Joe Wilcox of Jupiter’s Microsoft Monitor Research Service talks about MSFT’s collaboration culture within business groups and relates it to what former Apple executive Michael Mace wrote in his rant about Who Killed Apple Computer?:

From Collaboration: The Microsoft Way:
“Microsoft’s collaborative culture makes the company very responsive to competitive threats. The character also means Microsoft can quickly focus resources from multiple product divisions when executives see there is a need. These could be seen during the so-called browser wars with Netscape, when Microsoft rapidly churned out new Internet Explorer features and caught up with Netscape in about 18 months and three product versions…”

“Too often, success in any market has more to do with how well a business is run rather than how good the products are. Apple’s products often are more highly-regarded than Microsoft’s. High regard is fine, but in business sales count more; sales success is on Microsoft’s side. I believe the company’s collaboration culture is one of the major reasons.”

In general I would have to agree that this applies to any company or group. In addition, establishing a collaboration culture is not a technology problem, because as I said a few weeks ago, “…a healthy community doesn’t need a formalize process or a highly specialized set of tools to successfully collaborate.”

The collaboration culture needs to be fostered by good leadership. The solution will soon follow.

John sent me this article in Business 2.0, which seems to be demonstrating the application of Business Process Re-engineering in the Consumer Product Development area:

James Dyson says, “It is much easier to reinvent the wheel because the faults of the existing system are fairly obvious,” he contends. “The hard part is to find a solution that everyone who has come before you has not found.”

“Dyson has found ways to improve on such basic appliances as the vacuum cleaner, the washing machine, and the wheelbarrow.” [more here]

I just tested X1 for a few minutes and I’m truly impressed with its ability to quickly index and search my local repository of files and email messages.

“X1 is free PC software that uses an advanced indexing process that lets you find any word in any email or file on your computer, in under a second.”

The Pro version of X1 is just under $50 (US) and adds the ability to search network shares and native file preview options as well.

X1 isn’t a new concept, but I like the hit-highlighting, search history and the integrated web searching (via Google et al).

IMHO however, what would make this a killer application (especially within the enterprise) would be to incorporate federated network or P2P searching capabilities, whereby I could search disparate repositories that other “trusted” X1 users have indexed.

Indeed, you’d have to be much more selective in what you’re indexing locally, but the benefits in distributing the workload (and security) would outweigh the risks.

The Internet Archive has release a new tool that allows you to search for relevant pages from 1996 until today.

“You can search and find things the way they used to be.”

I guess the web almost never forgets…

Very cool! I just read on Library Stuff that you can now use My Yahoo as an RSS news aggregator.

If you’re already a member, click on the following link to add the “blog” module.

• Add the Blog Module

Next, click on the [edit] button to add some RSS feeds.

Consume and enjoy.

Matt Haughey of PVRBlog has an extensive review of SnapStream Personal Video Station 3.0:

“Would I trade a TiVo for a small PC running Snapstream? After playing with it for a few weeks, I’d have to say it is certainly possible. A home theater PC can do more than a TiVo (play videos, any audio format, photos, show the web on your TV, etc), and this package certainly covers the TV recording features that TiVo pioneered.”

“If my reviews carried ratings, SnapStream’s software would get nearly a 100% score for the low cost, loads of features, and easy video sharing, with the non-PC platform sharing being my only criticism.”

Good stuff!

I love this stuff too…

“Explorer Bar (Band) Maker is a Windows tool (one-step wizard) that lets you create your own Explorer bar from any HTML page, picture or Macromedia Flash file.” (via Anil Dash’s Links)