking the right boxes–more on getting your UI just right in your application.
Might be simple, but if your users can’t use the application–then everyone’s time has been wasted.

While I’ve been catching up this week Strutta came out of stealth and Techvibes got the first post/scoop on this new online video-based game:
Strutta is an arena, a platform for video competitions, called “games”. A game is created with a theme, such as “Best George W. Bush Impression” or “Best Surprise Wedding Dance”. Users can submit videos for that theme, watch others, and vote which they think is the best.  A key rule is that a user must submit their own video: either they appear in it or are holding the camera. A broad set of categories makes space for …read more

David Baines wrote an article in the Vancouver Sun on Saturday about GiveMeaning.  From the quick skim I did and Tom’s response, it sounds like David is raising questions about financial disclosure at GiveMeaning.  This is an excerpt from Tom’s response:

Nevertheless, his main contention is that GiveMeaning Foundation has spent more money building the GiveMeaning brand and service than it has raised money for its projects. This is not only not in dispute but not surprising to anyone that knows anything about a start-up business. GiveMeaning launched its re-vamped website in late September of 05. Prior to that, our web …read more

It’s a simple thing, but user interface is so important and when developers care about that it makes a huge difference for users.  The folks at Dabble DB  have a post on their blog about combo boxes that is a good read.  Why?  Because it shows, to me at least, that they are thinking about what users need:
Today’s blog post isn’t about a new feature to Dabble DB, but to me, the user interface designer, it feels just as significant.
Interface design on the web can be both simple and complex. The simple path is often the wisest. Don’t deviate from …read more