Kinetic typography - Love it.

I religiously follow Garr Reynolds blog. Thanks to Garr and his fantastic book "Presentation Zen" I have been able to make my conference presentations stylish, entertaining and enormously more effective. His latest post draws attention to the use of Kinetic typography. Using only animated text to deliver your message is a powerful and creative way to add emotion, create mood, add emphasis. The presentation below is a fantastic example of this method. The particular message in this presentation is an important one and the way it is conveyed is outstanding.

Should we allow PDF content on our Intranets?

I recently was asked the the following question about using PDF documents on the Intranet.

Apart from not complying with accessibility requirements (although I hear technology is on the horizon, making PDF files readable) what other reasons are there for not creating PDF links on sites? What is the better alternative?

On our Intranet site we have so many information contributors that it is impossible for me to impose strict formatting rules for content published.

My preference is for HTML, Flash, ASP and other mainstream web formats. However if I was to try and get all contributors to only publish in web friendly formats I would be perpetually training content managers and doing much more information formatting myself. I am also confident that the amount of content contributions would greatly diminish.

I have had to compromise by allowing the contributors to create and publish their information in the format that is easiest for them and their divisions.

Instead I have focussed on training staff across the business to create better optimised PDF, Word and even PowerPoint documents using only compressed images and paying close attention methods of reducing the final file sizes.

We enjoy a very wide bandwidth internally and have minimal problems with viewing these file types over the Intranet.

I would be interested in others views, opinions and solutions to the problem of best Intranet content format that I am sure many have experienced.

Attacking the Email Monster

This article contains lots of useful tips to handle the ever increasing number of emails we all receive. Many are common sense but did find a few new ones that I am going to try out.

"Exploding email in-boxes are an ever-increasing source of suffering and frustration for today's knowledge workers. In my one-on-one coaching with clients I sometimes see daily email loads hitting 200-350 emails per day. How is anyone supposed to keep up with that!?

I've collected below several ideas for how to overcome email overwhelm. The ideas focus on the basics of how to manage an inbox, and the practices individuals can do to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the emails they send and receive."

View the complete article on Michael Dolans blog "On The Road To GTD (Getting Things Done)" Attacking the Email Monster

Amazing Japanese Fountain

Many of you may have seen this already however for those who have not it is really amazing. Obviously computer controlled and operating in a kind of dot matrix (remember the old printers?) this fountain is in a mall Canal City Hakata in Fukuota, Japan. Mesmerising.

Addicted to Alltop

I have been using Alltop for a few months now and find that it has become one of the few site that I religiously visit every day.

Alltop is a Internet information aggregator that gathers together loads of news and information about specific topics in one place. It is described as being a "digital magazine rack" of the internet. You can search on a specific topic and are presented with an extensive list of information from hundreds of Internet sites about that topic. Everything from politics (US of course) to surfing to shoes. The list of topics aggregated grows daily. Unfortunately as yet there is no topic covering Intranet but I am sure one will come over time.

When you view a topic it provides a couple of suggestions for additional topics that might interest you. One thing I found very funny is that when you view the topic of Australia it suggests that you might also be interested in the additional topics of Beer and Rugby. They certainly seem to have Australian popular culture accurately summed up.

How to use social media in the workplace.

I came across this via a tweet from guykawasaki. It is quite an old item but one I found very interesting. Its an excerpt from a Forrester webinar talking about Incorporating Social Media Techniques Internally. The webinar was originally held in October 2007.
Here is a taste:

"General Motors used social media to embrace community members. When they previewed their new Camaro on the Fastlane blog, they posted a video of one of the designers driving and giving users a look at what it’s like to be behind the wheel. Not surprisingly, users then commented and created a dialog with the people at GM about what features or downloads they would be interested in seeing. GM was then able to incorporate these things into the new design."

View the complete piece here