Office Jotter

Office Jotter is the personal blog of Roger Whitehead, which he has been running since 2002. Roger gives broad coverage in it of computing and managerial topics. As the sub-title says, it offers "Tasty morsels on running the electronic business".

Deeper examination of product and supplier matters appears mainly in Roger's publications for Bloor, such as in his coverage of enterprise search and collaborative software (aka groupware).

Recent Blog Posts

Part 1 of 2 - Innovation in social networking for business
I had posted on this topic a few days ago but have thought again about how best to present the data from the survey I mentioned. I am therefore reposting the item with the changes included. The earlier version is no longer present. In the...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 5th November '09

Part 2 of 2 - Innovation in social networking for business
Here below are summaries of the details on which we have based our assessment of the innovativeness and corporate readiness of the listed products and services. 1. Atlassian Confluence is Java-based wiki software that also provides scope for...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 5th November '09

More on the business value of social networking
These news items caught my eye recently. Brand leaders The first, and most significant, is a report published jointly by Wetpaint, a social networking site, and the Altimeter Group, a firm of consultants. It gives the results of a survey by Charlene...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 7th September '09

Social netting - the whats and whys (2)
Part 2 - Why have social netting? Frameworks for thinking In the first in this series of articles on social networking, I referred to the typical business uses of social networking as being for: - customer intimacy - product or market research -...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 27th August '09

Investing in computers - a digression
Before looking at how social networking might help organizations, I thought it would be useful to set out a simple framework for discussing such investments. Why invest? In business, there are three primary motives for making any change: - to do...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 6th August '09

Social netting - the whats and whys (1)
Part 1 - What is social netting? Let's start with the usual dichotomising When thinking about this subject, it helps to distinguish between social networking and social media. Social networking is people conversing over a network. The network can be...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 27th July '09

Yelp - a model of community building
Before looking at the social networking market overall (see my previous posting), I want to show you an example of what a successful system can offer. Not all its characteristics translate well into the corporate world but you might be surprised at...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 13th July '09

Social netting - a survey
For the past few years, I've been working part of the time with Bloor Research - friendly folk, doing good work on analysing the markets for commercial software. One of my colleagues there, Carl Potter, has invited me to join him in looking at the...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 10th July '09

Social and age divisions among users of social networks
Danah Boyd is a researcher in social media at Microsoft Research. She describes herself as an ethnographer, which literally translates as someone who writes about people. Like other members of her trade, Ms Boyd uses statistical methods as a...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 9th July '09

Stopping search
My main hobby is photography, so I've been interested and dismayed to see how police forces around the country are increasingly bullying amateur and professional snappers in the name of security. It's never happened to me, I'm glad to say, probably...
Roger Whitehead, Office Futures | 15th June '09