As companies are finding an increasing proportion of their revenues outside home markets many are starting to realise that developing multicultural intelligence in their workforces could be a key lever to competitive advantage. To read "Crossing Cultures" article in Workforce Management

Standards initiative for blog aggregation and applications

One of the problems with blogs is that posts can have any, or no, structure. So, for example, my blog post about a DVD review might include the running time and the certificate. Your DVD reviews might instead offer a star rating and a genre classification. This inconsistency makes the work of automatic aggregation into a DVD review site very difficult. Likewise its very challenging to do intelligent filtering (e.g notify me of all reviews of Jim Carey's films in the non-comedy genre) .

Decoding the DNA of the Web

To date the web has been a bit of a black box where we search for needles of usefulness embedded in haystacks of junk. This could be changing as Alexa, the Amazon-owned search company have just announced (Dec 12) that they plan to open up their index of 5 billion documents to users and developers. This index is absolutely huge containing some 100 billion bytes of data which compares well with the complete Human Genome at a mere 3.2 billion base pairs. The release of this index will allow these mountains of data to be mined for all sorts of valuable associations plus the development of specialised applications and vertical search engines. Read the ‘heads up’ on this by John Battelle .

Cheer up if you cannot understand their web-site, you are not stupid: its designed that way

Simon Caulkin, writing for The Observer, Sunday December 11, 2005, Customers are not just for Christmas , notes that, regretably, it almost seems to be common practice, this time of year to misuse the power of the web by bamboozling customers with the objective of maximising profits, not through good value but at their expense.

Good collaboration needs accountability

Buzzle.com reports (7 Dec 2005) that wikipedia has been forced to change its policies to ensure that contributions can only be made by logged in users. Recently there have been possible libel cases around "false and malicious" wikipedia entries, 'vanity editing', and the question of how any of its entries can be trusted without author identification. To read the article.

A web tool to check for plagiarism

The Wright State University reports in Web Site Helps Colleges and Schools Ensnare Plagiarists that plagiarism is such a big problem in universities that they are now using web-based software detection tools to spot potential cheats.

How to get your life back

It used to be that work-life balance was perceived as a female issue or only of interest to men in the 'B-League' of business/career ambition - but not any more. The problem runs very deep and some of the practical ways some men are trying to redress their balance include job partnering, better team working and trading money for time.

Unique Jam event will focus the collective brainpower of virtual crowds on the world’s worst problems

From December 1-3, the Habitat JAM online event will bring together tens of thousands of people from around the world to discuss and debate some of the most urgent and controversial issues that face our rapidly urbanizing planet:

The world’s first international standard for managing collaborative business relationships is to be developed by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in collaboration with PSL (a joint DTI and CBI 'not-for-profit' venture).

It will provide a framework for businesses to manage their internal and external relationships effectively within their supply chains.

Frank Post, Marketing Director of British Standards said,

Collaboration is one of the 6 key areas being exploited by Web Smart 50 companies

Businessweek reports in The Web Smart 50 that..."the Web is not only cool again: It's hot. Sure, this time around it's different. The excitement, so vaporous in the bubble years, now pays dividends in hard coin. Productivity soars, costs plunge, and new markets come to life".