[there are ten news stories in this post.]
..."Too often knowledge management projects failed to deliver on their promise. Since the beginning of the 90's, AGiLiENCE staff has been pioneering the area of knowledge-worker productivity, with impressive results. With EPS, we have packaged this experience from a large number of successful projects into a hands-on product. Thereby, we provide a unique combination of powerful technology and proven implementation experience to the market, going beyond pure technology or pure service providers. This is key for yielding measurable productivity and quality gains, turning the knowledge management promise into profit,' says Dr Christian Kurtzke, CEO, AGiLiENCE Group, Munich, Germany.
This year the company has opened offices in Dubai, serving as the exclusive hub for the entire Middle East region. AGiLiENCE ME has started acquiring regional resellers and distributors for its products...
Kubi Client 1.1 is a single product that delivers all the essential functionality teams need to revise documents, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects, whether they are connected to Kubi Server or operating in Client- only (peer-to-peer) configurations. It makes it easy for knowledge workers to spontaneously create secure, structured workspaces and share them with internal and external partners, without leaving the familiar Email environment (Microsoft(R) Outlook(R) or IBM Lotus Notes). This innovative approach to collaboration -- recognized with a DEMOgod award when it was introduced at DEMO 2003, and chosen as a "Trend-Setting Product of 2003" by KMWorld Magazine -- has been enriched with the addition of new feature enhancements most requested by Kubi Client users...
ITWEB :: Gauteng starts building R300m Innovation Hub
BY Stephen Whitford
...[Johannesburg, 14 October 2003] - The first phase of construction of the R300 million Gauteng Innovation Hub Science Park has begun, with a sod-turning ceremony at the construction site in Pretoria. The project is described as southern Africa's first science and technology park.
Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa said at the ceremony that the Innovation Hub aimed to create a space where hi-tech entrepreneurs, businesses, education, research and venture capital would work and meet to enhance the innovative capacity and economic development of the province.
The Innovation Hub will house the incubation programme for hi-tech start-ups, which was launched in 2001 and is being run from the CSIR buildings. It will also contain a coach-lab leadership programme where post-graduate students will work on industry projects mentored by industry experts...
PCT Online :: Serious Labor Shortage Awaits U.S. Companies, Expert Says
...By 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor expects that U.S. companies will face a shortage of slightly more than 10 million workers. (That's partly because, while about 70 million baby boomers will retire - or at least reach retirement age - over the next 15 years, only 40 million new workers are expected to enter the workforce during the same period.)
"This has happened before," says Neil Lebovits, president and COO of a specialty-staffing firm called Ajilon. "But when the 2010 labor shortage hits, it will supercede the one we faced in the late '90s, when companies bowed to their employees' every need and desire to keep them from leaving."
Service industries that require knowledge workers with specialized skills will be hit the hardest, he adds. "There are more than 90 million Americans whose literacy and numeric skills are at the 10th-grade level or below," says Lebovits. "If you consider education and training, the coming talent shortage and 'talent wars' will be even more serious." ...
Entrepreneur.com :: Pining for a Paperless Office?
By Robyn Aber
...Q: What are the considerations, technologies and steps I should take to make our business paperless?
A: I take it that your business is buried in paper. That's no surprise. You've just hit on one of the most common complaints among both office workers and business owners.
Twenty years ago, the PC was introduced as a tool that would virtually eliminate the paper then choking the average office. But that hasn't happened. In fact, market analysts report that paper use continues to boom - by an incredible 6 to 7 percent annually.
It's no small issue. Hard-copy costs typically eat up 1 to 3 percent of a company's revenue. Meanwhile, worker productivity sinks, as knowledge workers spend 10 or more hours per week just sifting through paperwork...
Yahoo PRNewswire :: Multi-Tasking Employees Work Smarter With New FileMaker Tasks
...SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- FileMaker, Inc. announced today shipment of FileMaker Tasks, a full-featured tasks management application that helps business professionals more efficiently manage common business tasks, so they can focus on more important business objectives. FileMaker Tasks is the latest in a series of ready-to-use FileMaker Application business solutions that address common business tasks. Built on the popular FileMaker Pro 6 database software, FileMaker Tasks makes it simple to create, assign, and track everyday tasks and easily communicate deadlines and deliverables to all members of the team.
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JS Online :: View grows that scenic beauty is invaluable
By John Torinus
...A consensus is building in Wisconsin about the economic advantage of land protection. Conventional wisdom has been that economic interests are 180 degrees apart from environmental protection. That adversarial picture is breaking down as citizens in the state come to understand that the state's scenic beauty, its rural character, land, forest and water assets are invaluable.
Surveys have shown that most people in the state - Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative - regard themselves as environmentalists. People may strike different balances between protecting resources and growing the economy, but the common middle ground is much larger than the extremists would have us believe. ...
The next push will be for the trusts to seek funding for PDRs - purchase of development rights - so they can offer farmers an alternative to development. A farmer can use a PDR to partially cash out without having to get out of farming and subdivide. PDRs have seen limited use in Dane County as a way to preserve rural character and the agricultural economy.
In terms of economic development, business leaders have always stressed quality of life as an important ingredient in their decisions to locate and expand in the state. They know it's essential for attracting and retaining knowledge workers...
..."Although it is a new product, InfoPath 2003 really appealed to us because of the robustness of its development platform," said Adriaan van Wyk, chief executive officer of SourceCode Technology Holdings, responsible for the K2.net 2003 workflow software. "In a recent Meta study, 85 percent of organizations reported plans to implement BPM solutions by the end of 2004. We believe InfoPath 2003 can be a great tool in helping create BPM solutions for our customers, who are looking to empower knowledge workers in their organizations to take ownership of information and tasks. InfoPath 2003 has allowed us to extend the power of rapidly building workflow-enabled business forms into the hands of knowledge workers in the enterprise."...
Canada NewsWire :: eOptimize(R) Finds the "Suite Spot" with Exchange Server 2003
...NEW ORLEANS, LA, Oct. 10 /CNW/ - It's a software acquisition dilemma that most CIO's face at some point; go with standalone best-of-breed applications and glue them together with middleware, or select highly integrated collections of unremarkable solutions provided by a single vendor. Sound familiar? A fresh approach is to acquire best-of-suite solutions that address a set of generic business functions, but also have a rich integration strategy that supports facilitates niche custom or 3rd-party products.
"That's why the Microsoft Office System and Exchange Server 2003 are so important to us," explained Barry Baker, COO and CTO of eOptimize Inc. "I'm proud to state that our corporate scheduling product - About:Time(TM) for Exchange Server - couldn't exist without this very rich suite of knowledge worker and collaboration applications. Clients receive enormous benefit when vendors create more value out of the same data, and the same IT spend...
The Star :: The Asian ICT promise
By Edwin Yapp
PARTNERSHIPS, be it between individuals or corporations, have been regarded as perhaps the greatest fundamental need in today's interconnected world.
Todays partnerships, such as those fostered between the academia and industries, large multinational companies (MNCs) and smaller local Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), suppliers and manufacturers, are but some examples that have reaped tremendous rewards.
And in an increasingly globalised world, the concept of partnership has gone one step further as it has now been extended beyond merely cooperation between entities within national borders.
One such initiative is Connected Asia, which is managed by the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation.
It defines Connected Asia as a virtual network made up of Asian nodes of ICT (information and communication technology) excellence, which together form an integrated and dynamic ICT community...
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