A lovely open access scholarly journal called Information Research publishes articles on a wide range of information-related disciplines. The following article discusses how researchers use listservs.
Field differences in the use and perceived usefulness of scholarly mailing lists
Excerpts from the conclusion: Contrary to the widespread assumption in computer-mediated communication studies (often leaning on virtual community metaphors), sociability and social presence were not very desirable features in scholarly mailing lists. Scholars were more likely to unsubscribe from high-traffic mailing lists containing discussion and debate than low-traffic lists that were restricted to queries and announcements. … The disadvantages of mailing lists in terms of time required for reading and handling messages, and the challenge for developing an effective personal e-mail management system easily overweighed their benefits. The preferred type of mailing list was a message board providing information about conferences and other events, and new publications.
Note that lots of communication is not necessarily a good thing. People became quickly overwhelmed with too many messages and dropped out of the listservs, especially if they were used for social and personal messages.
Google has launched several free new services recently. The first two provide tools that help to understand and analyse the use of web sites, and the rest of them offer ways to post public content without needing to manage a web site at all.
Google Analytics provides sophisticated reports on who visits your web site and what pages they read. For example, funnel visualization shows where visitors drop out during a donations process. You can spot confusing navigation or bottlenecks and fix them. Google Sitemaps offers a related service, providing detailed logs for your site.
Google Base is a completely open web database that you can use to exchange public information, from recipes to job openings to community events. With Google Base, Google has provided a tool that is so flexible, no-one knows how it is going to be used. Robin Good has suggested some ways to take advantage of it, including “as the public archive for the text-based newsletter that I send out weekly to my subscribers. For who doesn't have a pre-set automatic facility to store and upload newsletter content into a public open archive, Google Base may offer an useful option. In such cases Google Base may also provide easier access, greater exposure, simpler maintenance and lower cost of hosting for all this content.”
Google Print has changed its name to Google Book Search to make them look less like they are competing with book publishers. Public domain books can be searched and read in their entirety, while thousands of other books can be searched. An interesting option for nonprofits is to contribute their own books to Google instead of paying to store them on their own web sites. It increases their visibility and may even contribute to revenues through contextual ads.
Google Video allows anyone to upload video and share it without expensive bandwidth fees. OurMedia also provides the free public distribution of audio and video files; I haven’t tested them yet to see which one is easier to use.
Maclean’s Magazine was able to get phone records for the personal and professional accounts held by Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart through an American data broker, locatecell.com (covered by Cryptogram). Here’s an excerpt from the story:
Macleans.ca | Top Stories | Canada | You are exposed
When even the privacy commissioner's cellphone records are available online, we've all got security problems.
Jennifer Stoddart is a dedicated public servant who has spent years — first working for the province of Quebec, and since 2003 as the federal privacy commissioner — trying to protect Canadians' personal information from prying governments and greedy businesses. …
Her eyes widen as she recognizes what has just been dropped on the conference table in her downtown Ottawa office — detailed lists of the phone calls made from her Montreal home, Eastern Townships' chalet, and to and from her government-issued BlackBerry cellphone.
This book excerpt has a nice collection of management tips for
small and informal projects. The actual excerpt is several pages long;
I’ve listed the summary points below. Worth reading for a description
of what successful project managers do. The excerpt is followed by
opinions from the usual argumentative Slashdot crowd; several point out
that more structured processes are essential for complex projects.
Slashdot | Book Excerpt: The Art of Project Management
Everything
can be represented in an ordered list. Most of the work of project
management is correctly prioritizing things and leading the team in
carrying them out.
The three most basic ordered lists are:
project goals (vision), list of features, and list of work items. They
should always be in sync with each other. Each work item contributes to
a feature, and each feature contributes to a goal.
There is a bright yellow line between priority 1 work and everything else.
Things happen when you say no. If you can't say no, you effectively have no priorities.
The PM has to keep the team honest and keep them close to reality.
Knowing the critical path in engineering and team processes enables efficiency.
You must be both relentless and savvy to make things happen.
