Phoning for Dummies?

The next time you're feeling overwhelmed by the proliferation of technical tools and how to use them, remember that there was once a time when people depended on the following technical instructions:

1. Never take the telephone off the hook unless you wish to use it
2. Loosen your lower lip and jaw
3. Should you wish to speak to another subscriber you should commence the conversation by saying, "Hulloa!"
4. When you are done talking say, "That is all," and the person spoken to should say, "O.K."
5. Never use the wire more than three minutes at a time, or more than twice an hour without first obtaining permission from the main office.

This is not Chapter One from Phoning for Dummies. It is an excerpt of the instructions provided in the only known edition of the world's first telephone book.

Today's technical tools may be more sophisticated, but the simple telephone was just as foreign in its time and place as tools like Twitter, Utterz, Twine, and the other tools we demonstrated at DigitalNow seem to us today.

History indicates that through application and experience, all useful tools become simpler to understand, we become more comfortable with them, and we grow to appreciate how they can make our lives and businesses easier and more productive.

Read more about the world's first phone book at Discovery News.

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DigitalNow 2008 was a sold out event; did you miss it?

Save the dates for 2009: April 15 - 18 at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts. Mark it on your calendar!

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Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

A message to DigitalNow 2008 attendees

Dear DigitalNow 2008 attendees:

We at Fusion Productions and Disney Institute are extremely grateful for your participation in DigitalNow 2008. We hope you enjoyed attending as much as we enjoyed presenting it to you.

Planning activities for DigitalNow 2009 are already underway. Your ideas, suggestions, and your compliments all provide us with valuable information about what we're doing right and where we can improve.

If you haven't already taken our survey, please take a few minutes to provide us with some feedback about your experience. Take the survey here.

When we say that DigitalNow is all about YOU - we mean it!

Sincerely,

The DigitalNow Team

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DigitalNow 2008 was a sold out event; did you miss it?

Save the dates for 2009: April 15 - 18 at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts. Mark it on your calendar!

Follow DigitalNow on Twitter.

Have you heard about the Fusion Productions Community of Practice platform? It's the first CoP platform to fully integrate social networking tools. Take the instant demo now.

Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management

As we explored at DigitalNow 2008, the last few years have witnessed an explosion of Web-based, user-driven social computing, networking, and collaborative applications, commonly referred to as Web 2.0 services. As these online applications infiltrate corporate knowledge sharing, they have come to be known collectively as Enterprise 2.0, which refers to the use of social computing on company intranets and in other business environments.

To go beyond the hype that often accompanies Web 2.0, APQC led a consortium of leading organizations including Accenture, Hewlett-Packard Company, and the United States Department of State to discover how organizations are using these applications in pursuit of their missions and business objectives. Several trends emerged, two of which are reviewed in this white paper, published by APQC.

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DigitalNow 2008 was a sold out event; did you miss it?

Save the dates for 2009: April 15 - 18 at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts. Mark it on your calendar!

Follow DigitalNow on Twitter.

Have you heard about the Fusion Productions Community of Practice platform? It's the first CoP platform to fully integrate social networking tools. Take the instant demo now.

Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Making passwords obsolete?

Imagine an online experience with no passwords to remember. One signon, one central authentication. That's the idea behind Open ID.

We are turning to the Internet as a source of information more than ever before. Whether you are a member of many sites or if you host a membership site for others, administration of keeping track of so many memberships and logins can become its own burden. Open ID is one way to address that challenge.

View the video below by Vidoop for a quick explanation of the impact Open ID has on the system most of us are familar with.

If you cannot view the video, visit this link to watch on YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcmY8Pk-qEk

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DigitalNow 2008 was a sold out event; did you miss it?

Save the dates for 2009: April 15 - 18 at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts. Mark it on your calendar!

Follow DigitalNow on Twitter.

Have you heard about the Fusion Productions Community of Practice platform? It's the first CoP platform to fully integrate social networking tools. Take the instant demo now.

Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com

Student Twitters himself Out of Jail

James Karl Buck is a graduate student from the University of California-Berkeley. He was working as a photographer, covering an anti-government protest in Malhalla, Egypt when he and his translator were arrested.

While en route to the police station, Buck managed to use his cell phone to post a one-word Twitter update. It read, "arrested." Within seconds, his friends and colleagues back home were alerted to his crisis.

According to Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Twitter has also been used in other crisis situations - such as during earthquakes in SanFrancisco, California.

Read the entire story at CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/25/twitter.buck/index.html

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DigitalNow 2008 was a sold out event; did you miss it? Save the dates for 2009: April 15 - 18 at Disney's Yacht and Beach Club Resorts. Mark it on your calendar!

Follow DigitalNow on Twitter.

Have you heard about the Fusion Productions Community of Practice platform? It's the first CoP platform to fully integrate social networking tools. Take the instant demo now.

Contribute to the DigitalNow blog. Suggest a blog topic, or reference an article or other item you think would be of interest to the DigitalNow community. Drop us a line at DigitalNow@fusionproductions.com