Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Question from Jerry Bowles - Without using the words "blog" or "wiki" or "collaboration" can you tell me what Blogtronix brings to companies that they

Our System is a Communication and Knowledge Management Platform. It helps large corporations to improve dramatically all internal communication channels. Blogtronix is very suitable for small and medium size businesses as it improves the customer relations and helps increase their loyalty. Blogtronix is the perfect community portal as the Platform offers excellent tools for social and business networking.

Blogtronix can help any business entity in achieving important strategic goals like know-how management, promoting online company’s products or services, dealing with support, sales or vendor issues while completely recreating almost any enterprise or company’s business and communication structure on the internet. Blogtronix community groups or projects can have different user rights and access restrictions set.

One of the most important issues we have taken into consideration is the data protection and data recovery. No data can be accidentally deleted or lost. Any accidentally deleted group, comment or post can be recovered. Extensive online document and file management utility was recently introduced to our clients.

Blogtronix presents a complete corporate compliance system both preventing specific words or phrases to be posted or commented as well as monitoring the usage of specific keywords. The Corporate Compliance module is the one that helps to immediately identify a problem or an achievement that is being discussed within the organization or out by the open public.

Blogtronix is extremely feature and user scalable Platform. Blogtronix is a Platform and although feature packed it is fully customizable to fit almost any specific needs. It supports and manages over 100,000 projects, communities and users. Blogtronix is a secure online service or corporate appliance residing on a MS SQL database and based on MS .NET technology.

Original post at Jerry Bowles Blog: http://www.enterpriseweb2.com/?p=83

Question from Jerry Bowles - Describe the typical user within an organization and explain what they will use Blogtronix for.

We are a Corporate Communication and Knowledge Management Platform, focused more on the groups of business people or individuals, than on the person itself. The typical user is a member of internal corporate structure or community involved in the proper communication channel buildup and improvement. Any general employee or executive dealing with knowledge base or working with/at research department will benefit from our system.

As an example, the business executives using our systems come from different departments or communities – PR, marketing, top management, different department managers. They use Blogtronix Platform for internal and external communication, knowledge management exchange vehicle and blog posting. They also have direct access to the raw feedback arriving from the external communication channels. The availability of both Wiki and Document Management System for online document storage and creation excels any of their functions – allowing mobility and constant access to company knowledge and know-how base.

Other members of a group or community that can benefit from Blogtronix usage are the sales department representatives or research department engineers and specialists. Creating groups and subgroups, based on project and customer’s separation or specification will greatly improve in time the clear information flow between the changing team members. Blogtronix can easily join any two or more groups together instantly combining not only the user base but the entire content and data between those groups, while doing that in a very secure and flexible access environment. Imagine Chrysler to join the knowledge and know-how databases of research departments in Germany and Detroit with 3-4 clicks once a decision for this is taken at a higher level …

Any general level employee and support representative will be more than a treasure to be involved in building content and research materials for the company as the front line reps and lower level employees are the closest groups to customers and vendors – the immediate reaction of the top management to any positive or negative feedback will depend on the involvement of those “front line” employees.

Question from Jerry Bowles - What makes Blogtronix different and/or better than the other enterprise social media platforms that are now coming to mar

First and foremost, Blogtronix is built on the latest Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework, combined with multi tier application structure. We chose Microsoft’s development platform based on several advantages:
- Scalability – Blogtronix Platform can support from 1 to well over 100 000 users and groups
- Microsoft Development environment and tools allow the creation of solid large and complex software solutions
- It is a common server environment for our target customers
- ASP.net Framework is the fastest evolving software environment for the past several years.

Blogtronix is using the latest Microsoft SQL Server as a database and is written on C# and C++. A good portion of the client and application layers are based on Atlas (Ajax) technology. That combination delivers incomparable loading, search and system work speed and security to the end customers. Blogtronix also supports and can work without any feature setback with the free MS SQL Express database provider.

We built Blogtronix Communication and Knowledge Management Platform from scratch. We do not have modules done by a third party solution. We can supply any type of customized solution for almost any type of business structures because of at least three facts:

Blogtronix is a Platform consisting of many functional modules that applied together or under specific configuration can satisfy almost any organizational business structure and its communication and know-how management needs.

We can offer additional, extremely specific solutions that need to be fit uniquely towards our clients’ needs – our software development teams are in our offices.

Being a multi-tier platform both as technology and features, it can be very easily integrated with almost every business software platform used by our target customers.

Tying your architecture to Microsoft increases the pool of potential customers but you also run the risk of going head to head with Sharepoint which a

SharePoint is one of the few long term competitors placed in the WebOffice 2.0 market that we recognize. In the present moment, Blogtronix delivers far more value to the customers in this market niche. To name a few of the issues that make us better are:

Any Blogtronix Product is easier to install and manage from small, medium and even large size companiesTo use Blogtronix is far easier and satisfying for the common users, that are not necessary to have good skills in the web based software.

We have extensive backend platform management allowing the administrators of the platforms and groups to easily maintain the system.

- Blogtronix can be implemented as a hosted solution.
- We can add specific functionality and build new modules in a reasonable time and budget frame.
- Blogtronix has better pricing structure compared to what Microsoft offers, as it is a flexible platform solution.
- Blogtronix is more focused on the external and internal Communication and Knowledge management.
- Blogtronix is far better cross platform solution. We treat all web and office application as equal when we integrate - them. As an example we are quite focused on delivering the best possible benefits for the Safari users under MacOS.
- Blogtronix license policy is more clear and understandable
- Blogtronix is one-stop software solution where for example the event calendar, news, statistical information retrieval and other modules are part of the Platform
- We have extensive Corporate Policy Compliance engine and comprehensive keyword tracking capabilities built within the Blogtronix Platform.
- Blogtronix has better web look & feel creativity and publishing capabilities offered as built-in UI themes, modules and editors.
- Blogtronix would not ‘run’ the intranet, Blogtronix will be one of the applications taking care for the proper know-how data management and communications.

Question from Jerry Bowles - What do you see as the main institutional barriers within enterprises to the acceptance of Enterprise Web 2.0 solutions?

I see only one temporary barrier. This is the cultural and mindset barrier that needs to be changed with some of the employees. But this is a normal obstacle in front of every new field explored and pioneered by the software industry.

I think the right approach to overcome this barrier, is to change the flamboyant expressions and terminology that scare the non-geek business people. That is it for me. The Web 2.0 and Office 2.0 solutions must be explained with easier examples and definitions to the organizations and individuals that take the decisions for implementing them.

If we simply explain to the executives and management bodies that this is just the next level and the next generation online web applications, services and products – it will be a completely different story.

We must explain that this new generation services are more interactive, that their performance actually depends on the user input, capabilities and knowledge - that would make the difference.

Web 2.0 applications and solutions are nothing more than comprehensive data driven platforms and systems that usually have several layers of functionality and structure. The user intervention and coordination is crucial as the output parameters of the system are coherently dependent on what and how the end or institutional user interacts with this web 2.0 system/platform. See what a nice non-geek statement I made! .. and this is while I am trying to be as clear as possible so … to re-phrase this: Usually the Web 2.0 systems display, compute, manage, present statistical information or entertain solely based on the user input. We do not have just the dull information and advertising databanks for a website as we used to a couple of years ago. The Web evolved to a better stage – The interactive one, the stage where the user is somebody and the single opinion can significantly influence single or multiple societies as those societies are interconnected and living structures

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Types of corporate blogs - External Blogs

Primary function of corporate communications/public relations today is network building. External blogs are participatory communications tools that can build complex and effective networks. Blogs build connections and links between and among your key audiences, which help the corporations to use these networks over time to persuade people to action, to respond to a crisis, to leverage market conversations and to improve the business overall.

Effectiveness of a network depends on:

- number of users
- connection between the nodes

and blogs are particularly well designed to help a corporation to do the both parameters, since blogs are link-heavy, and the link is the core technology for making networks visible.

There are a variety of sites in which a graphical representation of the links (e.g., Opte Project, MyDensity.com) or track online conversations (Blogpulse, Technorati, PubSub) are received, typing in a url

The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. This new balance of power, where consumers own marketing is aptly named "Consumer generated marketing". Blogs are not only the corporate tools but also consumer tools that promote companies who fulfil their promises, and to destroy those who break them.

Marketers expect to have product evangelists or influencers among the audiances. Once they find them they treat them like VIPs, asking them exclusive previews, product testing, consultation on marketing plan, customer services audit, etc…

Note:
The text and materials have been gathered from Wikipedia, Technorati, TechCrunch, BusinessWeek and RedHerring. We can proudly say that Boz Zashev and George Athannassov participated in the wikipedia text edits in blogging resource definitions as well.

Types of corporate blogs - Internal Blogs

Corporate blogs are very strong communication and information sharing tools in a corporate community and they are thought provocative.

Generally, anyone can write comments to any post in corporate blogs. Anyone can write a comment to any comment or simply anyone can write a new post, in internal blogs. Internal blogs are in many cases good alternatives of the meetings. People may not have frequent meetings, about many important matters, because of two simple reasons:

- distance of the meeting location and
- availability of all the people at the proposed meeting time.

However the way community members communicate and share information in a blog environment, creates practically many number of small or large virtual meetings that community members can participate at any time of the day (or night).

Since blogs are open to the community, the hurdle and hesitation of sending invitations to the exact/correct number of related people is removed. Consequently fewer people will feel that they are kept away from the decision making process. Since every post is open to the community, anyone can take part in the decision making process, simply by adding his/her comments.

A talking community creates the healthiest environment in the decision making process with collective intelligence of the elite crowd.

Blogs, in many cases, are more practical in use than emails.

Emails are not the best corporate communication and information sharing tools, since

- people receive too many of them and
- people are not always good enough in archiving their emails, therefore they may not find some of them, later when they need them again.
- In many big organizations there are at least a few but mostly many internal blogs on their intranet, according to the aim or target of the blog.

Blogs are used at every level of the organization. A good example may be the participation of the production workers with the improvement proposals, using the network connected kiosk around the production area, in some organizations. In such organizations, any other people can make a comment on the proposal and the improvement action is triggered automatically without the hierarchical vertical confirmation process.

Even if the made proposal is not applicable for some reasons, it may still inspire some other members in the crowd for more practical solutions.

Posts and comments are very easy to reach and follow. All the new browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE7 support the technology called RSS. RSS technology, with just one click, helps the readers to create a button which enable them to see some number of last posts in a small window, without the need to visit the URL of the blog. RSS is very useful especially when the posts are sent less frequent than visits potentially readers can make. Then the readers are simply informed if there are new posts, or not, without visiting the blog.

Automatic archiving and recalling of the past posts may be much faster than past emails. Emails are kept in the tree of directories. If an email is archived in a low level directory and if the directory is named different than the senders or receivers name, it may require making a special search to find it. However blogs use tags instead of directories. It is recommended to attach more than one tag to each post, for the future ease of finding.

For example; there can be a post about innovative marketing approach to increase the truck sales in Turkey.

If such a post is tagged with the words innovation, marketing, truck and Turkey then it can easily be found anytime in the future under the posts listed with any of these tags or may be much faster if the posts with the tag combinations like innovation-marketing or truck-Turkey are listed.

Some companies create their own internal taxonomy but this may not be even necessary since each new tag is automatically put into the tag cloud and members generally prefer to use the pre-created tags, rather than creating a similar new tag.

Some benefits of internal blogs can be listed as:

- It improves participation spirit, collaboration, and the capabilities of team learning. It is ideal to run projects and to work with heterogeneous teams. It is also useful to promote dialogue and find lateral ideas outside the team.
- It allows integrating conversations with a shared vision. It is an excellent means for the leaders to communicate.
- It is the space where interpretations and different points of view come up so that the any member of the organization can discuss and debate them.
- It is an excellent means for the employees to achieve an integrated vision of the company by joining in conversations.
- It implies an open communication platform that allows new ways relating and coordinating actions among the organizational members and between the latter and the network of external relationships.
- It becomes the written memory of the organization. Furthermore, writing conveys emotional stability which eventually promotes the process of organizational development.
- They speed up the transference and transformation of knowledge to make ideas flow easily and take learning into action

Note: The text and materials have been gathered from Wikipedia, BusinessWeek and RedHerring. We can proudly say that Boz Zashev and George Athannassov participated in the wikipedia text edits in blogging resource definitions as well.

Friday, August 25, 2006

What is a Corporate Blog?

I will copy the information available in Wikipedia and put some thoughts around it as the term is very well defined in there, which really proves that online collaborative work can present wonderful and extremely valuable results. Knowledge management at its best examples!

From Wikipedia:
“A corporate blog is a weblog published and used by the organization to reach the organizational goals. Although there are many different types of corporate blogs, they are mostly categorized as either external or internal corporate blogs”

I just want to add a little more towards the organizational goals, and I also think that I will be adding to this post as time goes as the definition of corporate blogging will evolve together with the different and changing goals and applications of such a tool. Some additional areas that can be definitely identified as major organizational goals and the Corporate Blogging can directly affect them include:

Corporate communication,
Corporate know-how management
Geographical Location independence
Corporate Knowledge Management
Internal Corporate Messaging
Internal Corporate Business Practice Recording and Archiving

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Heavy airport security measures! Travel "Light", RENT a laptop - Blogtronix will do the rest for the better prepared business trip!

I had a several webinars for the last two days with new and pilot customers and couple of sales agents. It was busy as none of those events was less than 150 minutes. So far so good, nothing really to remark or shout about, besides the fact, that one of the hottest topics and ideas that we discussed with all the guys and girls while presenting and educating the audience how Blogtronix Enterprise works was …. terrorism and the consequences of the recent terror plots in London, 9/11/2001, al Qaeda and the effect on the international business. And most importantly that after the recent security measures, Blogtronix Enterprise is and will be applied more and more into the business structures of all kind as it has a lot of functionality that will actually facilitate the business people on the move.

The recent security measures applied call for the passengers of transatlantic flights to carry a tiny little Ziploc bag containing really bare necessities – a passport, a wallet and … That’s all Folks! Well, this is not the case for the US Domestic flights yet but they are heavily talking about it. So - no laptops, no documents, no CDs or DVDs with information. Interesting! I had a call from a friend from The Bay area telling me that a couple of guys started to get business plans together to present in front of VC companies with very similar if not identical business models – you travel “light”, no laptop, as you would not want to check your 2-3-4K laptop on the belt in the baggage area – you land at your destination and RENT a laptop for a day, two or a week and return it. And travel back home light, Internet and carry-on DVDs will do the rest. So a couple of Laptop renting companies at each airport. Or Hertz and Avis will include laptops as a package with the car rentals? Not bad as an idea! God help the laptop producers – that is where the water turns into wine, ah?

The really interesting part for us comes if this actually gets real. Blogtronix can be the answer, guys! That is it! You do not have to carry anything guys – just go rent the laptop and everything else is online already! The management of the company you work for/with took care of the awkward security situation long before it got ugly! They became Blogtronix clients – we have Document Management System that allows you to upload and organize almost any types of files, documents and data. We have the collaborative Wiki systems and internal messaging system that is always online. Sales materials, PR, Legal Docs, research materials and other know-how elements, blogs and discussions – everything is online - under SSL or heavily protected, closed behind VPN gateways. Using Blogtronix any IT admin will easily recreate the entire department or corp. structure into user groups, user rights levels and physical instances. So – do not worry - We have it!

All I can say is that all the people I met those two days were extremely happy with the Blogtronix Platform and the services we created and sell. Funny, how a business idea can be applied to situations that you would never think that might occur!

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Talking to VCs and Business Consultants these days …

It just happened this August that instead of getting a nice vacation somewhere I am mainly dealing with investment companies and business consultants, while helping my partner Vassil, as always. No problem here. We had a lot of conference calls and meetings in regards to the next investment round we are preparing and I decided to kind of put down some information about Blogtronix and the teams behind it online so the guys and girls that are interested know who we are and what we can do.

Blogtronix is not a “normal” or “regular” startup. I know everybody will say that – “We are different!” and they will probably be right so let me say why I think we are different. For the last 12 years my boys and girls at ConsultCommerce and I have been involved in the software development and software distribution and implementation business. We have been doing small and medium size projects for about 4 years – 1995 -1999 when we decided to move into own products and services sales… Since then – that is it – we are quite successful in almost all the products and services we developed and we are marketing. We had slip-ups, of course but – that is life – we did what we could. 9/11 was not a pretty picture for us and I guess for everybody else too… We grew the company from 2 people in 1995, 6 in 1996 and close to 40 in 2005 and this without a singe dollar outside investment.

What I am trying to say here is that when we started to plan and think of Blogtronix as a product and service in December 2004 we were not just a couple of guys that gathered some cash and a couple of computers in the garage … and an idea. We have been dealing with corporate communication, business infrastructure development and knowledge management software tools since 2000. We had one of the best forum software based on Microsoft asp.net and MS SQL platforms back then, we had our first CMS commercially available in 1998. We are the proud creator of a personal financial product that has already over 16,000 customers all over the world. So we know what we are doing …. What I can really say is that we know what a customer is, how important this is. We know what a commitment is. We know what 24/7 worldwide support means. I also think that this combined with the wonderful talented development teams we have is a perfect combination for a really successful business ahead of us… What else? Did I mention that we are GOOD and besides that Vassil is tall ..? :):)

I kind of wanted to write a different post and I almost wrote it but then decided to change it and post a different point of view – the one that can really get the message across – “Do not worry – we know what we are doing as we have been around this block a few times and we are planning to make a few more rounds at least a few more times… and we have the guts to do it.”

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright - another book that corporate bloggers should have

Another book that I personally would always recommend is Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright. I am not going to make a complete review here as there is more than enough positive feedback from regular readers, Industry professionals and critics. All I wanted to say is that I brought a copy to our ConsultCommerce office in Plovdiv, Bulgaria besides the one I have here in Colorado and all the guys that read it find it extremely useful. There are very good examples and ideas that anyone who is planning to have a corporate blog should know. Jeremy, I do not know you but all I can say is Bravo and thank you for the good book.

Vassil Mladjov, CEO of Blogtronix to speak at Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco

Vassil Mladjov, CEO of Blogtronix was invited to be one of the speakers of the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, CA. We are happy that Blogtronix is truly recognized as one of the pioneer companies in the Web 2.0 Technology and share the overall industry opinion that Blogtronix Enterprise Communication and Collaboration Platform is more of an Web Office rather than a Blogging Platform. Here are a few words about the event, its program and the rest of speakers as we took it from The Event’s web site ( http://www.office20con.com/ ):

The first Office 2.0 Conference is organized by ITRedux, and brings together Office 2.0 companies, early adopters, investors, industry analysts, and journalists. The goal for the event is to collectively build the foundation for Office 2.0, investigate technical challenges, and showcase practical applications. Most importantly, it will be an opportunity for like-minded people to meet and network with an elite group of visionaries and industry leaders.

Office 2.0 Conference Details
Organizer: Ismael Chang Ghalimi @ ITRedux
Dates: October 12-13, 2006
Location: San Francisco, CA
Audience: Office 2.0 Companies, Early Adopters, Investors, Analysts, Journalists
Participant Fee: $395 with early registration before September 1st, $495 after

Proposed Agenda Items
Collective Definition of the Office 2.0 Concept (inspired by Rules for Office 2.0)
Case for Office 2.0 (inspired by Rationale for Office 2.0)
Best-of-Breed Office 2.0 Setup (inspired by Office 2.0 Setup)
Office 2.0 in 2010 (based on Enthiosys'' Remember the Future? methodology)
Technologies for Office 2.0 (AJAX, microformats, etc.)
APIs for Office 2.0 (data backup, single sign-on, billing, etc.)
Office 2.0 Bug Review (inspired by Office 2.0 Bug Tracker)
Computing & Networking Equipment for Office 2.0
Office 2.0 Vendor Demonstrations
Office 2.0 Workshop for building your own Office 2.0 setup and migrating legacy data
Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Demonstrations

Expected Outcome
Office 2.0 Manifesto (Collective eBook)
Office 2.0 Best-of-Breed Awards
Office 2.0 Use Cases
Office 2.0 Online Mashups

Technical Recommendations for Office 2.0The list of speakers and panelists for the Office 2.0 Conference currently includes:

Rod Boothby, Manager, Ernst & Young, [Blog]
Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO, Atlassian, [Blog]
Jeff Clavier, Managing Partner, SoftTech VC, [Blog]
Nik Cubrilovic, CEO, Omnidrive, [Blog]
Jnan Dash, CTO, Foldera, [Blog]
Scott Dietzen, President and CTO, Zimbra, [Blog]
Ismael Ghalimi, CEO, Intalio, [Blog]
Konstantin Guericke, Vice President of Marketing, LinkedIn, [Blog]
Kaliya Hamlin, Network Director, Planetwork, [Blog]
Eric Hoffert, CEO, ShareMethods, [Blog]
Jason Lemkin, CEO, EchoSign, [Blog]
Ivaylo Lenkov, CEO, SiteKreator, [Blog]
Ross Mayfield, CEO, Socialtext, [Blog]
Jeffrey McManus, CEO, Approver, [Blog]
Oren Michels, CEO, Mashery, [Blog]
Vassil Mladjov, CEO, Blogtronix, [Blog]
Rafe Needleman, Category Director, CNET, [Blog]
John Newton, Chairman and CTO, Alfresco, [Blog]
Jeff Nolan, Evangelist, SAP, [Blog]
Jason Roberts, CEO, Preezo, [Blog]
Narendra Rocherolle, Principal, 83 Degrees, [Blog]
Ken Rudin, CEO, LucidEra, [Blog]
Tom Snyder, President, iNetOffice, [Blog]
Bob Sutor, VP, Standards and Open Source, IBM, [Blog]
Sridhar Vembu, CEO, Zoho, [Blog]
Duncan Werner, CEO, Thumbstacks, [Blog]
Charlie Wood, Principal, Spanning Partners, [Blog]
Jason Wood, Principal, Rothschild Capital Partners, [Blog]
Ray Wu, Director, Venture Management, HP, [Blog]
David Young, CEO, Joyent, [Blog]

Some of the new functionality and features in the latest Blogtronix Enterprise Plarform release

Here is a list of some of the new and changed functionality that was uploaded on August 15th with the latest version of Blogtronix Enterprise Communication Platform upgrade.

1. We have implemented a new HTML / Text editor. We restricted the functionality of the HTML editor a little but now all Mac users using Safari and Opera as their primary Internet Browsers can enjoy functionality only available with Blogtronix while blogging at work or from home.

2. We have added the ability to define and select what type of sub-groups / sub-networks / sub-societies to create and use while organizing your business structure or social network.

3. Blogtronix has developed and implemented convenient Layout Management Tool allowing the Blogtronix Corporate Blogging Platform administrators to select the way the Global navigation, information and statistics display modules to be set and displayed. It can be in 4 general Layout setups: Minimum, Two-Column with Right-hand-side navigation, Two-Column with Left-hand-side navigation and Three Column Maximum Data Exposure Layout.

4. The personalization and the look and feel of our system is completely manageable as we adopt Web 2.0 technology. The administrators now can use the personalization feature to create look and feel as well as feature availability on both Personal and Group (Network) levels. We also presented the personalization feature to each user.

5. Blogtronix has created an extremely important function in regards to the groups or Networks management inside our Enterprise system – the Group/Network Template creation and Usage. Based on the Customers’ feedback we have implemented the creation of templates that can be used when creating a new network/group and subgroup inside our system. Based on the fact that our system gives the opportunity for the administrators to really create wonders with the look and feel as well as with the functionality and the features available, we implemented a way to save time and allow the admin guys to create templates to re-use once they are creating new Groups/Netoworks. This was accepted very well by our existing and trial customers as one of them has more than 140 groups to administer.

6. The administrators have the opportunity to switch on and off the different functionality and data modules in the system. Based on each company or each user Group/Network any of those moduels can be included or excluded.Here are the available modules:
News
Event Calendar
Poll
Statistics
Community Menu
Subgroups
Products
Recent Comments
Links
Blogs Archive Calendar
Most Read Blogs
Most Commented Blogs
Highest Rated Blogs
Top Blog Categories
Most Read Authors
Most Discussed Authors
Most Active Authors
Highest Rated Authors
HomePage Choice Of The Day
HomePage Weekly Most Discussed
HomePage Weekly Highest Rated
Recent BlogsFavorite BlogsQuick
Search
User Menu
Top Custom Tags
RSS
Members
Statistics

7. We have completely changed the User Rights Group and User Rights settings in the new Blogtronix Enterprise release

8. We have completely changed the HTML source of the entire system allowing better visibility throughout a wide selection of Operating systems and Internet Browsers. The upload speed of the system increased by at least 4 times.

9. We have created a function that hides the unused feature modules from the User Interface when there is no data to be displayed in those modules.

10. We have implemented a completely new SEARCH function and module allowing faster and better searches within the system no matter how big the data volume is.

11. We have introduced a new Document Management System inside Blogtronix Enterprise similar to any file management system in any popular Operating system now. This function was developed and implemented by popular demand amongst our existing and trial customers

12. We have Introduced OPML and RPC functionality to all users and guests of Blogtronix Enterprise

Corporate blogging using Blogtronix Enterprise Communication and Knowledge Management Platform

Blogtronix is an extensive communication and knowledge management platform directed towards the enterprise blogging market and needs. It allows you to better organize, manage and promote each company’s business ideas and endeavors.

The Blogtronix Platform is extensive multifunctional web publishing tool closer to complete web office rather than related to a system or portal. The Blogtronix Platform has a Blogging publishing capabilities as well as WIKI, Document management system and company organizational structure reproductive capabilities. An important function is the creation of groups and subgroups allowing you to widen and differentiate different business and organizational aspects of a business entity.

Blogtronix adopts convenient Layout Management Tool allowing the Blogtronix Platform administrators to select the way the Global navigation and information and statistical display modules to be set and displayed.

I am starting the description of the system with that function as based on the selection of this feature, the further description and discussion in regards to the way Blogtronix Enterprise Blogging platform works, will continue As we have selected the layout displaying the system in Three Columns I will base all the descriptions and screenshots I am preparing on this current layout

Looking at the system it consists of three columns containing the following modules (not necessarily in that order)

:News
Event Calendar
Poll
Statistics
Community Menu
Subgroups
Products
Recent Comments
Links
Blogs Archive
Calendar
Most Read Blogs
Most Commented Blogs
Highest Rated Blogs
Top Blog Categories
Most Read Authors
Most Discussed Authors
Most Active Authors
Highest Rated Authors
HomePage Choice Of The Day
HomePage Weekly Most Discussed
HomePage Weekly Highest Rated
Recent BlogsFavorite Blogs
QuickSearch
User Menu
Top Custom Tags
RSS
Members Statistics

I will explain the functionality behind each module both from User and Admin perspective.

Blogtronix Enterprise Blogging Platform customer list grows - Entriq, Inc. explores the corporate blogging

We are pleased to announce that the list of our customers has grew with one more and we are quite happy about this one! Entriq, Inc. !

Here are a few words about Entriq and their Company Blog site:
Entriq develops and manages Pay Media infrastructure. Our goal is to provide enabling technology and services that expand the business opportunities for Pay Media. We've been doing that successfully, with our IBS system, for more than 20 years in broadcast, cable, and satellite. Now we're doing it for broadband, IPTV, and mobile.

Everyone is aware of the enormous potential of these new distribution channels to expand markets for online media, but so far, no one has made significant money from them. Clearly, buyers and sellers must have a way of getting fair value from media transactions—and everyone participating in the value chain must derive fair compensation—if the potential of these vast new markets is to be realized. That's our job, as we see it: deliver a single end-to-end solution that takes care of all the complications in the background and makes Pay Media transactions quick, easy and worthwhile for everyone involved.

Entriq, Inc. is a division of MIH, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Naspers Limited (NASDAQ: NPSN). MIH launched South Africa's first pay TV service in 1984; today the company owns and operates pay TV businesses in Europe, Africa and Asia, and is a leading global provider of Pay Media platforms and services.

An Article about Blogtronix, our technology and the Corporate Blogging business model

We have found a very interesting and positive article about Blogtronix and Blogtronix Enterprise Platform. Blogtronix Enterprise – our core Corporate Blogging Communication and Knowledge Management Platform had recently received a huge user and backend admin functionality boost and was accepted extremely well among existing and trial customers. Here is an interesting article published by Jerry Bowles in his Blog site:

Article direct link: http://www.enterpriseweb2.com/p=67_
_____________________________________________________
Ho, Ho, Ho. Blogtronix Has the Last Laugh.

To cop a conceit from Ira Gershwin, they all laughed at Vassil Mladjov when he announced last year that his (and George Athannassov’s) new company Blogtronix would be built around a .NET blogging and business collaboration platform.

Well, not everyone laughed, but many of the open source zealots and the-anything-Microsoft-does-must-be-garbage crowd sure did. Why would someone do something so safe and boring, they demanded to know? The answer is: Precisely.

Blogtronix was conceived from the ground up to be an enterprise social media platform that would integrate easily into existing IT enterprise desktop infrastructures, which are overwhelmingly Microsoft. Sure the big M is boring and proprietary and sneaky and all the things we love to hate, but CIOs are comfortable with it and they have spent years learning to manage Microsoft installations in terms of the only three things they really care about–security, reliability and scalability. Exciting and revolutionary are tied for dead last on the enterprise software priority list.

Mladjov, who spent 13 years working in company IT environments, clearly understands the conservative nature of that market. Blogtronix Enterprise, a secure enterprise blogging, wiki and corporate social networking platform, which is an upgrade of company’s core business communication and collaboration offering, is being unveiled this week at Digital Hollywood, a trade conference for digital media professionals. The press release pretty well says it all: Blogtronix Enterprise is designed to make blog and wiki communication as well as user administration easy for deployments with virtually unlimited users and workgroups.
Among the new features and tools:

- LDAP real-time authentication and single sign on
- Unlimited blog communities and groups
- Microsoft SQL Express support
- Rich Media WYSIWYG editor for Windows and Mac- Flash based video blogging
- Secure and private workgroups
- Integrated Corporate Social Networking
- Restore options for blog posts, comments and wiki
- AutoSave for blog posts
- Document management
- Integrated RSS reader
- Activity feeds and email alerts to users and administrators
- Powerful anti-spam protection with solid feedback management tools
- Client branding
- Usage dashboards
- Detailed blog and user statistics
- Integrated video tutorials

In short, all the groovy stuff laid on top of an architecture that doesn’t require much integration and has the control features IT guys really care about. Blogtronix is being aggressive about pricing, too, with an introductory price of $20 per user per month available through September. Blogtronix Enterprise is also available as an behind-the-firewall appliance starts at $10,000 plus monthly user fees.

Blogtronix may not be as “cool” as some of its competitors (or it may be, I haven’t tried it) but based simply on the .NET platform which leverages on Microsoft’s dominating position in the enterprise desktop arena, its acceptance so far, and its very competitive price, you have to think that Blogtronix will be a formidable–perhaps even dominant–player in the enterprise social media platform space.

Somehow, I suspect that just like Christopher Columbus in the Gershwin song, Mladjov is going to be the one having the last laugh.

What to expect from the Enterprise Blogging

Certainly not miracles. Certainly not. And of course it all depends on the company’s policy for open books, open plans, advertised visions, shared problems… just open everything. It all depends, and certainly a Corporate or Enterprise blog can be a savior or a quite nice anchor to take you quickly to the bottom.

I was told that it all started with that famous Kryptonite Lock being open by a Bic pen. I still do have the link to it. I do not think it started there. I think it all started when the business executives and enterprise masterminds and movers realized that those big corporations are as big as the small individuals working in them. When they realized that the company or the corporation is actually as big as the team effort of the people working in each of them. It started with the need of sharing thoughts, ideas, problems or victories in each of our small personal worlds and this grew to the point when we all need information on all levels – the corporate one and the personal one. “Cats Blogs” went to family and love ones and the personal blogs went to the company blogging portals. The result – more and more corporations and organizations are opening blog sites and portals for themselves – internal and public ones because it is important – it is important for the individuals in the company, it is important for the management and it is very important for the customers of the company.

The company blog can boost your sales; the company blog can show you where your weaknesses are; it can show your mistakes and achievements because of several simple reasons: Internet is available for the general public, anybody can read about you, your products or services, you can not limit the public to few paid professionals working for you and caring about a paycheck that comes … again from you. Your customers can blog about you and your organization, your competition can blog about you – both on your blog site and on theirs … Anybody can talk about you, anything can happen … it is up to you what position to adopt and how to react. It is that simple.

You can expect a lot form the corporate blog – you can expect honest open communication channels. You can expect proper customer relationship management; you can expect proper support and critical business decision making based on valid and actual information and feedback from user and customer groups. And a lot more but you can also expect some phony guys telling you how great they are and how what they have is the best on the world and only there you can find the one and only … whatever – that is definitely also available but I am trying to ignore those guys …

In general you can expect a lot but stick to the rule to give out what you would like to be given – the more open you are – the better! It is all about proper, precise and timely communication – that is what the Corporate Blogging is all about I think

The Inevitable - The Corporate Blogging

The Inevitable - The Corporate Blogging
19 July 2006, 23:33 PM originally Posted in blogtronix.com / http://www.blogtronix.com/blog/GeorgeAtha

Categories : Corporate Blogging - Communication - CollaborationTags : Corporate Blogging , blogs , markets , companies , customers , idea , goals , enterprise blogging , blogtronix , company blog , business blog

There have been a few good books that people can get in regards to the corporate blogging. There have been at least 10 big events and conferences all over the US and a couple good ones in Europe about it too. There are a lot of guys that are gurus in that area and do not want to start listing them here as I will definitely miss some good ones and I will feel sorry about it .. but just to name a few - Robert Scoble, DL Byron, Jeremy Wright, not to miss Buzz, Eric and Steven from Blog Business Summit, Rod Boothby and a lot, a lot more that are helping small and big companies do what is really inevitable already... That is what I want to start my blog at Blogtronix with - the Inevitable in the Business now, today!

The Corporate Blogging!It is not possible at this point for any business structure small and big one - not to have a blog. I will try in a series of posts to cover as much as I can my view and perspective of how and why a company has to have an official blog site.Each business entity has to be known and easy-to-be found on Internet. Each company has to have a place where customers can say a few words about that company or the competitors, the products or services or even more - what more is needed. Each company has to know what its employees and officers need, want... think (in the good way, you know ...). The management structure, the services and the products structure, the clientele or the competitor structures - all that should be there - with one and probably best goal - better information to the customers and more information back from those same customers ...

I will of course base all those ideas, materials and thoughts ( and many more of course) on the Blogtronix Corporate Communication and Knowledge Management Blogging system that my colleagues and I developed since Feb - March 2005 and is based on the experience we have in the communication, management and financial software development and promoting practices we have for the last 11 years.