One of the most interesting collaborative business networks to emerge recently is a group of ambitious Northern Irish technology companies who have founded Whisple and are now actively recruiting new members from software and service companies who need a ready-made platform into the multi-billion global cloud-services market.

I have been intrigued with a new iphone app called RoamBi ("roaming business intelligence") which allows the creation of "secure mobile dashboards and visualizations" on iphones and ipads for individuals (free) and enterprises (not free) using data from excel plus other data-rich enterprise applications such as Business objects and Salesforce.com.

Three new types of graphing/charting object - sparklines, bullet charts and heat maps used in conjunction with a powerful new technique known as micro-charting, which allows complete mini charts to be embedded in single cells, can transform online dashboards, business scorecards, and what-if simulations. Here is a simple introduction.

BBC News reports that Google is dropping Google wave due to lack of users. Wave combined e-mail, instant messaging and the ability to collaborate on documents in real-time and was described as "how e-mail would look if it were invented today". Its a big surprise for a product that looked like a game changer and just like mobile picture messaging serves as a reminder of the risks of getting too far ahead of your market.

Interesting post on the idashboard blog which shows up how mass sentiment expressed through social media such as twitter can be automatically extracted into data visualization software and the results displayed in almost real-time. The number of applications for this type of social media dashboarding must be huge in both business and civic engagement

I am delighted to give bioteams.com readers a heads-up that I am launching www.youbidfast.com showing how any organization or even individual can turbo-charge their business development and marketing results by exploiting the latest best-in-class (and TOTALLY FREE) software in areas such as blogging, social media, CRM and web monitoring. Please check it out and let me know what you think!

Swarmteams is about to launch a major new software version offering a 1-stop shop for anyone who needs to engage and empower key networks of customers, consumers, fans or supporters - over any and all channels.