For road warriors, collaboration frequently means finding a comfy chair (or sometimes floor) with wireless Internet access.  Where would we be without our collaborative tools when we are on the road? Most modern airports do a great job of providing easy access to the Net for their premier customers, the business traveler.   Not so at Boston-Logan International Airport.In 2005, the Massachusetts Port Authority, or Massport, told airlines that they must disconnect their wireless and wireline high-speed Internet access in frequent flier lounges at Logan.  Massport told the airlines to instead use the fee-based system the airport was launching.  As a result of the Massport demand, for example, T-Mobile withdrew its service from the American Airlines lounge.  Continental Airlines petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to allow its own free service to continue; this move was later supported by Internet service providers and United Parcel Service.  

Massport contends that the rival services interfere with its network at Logan, raise safety concerns, and violate lease agreements.  But it looks like the FCC will side with Continental.  FCC Chairman Kevin Martin reportedly backs Continental’s petition and the FCC is voting on a proposed ruling favoring Continental.  The ruling requires the votes of at least two commissioners, in addition to Martin’s, to pass.

In petitioning the FCC, the airlines cited the FCC’s Over-the-Air Reception Devices regulations.  Massport contends that those regulations do not apply to Continental’s service and it has told the FCC that the airline’s system has caused unnecessary interference with other users at the airport.

A favorable ruling for Continental will serve as a precedent for other airports and airlines.  For the sake of road warriors who are plugged in everywhere, let’s hope so.

Spam works.  This may come as a surprise to you, but not only do people read spam e-mail messages but, when it comes to the ones that tout a stock, promising riches and urging the immediate purchase of the stock, recipients of such messages act on them in sufficient quantity so as to impact the pricing of a said stock. 

 In a Basex report  in 2003, we noted that spam e-mail, which at the time accounted for ca. 50% of all e-mail traffic, cost businesses in the aggregate $20 billion annually in lost productivity, clogged e-mail systems, bandwidth consumed, and the money spent on deploying anti-spam software.  Today, spam is said to account for over 65% of e-mail traffic, which translates into some 730 million messages per week.  15% of these are stock touts.  As you might imagine, despite improved anti-spam measures, spam still takes a significant toll on the knowledge worker.  But for some, the cost might be even greater.

As much as spam is universally reviled, some portion of the population appears to be hungry enough for investing advice so as to read, absorb, and act upon advice that is delivered to them via spam.

This information comes from a new study, "Spam Works: Evidence From Stock Touts and Corresponding Market Activity"  by Laura L. Frieder, an assistant professor of finance at Purdue, and Jonathan L. Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at Oxford, pointing out that spam pays, at least for some.  

Data was compiled from reviewing all 26,273 pieces of spam e-mail accumulated in Prof. Zittrain’s inbox between January 2004 and July 2005.  This was augmented with 1,775,743 reports of spam e-mail received by the Internet Usenet newsgroup net.admin.network.abuse.sights ("NANAS") over the same period.  The study identified 631 likely touts from Zittrain’s inbox and 74,784 likely touts from NANAS, concerning 307 Pink Sheet stocks.  

Such spam is not only sent out directly by the spammer, but also by zombies, or virus-infected computers tapped to send spam.  

On average, a touted stock gained 4.6% more than other similar issues on the trading day just before the spam’s peak volume day.  After the peak volume day, the return was 5.9% lower.

Stock-touting spam requires action on the part of a recipient far beyond clicking on a link.  After opening and reading the message, the recipient needs to issue instructions to a broker to purchase the touted stock.

Many of the stock-touting e-mails do contain disclosures that the sender would sell his own shares contemporaneously with the spam campaign, perhaps proving that such disclosures are ignored by many.  The researchers conclude that unscrupulous traders are able to make a tidy profit by buying shares prior to their spam e-mail campaign and then selling as the stock price increases due to investor activity generated by the spam.  Investors who purchase shares usually experience a considerable loss.

Unwanted spam? For the vast majority, yes.  But as long as some people continue to act on spam, it will remain a scourge of the knowledge age.

By the end of the year, business travelers will no longer be able to use their laptops at 30,000 feet for live collaboration sessions.  

No, this has nothing to do with the new security restrictions.  Yesterday, Boeing announced it will shut down Connexion by Boeing, its in-flight Internet service by year’s end.  [In June, Verizon Airfone, née Airphone (and later GTE Airphone) announced will shut down its phone service on commercial airlines, also by the end of the year.]  Yesterday’s announcement was upsetting to many people, particularly road warriors who use the service more extensively than others.Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira is one of those who is upset by the announcement.  "Especially on flights that occurred largely during the business day, I found FlyNet [Lufthansa's brand for the Connexion by Boeing service] extremely valuable.  It allowed me to remain productive in real time, placing calls via voice-over-IP, sending and receiving e-mail, and catching up on news."

Unfortunately, it seems that enthusiasm for the service wasn’t matched by the number of paying customers.  In announcing the program in 2000, Boeing predicted that in-flight Internet service would be a $70 billion market over ten years.  But even with 12 airlines and 156 aircraft connected, annual revenue for the service has been estimated to be ca. $25 million at the most.  

It’s still not clear what will happen to the service’s assets, and whether someone will pick up the pieces.  Negotiations had taken place with commercial satellite operators, including SES Global, a supplier of satellite capacity for Connexion, but no deal was forthcoming.  

There is still a business model for in-flight Internet service; it’s just that Boeing’s model didn’t work.  In fact, Airbus has announced plans to provide such a service with the delivery of the first A380 aircraft to Singapore Airlines later this year.  The service, OnAir, is a joint venture of Airbus and SITA, a provider of IT and communications services specializing in the air transport industry.

Since Boeing isn’t turning the system off for at least four months, it is still possible that someone will figure out a way to continue offering the service with a more profitable business model.  In a survey published by Boeing earlier this year, 92% of Connexion customers said that would recommend the service to others and 83% said the availability of Internet would impact their flying plans.  This is something the airlines should take note of, given the very competitive market for the business traveler.

Not surprisingly, as we go about our business collaborating and sharing information, we never stop to think about what happens to the knowledge we create and how it will be tapped into in the future.

But we really should take a step back and think about this.  Let’s take a look.

My colleague Sachin Anand here at Basex wrote about this growing issue in a recent issue of Basex:TechWatch and I am pleased to reprint it here for your study and consideration.

KNOWLEDGE: A CRISIS WORTH PONDERING

Knowledge is perhaps the most important asset any company holds.  While other capital assets may hold greater monetary value, or intrinsic worth, knowledge is the primary factor in utilizing those other assets.  For example, it is largely admitted, aside from lingering conspiracy theories, that NASA scientists were able to send astronauts to the moon in 1969 using the famous Apollo shuttle.  What is not admitted, or even known by most people, is the fact that NASA could not successfully send astronauts to the moon today.  Not only have vital blueprints, such as those for the Saturn rocket, been lost but other documents and data from the Apollo launches have become relics of a former era.  The piles of data and documents stored in NASA warehouses do not have an automated retrieval system.  Finding specific answers to questions about the Apollo missions could prove to be as difficult as finding the proverbial needle.    

NASA’s knowledge continuity crisis is a shocking example, but not necessarily one with large-scale consequences for the U.S. economy.  What will be affecting the U.S. economy in a large way will be the year 2010.  In 2010, the number of workers in the labor force over 55 years of age (those of the Baby Boomer generation) will reach an estimated 26.6 million people.  To put things in perspective, in four years this group will be larger then the current population of Venezuela, and over triple the current population of New York City.  This drastic change in the employment landscape has significant consequences for the U.S. economy. 

The greatest problem that the Baby Boomer retirement situation presents is the amount of knowledge that is at risk of being lost.  80% of an organization’s critical knowledge is held in the heads of its employees, with only 20% being formally documented, meaning that companies will witness the majority of their knowledge and know-how walk out the door with their retiring employees.  If loss of knowledge affected one of the nation’s most technologically advanced agencies, NASA, then what can we expect the severity of a knowledge loss to be for the U.S. economy?  The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that one in five baby boomers in executive, administrative and managerial positions will retire by 2008.  Retirement will not only cause knowledge to depart companies, but it will also take with it the management that is supposed to keep that knowledge within the company. 

While the severity of baby boomers retiring is in itself worthy of panic, the time to panic is not now.  Right now is the time to begin the restructuring and rethinking of knowledge continuity management in the workplace.  Many authors in this field currently discuss the need to retain the Baby Boomer labor force for as long as possible, through practices such as part-time hiring and outside consulting.  Unfortunately, delaying the process of retirement is only a short-term answer to a long-term problem.  Instead, knowledge retention through advanced knowledge worker tools and technology will be the long-term answer.  Collaborative Business Environments are the first step towards appropriate restructuring of the knowledge economy workplace.  By increasing communication, improving document management, and enhancing information retrieval, CBE’s provide companies with a digital knowledge retention system.  Eliminating reliance on tacit knowledge is the first step towards avoiding a knowledge continuity crisis.

JotSpot took a page from the Microsoft playbook and added a knowledge worker-friendly user interface to its JotSpot 2.0 wiki platform this week.  A wiki - "wiki wiki" is Hawaiian for "hurry quick" - is a Web page that allows users to add and edit content collaboratively; the term also refers to the software platform that supports wikis.  According to the Wikipedia, the first wiki, WikiWikiWeb, was named after the "Wiki Wiki" line of Chance RT-52 buses in Honolulu International Airport, Hawaii.

JotSpot, a Wiki company, announced JotSpot 2.0 this week. The new version of the company’s Wiki platform goes beyond traditional wiki boundaries (i.e. facilitating collaboration on textual information) by adding pre-defined page types which allow the creation of collaborative calendars, spreadsheets, file repositories, documents, and photo galleries.  The spreadsheet tool supports formulas, the ability to wrap text in a cell, copy and paste support, and the ability to ’shift-click’ to select a range of cells; the calendar page type allows users to create shared calendars; the file repository page type supports filing sharing; the photo gallery page support allows the creation of pages with images and photographs (uploaded images are displayed as thumbnails and a slide show).  A link picker allows knowledge workers to create links to pages inside and outside of the wiki as well as to documents within the wiki.  An updated permission model gives complete control over who sees what information on a page-by-page basis.

But wikis aren’t that common yet, although they are easy to deploy and offer a good knowledge sharing and collaboration platform for organizations that have limited IT resources.  One reason is that they remain too democratic, my colleague Jonathan Spira reminded me in a conversation yesterday.  "Anyone," he noted, "can edit anything in a traditional wiki.  This scares a lot of managers and CIOs."

What JotSpot is doing is making wikis easier to use by moving the wiki technology closer to an interface most users are familiar with.  

In a prepared statement, Joe Kraus, co-founder and CEO of JotSpot, had the following to say about their new offering: "JotSpot has redefined what a wiki is by removing the limitations of traditional wikis and marrying the wiki metaphor with some of the capabilities of Microsoft Office.  We’ve combined the familiarity and functionality of desktop applications like Office with the collaborative power and flexibility of wikis so users can quickly and easily collaborate on all types of information."

Ultimately, wikis may prove very valuable to smaller organizations in need of good knowledge sharing and collaboration tools but lacking large IT departments.  Only time will tell if a wiki suite is the right solution, but it sounds like JotSpot is making it easier for companies of all sizes to avail themselves of tools which previously only a large company might have in place.

One challenge the knowledge worker faces - sometimes daily - is staying connected so he can collaborate with others.  My colleague Sachin Anand recently wrote a Commentary in Basex:TechWatch on the trials and tribulations he experienced as he tried to stay connected so he could collaborate with his colleagues here at Basex.  As our work environments change more and more to the non-Dilbertian, staying connected will continue to be something we have to work at - at least until connectivity becomes truly ubiquitous and more like a walk in the park.

THE ROAD WARRIOR’S CONNECTIVITY - SOMETIMES IT MAY JUST BE A WALK IN THE PARK

At the onset of the first real heat wave of the summer, Internet access in my home office was suddenly no more.  I therefore ventured out in Brooklyn to find a café where I could finish my  work in a more hip, and caffeine filled place (the prospect of braving a ride on a hot steamy subway to the office was not very appealing).  There are many cafés nearby that offer free WiFi to their customers, as well as some offering T-Mobile HotSpots for which I have a corporate account.  However, you get what you pay for and free WiFi can be a problem for the road warrior. 

But the road warrior can tire of Starbucks, and the ambience of Ozzie’s Coffee and Tea in Park Slope was beckoning, even if I had to use their (not for free) WiFi provider, Urban Hotspots.  

Frequently the road warrior faces this very trade-off: free, but unpredictable, Wi-Fi versus supposedly more reliable paid Wi-Fi.  Choosing Ozzie’s Coffee and Tea shop meant I was going to be using Urban Hotspots, which charged a fee ($6/day or $30/month) for its high-speed Internet service.  Upon launching my internet browser, I was directed to www.urbanhotspots.com, where I was prompted to register, decide whether I wanted a day or month pass, and pay for the service through PayPal.  Opting for the day pass, I entered my new log-in information, and paid for it through the PayPal site.  Unfortunately, when I tried to use the Internet, I was repeatedly told my log-in was incorrect.    

At this moment in time, I recognized another problem with using pay for service Wi-Fi.  Since most of the pay for use Wi-Fi services in coffee shops are outsourced, there is little the coffee shop employees can do to help with your Internet crisis.  Instead, you must contact the technical support team that manages the WiFi service.  I rang the technical support number for Urban Hotspots and found out that the service team was actually one person.  The voicemail message informed me that all systems were up and running, and that I should leave a message if I needed any further assistance.  This I did, and waited.  

After letting 15 minutes pass, I called tech support again.  Luckily, my call was promptly answered.  My log-in problem must have been a common complaint because he had the answer to my problem immediately.  He asked whether at the end of my PayPal process I clicked the “Return to Merchant” link or simply moved on to accessing the Internet.  It turned out that this one specific part of the process determined whether your log-in information was registered with the Urban Hotspots database.  By not clicking this link, you were charged by PayPal but were never officially registered; leaving you with a lighter wallet but no Internet.    

After rectifying the situation, I started my browser and logged into Urban Hotspots.  The log-in process worked flawlessly, and the high speed Internet was now at my fingertips.  But this only lasted a few minutes.  The Internet connection slowed down so much that all my sites began to "time out".  This time the tech support worker could not figure out the problem, because it was clearly not a bandwidth issue, with only 2 other users on this particular network at the time.  Without any clear answer in sight, I relocated to my familiar Starbucks and my paid for T-Mobile account.  

Since my colleague Jonathan Spira has noted many times in his columns that paid Wi-Fi services can also be unpredictable, perhaps my difficulties with the Urban Hotspots service should not have come as such a surprise.  With unpredictable free and paid for Wi-Fi services, what is the answer for the virtual knowledge worker on the prowl for dependable, cheap Internet service while on the road?  One answer may be found in a third alternative, sponsored free Wi-Fi.

New York City will soon witness a large increase in the number of free Wi-Fi spots available in city parks.  A partnership between a small start-up, Wi-Fi Salon, and Nokia promises that knowledge workers (and other people) will be able to enjoy free Internet at 18 locations across 10 city parks by the end of August.  Corporate sponsorship may have the added benefit of reliability because the sponsor (in this case, Nokia) has a lot to lose (e.g. credibility) from a poorly managed Wi-Fi network.  The road warrior has benefited greatly from increased access to Wi-Fi networks at thousands of Starbucks locations, but what is the answer for the worker who just cannot stomach the prospect of yet another grande latte?  If nothing else, a shady oak tree in Central Park sounds rather appealing.

Yahoo and Microsoft began testing interoperability between their public instant messaging services today.  Specifically, users of Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger with Voice can IM each other.  This may not sound like much, but it allows two communities which have been separate to conflate (for those keeping count, this involves ca. 350 million users).

Users of public IM services have generally had to maintain multiple accounts so they could communicate with business acquaintances and friends on one service or the other.  Now, users no longer have to maintain multiple personalities (accounts) (this may indeed reduce the 350 million number given duplication) and can see presence awareness information, share emoticons, view offline messages, and add contacts from either service to their buddy lists.  

Right now users in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada (English and French), China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States (English and Spanish) can participate in the interoperability beta test by going to either Yahoo or Microsoft .

Microsoft just unveiled its latest strategy for unified messaging (this used to be called convergence, along with a host of other things) on the desktop.  Building on announcements over the past year that it was working with traditional telecoms suppliers including Alcatel, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, and Siemens (which is one of their longest standing partners in this area), this week’s  announcement continues along the path leading to the release of the 2007 Microsoft Office system.

If this announcement sounds familiar, it should.  Microsoft has had a fairly robust unified messaging strategy in Exchange Server although a lot of the functionality started appearing in other products.  This, the company’s latest messaging strategy, reunites many of these tools and builds on them.  A few years later, Microsoft needs to look at more than e-mail, fax, and instant messaging - today there’s Voice-over-IP telephony, mobile communications, audio, video, and Web conferencing, and more sophisticated presence awareness.  It may be hard to imagine, that just a few years ago, all of us weren’t connected 24×7 to everything.

So how exactly is this new direction different?  For one thing, it’s intelligent unification.  The network "knows" when you are on the phone and changes your presence awareness state; it also knows your availability to receive messages and will direct communications appropriately.  To this end, Siemens is integrating its HiPath 8000 switch with Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Live Communications Server; other telecoms companies are following suit.  

Microsoft has also designed these tools to comply with Embedded Community, which refers to contextually embedding community and collaboration tools deep into the work environment so that there is a clear and direct relationship with the work at hand and the tools available in an organization’s Collaborative Business Environment.A brief look at the products Microsoft is releasing shows that the future does hold great promise - now it’s up to Microsoft to make sure all the pieces work together and, more importantly, help ensure that their customers are ready to embrace the knowledge economy

• Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 is a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) based real-time communications platform that supports presence-based Voice-over-IP call management, audio/video/Web conferencing, and IM. 

• Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provides a unified inbox that adds speech-based automated attendant that allows users to access their communications/messages from any phone in addition to supporting e-mail, fax messaging, and voicemail.

• Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 is the unified communications client that delivers a presence-based, enterprise-class Voice-over-IP softphone, secure instant messaging, intercompany federation for IM, and connectivity to public IM networks such as MSN, AOL, and Yahoo. It also supports one-to-one and multi-party audio/video/Web conferencing.

• Microsoft Office Live Meeting is the company’s conferencing service that now adds support for e-learning, enhanced audio and video including Voice-over-IP, integration with the Microsoft Office system, and a new user interface.

• Microsoft Office RoundTable is one of my favorite new applications (it came out of  Microsoft’s Information Worker research and my colleague Jonathan Spira had the opportunity to study this in its earliest developmental phases at the Center for Information Work).  RoundTable (in conjunction with Office Communications Server 2007)  is an audio-video conferencing device with a 360° camera.  Meeting participants both in the meeting remote and in remote locations have a true panoramic view of everyone in the conference room as well as close-up views of individual knowledge workers as they take the floor.

Recently, discussions with clients about collaboration and a move towards the creation of their own Collaborative Business Environment have revolved more and more around the knowledge economy.  After several of these conversations, I got the feeling that many people needed a primer.  Happily, a colleague of mine at Basex, Chris Zaluski, prepared such a primer last week in Basex:Techwatch and I am pleased to share it with you here:

If there existed an economic Rip Van Winkle, who happened to fall asleep 25 years ago and awakened at the dawn of the 21st century, the change would have been much more drastic than the original story portrayed.  Among the vast number of changes, possibly one of the most significant has been the way our economy is fueled; from manual labor in factories to knowledge and computers.

America has gone from having a workforce composed of industrial workers to its current state of having nearly 60% of the workforce categorized as knowledge workers.  Financial analysts, bankers, teachers, software designers – all are part of the knowledge field.  This shift marks the rise of a new knowledge economy that is overtaking the workplace.  Unfortunately, although the change is making a noticeable impact on the economy, many companies are sleeping through its effects.

The knowledge economy is categorized much differently than its neo-classical counterpart.  Whereas economic principles of the past have been categorized between labor and capital, with knowledge falling to the wayside, economists today have included knowledge as a third pillar – sometimes the most important pillar.

Companies compete on a worldwide scale for not only better products, but for knowledgeable employees within their organization, regardless of the geographical limits.  The products these employees are producing are many times intangible — a characteristic lending itself to the very definition of a knowledge economy.  According to Jonathan Spira in his book "Managing the Knowledge Workforce," a knowledge economy is "an economic environment where information and its manipulation are the commodity and the activity."  A knowledge worker is, according to Spira, a participant in this type of economy.

So what does this all mean for the managers of these new-age knowledge workers?  Knowledge management revolves around being able to harness the intangible knowledge and ideas within an organization in order to creatively guide the company.  Unlike the tangible assembly line products of our forefathers, there is no easy way to gauge a knowledge worker’s productivity.  Likewise, knowledge managers are left without step-by-step management practices.  These are two truths that many traditional, “Tayloristic-bred” managers have trouble grasping.

Despite what may seem like a rapid influx of the knowledge economy into the framework of our overall economy, the very concept of the knowledge economy is still new.  Perhaps in hindsight, 50 years from now, we may not view the knowledge economy as a pillar of the economy at all.  However, businesses and managers still need to recognize the current trend.  Successful knowledge managers are able to guide an organization to reach its full potential, thus, helping everyone involved with the company, including the consumer.

Although knowledge workers rely on technology, technology still remains but a tool for performing knowledge work.  Granted, such knowledge work does not necessarily even require technology beyond a pad and pencil, yet Collaborative Business Environment tools aid the process.  Next time, we will take a look at how companies are addressing this issue.

The Avian flu was back in the news the past few weeks as the Federal government unveiled some of its plans to continue operations in the event of such an emergency and the American Broadcasting Company presented a made-for-television movie on what could happen if the bird flu mutated into a virus that was transmitted easily from human to human.  The government plan notes that 40% of federal works might be sick for extended periods of time, out caring for loved ones, or deceased - and that it will be impossible to predict who will fall into which category.  (For an in-depth look, I recommend reading Strenghening Corporate Pandemic Preparedness and Response.)

The model of having a Collaborative Business Environment, the knowledge worker’s workplace and nexus of knowledge sharing, collaboration, and business, is slowly but surely becoming part of the IT landscape.  But continued external threats to business continuity, whether SARS, terrorism, or now, a pandemic influenza, highlights the fact that having a Collaborative Business Environment can be essential to the continued operation of companies of all sizes.
 

SARS struck millions of people with fear in impacted areas, from Hong Kong to Singapore.  Worried that merely leaving their apartments would increase the likelihood of infection from exposure, thousands of employees who never dreamt of telecommuting before began working from (sometimes makeshift) home offices.  A pandemic influenza would make the SARS episodelook like a head cold.

In order for work to carry on under such conditions, there are certain aspects of collaboration that need to take place. These include:

•  Communicating with members of the team or other team’s members and partners
•  Access to documents and tools needed to complete tasks

Preparing for business continuity in the knowledge economy entails creating a work environment in the home.  As simple as that sounds on an individual basis, it is far from simple for the global enterprise where hundreds or perhaps thousands of employees are suddenly going virtual.  That’s why it is important to plan this before it becomes a necessity.  Of course, world crises do not happen often but, given what scientists have found, one simply cannot ignore the possibility of a pandemic.  If the Avian flu should arrive on the scene, having a Collaborative Business Environment in place that will allow a company to continue operations, may mean the difference between staying in business and closing the doors.  In an age as ugly as ours, with crises happening with increasing frequency, and every enterprise focusing on survival - in a literal sense, not only within the marketplace in which it competes - everyone needs to be prepared.