I usually write about this in my personal blog but this year I want to cover it here. The New York Times has published its 100 notable books of the year. Every year I like to recommend the books I have read from the list:

“Strange Piece of Paradise” (Terri Jentz)

I am biased here as I know Terri and re-connected with her after reading her spectacular book. Her riveting memoir of her attack in the 70s in Oregon widens into a look at violence and justice in America. I am hoping that this book will make the top ten list. It certainly deserves a place there this year.

“Arthur & George” (Julian Barnes)

I loved this historical novel about how Arthur Conan Doyle solves a crime and exonerates an English man of Indian descent.

“Eat the Document: A Novel” (Dana Spiotta)

This novel was also nominated for a National Book Award. Very interesting story of a woman who goes underground in the 60s.

“The Emperor's Children” (Claire Messud)

This is one of the books that I could not put down. It is set just prior to 9/11 in New York. A great character-driven novel. A great read.

“The Inheritance of Loss” (Kiran Desai)

Winner of the Booker Prize. Beautiful. Terribly sad.

“The Keep” (Jennifer Egan)

Odd, post-modern, gothic novel. I liked it.

“Suite Française” (Irene Nemirovsky)

One of my favorite books this year. Found in an attic and only recently published in French and English. Beautiful. Tragic. You must read the appendices to get a full measure of the loss here.

“Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West” (Hampton Sides)

I am in the middle of this book. It is a fascinating history of the west told through the biography of Kit Carson.

“Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq” (Thomas E. Ricks)

Probably the best book on Iraq.

“Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany” (Bill Buford)

This is a great fun read about food. It inspired me to buy a pasta machine which now sits unused in my pantry.

“The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million” (Daniel Mendelsohn)

I am half way through this right now. it is a beautiful story of one man's discovery of the life stories of his family members lost in the Holocaust.

“Sweet and Low: A Family Story” (Rich Cohen)

I laughed all the way through this wonderful family history, which is also a text for how not to run a small business.

If there are books on the list you read and liked, please email me or post them as comments here. I like to keep a running list of books to recommend and read.

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After a long hiatus I am starting up my learning 2.0 podcast series. This first video podcast covers strategies and tools for managing and sharing RSS feeds using the Blogbridge desktop and library tools.

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After reading Andrew McAfee's example of how one group built a del.icio.us tag collection into its Intranet, we decided to add this feature to our blog site.

Here are the the four tags that we have set up as resource lists to accompany Web 2.0 for Business Advantage.

otterid

otterfeed

ottercollab

otterstories

And we created on general tag: ottergroup

Jaime set up a page on our blog site and added code that automatically lists the latest five tags and has a link to the full page of tags on del.icio.us:

This is a very nice emergent way to collective and share knowledge.

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Thanks to Jim McGee and Des Walsh for their early and insightful reviews of our recently published Web 2.0 Guide to Business Advantage. Both reviewers really understood where I was trying to go with this guide.

McGee writes:

If you are trying to understand, or if you find yourself helping others understand, the fuss about blogs and wikis and basecamp and all the other tools for productive knowledge work that constitute today’s web, here is an excellent new resource. Kathleen Gilroy of the Otter Group has distilled her experiences into a nicely focused review of this terrain. Rather than getting caught up in the details of the technology, she anchors her observations in the “what’s in it for me” perspective that busy knowledge workers will appreciate and value.

Walsh explains why he find the document valuable:

Although it’s not a lengthy document, the white paper has plenty of links to enable readers to go deeper on particular aspects or on the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon. As a result of reading the paper I have a better fix on what I already knew at some level and I’ve had my eyes opened to some tools and services I had not known about or had not really figured out a practical business use for.

But a particular feature of the document, and why I’ve started recommending it to others, is that it is written in the first person, by someone who has been on a personal business journey through the various manifestations of Web 2.0. And as well as being a “voice from the trenches”, it is also an account by an experienced educator, who has a special skill in situating the technical details in a broader context of adult learning, communications, networking and business.

You can download an extract at no charge, which comprises the first 13 pages and includes the table of contents. For $9.95 you can download the whole document.

If, like me, you are not a techie and would like some clear explanations, not just of Web 2.0 but of its manifestations such as del.icio.us, OPML, tagging, RSS, folksonomy… you may find this document helpful. If you are a techie and don’t want to spend time explaining to people like me what is obvious to you about Web 2.0, you might like to check out the white paper and see if it is something you could refer others to, so you can get back to whatever you would rather be doing.

One reason for getting hold of the whole document is the case study at the end, where Kathleen reports on a process which did not go smoothly by any means, where she and the processes and technology she was using were seriously challenged and what lessons were learned from that. For anyone introducing Web 2.0 strategies or tools in a business context, those few pages alone are worth, as they say, the price of entry.

You can learn more and purchase the guide in our store for $9.95.

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, learning 2.0, puppy

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Thanks to Andrew McAfee for pointing out this great idea for automating posting of links to a portal page with del.icio.us

Here is the home page of an Intranet for Razorfish in Seattle:

As employees find information of value they tag it with AARF in del.icio.us and it is brought automatically into the portal page.

The page also incorporates a wiki so documents and other text can be added.

We have been using a blog as a portal to our learning 2.0 networks. It would be relatively simple to incorporate the del.icio.us integration here. Sweet.

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Apple has created a three-part seminar series (video in Quicktime) that teaches you how to record, produce, and promote your podcasts. Each part runs 20-plus minutes.

These are a very nice overview of the basics. Highly recommended.

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I am pleased to announce the publication of a new white paper Web 2.0 for Business Advantage: A Personal Guide to Profiting from the New Web.

I have been immersed in the world of Web 2.0 for three years now and I still find it difficult to sort out what is going on and what this new way of using the Internet means for me and for my business. I wrote this Guide to Web 2.0 in the first person because so much of what I read about Web 2.0 is abstract. Here I wanted to tell my own stories and experiences and explain things in plain terms that make sense for the small business person, student, educator, or non-profit executive.

Web 2.0 for Business Advantage explores what is driving the dramatic adoption of Web 2.0 and how you can profit from it. The guide covers key advantages that can be had from smartly deploying Web 2.0: building an online presence; personal information management and the new desktop; and the new collaboration.

In each section we cover the big ideas and new capacities that are driving the opportunity. We also talk about our experience with three business problems that were solved with Web 2.0 solutions and explore what happened as we worked to implement the new models and services: podcasting for learning; innovation in financial services; and learning networks at the American Library Association.

You can see the full table of contents and download an excerpt at our site. You can purchase a pdf of Web 2.0 for Business Advantage for $9.95 at the Otter Group Store.

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Otter Group Papers : Web 2.0 for Business Advantage

This forty-page guide explores what is driving the dramatic adoption of Web 2.0 and how you can profit from it.  The guide covers key advantages that can be had from smartly deploying Web 2.0:  building an online presence; personal information management and the new desktop; and the new collaboration. 
In each section we cover the big ideas and new capacities that are driving the opportunity.  We also talk about our experience with three business problems that were solved with Web 2.0 solutions and explore what happened as we worked to implement the new models and services: podcasting for learning; innovation in financial services;  and learning networks at the American Library Association.  ($9.95 40-page PDF).

Paper Reviews:
http://www.mcgeesmusings.net
http://www.blogbridge.com
http://www.businessandblogging.com
http://www.kmblogs.com

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Front end blogging tools are the means by which active bloggers enter information into their blogs. By using a front end blogging tool (I use Ecto for the Mac), I bypass having to log in to my blog's administrative back-end and post from there. This saves me a few steps in posting and I would not be a frequent blogger without a front-end posting tool.

If you are going to blog, you will need a front-end blogging tool. Here are a few to consider:

For the Mac

Ecto

This is by far the best tool I've used. It integrates with iPhoto, iTunes, and Amazon, so you can easily bring images, songlists, books into your post.

With one click, I just added a link to my friend Terri Jentz's amazing book A Strange Piece of Paradise.

“Strange Piece of Paradise” (Terri Jentz)

And with one click, I added a great song from one of my new favorite ukulele players, Janet Klein.

That's Love! from the album “Oh!” by Janet Klein And Her Parlor Boys

A copy of Ecto costs $17.95. Well worth the modest investment in terms of return on productivity.



Performancing for Firefox

With the performancing plug-in you can post directly from your browser to your blog. Just install the add-on and hit F8 on your keyboard. A posting window pops up and you can write and post. It does not have the elegant integration features of ecto for images, etc.

For the PC

People are applauding Windows Live Writer as a blogging front-end. It is only available for the PC so I cannot comment on how well it works. It is a WYSIWIG authoring tool that handles images, maps, and the following things:

1. Images from online photo publishing sites

2. Embedded video or audio players

3. Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites

4. Tags from tagging services

If any of you have other suggestions for blogging front-end tools, please email me kathleen@ottergroup.com and I'll update this list.

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