Life is a Marathon, not a Sprint!

God, I have not written here for ages ....

2010-04-14T06:47:00.007-06:00

I must feel ashamed, I have not written here for ages ... too bad, especially in times when i have some much happening and so much to share ..

This is changing, absolutely.

WordFrame Partners meeting in Plovdiv

2008-06-30T23:30:00.000-06:00

The last two weeks we, at ITBrix / WordFrame, had the privilege of having representatives of 4 partner companies visiting our Plovdiv office. The visits had been planned in the previous months and although Des Walsh from Australia and George Dearing from Texas could not make it for personal reasons, we had a lot done. Social Media Today could not send anybody this month but they are sending Mark Lazen to Plovdiv next month.

Here are the participants in the peaceful “invasion” we were so happy to host:

1. Paul Fox from GroupCom and the project that will really surprise a lot of people in the collaboration, social media and community building area – Neighbo.com

2. Eric Andersen from Parnassus Group and Blog Business Summit

3. Synergy3 had three representatives in Bulgaria last week, Liz Dietz, Vicki Tambellini and Tim Liu. The visit helped Synergy3 to meet in person the developers responsible for two of their most important projects – Edu1World.org and BellaSavio.com

4. David Terrar, who is also the latest addition to the ITBrix management board and owners’ list

There were two important events happening during the visits – the first one being that The WordFrame partners met in one place and began important discussions and interaction between each other; and the second one - all the participants were given the first demo of WordFrame2 Enterprise Platform. Jerry Bowles and Mark Lazen from Social Media Today participated via GoToMeeting Session. I will present more facts in the near future and leave David to be more specific for now. I will reserve the right to publish some nice stories and achievements by our partners soon. The meetings and discussions were of huge importance for all of us. We got to know each other better and we identified business niches and concepts that we could not have done so successfully by working separately. Isn’t this what the collaboration is all about?

We have planned another Meet-Up like that in the near future, before December 1st to discuss and implement the new marketing plan and policy of WordFrame. A marketing plan which is completely dependent on the WordFrame2 Enterprise implementation and our partner eco-system we are successfully implementing. I want to personally thank to all participants as well as to Jerry Bowles, Robin Fray Carey, Mark Lazen and Des Walsh for the continuous support and time devoted to the WordFrame partnership

WordFrame Advances ...

2008-06-30T22:43:00.000-06:00

I was looking at the latest entries in our support and issue tracking system today. Although Rumen, Boz, Tanya and I are using this every single day something very important drew my attention. We have over 990 new functionality items implemented and issues solved for the past 200 days since we separated from our previous partners.

I think this is quite an achievement having on mind our heavy involvement with the development of the WordFrame Enterprise v2.0.

We have numerous requests from our customers that we have implemented into active functionality for all the WordFrame users . That of course had always been the way to grow all our products properly - WordFrame is not an exception at all. Starting with Social Media Today going through Wenatchee and finishing with ICAEW and Neighbo requests and functional improvements helped WordFrame present an unique and difficult to duplicate functionality set

The other important thing is that all our partners and customers benefit immensely while using the support system, taking active role in the decision making and the WordFrame future.

There are two important upcoming events in the very near future - the release of the WordFrame version 1.5 and the release of the Neighbo project.

I am certain those two events will help WordFrame get the deserved recognition and respect as one of the best solutions among the existing collaboration and social media platforms. Our fans should not forget that the world learned about WordFrame on February 21, 2008, not earlier. So we will just keep it going like that for now - create great products and keep our partners and customers happy!

WordFrame New Features and Release notes

2008-05-31T07:07:00.000-06:00

We have implemented a couple of new things on the current v1.0 of WordFrame Community Platform in the last few months. This, of course, does not change our plans for major update to version 1.5 in July of our so-popular social media online application.

We are publishing this post as more of a reminder for some of our customers and partners who are quite familiar with the system but does not get to visit the WordFrame Help WIKI often – this way they lose the opportunity to check our monthly release notes based on all upgrades and updates we do in the course of each calendar month.

We strictly list all major improvements and bug-fixes but we certainly miss to mention some of them for one or another reason. Please, feel free to contact us for more details and information regarding all issues that you might have with the system. Sometimes we do miss to inform our fans and customers for various new things we are implementing.

Here is just a short list of some of the things we have implemented lately:

1. New report: "All Users" - The report presents full profile data for all users who have fully completed the login process. It does not include imported users who have not been logged in the WordFrame system yet.

2. Import Users / Extended Import Function - New Extended Import is now present in Admin -> Users -> Import Users. It helps you to import much more detailed information about the users.

3. Community Statistics - The Statistics shows the number of all community members, who have been logged in the system at least once.

4. Email notifications – Email alerts for comments. The users can now be notified, whenever a new comment is written on a post they have created or discussed.

5. Post Publish Date - The posts can now be published with a past date. (we know – even WordPress has had this for ages…)

6. All Posts Page - The post filter in “All posts” page now includes all categories in the current group.

7. Change Email - The new functionality enables users to change their login email.

8. New Admin Section: Wiki Home Page Content - New admin section is introduced in the Content Tab called Wiki Home Page Content. It is used for adding description, which will be displayed on Wiki Home page.

9. New Admin Section: Document Home Page Description - New admin section is introduced in the Content Tab called Document Home Page Description. It is used for adding description, which will be displayed on Document Home page.

10. New Admin Section: People Page Description - New admin section is introduced in the Content Tab called People Page Description. It is used for adding description, which will be displayed on People page.

11. Category Description - The new functionality is used for adding description, which will be displayed on the top of page when users review the posts in the current category.

12. User Notification Module - This Module notifies users when they receive new messages or invitations.

13. New Admin Module: Private Group Landing Page - New admin section is introduced in the System Tab called Private group landing page. It is used to set and manage the landing page description, which appears when a user, who is not a member of the current private group, navigates to it.

14. E-mail Campaigns - Saved or pending newsletter campaigns can now be edited.

15. Inbox - Email alerts on private messages can now be enabled from the Inbox

All WordFrame Community Platform Release notes are available on the WordFrame Help WIKI home page at:

http://help.wordframe.net/index.php/Main_Page

Startups and WordFrame

2008-05-31T07:04:00.000-06:00

We had several nice meetings and business trips this month to close a number of customers as well as to work with several startups needing somewhat different customer/vendor type of relationship.

The very interesting fact, which two of those companies (future WordFrame users) observed and shared with us, was the type of reception they had got from some of our direct and not-so-direct competitors. The two companies, the first one based in Dallas and the second one based in LA, told us that the companies they approached before us were in fact targeting larger and more established enterprises. Fact – in some cases – it was almost impossible to talk to those guys over the phone or organize a meeting, let alone direct access to a project manager or live phone support. Well, we were told something that we had already known but it was anyway nice to hear that our efforts really gave great results not only for us as a company. It was good to know that our productive management and work was also making other people happy.

It turned out that most of the companies they had approached, really wanted to deal with bigger, both in size and volume, customers. Some of those companies believed that it was not economically viable to deal with communities featuring less than 10,000 users.

Well, welcome to WordFrame - we are happy to take care of customers of any size. Another interesting fact - both companies I am having in mind are actually well-funded (they have enough to pay their bills as well as to request customizations) and money is not an issue – service is.

Personal approach towards each customer alongside with clear identification of responsibilities, proper business attitude and care about all our customers is a primary goal and concern in WordFrame.

Facts like these make us wonder why others do that, but also make us really happy that we deal differently.

WordFrame update

2008-05-31T06:57:00.000-06:00

It has been almost a month since our last posts in the WordFrame Blog. Well, our absence both on the blogging and the Twitter arena was not without a reason. We were mainly engaged with business development and with WordFrame partner network enlargement, sales, demos and most importantly - the WordFrame Enterprise v2.0 planning and development.

We got a handful of new customers and partners and this kept us busy quite a lot. I will be happy to announce a couple of our new customers in the next coming weeks as well as all our new partners, together with some of the more significant projects powered by WordFrame. Some of the new ones - great communities and social media networks, include Synergy3’s Edu1World.org and bellaSavio, alongside with the blog site for Content Management Connection and GreenBlogosphere.com .

Another very important event was the latest update and upgrade of our CMS. The CMS is called PageTypes and we will be finally launching its website, featuring full-blown online help and documentation. The interesting fact is that when we had it ready for its first official release last year we were planning to call it WordFrame - but for one or another reason, after we split from our previous venture in the end of last year, we decided to use that name for our Social Media platform.

Anyway, the faith knows its ways better than us, as we are now implementing the fully-functional PageTypes CMS into the WordFrame Enterprise to create something really unique and powerful. David Terrar and I will be posting regular updates on our sites about PageTypes CMS and WordFrame Enterprise v2.0.

By the way – the PageTypes CMS should not be considered being the main or the only functional and structural addition to the new WordFrame v2.0. There is much more hidden up our sleeves to surprise you with.

I will be posting some more news in the next couple of days about events that were and still are part of our busy and happy month of May.

Think twice before getting serious with Facebook

2008-05-31T06:50:00.000-06:00

This is another post inspired in some way by Robert Scoble. He wrote a post and uploaded a recorded conversation with a guy who was kicked out from Facebook without a real reason. There are several comments that are valid and set the real situation - all the people are certain that people should not be banished like that while one of the comments done by Mike (no last name or a link unfortunately) points out properly that besides the fact that this is not right, Facebook owners and editors will not lose sleep over it nor this fact (which definitely is not the first occasion) will be a front page news piece. So far so good/bad … what is kind of important here, though?

These type of social networks must have some kind of spam prevention services or tools that really work, that is for sure. What the real deal for me is can be described like that – these type of managed /hosted publicly available and monitored/explored hosted social networks cannot be really trusted and used for serious business or important personal activities. They can get you down at any point. Absolutely. Sometimes (as in this case) without any real reason. They can always shut you down with the simple explanation that they do not like you. Since you “are not paying” anything, you cannot complain.

I do not want to diminish the value Facebook brings to the online community nor do I think it is useless. On the contrary, almost all WordFrame personnel have Facebook accounts and we also have a WordFrame group there. What I would like to point out is that one should have more than just warning lights lit when he/she plans to use Facebook for serious and important business or personal stuff.

There are at least a dozen companies that will help you create the proper business social network (WordFrame is one of them, (sorry, could not resist the bragging)). Some of the companies have business social networking tools for free, others have great offers for the software, plus the hosting or the maintenance after that. The software apps are different in type, functionality and usability - at least a couple are open source, some built on java, some on php, some on .NET/C# . The most important part here is that one can have a contract with any of these companies, and if anything happens – there is someone to take the responsibility.

Well, too bad for that guy, I really feel sorry for him, but he was supposed to think twice when he trusted an online social networking solution which clearly states that it cannot be blamed for almost anything when it comes to their free services.

Probably, it is high time for the people that need social media apps or social networking software tools online and they are planning to use them heavily, to realize that there is no free lunch. If you are cheap enough not to even pay for the hosting of a free application that will do similar things – well, please do not complain in such a loud voice. If you want to do some serious work, both business and/or personal – be careful and expect to be treated differently compared to the way the paid solutions will treat you.

"Dark" workplace environment

2008-04-28T13:15:00.002-06:00

This post was provoked (in a good way) by Robert Scoble. Robert wrote a post about something that he was impressed with when he passed the Rackspace Headquarters. He found a department there that was completely dark.

I wrote him a small comment but I also promised him that will blog about it. For one or another reason (lots of work, new WordFrame customers, new trials, ICAEW community grew to 80,000+ users and a vacation) I could not write earlier. I am back on track now and I am posting everything that I had on my mind for some time now.

So, back to the main idea … For the last 13 years (since 1996) ITBrix development offices were on two locations. We spent 10 years in two large apartments which we converted into one office where we initially started with 4 people in 1996. At one point we were over 30 people on about 2500 sq. f. !

It was in 2001 when 3 of our guys started to completely block the sun and put thick paper on the windows. When we talked about the dark room idea it turned out that they feel more comfortable, work more concentrated and generally feel better. We did not need to talk more about it and we made two rooms very dark, just the light from the monitors.

When we moved to our new own office which we purchased in 2004 and completely renovated by 2005 we already had the idea that one of the main halls will be a “dark” one. We did install two types of blinds, external roller plastic blinds and internal Hunter-Douglas type blinds on all the office windows. We now have 7 people working in the dark hall with two guys feeling “left on the bright side” as they were in the dark rooms in the old office. One of them is the WordFrame Product manager – Rumen Yankov, but he manages to get a similar effect using the blinds we have on the windows. Plus the fact that Rumen has to be around his 10-people WordFrame development team on one hand, testers and support people on another and close to the CTO Hristo Serafimov.

So here is how the "dark" hall in our office looks like:

You can see that the light is from the camera flash and all the office lights on the ceiling are off.

So, Robert - not a new idea, and I am certain this “dark work place environment” can be observed in many offices or home offices all over the world.

Three WordFrame partners and 5 WordFrame powered sites on AllTop.com

2008-04-10T13:32:00.000-06:00

It is a great thing to see your product getting the recognition it deserves.

We have been following AllTop.com, the latest venture of Guy Kawasaki, closely and we are happy with the way it goes. We are even happier to see three of our partners listed in the Social Media Category as well as 5 WordFrame powered sites. Des Walsh and Social Media Today have their separate section and most of the sites listed on those sections are powered by WordFrame Community Platform v1.0.

We are really eager to see what will be the case when we have the WordFrame Enterprise 2.0 up and running later this year as WordFrame 2.0 will be the real “killer” social media platform.

Some update ...

2008-04-10T13:30:00.000-06:00

I have not written in the blog for over two weeks now but I was extremely busy with a new product we are releasing – a brand new .NET based CMS plus I finally managed to squeeze a week of vacation within the very very busy schedule these days. So, I am almost back on track with all the things that happened in and around WordFrame and the super new products we are releasing this year. Whatever plans we had to do some new product releasing in 2009 are already changed – we are moving everything ahead. The WordFrame Enterprise Platform will start its test runs somewhere in Autumn 2008 guys …

Well, I am starting to post some stuff I had ready for weeks now – like the posts I did over three weeks ago and that were provoked from a couple of articles written by Robert Scoble (thanks Robert, you are always an inspiration) …

Official WordFrame Community Platform Demos Schedule

2008-04-10T13:18:00.001-06:00

This one looks more like an official announcement rather than a post in our WordFrame Corporate Blog.

There will be three official demos regularly scheduled during any given week.

The first Demo is directed for our prospects in Australia and Asia. The time for this demo is Every Friday at 1AM GMT (London time) or 12:00 at noon in Sydney, Australia.

The second Demo is directed for our prospects in Europe. The time for the European demo is Every Friday at 2PM (14:00) GMT, London Time.

The third Demo is directed for our North American prospects and is scheduled for Every Friday at 2PM Eastern Standard Time (New York).

We have made a table with the respective time readings in 5 different time zones so our prospects and customers can choose which of the three scheduled demos to choose and participate.

Suzie Cheel, David Terrar, Des Walsh and I have came up with the following times for the WordFrame demos that we are presenting on weekly bases:

Every Thursday (US), Australasia and China Demo

Before April 6th 2008 After April 6th 2008

Sydney,Australia (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
12 Noon, 12:00 (Friday Morning) 11 AM, 11:00 (Friday Morning)

Beijing, China
9 AM , 09:00 (Friday Morning) 9 AM , 09:00 (Friday Morning)

London, UK (GMT, International Standard)
1 AM, 01:00 (Friday Morning) 2 AM , 2:00 (Friday Morning)

New York, USA (Eastern Standard Time)
9 PM , 21:00 (Thursday Evening) 9 PM , 21:00 (Thursday Evening)

Denver , USA (Mountain Standard Time)
7 PM , 18:00 (Thursday evening) 7 PM, 19:00 (Thursday evening)

Every Friday, European Demo

Before April 6th 2008 After April 6th 2008

Sydney,Australia (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
1 AM, 01:00 Saturday Morning, 12 Midnight, 24:00 (Friday Evening)
(Daylight Saving time)

Beijing, China
10 PM 22:00 (Friday Evening) 9 PM, 21:00 (Friday Evening)

London, UK (GMT, International Standard)
2 PM , 14:00 (Friday Afternoon) 2 PM , 14:00 (Friday Afternoon)

New York, USA (Eastern Standard Time)

10 AM , 10:00 (Friday Morning) 9 AM , 9:00 (Friday Morning)

Denver , USA (Mountain Standard Time)

8 AM , 10:00 (Friday Morning) 7 AM , 7:00 (Friday Morning)

Every Friday, US and Canada demo

Before April 6th 2008 After April 6th 2008

Sydney,Australia (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
5 AM, 05:00 (Saturday Morning, 4 AM, 4:00 (Saturday Morning)
(Daylight Saving time))

Beijing, China

2 AM , 02:00 (Saturday Morning) 2 AM , 02:00 (Saturday Morning)

London, UK (GMT, International Standard)
6 PM , 18:00 (Friday Evening) 7 PM , 19:00 (Friday Evening)

New York, USA (Eastern Standard Time)
2 PM , 14:00 (Friday Afternoon) 2 PM , 14:00 (Friday Afternoon)

Denver , USA (Mountain Standard Time)
12 PM , 12:00 (Friday Noon) 12 PM , 12:00 (Friday Noon)

Guys, I have to tell you it was a challenge to coordinate the proper times and the business activities in the different time zones so we can accommodate as many prospects and customers as possible. We were doing those calculations by hand and with the help of a couple of planning apps we had, online ones too.

Part of the problem is that the US moved its Daylight saving time almost a month before Europe and a month before Australia and then … we forgot, Australia will just switch to normal time, as the Winter will be over there in a week, so they are removing an hour, not adding one as we did here, in the Northern Hemisphere. Oh, boy!

Anyway – the table with the three regularly held demos is up – please take a look what suits you best and write a small note to sales@wordframe.com or just fill out the form available in this post so we can get in touch with you regarding a demo.

WordFrame Dynamic User Profile Management - part 1

2008-04-10T13:00:00.000-06:00

WordFrame Community Platform released a completely new User Profile management module about a week ago. The new module gives the WordFrame administrators the unique capabilities of customizing the User Profiles the way they see fit.

This useful upgrade was implemented because a couple of our customers have requested specific changes in the User profile section. Having in mind the diversity of the companies and their users and audiences, it was clear to us that a unified profile setup will not do the job and cover the needs of all those guys.

We had Social Media Today and JustGetOut.net as one of the first requestors in December 07 and January 08 and then a couple of British customers and trial accounts followed with a set of customization requests concerning mainly and only the type of data gathered, stored and requested in the WordFrame User Profile. The latest request came from the Bahamas Tourist Network. We have made many conference calls and exchanged a series of e-mails with all our customers regarding the exact results and functionality they wanted to see and here it is, we are ready.

The User Profile management is done by the Dynamic Profile Management Section under the Users tab in the WordFrame Administration module.

The Dynamic Profile Management section gives the opportunity the administrators to create and set the desired number of sections in the User Profiles and manage them. The User Profile can contain unlimited number of sections.

Each section can contain unlimited number of data fields. The data fields can be chosen from the preset field types in the system. Those preset field types cover all the possible data or selection gathering field types.

A very important portion of the fields selector and user profile section creation is the ability for the administrators to set the required fields in the profile. Once a data field from the User profile is set as a “required” field, it automatically becomes part of the initial registration process. In the even when a new required field is introduced towards an already existing user base (users that are already registered and filled out their profiles ) the system cleverly asks this missing data to be entered by the existing users the next time they try to login.

We will be more than happy to show how this works in any of our regularly schedule demos of the WordFrame Community Platform.

Complete User Profile management and setup in WordFrame Community Platform 1.0

2008-04-10T12:54:00.000-06:00

ITBrix / WordFrame is proud to announce the release of a completely new and functional upgraded User Profile Management Module under the Administration Section in the WordFrame Community Platform. The new features in the User management Admin module allow the administrators of any WordFrame community to manage, define and set the types of the user profiles and the data contained and gathered by the Community members.

I will post two articles today about this new module in the WordFrame administration. The first article will be short will have only two screenshots and will present really general information about the new WordFrame Profile management capabilities.

The second Article will be a bit longer and is directed towards current and future users of the system that are heavily interested in the Social Networking and User profiles building features of an extensive Social Media and Collaboration tool such as WordFrame Community platform. The second post will have more than 7 screenshots displaying the new management of the user profiles, the User Profile sections creation, the field selection and settings in each profile section. I will also specifically point out the way the “required fields” are set up. What happens after the User Profile is initially created or User Profile Edits are saved, how the registration process depends on the selected profile fields and how the newly created and set “required fields” are applied towards the existing WordFrame user accounts and profiles.

WordFrame Weekly demos, schedule and info

2008-04-10T12:50:00.000-06:00

Des Walsh, our Australian partner and I had a small discussion today in regards to the WordFrame Community Platform weekly demos. I realized that we do not have this properly announced on the WordFrame website and nor have I blogged about it. I will now try to fix the mistakes on our side.

We have a scheduled weekly demos every week, Friday at noon, 12:00 PM, Mountain Standard Time. This is respectively 2:00 PM Eastern or 11:00 AM Pacific time. The demos are done either by me or David Terrar. We do them online with either a skype conference or a Conference call number. The visualization is done via LiveMeeting.

David and I already planned another regular weekly demo for the rest of the world as this one is convenient for the interested in WordFrame on the North American continent. The other demo time and day will be announced later next week when we finish the planning and coordination for these regular events with David Terrar and Des Walsh. Our Asian prospects and customers seem to grow rapidly and we have to take care of them too. So, we will inform you guys about that next week.

The European and the Asian oriented WordFrame demos will be done on GoToMeeting as David is not very big fan of LiveMeeting.

We will post the demos’ details both on the Blog site here and on the WordFrame product site.

PS. Des would be mad at me calling him our Australian partner because the proper term, is Australasian. Sorry Des

Ornithologists in Siberia

2008-04-10T12:48:00.000-06:00

This has been in my mind for some time now and I was wondering how to start it. I was thinking to start it with the unique look at life from Hughes “What happens to a dream deferred …” but decided not to. I think that I should be as straight as I can be, as I saw too many people twisting their moral values only because they do not want to be honest enough to call events and people with their proper names and definitions.

What happens when you lie to your colleagues and friends? You either get fired or get very, very lonely…. What happens when you stand in front of the people that helped you become someone and offend them? Well, what happens when you do it more than once and keep doing it on different occasions over and over again? What do you do then?

What do people that forget where they have started from, who has helped them and how small and insignificant they actually are - what those people do when they are left all alone? When any sense of reality and trust is gone? What happens when they are exposed and they are also lazy and moreover: have never managed to learn how to work in a team? I do not know. That is why I am asking that question to all of you, because being a part of such a great team and organization as ITBrix / WordFrame makes me unable to comprehend how the not-being-yourself part works.

My partners and friends gave me the proper answer to that question of mine about three months ago. When all this happens and you are that type of person - arrogant, lazy, hypocrite and your lies eventually get exposed, you can become only one thing for sure - an Ornithologist in Siberia. That is it. Period. That is what you can do!

Interesting, I wanted actually to write about how happy I am with the guys and girls around us and the introduction turned bigger than the punch line, no problem, my guys know me. Well, I am happy with the clear results on the sales and the development sides for the last three months – I can not be happier for the WordFrame project and venture. Thank you guys and girls!

Thank God and Faith our growing team has managed to save itself from people like the ones above and we happily move ahead for 14 years already. The interesting thing is that when we hire new people to work in ITBrix / WordFrame or we partner with new individuals and companies we do spend the time to see how will the bond work and what are the responsibility levels the both sides are willing to cover. Simple… and very productive. I am so happy that we have great people and teams around us.

Boz, Svetlyo and Ivan are doing the team pages on the WordFrame site later next week so our visitors and customers will be able to actually match a name to the faces of those great and hardworking people

As I have a small celebration today, I would like to make a toast for all our colleagues, partners and friends all over the world and to all the past, present and future Ornithologists in Siberia!

Demo and first testing of the latest version 2.0 of the ITBrix CMS

2008-04-10T11:16:00.000-06:00

It has been great 10 days although I was traveling the whole week and neglected the blogging and the tweets. David Terrar and I had a demo on the latest version of the ITBrix CMS (Content Management System) this weekend and we were pleasantly surprised. At least I was … The demo was done by the CMS project manager, Mitko Dyulgerski and took about an hour.

I must admit that I was very, very surprised as our own CMS Project has always been in the second priority level for me. That is a product/service we are maintaining since 2001 and we usually build between 20 and 80 sites per year depending on the type of the customers and the industries they are into.

The ITBrix CMS is a very important part of the future of the company as this product will be an important part of the WordFrame Enterprise Platform we are developing at the moment. The CMS part is really what’s missing in the WordFrame Community Platform and this addition will give us a really competitive edge compared to what else is available on the market.

I will include a couple of screenshots here in this post while I am describing the product. I will start with some retrospection and show you what we had and have until now because the ITBrix CMS version 1.0 is still powering well over 300 sites built by us between 2001 and now.

The ITBrix CMS v1.0 is a PHP /MySQL based product and delivers quite some functionality in regards to simple and medium-functionality level websites building.

(I apologize for the poor quality of some of the screenshots but I am trying to show bigger screens taking quite much more real estate on their original locations so the images are a little condensed. I am sorry)

You have general management of the menus, pages, news, image galleries, administrators, roles and a lot more.

HP Blogging Code of Conduct

2008-04-10T11:12:00.000-06:00

I will put the HP Blogging Code of Contact as one of our final materials regarding the Corporate Blogging Policies of various companies. We will be updating the WordFrame Blog regularly with similar documents and they will always be in the Corporate Blogging Resources category

Original Document available at:
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html
______

HP Blogging Code of Conduct

Spanning a range of topics from servers to marketing excellence. HP blogs chronicle the unvarnished thoughts of HP employees. Find out what company leaders, topic experts and guest bloggers think about the technology landscape of today - and tomorrow. Become part of the conversation by reading and sharing your comments with us.

HP blogs are written by a variety of employees at different levels and positions in the company, so you can expect many viewpoints. You can also expect the following:

1. We will strive to have open and honest dialogues with our readers.
2. We will correct inaccurate or misleading postings in a timely manner. We will not delete posts unless they violate our policies. Most changes will be made by adding to posts and we will mark any additions clearly.
3. We will disclose conflicts of interest.
4. Our Standards of Business Conduct will guide what we write about — so there are some topics we won't comment on such as information about financials, HP intellectual property, trade secrets, management changes, lawsuits, shareholder issues, layoffs, and contractual agreements with alliance partners, customers, and suppliers.
5. We will provide links to relevant material available on other blogs and Web sites. We will disclose any sources fully through credits, links and trackbacks unless the source has requested anonymity.
6. We understand that respect goes both ways — we will use good judgment in our posts and respond to you in a respectful manner. In return, we ask the same of you.
7. We trust you will be mindful of the information you share on our blogs — any personally identifiable information you share on a blog can be seen by anyone with access to the blog.
8. We will respect intellectual property rights.
9. We will use good judgment in protecting personal and corporate information and in respecting the privacy of individuals who use our blogs.

Comments:

1. Comments will be reviewed by bloggers before they are posted on our blogs.
2. We will review, post and respond to comments in a timely manner. We welcome constructive criticism. We can't respond to every comment, but will read all of them.
3. We will not post comments that are spam, inappropriate, defamatory, use profanity, or otherwise violate our policies or Terms of Use.
4. Because our blogs focus on material of general interest to all our readers, we ask that you direct customer support inquiries through our traditional customer service channels or use our IT resource center forums. Using these channels will allow you to get your issues to experienced HP support representatives in a timely manner.
5. Our bloggers will not respond to customer support issues and will not post these comments to their blogs.

Plaxo Public Internet Communication Policy ( Blogging Guidelines )

2008-03-25T09:57:00.000-06:00

Plaxo has presented a nice and short but informative document in regards to their blogging guidelines. WordFrame is happy to have thier Blogging Guidelines as one of our examples for the properly structured and set corporate blogging policies.

Original Document available at:
http://blog.plaxoed.com/2005/03/29/plaxos-communication-policy/
________________________

Plaxo Public Internet Communication Policy

The following policy applies to all employees and contractors of Plaxo, and covers all publicly accessible communications via the Internet relating to Plaxo. This includes, but is not limited to: blogs, discussion forums, newsgroups, and e-mail distribution lists.

OVERVIEW

This company depends upon not only the strong formal competencies of its workers (programming abilities, writing skills, etc.), but their “soft skills” as well. Specifically, the fabric of this company is sustained by a sense of camaraderie and trust.

While we encourage open communication both internally and externally in all forms, we expect and insist that such communication does not substantively demean our environment. This means that constructive criticism — both privately and publicly — is welcome, but harsh or continuous disparagement is frowned upon.
Externally communicating about aspects of the company that are part of your non-disclosure agreement (partnership deals, earnings, upcoming unannounced features, etc.) is ALWAYS forbidden, however, and grounds for immediate termination and legal action.

In a nutshell, be prudent. Ask yourself: “Would this public expression regarding Plaxo impair my ability to work with my colleagues on a friendly basis? Would it give a leg up to our competition? Would it make our current or upcoming partners uncomfortable?” If you could answer yes to any of those questions, please avoid this communication.
Additionally, you should first express with your management and co-workers any Plaxo concerns you may have. Voicing concerns about Plaxo publicly without first communicating such concerns to your management and co-workers is counterproductive and inadvisable.

SPECIFIC POLICIES

1. Your public communications concerning Plaxo must not violate any guidelines set forth in your employee handbook, whether or not you specifically mention your employee or contractor status.

2. You may participate in Plaxo-related public communications on company time. However, if doing so interferes with any of your work duties and/or responsibilities, Plaxo reserves the right to disallow such participation.

3. You must include the following disclaimer on published public communications if you identify yourself as a Plaxo employee or if you regularly or substantively discuss Plaxo publicly: “The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of [your name]. Content published here is not read or approved by Plaxo before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Plaxo.”

4. You may not communicate any material that violates the privacy or publicity rights of another.

5. You may not attack personally fellow employees, authors, customers, vendors, or shareholders. You may respectfully disagree with company actions, policies, or management.

6. You may not disclose any sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial information about the company. This includes revenues, profits, forecasts, and other financial information, any information related to specific authors, brands, products, product lines, customers, operating units, etc. You may not disclose any information about any specific customer. Further detail is provided in the “Security and Confidentiality” section of your employee handbook.

7. You may not post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or embarrassing to another person or any other person or entity. This includes, but is not limited to, comments regarding Plaxo, Plaxo employees, Plaxo’s partners and Plaxo’s competitors.

Failure to follow these policies may result in disciplinary action, up to and including discharge. Only a written document signed by the President of Plaxo can approve an exception of any of the above policies.

Additionally, here are some guidelines you may wish to follow for your own protection. This is not a comprehensive list and Plaxo will not indemnify you from legal action if you follow these guidelines.

1. If you think you will get in trouble directly or indirectly because of any communication you are about to make, please discuss it with your manager first.

2. Remember that you are not anonymous. Even if you write anonymously or under a pseudonym, your identity can still be revealed. You should communicate as if you are doing so under your own name. Indeed, it is recommended that you do communicate using your real name.

3. You will probably be read or heard by people who know you. Post as if everyone you know reads or hears every word.

4. You are personally legally responsible for any content you publish. Be aware of applicable laws regarding publishing your content or regarding the content itself before you post. This includes adhering to applicable copyright laws.

Corporate Blogging Policies - Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines

2008-03-25T09:42:00.000-06:00

Another Corporate Blogging Guidelines example at the WordFrame Blog - Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines

Original Document available at:
http://www.thomasnelson.com/consumer/dept.asp?dept_id=1117904
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Thomas Nelson Blogging Guidelines

At Thomas Nelson, we want to encourage you to blog about our company, our products, and your work. Our goal is three-fold:

• To raise the visibility of our company,
• To make a contribution to our industry, and
• To give the public a look at what goes on within a real live publishing company.

Therefore, we have established a “blog aggregator page” that is linked to the ThomasNelson.com Web site. “House Work,” the name of this page, contains links to employee blogs, along with the first few sentences from the most recent entry. The page is automatically updated whenever a blogger creates a new post. This way readers can quickly scan new entries, click on those that interest them, and then read the entry on the blogger’s site. This makes it convenient for people who are interested in reading employee blogs. It also helps publicize individual blogs and generates traffic for everyone.

In order to give some direction to employees who wish to blog, we have established a “Blog Oversight Committee” or “BOC.” This is a group of fellow-employee bloggers who are committed to promoting blogging within our company and making sure that the Company’s interests are served.

If you would like to have us link to your blog, you must submit it to the BOC. Before doing so, you should design your blog and write at least one entry. Once you have done this, send an e-mail to Gave Wicks with a link to your blog. The BOC will then review your blog and notify you whether or not it meets the criteria.

In order to participate in this program, you must abide by the following guidelines. (Please keep in mind that review by the BOC and participation in this program does not absolve you of responsibility for everything you post.)

1. Start with a blogging service. We do not host employee blogs. We think it adds more credibility if the Company does not officially sponsor them. Therefore, please use one of the many third-party blog hosting sites on the Internet. Some of these are free, such as Blogger.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, Xanga.com, and MSN Spaces. Others charge a nominal fee. Examples include TypePad.com, SquareSpace.com, BlogIdentity.com, and Bubbler.com. If you use one of the latter, any expense is your responsibility.

2. Write as yourself. In other words, please use your real name. We don’t want people writing anonymously or under a pseudonym. Your name should be prominently displayed on your blog’s title or subtitle. This will add credibility with your readers and promote accountability within our company.

3. Own your content. Employee blog sites are not Company communications. Therefore, your blog entries legally belong to you. They represent your thoughts and opinions. We think it is important that you remind your readers of this fact by including the following disclaimer on your site: “The posts on this blog are provided ‘as is’ with no warranties and confer no rights. The opinions expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.” You assume full responsibility and liability for all actions arising from your posts. We also encourage you to put a copyright notice on your site in your name (e.g., “© 2005, John Smith”).

4. Write relevant. Write often. Whether you know it or not, you are an expert. You have a unique perspective on our company based on your talents, skills, and current responsibilities. People what to hear about that perspective. Also, in order to develop a consistent readership, you should try to write on a regular basis. For some, this will be daily; for others, it may be weekly. The important thing is consistent posting. New content is what keeps readers coming back. You may also write on company time, provided it doesn’t become excessive and doesn’t interfere with your job assignments and responsibilities.

5. Advertise—if you wish. While there is no requirement to run ads on your blog, you are free to do this if you wish. Some of the free blog services run ads as a way to offset their costs. If you use such a service, you won’t have a choice. On the other hand, if you pay for your service, you can avoid advertising altogether or participate in a service like Google’s AdSense or Amazon’s Associate Program. These types of programs will pay you based on “page views,” “click-throughs,” or purchases made on participating Web sites. You might want to ask the BOC or fellow bloggers for suggestions. The only thing we ask is that, to the extent you have control, you run ads or recommend products that are congruent with our core values as a Company.

6. Be nice. Avoid attacking other individuals or companies. This includes fellow employees, authors, customers, vendors, competitors, or shareholders. You are welcome to disagree with the Company’s leaders, provided your tone is respectful. If in doubt, we suggest that you “sleep on it” and then submit your entry to the BOC before posting it on your blog.

7. Keep secrets. Do not disclose sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial informa-tion about the Company, other than what is publicly available in our SEC filings and corporate press releases. This includes revenues, profits, forecasts, and other financial information related to specific authors, brands, products, product lines, customers, operating units, etc. Again, if in doubt, check with the BOC before posting this type of information.

8. Respect copyrights. For your protection, do not post any material that is copyrighted unless (a) you are the copyright owner, (b) you have written permission of the copyright owner to post the copyrighted material on your blog, or (c) you are sure that the use of any copyrighted material is permitted by the legal doctrine of “fair use.” (Please note: this is your responsibility. The Company cannot provide you with legal advice regarding this.)

9. Obey the law. This goes without saying, but by way of reminder, do not post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful, embarrassing to another person or entity, or violates the privacy rights of another. Also, do not post material that contains viruses, Trojan horses, worms, or any other computer code that is intended to damage, interfere with, or surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data, or information.

10. Remember the Handbook. As a condition of your employment, you agreed to abide by the rules of the Thomas Nelson Company Handbook. This also applies to your blogging activities. We suggest you take time to review the section entitled, “Employee Responsibilities” (pp. 36–39).

If you do not abide by the above guidelines, we reserve the right to stop linking to your blog.

Corporate Blogging Policies - Feedster Corporate Blogging Policy

2008-03-25T09:39:00.000-06:00

Another example for good corporate blogging policy available as a resource on the WordFrame blog site: Feedster Corporate Blogging Policy

Original Document available at:
http://feedster.blogs.com/corporate/corporate_policies/index.html
______________

Corporate Blogging Policy

In general, the company views personal websites and weblogs positively, and it respects the right of employees to use them as a medium of self-expression. If you choose to identify yourself as a Feedster employee or to discuss matters related to our technology or business on your website or weblog, please bear in mind that, although you and we view your website or weblog as a personal project and a medium of personal expression, some readers may nonetheless view you as a de facto spokesperson for the company. In light of this possibility, we ask that you observe the following guidelines:

1. Please make it clear to your readers that the views you express are yours alone and that they do not necessarily reflect the views of Feedster. To help reduce the potential for confusion, we would appreciate it if you put the following notice – or something similar – in a reasonably prominent place on your site (e.g., at the bottom of your “about me” page):

The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
Many bloggers put a disclaimer on their front page saying who they work for, but that they’re not speaking officially. This is good practice, but may not have much legal effect. It's not necessary to post this notice on every page, but please use reasonable efforts to draw attention to it – if at all possible, from the home page of your site.

2. Be careful to avoid disclosing any information that is confidential or proprietary to the company or to any third party that has disclosed information to us. For good measure, consult the company’s confidentiality policy for guidance about what constitutes confidential information.

3. Please remember that your employment documents give the company certain rights with respect to concepts and developments you produce that are related to our business. To avoid conflicts or discrepancies, please consult your manager if you have questions about the appropriateness of publishing such concepts or developments related to the company’s business on your site.

4. Since your site or blog is a public space, we hope you will be as respectful to the company, our employees, our customers, our partners and affiliates, and others (including our competitors) as the company itself endeavors to be.

5. You may provide a link from your site to the corporate website. However you will require permission to use company trademarks or reproduce company material on your site.
6
. Finally, please be aware that the company may request that you temporarily confine your website or weblog commentary to topics unrelated to the company (or, in rare cases, that you temporarily suspend your website or weblog activity altogether) if it believes this is necessary or advisable to ensure compliance with securities regulations or other laws.

If you have any questions about these guidelines or any matter related to your site that these guidelines do not address, please direct them to me.

Our policy is an adaptation of Groove Network’s published policy. Here’s a quick summary from Charlene Li of Forrester Research:

1. Make it clear that the views expressed in the blog are yours alone and do not necessarily represent the views of your employer.

2. Respect the company’s confidentiality and proprietary information.

3. Ask your manager if you have any questions about what is appropriate to include in your blog.

4. Be respectful to the company, employees, customers, partners, and competitors.

5. Understand when the company asks that topics not be discussed for confidentiality or legal compliance reasons.

6. Ensure that your blogging activity does not interfere with your work

Corporate Blogging Policies - Blogging Guidelines of Sun Microsystems

2008-03-23T15:54:00.000-06:00

Here is the Corporate Blogging Guidelines of Sun Microsystems. I wll try to put as many as possible docs from the ones I have read and used over the years so we can have them in one place and WordFrame Blog be another good reference point too.

Original Document available at:
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/02/Policy

_____________________
Sun Blogs

Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. We need to do a better job of telling the world. As of now, you are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first (but please do read and follow the advice in this note). Blogging is a good way to do this.

Advice By speaking directly to the world, without benefit of management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards. We don't want to micro-manage, but here is some advice.

It's a Two-Way Street The real goal isn't to get everyone at Sun blogging, it's to become part of the industry conversation. So, whether or not you're going to write, and especially if you are, look around and do some reading, so you learn where the conversation is and what people are saying.

If you start writing, remember the Web is all about links; when you see something interesting and relevant, link to it; you'll be doing your readers a service, and you'll also generate links back to you; a win-win.

Don't Tell Secrets Common sense at work here; it's perfectly OK to talk about your work and have a dialog with the community, but it's not OK to publish the recipe for one of our secret sauces. There's an official policy on protecting Sun's proprietary and confidential information, but there are still going to be judgment calls.

If the judgment call is tough-on secrets or one of the other issues discussed here-it's never a bad idea to get management sign-off before you publish.

Be Interesting Writing is hard work. There's no point doing it if people don't read it. Fortunately, if you're writing about a product that a lot of people are using, or are waiting for, and you know what you're talking about, you're probably going to be interesting. And because of the magic of hyperlinking and the Web, if you're interesting, you're going to be popular, at least among the people who understand your specialty.

Another way to be interesting is to expose your personality; almost all of the successful bloggers write about themselves, about families or movies or books or games; or they post pictures. People like to know what kind of a person is writing what they're reading. Once again, balance is called for; a blog is a public place and you should try to avoid embarrassing your readers or the company.

Write What You Know The best way to be interesting, stay out of trouble, and have fun is to write about what you know. If you have a deep understanding of some chunk of Solaris or a hot JSR, it's hard to get into too much trouble, or be boring, talking about the issues and challenges around that.

On the other hand, a Solaris architect who publishes rants on marketing strategy, or whether Java should be open-sourced, has a good chance of being embarrassed by a real expert, or of being boring.

Financial Rules There are all sorts of laws about what we can and can't say, business-wise. Talking about revenue, future product ship dates, roadmaps, or our share price is apt to get you, or the company, or both, into legal trouble.

Quality Matters Use a spell-checker. If you're not design-oriented, ask someone who is whether your blog looks decent, and take their advice on how to improve it.

You don't have to be a great or even a good writer to succeed at this, but you do have to make an effort to be clear, complete, and concise. Of course, "complete" and "concise" are to some degree in conflict; that's just the way life is. There are very few first drafts that can't be shortened, and usually improved in the process.

Think About Consequences The worst thing that can happen is that a Sun sales pro is in a meeting with a hot prospect, and someone on the customer's side pulls out a print-out of your blog and says "This person at Sun says that product sucks."

In general, "XXX sucks" is not only risky but unsubtle. Saying "Netbeans needs to have an easier learning curve for the first-time user" is fine; saying "Visual Development Environments for Java sucks" is just amateurish.

Once again, it's all about judgment: using your weblog to trash or embarrass the company, our customers, or your co-workers, is not only dangerous but stupid.

Disclaimers Many bloggers put a disclaimer on their front page saying who they work for, but that they're not speaking officially. This is good practice, but don't count on it to avoid trouble; it may not have much legal effect.

Tools We're starting to develop tools to make it easy for anyone to start publishing, but if you feel the urge, don't wait for us; there are lots of decent blogging tools and hosts out there.

This site contains blogs written by Sun employees and is governed by company policies, including Sun's Blogging Guidelines. When employees leave Sun, blogs written during their employment normally remain in place here and are subject to the same policies. Sun Alumni are invited to continue blogging on the friends.sun.com/blogs site, where additional terms and conditions apply.

Sun's Blogging Guidelines

Speaking to the world in public has potential risks for you and for Sun and you need to understand
them. Here are the big-picture risks.
Posting the wrong thing on your blog could:
? Lose Sun its right to export technology outside the U.S.
? Get Sun and you in legal trouble with U.S. and other government agencies.
? Lose Sun its trademark on key terms like Java and Solaris.
? Cost us the ability to get patents.
? Cost you your job at Sun.
Most of these risks can be avoided by just being careful and responsible. Here is a summary of the
important rules to follow to avoid getting in trouble. There is an applicable company policy for each of
the items listed. Links to these policies are included in the internal version of this document located at
https://akula.sfbay.sun.com:8443/blogs-admin/ Violation of any applicable company policy may result
in disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.
Summary of the important rules:
1. Do not disclose or speculate on non-public financial or operational information. The legal
consequences could be swift and severe for you and Sun.
2. Do not disclose non-public technical information (for example, code) without approval. Sun
could instantly lose its right to export its products and technology to most of the world or to
protect its intellectual property.
3. Do not disclose personal information about other individuals.
4. Do not disclose confidential information, Sun's or anyone else's.
5. Do not discuss work-related legal proceedings or controversies, including communications with
Sun attorneys.
6. Always refer to Sun's trademarked names properly. For example, never use a trademark as a
noun, since this could result in a loss of our trademark rights.
7. Do not post others' material, for example photographs, articles, or music, without ensuring
they've granted appropriate permission to do this.
8. Follow Sun's Standards of Business Conduct and uphold Sun's reputation for integrity. In
particular, ensure that your comments about companies and products are truthful, accurate, and
fair and can be substantiated, and avoid disparaging comments about individuals.

Corporate Blogging Policies - Blogging policy at Harvard Law

2008-03-23T15:53:00.000-06:00

We think that adding a corporate policy published by a not typical "business-oriented" entity what is Harvard Law will only benefit the visitors and customers of the WordFrame Community Platform Blog. Please take a closer look at what the guys and girls at Harvard follow while blogging.

Link to the Original Document:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/terms

__________

Terms of Use

Welcome to Weblogs at Harvard Law!
We don’t mean to turn you off from blogging by immediately inundating you with legalese, but we need to make clear our respective rights and responsibilities related to this service. So, the President and Fellows of Harvard College (“Harvard”) offer these blogging services (the “Services”) to you subject to the terms and conditions of use (“Terms”) contained herein. By accessing, creating or contributing to any blogs hosted at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/, and in consideration for the Services we provide to you, you agree to abide by these Terms. Please read them carefully before posting to or creating any blog.

1. Rights in the Content You Submit
Default Creative Commons Public License
Unless you specify otherwise, any and all works of authorship copyrightable by you and posted by you to any blog (“Content”) are submitted under the terms of an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public License. Under this license, you permit anyone to copy, distribute, display and perform your Content, royalty-free, on the condition that they credit your authorship each time they do so. You also permit others to distribute derivative works of your Content, but only if they do so under the same Attribution-ShareAlike license that governs your original Content.

Please read the full text of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public License.

Amongst other things, this license permits RSS aggregators to copy, distribute, display and perform any Content on your blog that you syndicate using RSS. All Content on your blog is syndicated for RSS aggregation unless you change your settings to indicate otherwise.

Option for More Restrictive License Terms

If you prefer to offer your Content on more restrictive terms, you may do so as follows:

For Content you submit to your own blog, remove the Creative Commons logo from your blog template (contact us if you require instructions).

For Content you submit to a blog other than your own, label your submission with a full copyright notice, i.e., your name, the word “copyright” or symbol “©” and the year of first publication.

By posting your Content using the Services, you are granting Harvard a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use your Content in connection with the operation of the Services, including, without limitation, the license rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Content, and/or to incorporate it into a collective work.

Attribution

When publicly displaying, publicly performing, reproducing or distributing copies of your Content, or Content as incorporated into a collective work, Harvard will make best efforts to credit your authorship. You grant Harvard permission to use your name for such attribution purposes. You, likewise, agree to represent yourself accurately. You acknowledge that misrepresentation may lead us, in our sole discretion, to cancel your use of the Services and delete any of your Content.

2. Conduct

Posting

Those of us who are coordinating this research project believe deeply in free speech. Given our role in offering this service and our presence together as part of the extended university community, however, we must reserve the right to remove certain content that you may post. As a general matter, you may post content freely to your blog and to those of others, so long as the content is not illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, infringing of intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy or otherwise injurious or objectionable.

You may not use the Harvard name to endorse or promote any product, opinion, cause or political candidate. Representation of your personal opinions as institutionally endorsed by Harvard University or any of its Schools or organizations is strictly prohibited.

By posting content to any blog, you warrant and represent that you either own or otherwise control all of the rights to that content, including, without limitation, all the rights necessary for you to provide, post, upload, input or submit the content, or that your use of the content is a protected fair use. You agree that you will not knowingly and with intent to defraud provide material and misleading false information. You represent and warrant also that the content you supply does not violate these Terms, and that you will indemnify and hold Harvard harmless for any and all claims resulting from content you supply.

You acknowledge that Harvard does not pre-screen or regularly review posted content, but that it shall have the right to remove in its sole discretion any content that it considers to violate these Terms or the terms of any other campus user agreements that may govern your use of the campus networks.

Accessing

You understand that all content posted to http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ is the sole responsibility of the individual who originally posted the content. You understand, also, that all opinions expressed by users of this site are expressed strictly in their individual capacities, and not as representatives of any Harvard institution.

You agree that Harvard will not be liable, under any circumstances and in any way, for any errors or omissions, loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of use of any content posted on this site. You agree that you must evaluate and bear all risks associated with the use of any content, including any reliance on the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such content.

Children

Collecting personal information from children under the age of 13 is prohibited. No Content should be directed toward such children without the express written permission of the Executive Director, Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

3. Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability

This site is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. Harvard makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, as to the site’s operation or the information, content or materials included on this site. To the full extent permissible by applicable law, Harvard hereby disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for any particular purpose. Harvard will not be liable for any damages of any kind arising from the use of or inability to use this site. You expressly agree that you use this site solely at your own risk.

4. Privacy Policy

Please be sure to read our Privacy Policy, which is incorporated herein by reference.

5. Modification of These Terms of Use

Harvard reserves the right to change, at any time, at our sole discretion, the Terms under which these Services are offered. You are responsible for regularly reviewing these Terms. Your continued use of the Services constitutes your agreement to all such Terms.

6. Copyright Complaints

Harvard respects the intellectual property of others, and requires that our users do the same. If you believe that your work has been copied and is accessible on this site in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or that your intellectual property rights have been otherwise violated, please follow our instructions for reporting copyright infringements.

By clicking on the link below, you acknowledge that you have read and are bound by this agreement, as well as any other Harvard network usage agreements that may govern your conduct. Thank you for participating in the Weblogs At Harvard Law initiative. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have questions.

Corporate Blogging Policies - BBC GUIDELINES ON EMPLOYEES WEBLOGS AND WEBSITES

2008-03-23T15:44:00.000-06:00

The BBC Blogging Guidelines is an interesting document regarding some specific issues connected mainly to the type of the business and industry type in which The BBC is into. We already received a small note from a prospect customer how helpful the materials regarding the corporate policies we posted yesterday on the WordFrame blog are so we are continuing in that direction. Please note that we will be updating this section of our WordFrame blog site constantly.

Original document available on the BBC site:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/assets/advice/guidelin
esonemployeesweblogsandwebsites.doc

____________________

BBC GUIDELINES ON EMPLOYEES WEBLOGS AND WEBSITES

These Guidelines apply to personal blogs and all other personal webcontent (e.g. personal podcasts). Official BBC content which uses blogging formats must be signed off by the relevant divisional interactive head.

Principles

Blogging is a form of public conversation on the internet, in which BBC people may wish to take part.

When a blogger clearly identifies themselves as a BBC person and/or discusses their work, the BBC expects them to behave well when blogging, and in ways that are consistent with the BBC’s Editorial Values and policies.

Many bloggers, particularly in technical areas, use their personal blogs to discuss their BBC work in ways that benefit the BBC, and add to the “industry conversation”. These guidelines are not intended to restrict this, as long as confidential information is not revealed.

Blogs or websites which do not identify the blogger as a BBC employee, do not discuss the BBC and are purely about personal matters would normally fall outside these guidelines.

These guidelines complement the BBC’s Conflict of Interest guidelines.

Editorial Policy can give advice on these Guidelines.

Guidelines For Bloggers

If you already have a personal blog or website which indicates in any way that you work at the BBC you should tell your manager.

If you want to start blogging, and your blog/website will say that you work for the BBC you should tell your manager.

If your blog makes it clear that you work for the BBC, it should include a simple and visible disclaimer such as “these are my personal views and not those of the BBC”.

Unless there are specific concerns about the nature of your job, you are free to talk about BBC programmes and content on your blog. Consult your manager if in any doubt.

Don’t reveal confidential information. This might include aspects of BBC policy or details of internal BBC discussions. Again, consult your manager if you are unclear about what might be confidential.

You should not use your blogs to attack or abuse colleagues. You should respect the privacy and the feelings of others. Remember that if you break the law on your blog (for example by posting something defamatory), you will be personally responsible.

If you think something on your blog or website gives rise to concerns about a conflict of interest and in particular concerns about impartiality or confidentiality this must be discussed with your manager.

If someone offers to pay you for blogging this could constitute a conflict of interest and you must consult your manager.

If someone from the media or press contacts you about posts on your blog that relate to the BBC you should talk to your manager before responding. The relevant BBC press office must be consulted.

You are allowed to update your personal blog from a BBC computer at work, under the BBC’s Acceptable Use Policy.

Guidelines For Managers
Under these guidelines managers in each area will decide what is appropriate. They should not adopt an unnecessarily restrictive approach. Managers should ensure that any special instructions on blogging are reasonable and explained clearly to staff.

Managers should bear in mind concerns about impartiality, confidentiality, conflicts of interest or commercial sensitivity. In some cases individuals may be dealing with matters which are so sensitive that rules may have to be set on what they can and cannot talk about on their personal blog.

Those involved in editorial or production areas must take particular care to ensure that they do not undermine the integrity or impartiality of the BBC or its output on their blogs. For example those involved in factual areas should not advocate a particular position on high profile controversial subjects relevant to their areas.

Managers can consult the BBC’s Conflicts of Interest Guidelines and the BBC’s Acceptable Use Policy For Internet and Email.

News and Current Affairs

Impartiality is a particular concern for those working in news and current affairs. Nothing should appear on their personal blogs which undermines the integrity or impartiality of the BBC. For example, news and current affairs people should not:

• advocate support for a particular political party
• express views for or against any policy which is a matter of current party political debate
• advocate any particular position on an issue of current public controversy or debate

If news and current affairs people are in doubt they should refer immediately to their line manager.

If news and current affairs people are asked to blog for commercial gain this could constitute a conflict of interest. Managers should consult the Off Air Activities Guidance Note for News and Current Affairs Presenters and Editorial Staff in BBC News, BBC Nations and Regions and BBC Global News.

Corporate Blogging Policies - Groove Weblog Policy

2008-03-23T15:36:00.002-06:00

This is the Groove Corporate Blogging Policy. It took us some time to dig it but we really wanted WordFrame blog site to have all the needed materials that can help our customers.

Original Document available at:
http://rayozzie.spaces.live.com/editorial/rayozzie/old/blog/catego
ries/organizations/2002/08/24.html

_________________

Weblog Policy: A number of people at Groove have started blogs, and I'm really trying to encourage more to do the same. The more we live it, the more that we'll learn from it, and the more that we'll learn through it as we're engaged in conversations with our customers. And thus, the sooner that we'll be able to improve our products and services based upon what we learn. Of course, there are many questions that arise when an employer encourages employees to operate more "in the open", and so our counsel, Jeff Seul, has taken a first pass at creating a "blog policy". Check it out.

As an employer, this gives me many things to consider. About a year ago, many of us witnessed as an employee of one company lost his job because he allegedly disparaged the company and some of its employees online. But it doesn't seem appropriate or possible to mandate and codify "reasonable behavior" in a policy. On the other hand, people will be increasingly challeneged to be aware of what they should or shouldn't say online - particularly with regard to intellectual property - and maybe reminding them to be aware of this is a good thing.

Furthermore, consider things like this. Jeff says, "I've added a paragraph about limitation or suspension of website/weblog activity during SEC-mandated quiet periods. You may recall that the SEC postponed Webvan's IPO because it considered certain activity on Webvan's website to be a violation of the pre-IPO quiet period. Although we view employee weblogs as a personal activity, the SEC could potentially impose a cooling-off period on us if it considered employee weblog activity to be sanctioned by the company or something we've turned a blind eye toward. There's a risk that they could view employee weblogs to which we link (or have linked in the past) as company-sanctioned." Fascinating.

Perhaps we can learn from one another: are there any other companies that have done similar things? Can you provide links or stories?

Personal Website and Weblog Guidelines

Some employees who maintain personal websites or weblogs, or who are considering beginning one, have asked about the company�s perspective regarding them. In general, the company views personal websites and weblogs positively, and it respects the right of employees to use them as a medium of self-expression.

If you choose to identify yourself as a company employee or to discuss matters related to the company�s technology or business on your website or weblog, please bear in mind that, although you and we view your website or weblog as a personal project and a medium of personal expression, some readers may nonetheless view you as a de facto spokesperson for the company. In light of this possibility, we ask that you observe the following guidelines:

• Please make it clear to your readers that the views you express are yours alone and that they do not necessarily reflect the views of the company. To help reduce the potential for confusion, we would appreciate it if you put the following notice � or something similar � in a reasonably prominent place on your site (e.g., at the bottom of your �about me� page):

The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.

If you do put a notice on your site, you needn�t put it on every page, but please use reasonable efforts to draw attention to it � if at all possible, from the home page of your site.

• Take care not to disclose any information that is confidential or proprietary to the company or to any third party that has disclosed information to us. Consult the company�s confidentiality policy for guidance about what constitutes confidential information.

• Please remember that your employment documents give the company certain rights with respect to concepts and developments you produce that are related to the company�s business. Please consult your manager if you have questions about the appropriateness of publishing such concepts or developments related to the company�s business on your site.

• Since your site is a public space, we hope you will be as respectful to the company, our employees, our customers, our partners and affiliates, and others (including our competitors) as the company itself endeavors to be.

• You may provide a link from your site to the company�s website, if you wish. The web design group has created a graphic for links to the company�s site, which you may use for this purpose during the term of your employment (subject to discontinuation in the company�s discretion). Contact a member of the web design group for details. Please do not use other company trademarks on your site or reproduce company material without first obtaining permission.

Finally, please be aware that the company may request that you temporarily confine your website or weblog commentary to topics unrelated to the company (or, in rare cases, that you temporarily suspend your website or weblog activity altogether) if it believes this is necessary or advisable to ensure compliance with securities regulations or other laws.

If you have any questions about these guidelines or any matter related to your site that these guidelines do not address, please direct them to the company's Vice President of Communications or its General Counsel, as appropriate.

Corporate Blogging Policies - FOX Interactive Media Forums Rules of Discussion

2008-03-23T15:32:00.000-06:00

This material is very interesting and we, at WordFrame, are happy to put it as one of the example Corporate Blogging Policies.

The Original document is on the Fox websites. Here is a direct link to these FOX Rules on one of the sites that you can find these:
http://community.myfoxdc.com/blogs/blogrules.aspx

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FOX Interactive Media Forums Rules of Discussion

You are welcome to post, transmit or submit messages and other materials (to bulletin boards, chat rooms, blogs or other public areas within this Site ("Forums"). In order to keep these Forums enjoyable and suitable for all our users, we ask you to follow the rules listed below. By participating in any of our Forums you are consenting to, and agreeing to abide by, these rules.

1. You agree that you are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree to limit the content you post to the subject matter for which the Forums are intended. You will not post content that violates the copyright, trademark or other intellectual property rights of any other person. You will not post content that is libelous, an invasion or privacy or publicity rights, defamatory, obscene, profane or indecent, abusive or threatening. You will not post content that constitutes a criminal offense, that gives rise to any civil liability or that otherwise violates any local, state, national or international law.

You will indemnify Fox Interactive Media, Inc. (FIM), its parents and affiliates together with their respective employees, agents, directors, officers and shareholders, from and against any claims, liabilities, damages and expenses (including but not limited to reasonable attorneys' fees) related to or arising out of any content you have posted.

2. You understand and agree that FIM is not responsible for any content posted by you or any other third party. You further understand that FIM does not endorse and has no control over the content posted in the Forums by third parties, and cannot vouch for its accuracy or reliability. You also understand that FIM has no responsibility to monitor the Forums for inappropriate content posted by users. Even if FIM chooses, in its sole discretion, to monitor the Forums, we nonetheless assume no responsibility for the content of the postings. However, FIM reserves the right to prevent you from posting content to the Forums and to edit, restrict or remove your content for any reason at any time.

3. You agree not to post content that contains advertising, is for commercial purposes, or solicits a person to buy or sell products and services or to make donations.

4. You agree that any content you post becomes the property of FIM. You understand and agree that FIM and its parent and affiliated companies may use, publish, copy, sublicense, adapt, edit, distribute, publicly perform, display and delete the content you post as they see fit. This right will terminate at the time you remove such content from the Site. Notwithstanding the foregoing, a back-up or residual copy of the content posted by you to the Site may remain on the FIM servers after you have removed such content from the Site, and FIM retains the rights to those copies.

Corporate Blogging Policies - IBM blogging policy and guidelines

2008-03-23T09:16:00.000-06:00

This article is continuation of our Corporate Blogging Policy examples series posted on the WordFrame Community blog. We constantly surf the net so we can always present the best materials and information for all customers.

These are the IBM Blogging Policies. The original material with some changes is available at:

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

The text bellow contains some additional text that was recently removed form the IBM guys but I have decided to show you all the materials available at some points on the IBM site. Please always check the sites of those companies to get the latest versions of those documents
__________________________________________

IBM blogging policy and guidelines

Introduction

Guidelines for IBM Bloggers: Executive Summary

1. Know and follow IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines.
2. Blogs, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. IBMers are personally responsible for their posts. Be mindful that what you write will be public for a long time -- protect your privacy.
3. Identify yourself -- name and, when relevant, role at IBM -- when you blog about IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
4. If you publish a blog or post to a blog and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: "The postings on this site are my own and don?t necessarily represent IBM?s positions, strategies or opinions."
5. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
6. Don?t provide IBM?s or another?s confidential or other proprietary information.
7. Don't cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval.
8. Respect your audience. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc., and show proper consideration for others' privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory -- such as politics and religion.
9. Find out who else is blogging on the topic, and cite them.
10. Don't pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don't alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
11. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective.

Guidelines for IBM Bloggers: Detailed Discussion

1. The IBM Business Conduct Guidelines and laws provide the foundation for IBM's policies and guidelines on Web logs (blogs).

The same principles and guidelines that apply to IBMers' activities in general, as codified in the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines, apply to IBMers' activities online. This includes forms of online publishing and discussion, such as Web logs (blogs) and Wikis.

As outlined in the Business Conduct Guidelines, IBM fully respects the legal rights of our employees in all countries in which we operate. In general, what you do on your own time is your affair. However, activities in or outside of work that affect your IBM job performance, the performance of others, or IBM's business interests are a proper focus for company policy.

2. IBM supports open dialogue and the exchange of ideas.

IBM regards blogs as primarily a form of communication and relationship among individuals. When the company wishes to communicate publicly as a company -- whether to the marketplace or to the general public -- it has well established means to do so. Only those officially designated by IBM have the authorization to speak on behalf of the company.

However, IBM believes in dialogue among IBMers and with our partners, clients, members of the many communities in which we participate and the general public. Such dialogue is inherent in our business model of innovation, and in our commitment to the development of open standards. We believe that IBMers can both derive and provide important benefits from exchanges of perspective.

One of IBMers' core values is "trust and personal responsibility in all relationships." As a company, IBM trusts -- and expects -- IBMers to exercise personal responsibility whenever they blog. This includes not violating the trust of those with whom they are engaging. IBMers should not use this medium for covert marketing or public relations. If and when members of IBM's Communications, Marketing, Sales or other functions engaged in advocacy for the company have the authorization to participate in blogs, they should identify themselves as such.

3. What does an IBMer's personal responsibility mean when blogging?

A blog is a tool individuals can use to share their insights, express their opinions and communicate within the context of a globally distributed conversation. As with all tools, it has proper and improper uses. While IBM encourages all of its employees to join a global conversation, it is important for IBMers who choose to do so to understand what is recommended, expected and required when they discuss IBM-related topics, whether at work or on their own time.

Know the IBM Business Conduct Guidelines. If you have any confusion about whether you ought to post something on your blog, chances are the BCGs will resolve it. Pay particular attention to what the BCGs have to say about proprietary information, about avoiding misrepresentation and about competing in the field. If, after checking the BCG's, you are still unclear as to the propriety of a post, it is best to refrain and seek the advice of management.

Be who you are. Some bloggers work anonymously, using pseudonyms or false screen names. IBM discourages that in blogs, wikis or other forms of online participation that relate to IBM, our business or issues with which the company is engaged. We believe in transparency and honesty. If you are blogging about your work for IBM, we encourage you to use your real name, be clear who you are, and identify that you work for IBM. Nothing gains you notice in the "blogosphere" more than honesty -- or dishonesty. If you have a vested interest in something you are discussing, be the first to point it out. But also be smart about protecting yourself and your privacy. What you publish will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully and also be judicious in disclosing personal details.

Speak in the first person. Use your own voice; bring your own personality to the forefront; say what is on your mind.

Use a disclaimer. Whether you publish a blog or participate in someone else's, make it clear that what you say there is representative of your views and opinions and not necessarily the views and opinions of IBM. At a minimum in your own blog, you should include the following standard legal disclaimer language: "The postings on this site are my own and don?t necessarily represent IBM?s positions, strategies or opinions."

Managers and executives take note: This standard disclaimer does not by itself exempt IBM managers and executives from a special responsibility when blogging. By virtue of their position, they must consider whether personal thoughts they publish may be misunderstood as expressing IBM positions. And a manager should assume that his or her team will read what is written. A blog is not the place to communicate IBM policies to IBM employees

Respect copyright and fair use laws. For IBM's protection and well as your own, it is critical that you show proper respect for the laws governing copyright and fair use of copyrighted material owned by others, including IBM's own copyrights and brands. You should never quote more than short excerpts of someone else?s work. And it is good general blogging practice to link to others' work. Keep in mind that laws will be different depending on where you live and work.

Protecting confidential and proprietary information. You must make sure you do not disclose or use IBM confidential or proprietary information or that of any other person or company on any blog. For example, ask permission to publish someone?s picture or a conversation that was meant to be private.

IBM's business performance. You must not comment on confidential IBM financial information such as IBM's future business performance, business plans, or prospects anywhere in world. This includes statements about an upcoming quarter or future periods or information about alliances, and applies to anyone including conversations with Wall Street analysts, press or other third parties (including friends). IBM policy is not to comment on rumors in any way. Do not deny or affirm them -- or suggest either denial or affirmation in subtle ways.

Protect IBM's clients, business partners and suppliers. Clients, partners or suppliers should not be cited or obviously referenced without their approval. On your blog, never identify a client, partner or supplier by name without permission and never discuss confidential details of a client engagement. It is acceptable to discuss general details about kinds of projects and to use non-identifying pseudonyms for a client (e.g., Client 123) so long as the information provided does not violate any non-disclosure agreements that may be in place with the client or make it easy for someone to identfy the client. Furthermore, your blog is not the place to "conduct business" with a client.

Respect your audience and your coworkers. Remember that IBM is a global organization whose employees and clients reflect a diverse set of customs, values and points of view. Don't be afraid to be yourself, but do so respectfully. This includes not only the obvious (no ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc.) but also proper consideration of privacy and of topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory -- such as politics and religion. If your blog is hosted on an IBM owned property, avoid these topics and focus on subjects that are business-related. If your blog is self-hosted, use your best judgment and be sure to make it clear that the views and opinions expressed are yours alone and do not represent the official views of IBM. Further, blogs hosted outside of IBM's protected Intranet environment must never be used for internal communications among fellow employees. It is fine for IBMers to disagree, but please don't use your external blog to air your differences in an inappropriate manner.

Add value. Blogs that are hosted on IBM-owned domains should be used in a way that adds value to IBM's business. If it helps you, your coworkers, our clients or our partners to do their jobs and solve problems; if it helps to improve knowledge or skills; if it contributes directly or indirectly to the improvement of IBM's products, processes and policies; or if it helps to promote IBM's Values, then it is adding value. Though not directly business-related, background information you choose to share about yourself, such as information about your family or personal interests, may be useful in helping establish a relationship between you and your readers, but it is entirely your choice whether to share this information.

Apply the skills and values learned from participation in IBM jams, IBM forums and other kinds of online collaboration. Although a relatively small percentage of the IBM population has thus far participated actively in blogs, we have a deep well of experience in online collaboration -- perhaps deeper than any other company in the world. Starting with the VM Fora in the 1980s, and extending up to our emeetings, teamrooms and companywide jams on w3 today, IBMers have honed skills, wisdom and creativity in many forms of online collaboration and engagement.

We should bring this experience to bear in blogs and wikis.
For instance, think about constructive forms of facilitation you've seen in jams or the IBM Forums. What did those IBMers do that helped develop the discussion, moved it forward, brought people together who were making complementary points, encouraged others to express themselves -- or to push themselves? Blogs aren't restricted to expressing opinions, or disputing opinions, or discussing products or services or one's personal life. They can also be a forum for genuine public discussion and learning -- and IBMers can play a fruitful, mature and constructive role in helping that happen.

Know your fellow bloggers. The most successful bloggers are those who pay attention to what others are saying about the topic they want to write about, and generously reference and link to them. Who?s blogging on the topics that most interest you? On the Internet, a quick way to find out who?s saying what is to use the search tools on Technorati, DayPop or Blogdigger. Drop your fellow bloggers a note to introduce yourself and your blog. There is also an informal community of IBM bloggers, so you can quickly find out which of your peers are part of the conversation.

Don't pick fights. When you see misrepresentations made about IBM in the media, by analysts or by other bloggers, you may certainly use your blog -- or join someone else's -- to point that out. Always do so with respect and with the facts. Also, if you speak about a competitor, you must make sure that what you say is factual and that it does not disparage the competitor. You should avoid arguments. Brawls may earn traffic, but nobody wins in the end. Don?t try to settle scores or goad competitors or others into inflammatory debates. Here and in other areas of public discussion, make sure that what you are saying is factually correct.

Be the first to respond to your own mistakes. If you make an error, be up front about your mistake and correct it quickly. If you choose to modify an earlier post, make it clear that you have done so.

Use your best judgment. Remember that there are always consequences to what you write. If you?re about to post something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, review the suggestions above and think about why that is. If you?re still unsure, and the post is about IBM business, feel free to discuss your proposed post with your manager. Ultimately, however, you have sole responsibility for what you choose to post to your blog.

Don't forget your day job. You should make sure that blogging does not interfere with your job or commitments to customers

Corporate Blogging Policies - Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines: 1.0

2008-03-23T08:59:00.000-06:00

WordFrame Community Platform is committed to its visitors, prospects and customers. We are continuing with the presentation of a list of Corporate Blogging Policy Examples.

This is a direct link to the original of the document setting the Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines:
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/yahoo/yahoo-blog-guidelines.pdf

Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines: 1.0
Yahoo! believes in fostering a thriving online community and supports blogging as a valuable component of shared media. The Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines have been developed for Yahoos who maintain personal blogs that contain postings about Yahoo!’s business, products, or fellow Yahoos and the work they do. They are also applicable to Yahoos who post about the company on the blogs of others. The guidelines outline the legal implications of blogging about the company and also include recommended best practices to consider when posting about Yahoo!.
LEGAL PARAMETERS: The following two bullets cover your legal responsibilities and non-disclosure obligations. Failure to abide by these two guidelines can result in serious ramifications for individual bloggers and/or individuals who post on the blogs of others.

Legal Liability
When you choose to go public with your opinions via a blog, you are legally responsible for your commentary. Individual bloggers can be held personally liable for any commentary deemed to be defamatory, obscene (not swear words, but rather the legal definition of "obscene"), proprietary, or libelous (whether pertaining to Yahoo, individuals, or any other company for that matter). For these reasons, bloggers should exercise caution with regards to exaggeration, colorful language, guesswork, obscenity, copyrighted materials, legal conclusions, and derogatory remarks or characterizations. In essence, you blog (or post on the blogs of others) at your own risk. Outside parties actually can pursue legal action against you (not Yahoo!) for postings.

Company Privileged Information
Any confidential, proprietary, or trade secret information is obviously off-limits for your blog per the Proprietary Information Agreement you have signed with Yahoo!. To obtain a copy of your agreement, please contact your HR manager. The Yahoo! logo and trademarks are also off-limits per our brand guidelines. Anything related to Yahoo! policy, inventions, strategy, financials, products, etc. that has not been made public cannot appear in your blog under any circumstances. see Yahoo! Guides 2. Disclosing confidential or proprietary information can negatively impact our business and may result in regulatory violations for the company.

Press Inquiries
Blog postings may generate media coverage. If a member of the media contacts you about a Yahoo!-related blog posting or requests Yahoo! information of any kind, contact PR (pr-corp@yahoo-inc.com or 415-318-4120 ) You should also reach out for PR for clarification on whether specific information has been publicly disclosed before you blog about it.

BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES: These four recommendations provide a roadmap for constructive, respectful, and productive dialogue between bloggers and their fellow Yahoos. These are not "rules" and thus they can’t be broken. There is no hidden meaning or agenda. We consider these to be "best practices guidelines" that are in the spirit of our culture and the best interest of all Yahoos, whether they blog or not. We encourage Yahoos to follow these guidelines, but it is not mandatory to do so. It’s your choice. We really mean that.

Be Respectful of Your Colleagues
Be thoughtful and accurate in your posts, and be respectful of how other Yahoos may be affected. All Yahoo! employees can be viewed (correctly or incorrectly) as representative of the company, which can add significance to your public reflections on the organization (whether you intend to or not). Yahoos who identify themselves as Yahoo! employees in their blogs and comment on the company at any time, should notify their manager of the existence of their blog just to avoid any surprises. To be clear, you are not being asked to alert your manager of your posts, just to consider letting them know you have a blog where you may write about Yahoo!. Whether your manager chooses to occasionally read your blog or not, the courtesy head’s up is always appreciated.

Get Your Facts Straight
As a Yahoo! employee with intranet access, you have the opportunity to contact the Yahoos who are responsible for the products, services, or other initiatives that you may want to write about. To ensure you are not misrepresenting your fellow Yahoos or their work, consider reaching out to a member of the relevant team before posting. This courtesy will help you provide your readers with accurate insights, especially when you are blogging outside your area of expertise. If there is someone at Yahoo! who knows more about the topic than you, check with them to make sure you have your facts straight.

Provide Context to Your Argument
Please be sure to provide enough support in your posting to help Yahoos understand your reasoning, be it positive or negative. We appreciate the value of multiple perspectives, so help us to understand yours by providing context to your opinion. Whether you are posting in praise or criticism of Yahoo!, you are encouraged to develop a thoughtful argument that extends well beyond "(insert) is cool" or "(insert) sucks".

Engage in Private Feedback:
Not everyone who is reading your blog will feel comfortable approaching you if they are concerned their feedback will become public. In order to maintain an open dialogue that everyone can comfortably engage in, Yahoo! bloggers are asked to welcome "off-blog" feedback from their colleagues who would like to privately respond, make suggestions, or report errors without having their comments appear your blog.

Bloggers want to know what you think. If you have an opinion, correction or criticism regarding a posting, reach out for the blogger directly. Whether privately or on their blog, let the blogger know your thoughts.
SOME WORDS FROM THE WISE: As you may know, Yahoo! has some talented and experienced bloggers who are very active in the social media circles. We’ve asked them to share their wisdom and they have provided the following insights for those who are new to blogging:

Jeremy Zawodny
Jeff Boulter
JR Conlin
Russell Beattie

Corporate Blogging Policies - Hill & Knowlton blogging policy and guidelines

2008-03-23T08:51:00.000-06:00

This is the Corporate Blogging policy of Hill & Knowlton. Please read it carefully as there some elements int his document that are still not available in similar documents originating from much larger enterprises. WordFrame Community platform resource bank will continue to be of any and all the help possible so you guys, can build the proper social networks and social media oriented online systems.

The Original document is created and published by Naill Cook on May 19th, 2005.

Please follow the link if you want to see the original of this document: http://blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/niallcook/archive/2005/05/19/279.aspx

Blogging policies and guidelines

Following a collaborative effort by existing bloggers in our company, we've just had our guidelines for personal weblogs approved and published to all our staff. I'm reproducing the key extracts here for the reference of others. Hill & Knowlton views personal websites and weblogs (blogs) positively. Blogs are powerful tools that are already influencing reputation. They form part of some much wider changes taking place in online media that will increasingly affect our business and our clients’ brands. By experimenting with the medium – personally or on behalf of the company – our staff will learn more and be able to advise our clients better and more credibly. In connection with any blogging, please be mindful of the following:

• Most weblogs publish RSS feeds that others can subscribe to, so remember that others, including your colleagues, may be actively reading what you write.

• Think of what you say in your weblog in the same way as statements you might make to the media, or emails you might send to people you don’t know. If you wouldn’t include it in those, don’t post it on your weblog.

• Never disclose any information – including textual or visual material – that is confidential or proprietary to Hill & Knowlton, or any third party that has disclosed information to us (e.g. clients, journalists, suppliers, etc.). Your existing contract in any case prohibits this.

• There are many things that we cannot mention as a publicly-owned company. Talking about our revenue, future plans, or the WPP share price will get you and Hill & Knowlton in legal trouble, even if it is just your own personal view, and whether or not you directly identify yourself as an employee of Hill & Knowlton.

• You should make it clear that the views you express are yours alone. You may want to use the following form of words on your weblog, weblog posting, or website: The views expressed on this [blog; website] are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer In addition, we include some advice on best practice:

• Link, link, link The web is all about links. When you find something interesting and relevant, link to it. You’ll be helping your readers, and you’ll generate links back to your blog.

• Be interesting If you write interesting things on your blog, it will be popular. Expose your personality – write about yourself, your family, movies, books and games; post pictures. But remember that your blog is a public place so try to avoid embarrassing your readers or others.

• Check your facts Even though your blog postings will be primarily made up of personal opinion, do your research well and check that your facts are accurate. Make sure you have permission to post any copyrighted items (e.g. images) to your blog, and be careful about posting or linking to items that may contain viruses.

• Write about what you know The best way to be interesting is to write about what you know. If you have a deep understanding of something, talk about the challenges and issues around it. Try not to rant about things you don’t understand, as you’re more likely to get embarrassed by a real expert.

• Quality matters Use a spell-checker and keep things clear and concise. Ask people whether your blog looks good, design-wise, and take their advice to improve it. The most interesting thing about the whole process has not been creating the guidelines themselves, but the connected issues raised by staff such as ghost writing blogs for clients, monitoring and commenting on blogs, pitching stories to bloggers, and blogging on behalf of the company. So with the personal guidelines under our belt, we're making a start on addressing some of these other issues.

Published 19 May 2005 09:30 by Niall Cook

Corporate Weblog Manifesto by Robert Scoble

2008-03-23T08:36:00.000-06:00

This document was created by Robert Scoble in January and February 2003. The actual publishing date is February 26, 2003. At that point Robert Scoble is still the Microsoft Geek Blogger. I personally met Robert about 30 months later while I was participating at an Event organized by Blog Business Summit / Parnassus Ventures guys and gall ( at that point Teresa Valdez Klein was the only girl in the team but that is not the case now). Parnassus Ventures are one of the WordFrame partners now and we are very happy with everything we do together. Anyway, I met Robert in late 2005 and i did tell him how I first heard about him – through his Corporate Blogging Manifesto.

Here is the link to the Original Document .

For those that the link may not work for some reason I am also attaching the entire URL for reference:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2003/02/26.html#a2357

The Corporate Weblog Manifesto.

Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here's my ideas of things to consider before you start.

1) Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.

2) Post fast on good news or bad. Someone say something bad about your product? Link to it -- before the second or third site does -- and answer its claims as best you can. Same if something good comes out about you. It's all about building long-term trust. The trick to building trust is to show up! If people are saying things about your product and you don't answer them, that distrust builds. Plus, if people are saying good things about your product, why not help Google find those pages as well?

3) Use a human voice. Don't get corporate lawyers and PR professionals to cleanse your speech. We can tell, believe me. Plus, you'll be too slow. If you're the last one to post, the joke is on you!

4) Make sure you support the latest software/web/human standards. If you don't know what the W3C is, find out. If you don't know what RSS feeds are, find out. If you don't know what weblogs.com is, find out. If you don't know how Google works, find out.

5) Have a thick skin. Even if you have Bill Gates' favorite product people will say bad things about it. That's part of the process. Don't try to write a corporate weblog unless you can answer all questions -- good and bad -- professionally, quickly, and nicely.

6) Don't ignore Slashdot.

7) Talk to the grassroots first. Why? Because the main-stream press is cruising weblogs looking for stories and looking for people to use in quotes. If a mainstream reporter can't find anyone who knows anything about a story, he/she will write a story that looks like a press release instead of something trustworthy. People trust stories that have quotes from many sources. They don't trust press releases.

8) If you screw up, acknowledge it. Fast. And give us a plan for how you'll unscrew things. Then deliver on your promises.

9) Underpromise and over deliver. If you're going to ship on March 1, say you won't ship until March 15. Folks will start to trust you if you behave this way. Look at Disneyland. When you're standing in line you trust their signs. Why? Because the line always goes faster than its says it will (their signs are engineered to say that a line will take about 15% longer than it really will).

10) If Doc Searls says it or writes it, believe it. Live it. Enough said.

11) Know the information gatekeepers. If you don't realize that Sue Mosher reaches more Outlook users than nearly everyone else, you shouldn't be on the PR team for Outlook. If you don't know all of her phone numbers and IM addresses, you should be fired. If you can't call on the gatekeepers during a crisis, you shouldn't try to keep a corporate weblog (oh, and they better know how to get ahold of you since they know when you're under attack before you do -- for instance, why hasn't anyone from the Hotmail team called me yet to tell me what's going on with Hotmail and why it's unreachable as I write this?).

12) Never change the URL of your weblog. I've done it once and I lost much of my readership and it took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.

13) If your life is in turmoil and/or you're unhappy, don't write. When I was going through my divorce, it affected my writing in subtle ways. Lately I've been feeling a lot better, and I notice my writing and readership quality has been going up too.

14) If you don't have the answers, say so. Not having the answers is human. But, get them and exceed expectations. If you say you'll know by tomorrow afternoon, make sure you know in the morning.

15) Never lie. You'll get caught and you'll lose credibility that you'll never get back.

16) Never hide information. Just like the space shuttle engineers, your information will get out and then you'll lose credibility.

17) If you have information that might get you in a lawsuit, see a lawyer before posting, but do it fast. Speed is key here. If it takes you two weeks to answer what's going on in the marketplace because you're scared of what your legal hit will be, then you're screwed anyway. Your competitors will figure it out and outmaneuver you.

18) Link to your competitors and say nice things about them. Remember, you're part of an industry and if the entire industry gets bigger, you'll probably win more than your fair share of business and you'll get bigger too. Be better than your competitors -- people remember that. I remember sending lots of customers over to the camera shop that competed with me and many of those folks came back to me and said "I'd rather buy it from you, can you get me that?" Remember how Bill Gates got DOS? He sent IBM to get it from DRI Research. They weren't all that helpful, so IBM said "hey, why don't you get us an OS?"

19) BOGU. This means "Bend Over and Grease Up." I believe the term originated at Microsoft. It means that when a big fish comes over (like IBM, or Bill Gates) you do whatever you have to do to keep him happy. Personally, I believe in BOGU'ing for EVERYONE, not just the big fish. You never know when the janitor will go to school, get an MBA, and start a company. I've seen it happen. Translation for weblog world: treat Gnome-Girl as good as you'd treat Dave Winer or Glenn Reynolds. You never know who'll get promoted. I've learned this lesson the hard way over the years.

20) Be the authority on your product/company. You should know more about your product than anyone else alive, if you're writing a weblog about it. If there's someone alive who knows more, you damn well better have links to them (and you should send some goodies to them to thank them for being such great advocates).

Any others? Disagree with any of these? Sorry my comments are down. Now Hotmail is down too. Grr. Where's the "Hotmail weblog" where I can read about what's going on at Hotmail? So, write about this and link to it from your weblog. I watch my referer links like a hawk. Oh, is that #21? Yes it is. Know who is talking about you.

Corporate Blogging Resources

2008-03-23T08:35:00.000-06:00

Ever since we started doing collaboration and publishing social networking software in 2000 with our NewzSpread project, our CMS software and our web publishing tools we were interested in and obliged to follow what the big corporations set as rules for their internal and external communication platforms or blogging tools.

Although the Blogging tools actually started to be more modern and functional and to include more than just article posted after 2003, there were some companies with advance thinking that even then published very serious materials and set the boundaries for their employees and consultants. Those set of rules were for all the boys and girls who had the guts and the abilities at that time to say out loud what they really think.

I have gathered a good collection of corporate publishing and blogging policies through the years since 2001 that I personally used to consult all our clients that were planning to have publishing and open discussion tools like that. The initial project that we used some of the materials that I have was for a Texas company out of Fort Worth called Street Advisor at that point and it was later acquired by a UK based consulting company.

I will post all the materials I have in regards to the existing at that time Corporate practices and Policies combined with what is available as documents at the moment out there so all WordFrame users and visitors can benefit from these type of documents. I will be including each company’s info and website so the people interested can actually find more or additional materials on these sites.

Please note that the materials that I will be posting are property of each respective document owner strictly mentioned in each of the articles I am going to post on the WordFrame Blog site

Why things happen?

2008-02-28T18:56:00.000-07:00

There are some certain difficult issues we at ITBrix US office are dealing with lately which have made me think and try to explain the reasons to why things get done so successfully inside ITBrix.

Why things happen?

This question is as philosophical as it is practical. I will try to answer and look at it from my micro economical tower called ITBrix/ConsultCommerce. For me the question is more like “Why things happen in ConsultCommerce and ITBrix?” or “Why we have results?” or “Why people like and use what we produce and maintain?”

I always try to break the more complicated things into smaller and simple elements. I always try to solve the big problems by breaking them into smaller ones, so easier and simpler solutions are required to solve big problems.

So looking at the question above – why things happen? ; and adding the portion “in ConsultCommerce” to it again gives me the opportunity to answer this question easily and precisely.

We started building our company with several important things in mind 13 years ago. We had to present a good product to our US customers, we had to maintain this product during the years to come and we had to make the people doing all those things happy. We also did not create the company with the idea to sell it for millions to bigger guys. Against all odds and all VC books, recommendations and rules – not to invest in companies run by married couples Tanya and I, together with our Best Man started building a team, a product line and a more productive life basically. So with those things in mind we started and managed to do a lot of things. We are still working under that credo even now – not to sell the company, not to make the great millions quickly or not to just take the customer’s money. No. Everything we do is planned, coordinated and a product of a team effort. Everything is done under the simple rules that it has to be a great product or service, that we will be taking a good care for it through the years and that the people making it should be satisfied and happy because of what they have done. Simple. What we do and live is a marathon, not a sprint.

These simple rules maintained a perfect team of developers together, a perfect team of people, real people. People that you can always trust and rely on. Darn hardworking and clever chaps. We have been through good and bad with those guys – they never complained. As long as the goal set was the right one, the proper one – the guys and gals in the office never had a rest till they actually see the proper results. That my friends usually never meant 9 till 5 working time.

The team in our Plovdiv office is what Tanya and I can consider as our most valuable business achievement ever.

It is very difficult to explain to some people here in the States why and how we achieve certain things. Even if we try – the message does not seem to get through. At the same time a lot of our US colleagues, customers and partners get this in the very first moments of interaction with our company. But this is normal – different people, different worlds.

Our guys have never been lazy, our guys have never looked for the easy way out. They always searched for the proper way and this is how they live and work – the proper way – without the concern how much more difficult this way is. That is the credo – the proper way…. and you darn learn how to take responsibility. For better or for worse you stand up and you are responsible for what you have done. Somebody else’s fault will never get the job done nor will make a customer happy!

I was recently asked how we managed to do a certain portion of the new WordFrame Help section for such a short time. I looked at the calendar then and I said – the time was not short at all, like 45 days since end of November … the days were darn short, the time was not short. How? Easy, you set the proper task, have a team in Bulgaria work about 12-13 hours a day and have the same size team from Colorado on the task and “voila” – you actually see the result – complete set of user manuals for WordFrame, FAQs, Partner tutorials and Administration Guides. Music in the ears and feast for the eyes of our sales partners. Weeell, no weekends bro’ , no skiing in Breckenridge or Vail although a few hours’ drive away, a little shorter on the Christmas shopping tours too, short on the sleep but you had a goal ahead, the proper goal. Interestingly enough, our tenacious efforts were contagious. Some of our partners started helping us with the website preparation and some of the help sections, the Web 2.0 Glossary for example. So again – our simple rules, especially the one about the team efforts proved very very right! So you see, it is easy.

Why things happen in ConsultCommerce and ITBrix? Easy answer – they happen because we get them done. You sit on your butt and get the darn thing done in such a way that you actually like what is produced. Noting happens when there is no effort. When there is a problem we do not point fingers – we get the things done. That is why the things in ITBrix and WordFrame are going well. That is why our customers can sleep well – they know we will take care of them the proper way.

Some ideas how the collaboration software can help the corporate world

2008-02-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Corporate World, collaboration, enterprise software, community and social media software. All great, important terms, complicated, full of all sorts of definitions and meaning.

For me those things are important. Really! Very! Because ITBrix does exactly that. We are developing software for 13 years now, a couple of our employees started signing the payroll docs in 1995. This is very important and not that common for a Web 2.0 company like ITBrix.

Our new Product and Service called WordFrame is actually all about the proper collaboration and organization, better communication, business process and sales integration within any company and corporation.

This, besides being my personal blog, is my WordFrame blog and I will be talking about and discussing WordFrame a lot here, but I will stress on key tools and functionality in general in this post. What should a new modern company has in regards to tools and organization to benefit those new social media and business collaboration tools that are available out there?

The first and the foremost thing is that the company (or the corporation) should be willing to change the way it is presented to the world, the way it works with its customers and vendor. The way it interacts with its own employees and most importantly with its competition and the media in general. If the will for a change is there – tools are there too. If the company does not want to change its perception of the new marketing techniques and tools, if the company does not want to lead and follow open conversation and discussion with the rest of the world – sorry, it will not work. So for those who want to change, even a little, here is what you can use in your company:

Wikis – very useful tool for online and offline collaboration. A document, a material or an article can be edited and created by more than one person at the same time. The people working on this document can be thousands of miles apart. The wikis can compare document versions, can restore previous versions and most importantly – the docs are available 24/7 online. It does not matter where you are, traveling or at what time you need the docs – the docs are there. What else – manageable interface, easy-to-work-with HTML or text editors. Almost no administrative cost

Blogs and Forums – Create public and open communities and discussion groups with your customers, vendors and employees – tools for open conversations. Talk to the world, tell them what you have and what you can do for them. Prepare to get slammed though – people are honest and sometimes angry – you may not like what you hear about your company or you. But there are also the positive opinions and of course- what better way to increase customer’s loyalty than honestly and openly tell your customers what the real deal and situation with your company is. Those are great tools. Engage your employees, customers and vendors in a non-stop conversation for how you can make the things they need and you have better.

Online file and document management systems - Just imagine all the files, documents and written materials accessible from everywhere, wherever you are, all the time! What can be more productive and easier? RSS feeds and RSS aggregators The RSS technology presents the easiest and fastest way to get the news or the information in general that you are interested it. Use RSS readers and aggregators to quickly obtain newly edited or changed content information from websites, news services or data collecting and publishing systems. A Specific RSS feed that will be processed by your RSS reader will contain only the information you have subscribed for and nothing more. Saving time …. Put RSS on your sites and systems – more and more people are using those. It is easy…

I will continue posting materials and examples on this topic … We at ITBrix know it is important

WordFrame in the Blogosphere

2008-02-28T07:16:00.002-07:00

WordFrame is getting more and more popular and loved these days. We have happily spotted two wonderful articles about WordFrame these past couple of days.

The first article is by David Tebbutt from Freeform Dynamics . The article correctly describes what we do, how we do it and most importantly, it points out a couple of places where we can certainly make the system better. Thanks David. I can assure you that with feedback and critique like that we will do our best and everything possible to convert your wise comments and advises into user friendly functionalities.

Here is the URL of the article as well: Click here to Go to the Original Article !
http://www.smallbizpod.co.uk/blog/2008/02/25/wordframe-social-computing-with-a-pedigree/

The second article is from our partner in Australia Des Walsh. He described what WordFrame does very well. He presented WordFrame through his own “consulting business approach” eyes. He fit one of the WordFrame application towards the proper market segment and niche and pointed out the key differentiators between WordFrame and the competition. He did not miss the importance of the development team, the custom work and a couple of facts from our organizational and support structure.

Here is the actual URL for the article form Des: Click Here to go to the Original Article!
http://deswalsh.com/2008/02/27/new-enterprise-20-social-media-platform-wordframe-launched/

David and Des, thank you very much for the kind words and honest opinion.

Food for all the WordFrame fans

2008-02-27T12:41:00.001-07:00

Hello WordFrame fans, we received a couple of requests and questions about the WordFrame related groups we have in the different Social Networking sites and services available out there. We did create those in the very first release day of the WordFrame Community Platform - Thursday last week, February 21st, 2008.All the groups we created are open for anybody to join. Here is a small list so we can facilitate the joining process:

MyBlogLog
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/wordframe/

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8371249236

LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/58566/0724AA0CF330

Thank you for the questions and requests and MOST importantly - thank you for the continuous support for our new WordFrame Brand! we promise to work even more diligently to get you the best possible social media and collaboration software.

a day starts better ...

2008-02-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

A day really starts better when you see a couple of important tasks reported as completed by your partners and guys you trust. Good. Very good, a couple of partners and clients will be happier today.

A couple of things to finish today that left from yesterday but the days tarts good. The Plovdiv office is doing an excellent job and this makes my work easier. Boz Zashev and Rumen Yankov are great in what they are doing for WordFrame and the rest of the guys are taking care of the other projects which are equally important , of course.

Besides the demos and conf calls yesterday and today I am writing a bigger piece about how and why things happen in ITBrix and WordFrame. The last 6 months were mind opening experience so i have lined up a couple of things that i want to share with everybody ...

Plus, that will be interesting. This week I am expecting to start testing the latest release of our our CMS that will accompany WordFrame in our quest for a web content management solution later this year .. the WordFrame Enterprise. I hope we can release the CMS in March so we push the product into sales long enough so we can have the proper customer feedback before inclusion in the WordFrame Enterprise ...

Starting to post in My Blogger blog again ...

2008-02-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

This one will be fun to get back to as I was mainly doubling the information i was posting on the corporate blog of the previous company where I was since ... for a couple of years. Anyway.

I am starting this again, and this blog will be a littel different, it will be some more details about all the things around running ITbrix, being a family man with two kids and a wonderful wife and the great new product called WordFrame.

During the Knowledge Management World / Streaming Media West trade show ….

2006-11-12T12:01:00.001-07:00

I have to admin that I was surprised to see so many people attending the event. The booth we had was “assembled” the very last moment and the really black point that we put on the organizers was that they were selling us everything - the carpet, the table, the chairs, most importantly – the electrical power point at the back (as I can go without power on an event like that). Anyway, we wrote them a letter and put our concerns on the evaluation sheet we were asked to fill out the last day… Nickel and dime is not the best policy I think …..

We had a lot of visitors and we made some great contacts. I have to really thank my colleagues for the wonderful job they did accommodating visitors and presenting how we lead in functionality and usability over any similar product in the corporate blogging, Enterprise Knowledge Management and Collaboration Software market.

I had two meetings with guys that are getting a Trial already and what they told me was an interesting comment regarding their offshore software development offices in India. That really made a mark on me.. - the first guy told me that he is pulling his development off India and sending it to Eastern Europe for two reasons – the guys there were not able to apply or show any creativity on their own plus they eventually stole the source code and released a similar product on their own. Another guy came the next day of the event and told us a similar but even worse story – everything was going perfectly even the deadline was met and he tried to patent the product when he found out that 3 months before his application a company from India already submitted same product with a slightly different name and he got really screwed. Not to mention how his partners and investors felt … I do not know whether those guys made mistakes on the legal front and did or did not do something properly but the identical problems by two completely different companies telling us same stories just made us wonder – Is the Offshore Software Development in India starting to be pointless any more …. ?

I also wanted to thank all the visitors at our booth at the event that spent time with us discussing what and how we can really help them grow …

My comment to Jerry Bowles regarding the SuiteTwo and Blogtronix

2006-11-12T11:56:00.001-07:00

This was my comment to Jerry Bowles in regards to his article about SuiteTwo and Blogtronix

I do not think there is a class war nor are we aiming for one. What Vassil and I will do is just let time tell who is right. What I will aim now (and this is what I have been doing for the last 13 years) is to produce the best possible software, best possible solution and service for our customers (and for the customers of our competitors :):) ). We, at ConsultCommerce have been doing Enterprise software since 1995. Blogtronix was started last year in February and we released our first version 0.5 in November 05, 1 year later we have version 1.5 which I think is a killer.

What I want to show everybody is that web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are not just elaborate terms but a way and method of presentation and explanation about where online services and products are going. Blogtronix is one of the examples. It is great that Intel gathered so many nice companies and plans to produce something that was in our heads for 2 years already. We already have super enterprise and social blogging modules, data mining, dashboard and corporate compliance tools (we recently did a demo for a company dealing with statistics and they were amazed by the functionality available and the statistical regression analysis already built in based on the data in the system available in the WIKIs, articles, comments, personal and corporate user profiles, and the docs in the document management system). I will be more than happy to make a demo or give a demo account for anybody interested to see what we have done and where we are going. We have incorporated Blogging and Knowledge management tools, rating systems, WIKI and Document management, Social and Business Network, Internal messaging system and Extensive RSS server and RSS Aggregator. We have developed a very profound personal and corporate profiling system allowing the users to instantly identify who and how eligible the person you are discussing or linking to is. One of the unique functions is the creation of groups and subgroups that can be public or private, internal or external for the system, as well as the ability to join groups and subgroups (societies and sub societies) of external systems easily. But enough advertising .. :):)

I really wonder about the media guys though – they did not even do any research to see what the other companies on the market (our competitors and friends at Atlassian (Confluence) were doing collaboration software years before anyone calls it a WIKI, for example) are already doing and rushed to inform the world about that “big deal” that Intel is doing. Well, I do not think it is a big deal but I do thank Intel for that as we needed the outside validation a bit. We have it now, not in six or whatever months – one platform, one solution and you can trust me on this one – for the next six months we will not just sit and watch, guys, we have some news and tricks in our sleeves and hats that will be popping out at least three times for the next upcoming 6 months, some of the news and services we are releasing very soon will really be very surprising …

Rod Boothby called us “a true Web Office solution” months ago, and we have not stopped working and implementing new functionality for a single minute. We put everything that our customers request and we are implementing everything that we have planned and planning for the future… and that will be the case. We will not stop working because we have customers and partners that trust us.

SuiteTwo vs. Blogtronix Smackdown - another great article by Jerry Bowles mentioning Blogtronix

2006-11-12T11:53:00.001-07:00

this is the text of Jerry Bowles' article:

For those of you keeping score at home, here’s a recap of this week’s exciting action in the battle of the enterprise wikis. On Tuesday, Socialtext announced that it was the wiki part of an bundle of social software called SuiteTwo–packaged by Intel Capital, the chipmaker’s venture arm–to be sold through Intel channels. The other pieces of the suite are a wiki (Six Apart), a news reader (NewsGator), and an RSS news feeder (SimpleFeed), with SpikeSource supplying the support.

Some grizzled veterans of past software wars reacted with skepticism based on Intel’s well-documented inability to get out of its own way when it tries things not related to his core business. Others questioned the pricing, which is a considerable premium over the cost of each of components alone.

Not suprisingly, among those pronouncing SuiteTwo “no big deal” was Vassil, CEO and co-founder of rival Blogtronix, which unveiled the new version of Blogtronix 1.5 on Wednesday which has integrated blogging, wiki, RSS feeds and an online RSS reader, as well as social networking capability.

“We at Blogtronix had all of this functionality more than a year ago under one platform and it was all integrated,” Mladjov wrote, in a comment on TechCrunch. “Not to mention that we did this without millions of dollars from VC’s (you need to combine the total of funding all the Suite2 companies) and with a fraction of the developers or the time it took them. In fact, we showed this to Intel Capital last year and they turned us down. Intel was not impressed that we were not from Stanford or Harvard and that we were only two guys (and 10 + developers).”

Do I detect a hint of class warfare in Silicon Valley?

Corporate guidelines for companies with public corporate blog sites - an article from Fredrik Wackå

2006-09-04T11:09:00.001-06:00

We created a small group of people in our company to help our customers prepare and implement Corporate Guidelines for the company blog sites they build with our system. We have especially focused on the ones that have public access besides the Internal communication and knowledge management features as goals. We started preparing documents and example guidelines that are available from the corporations that already have those in place – good better and best… We actually could not find bad ones. While we were doing that I found a very, very nice article called “Policies compared: Today's corporate blogging rules” form Fredrik Wackå from Malmö, Sweden. He is with W PR & Information AB. I would like to personally thank him for the wonderful article he put together. Thank you, Fredrik. The article is great and everybody dealing with corporate blogging should read it.

I will be posting some more information about similar pieces but I really wanted to start with this one.

About Corporate Blogging, search engines and how to use the corporate blog to attract traffic

2006-09-03T00:43:00.001-06:00

I got a couple of questions this week forwarded to me from our sales team and sent directly from some of our customers. Will the corporate blog site get the company more exposure? That is a question with several “Yes's” as answers and with several “If's” too. Yes, the corporate blog will definitely help you get better search engine ranking and drive more traffic to your website. But you also have to help the situation. It will not happen by itself. You have to do your homework and keep doing it all the time.

You have to know first that Google and Yahoo have different indexing mechanisms and this brings different results to both search engines. You also have to know that usually the blogging software you are using and especially our system will automatically ping the main blog search engines but each corporate blog’s administrator will have to help too. For example: manual submission to Blogpulse is required and creating a corporate or personal profile at Technorati will help significantly. The easy part of it ends here - that is what I have always told all corporate bloggers, not only our own customers.

You have to blog guys! It is a blog! It needs attention, or you can say – it is a company, it needs work, it needs attention and care. Debbie Weil says: “Corporations do not blog, individuals do”. I could not agree more. My interpretation with the same meaning for quite some time now has been: “It is up to the people in one company, the employees and owners that care, that have to get organized and blog, communicate and discuss with customers, vendors, and last but not the least - between themselves. The company will not blog, it is the people inside that will”. Debbie Weil has worded it better and more precisely.

So, in order to really use the company blog as a tool you have to blog, you have to share your thoughts, worries and achievements with the world. That is the key.

One of the first issues is to create company blog guidelines. Another step is to select a team within your company or hire professionals to do it for you. My personal opinion is that an insider will do a better and faster job while the “hired guns” will take some time to step up properly. On the other hand the hired pros will not need time to learn what a corporate blog is and how to keep it alive. The CEO or any other member of the management is good to blog but this is not obligatory. Quite often regular employees or PR and Marketing Department members would do a better job.

Once this is in place - get the hot topics off the charts and the business plan, get the initial customer feedback and start writing about it. I can not stop repeating that you have to blog often; you have to keep the blog alive. It will be a mistake if you just put text in there and post for the sake of the daily obligation. Blog wisely! Choose the topics properly and have your own opinion in there. I think that if 3-5 posts a week appear on your company blog per blogger – that will be something. Check blog statistics daily, most popular articles, most popular search terms, search engine links and visit durations – everything is important to properly monitor and direct the company blog.

Another important step is to have the company bloggers read and comment other people’s and companies' blogs. Identify yourself and your company blog to the world by making other people’s efforts and achievements worthwhile.

The content available in the Cyberspace is vast, the Blogosphere is growing rapidly. Content creation on your blog will not be important unless it is specific, focused, precise and has a personal touch.

The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil - this is a must-have book for the corporate blogging community members, and not only! The book is great!

2006-09-02T12:42:00.001-06:00

After Tanya spotted the book on a bookshop window I got it about 10 days ago. Since we were releasing a couple of new customers and pilot testers I was kind of busy and managed to look at the book just last night. I have to say that BY now it is already read and remarks are done both on the book (sorry Debbie, I sometimes make small comments with a pencil) and on a couple of sheets. I am also getting another copy from the local Barnes and Noble store to bring to our European office as this is not available in Europe yet.

Guys and girls, you have to read The Corporate Blogging Book - you will find basic information about the blogs initially, about the corporate blogs, answers of the most common issues standing in front of anyone planning to enter the corporate blogosphere and perfect examples... Then more and more profound and detailed info and research materials about corporate blogging and business networking. The book has very nice comments on some of the CEO's blogs, examples of some prominent corporate bloggers and comments on large and small corporate blogs.

The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil also has examples and comments for corporate blogging guidelines and other legal issues to consider as well as some nice and very probable direction where the corporate blogging will head. I definately recommend this book for everyone.

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

2006-08-29T23:46:00.001-06:00

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.

2006-08-29T23:32:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-29T23:29:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-29T23:17:00.001-06:00

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?

2006-08-29T23:12:00.001-06:00

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

Types of corporate blogs - External Blogs

2006-08-26T14:04:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-26T13:03:00.001-06:00

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.

What is a Corporate Blog?

2006-08-25T13:46:00.001-06:00

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

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

2006-08-24T23:44:00.001-06:00

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!

Talking to VCs and Business Consultants these days …

2006-08-22T21:29:00.001-06:00

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.”

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

2006-08-20T23:42:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T20:17:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T20:14:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T20:09:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T20:07:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T20:03:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T19:59:00.001-06:00

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

2006-08-20T19:56:00.000-06:00

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.