10 Web 2.0 Ideas to Keep Your Intranet Fresh

Daniel X. O’NeilInternet Consultant

(773) 960-6045danielx@gmail.com

Hello.

• Daniel X. O’Neil• 10 years as an internet strategist, consultant,

and project manager• Worked on intranets for Sears, Allstate,

Kimberly-Clark, and Bank One• 5 years of working with Web 2.0 tools, starting

with Salon Blogs and moving forward from there as a beta hound

• Currently the People Person at EveryBlock

How to Evaluate Emerging Technologies

• Separate the technology from the culture

• Separate the current utility from the generic utility

• Maxim: any piece of software with pop culture popularity has enterprise utility

• That’s what we’re going to do today– show the utility of popular application in the enterprise

Web 2.0 Principles: Technology

• Fast, iterative development on web-focused toolsets (Ruby on Rails, Django, AJAX, etc.)– means that users can affect features more closely

• Open standards, open source software-- leads to reduced cost and more reuse

• APIs– less cost to build

Web 2.0 Principles: Culture

• Collaboration: comments, trackbacks, frequent updates/ edits

• Openness: transparency in approach

• Crowdsourcing: Wikipedia is the great example, but there are many others (Yahoo! Teachers and Answers, for instance)

Security and Enterprise Use

• Based on the intranet audience, all ideas presented here are geared toward intranet usage

• Security: most of the tools here are stored on public servers behind simple passwords

• Enterprise architectures: most tools run on external servers

• I don’t recommend using public tools to store company secrets

Levels of Complexity

• Each of these ideas are prepared for communicators with little or no input from IT types

• However, as the skills of IT and cooperation with them increase, you can move into greater complexity

• RSS feeds run through Feedburner can be turned into direct APIs via Twitter, for instance

Essentials

• There are step-by-steps here, but you’ll have to figure some things out

• Use the “Help” button• If you get stuck, Google the problem– chances are

someone else has had the same issue• The ability to copy/paste pieces of code directly into

your intranet is key to most of these ideas• Email tech support or the creator of the tool your

using for help if you search and find no answers

10 Ideas: The Platform

• Use Google Reader to keep up with employees, trends, and news in your industry

• Use Google and Yahoo! news & blog search RSS feeds along with Yahoo! Pipes and FeedBurner to create custom competitive intelligence

• Use Flickr for finding, publishing, and sharing photos relating to your company

10 Ideas: Outside In

• Use Google Video to stream instructional videos and other corporate video assets

• Use Google Apps For Your Domain for complete out-of-the-box intranet (small businesses or independent-minded divisions)

• Use Google Gadgets for weather, world clocks, or just plain fun

• Use Live.com to create custom point-to-point maps

10 Ideas: More Complex

• Deploy WordPress to for feature-rich, extensible content management system

• Use social networking sites such as Facebook as an extension of your corporate conversation

• Use Zocalo to create prediction markets and tap hidden knowledge

Google Reader

• This is one of the basics that every communicator should have– a full RSS reader

• Google Reader is the best– easy to subscribe, easy to share, great screen shortcuts

• Allows you to keep on top of all sorts of info and serves as a basis for more sophisticated things

Google Reader

Google Reader for Subscribing to News

• Electronic clipping service• Subscribe to any news source

that has an RSS feed• Use the Firefox or IE 7

browsers for auto-detection of RSS feeds

• Firefox is best– faster, renders pages better, spellcheck

Google Reader for Corporate News Clippings & Content Fodder

• Reading lists– keep up on key industry publications and newspapers

• Do searches in your key executive staff, company name, and industry keywords in Google News

• Every search has an RSS feed• Don’t forget the blog search, too• Once you’ve got the feed, you can just click the

orange RSS button or copy/paste the URL into the “Add Subscription” section in Google Reader on the left

Google Reader: Export Reading List

• Once you build a good reading list, you can share it with everyone in your company

• Settings > Import/ Export > Export Your Subscriptions as an OPML File

• Then upload it to your intranet• Anyone can download it and import it into

their feed reader

Google Reader: Export OPML file

Custom Competitive Intelligence

• Use Google and Yahoo! news & blog search RSS feeds along with Yahoo! Pipes and FeedBurner to create custom competitive intelligence

• Once you’ve got an RSS feed, you can trim it then publish it to your intranet

Custom Competitive Intelligence: Convenience Stores

Capture the RSS Feed

Get an account at Feedburner

Burn the new feed (step-by-step in Feedburner)

Then click “Buzzboost” under the “Publicize” tab and complete the form

The result? A script. Publish it to your intranet in a block that takes HTML

<script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ConvenienceStores-GoogleNews?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ConvenienceStores-GoogleNews"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript>

Here’s the raw HTML in a webpage

Last Step: Customize the feed with Yahoo! Pipes

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ConvenienceStores-GoogleNews

Convenience Store Raw Feed

Convenience Store Feed w/o the phrase “7-eleven”

Now it is

Custom Competitive Intelligence:Upshots

• Somewhat complicated, but powerful once you get it

• Be sure not to “publish” your feed– then only you know its URL

• Be sure to only use this tactic on feeds that you are OK to make public

• The feeds may be indexed by search engines• If you’re afraid of the competitive intelligence

searches becoming public, pick your content by hand using RSS feeds as in our first example

Flickr

• Use Flickr for finding, publishing, and sharing photos relating to your company

• Flickr has 25,017 photos of “Pepsi”

Flickr for Creative Commons Photos Available for use on your Intranet

• Creative Commons is a set of intellectual property standards based on existing copyright law

• Flickr supports search for Creative Commons images in their Advanced Search

666 “Pepsi” photos on Flickr licensed under Creative Commons

Flickr for storing hi-res images

• Great for sharing with art departments

• Password-protected, but stored on the internet– so no trade secrets or pre-product launches

• Supports separate privacy settings for each photo

Extending Flickr

• Supports printing• Third-party applications• Integration with blogging software• Publish to Flickr by email• Publish to blog by email• Publish by cellphone camera

Google Video

• Use Google Video to stream instructional videos and other corporate video assets

• Google allows for the streaming of private, non-indexed videos inside your intranet

• But again, only store non-critical items there– you never know

• Great for historical company videos or non-secret trade or instructional videos

“Uploaded videos” screen

Advantages of Google Video

• Private• No size limits– blows past all of the “server

space” issues of the past• Personal index of your videos– great for

historical asset management• Streaming onto your intranet is easy

Google video: Just copy/ paste HTML

Google Apps For Your Domain: One-Stop Intranet

• Use Google Apps For Your Domain for complete out-of-the-box intranet (small businesses or independent-minded divisions)

• https://www.google.com/a/smallbiz/

Google Apps For Your Domain:Start Page

• Click & drag modules• News, weather, custom integration with

other applications• A great option for a small business or an

enterprise with no intranet yet• Or, the corporate division with lots of latitude• The usage would be more of a shared

homepage than the storage of any internal communications

Google Gadgets: Inside your intranet

• Use Google Gadgets for weather, world clocks, or just plain fun

• The same components that are available in Google Apps For Your Domain are also available as “gadgets”, or portable pieces of software, on your intranet

• There are currently more than 12,000 available: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open

Google Gadgets: Weather for every corporate location

Google Gadgets: Configure the Gadget to your liking

Google Gadgets: Then “get the code”

<script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?url=http://www.labpixies.com/campaigns/weather/weather.xml&amp;up_degree_unit_type=0&amp;up_city_code=none&amp;up_zip_code=none&amp;synd=open&amp;w=320&amp;h=224&amp;title=Live+Weather&amp;border=%23ffffff%7C3px%2C1px+solid+%23999999&amp;output=js"></script>

Google Gadgets: Other useful gadgets

Google Gadgets: Other useful gadgets

Google Gadgets Upshots

• Since the gadgets run on a server outside your intranet, it can function as a “back door” into functionality that could take months to develop internally

• Some IT types may have issues with possible script exploits with some gadgets– check with them if you must

Live.com for custom maps

• Use Live.com to create custom point-to-point maps

• Very useful for maps to company picnic, key suppliers, ad-hoc route maps

• Published to the internet and accessible with the right URL

Live.com maps– add custom “pushpins”

• Allows you to add “pushpins” (see right-hand side of screen after you log in)

• Each pushpin can be precisely placed and have detailed descriptions, URLs, images, etc.

Live.com– see the map here

• http://local.live.com/?v=2&cid=5973FA202DA62927!138&encType=1

• Permanent URL for sharing

• Not indexed by search engines

WordPress: content management

• Deploy WordPress to for feature-rich, extensible content management system

• “Blog” software that runs on your intranet, not on an outside server

• Highly extensible (can add outside functionality)• Can be used as content management (more

sophisticated databased relationships among content types)

• Has the simplicity and features of a blog

WordPress: Powerful Features

WordPress: Extensible

Social Networking Sites

• Use social networking sites such as Facebook as an extension of your corporate conversation

• Not recommended for every corporation (especially the larger ones)

• But can be highly effective to have informal, deeper relationships with employees

• Be where they are, gather more knowledge

Zocalo Prediction Markets• Use Zocalo to create prediction

markets and tap hidden knowledge• Perhaps the most “out-there”

suggestion on the list, and most difficult to execute

• But very rewarding for large organizations that seeks to get the low-down and dive deep into the collective mind of the workforce

• Great take on prediction market’s utility in the enterprise:

• http://wiki.commerce.net/wiki/ZMarket

Zocalo Prediction Markets

• Need an experienced IT person to implement this

• Advantage: completely internal• Web-based source: www.inklingmarkets.com

Thank You

• Call me anytime (773) 960-6045• Contact me on MyRagan• danielx@gmail.com • Look for the launch of EveryBlock• Questions?