Pete Shelton has a really amazing post on Web Tastings about some lessons his group’s learned about teaching researchers about Web 2.0 (which I came across via Nancy White’s post).

With all the hype around about Web 2.0, it’s great to hear such a common sense take on what needs to be done around educating people on Web 2.0.

Pete’s first rule of focusing on the job, rather than the tool, is something everyone (not just KM folks) should keep in mind with any piece of technology. No one cares how cool/new/shiny it is. Plain and simple, they want results.

Pete mentions both del.icio.us and blogging as too phenomena that didn’t necessarily catch on right away with their audiences — neither of which should come as a great surprise. Pete’s conclusion that people aren’t too interested in the tools themselves seems incredibly simple — but it’s easy to forget when you’re immersed in using those tools every day.

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I came across an interesting panel discussion on CBC Radio about information overload and not only its effect on work productivity, but also how it can be managed effectively.

Companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM have formed the Information Overload Research Group with the goal of helping people manage the amount of information they have to deal with in a day.

According to Jonathan Spira, one of the group’s founding members, wikis, blogs and RSS have made the deluge of information worse, rather than better.

Maggie Jackson (author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age) also joins the conversation to talk about how all this information is eroding our attention spans. It’s very interesting  and well worth a listen.

You can listen to the entire discussion at the link I’ve provided (and cheers to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for putting their content online).

What a day of tortured joy for Canadian Apple fanatics — Rogers Wireless finally launches the iPhone here and the Rogers website subsequently dies. I’m sure their call centres aren’t faring much better.

While I’ve never been much of a Mac/Apple fan myself, I was the proud owner of a 1 gigabyte iPod Shuffle at one time, until it met its demise in a washing machine accident.

Speaking of shuffles, Rogers has pulled off some fancy footwork when it comes to how they’re going to be charging people for data on their phones. But first a little background.

Consumers haven’t exactly been overly pleased with Rogers’ handling of the iPhone, especially where data usage is concerned. And rightly so, considering the Canadian iPhone is the 2nd most costly in the world.

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There are lots of organizations out there who are starting corporate blogs — and many of those blogs get a less-than-stellar reception from their potential audiences.

Why does this happen? Why don’t people want to read a particular blog? Well, I’d suggest there are certain things people want to see in a corporate blog. They want a blog that is:

1. Authentic. Many corporate blogs start off on the wrong foot right away by forfeiting their readers’ trust. Instead of a blog written by an interesting, charismatic person in the organization, the job gets unloaded on some poor writer or administrative assistant who has to try to come up with content.

If the voice of the blog feels out of sync with the person who’s writing it, readers will catch on. If the blogger doesn’t have time to write their own blog, they shouldn’t be blogging. Period.

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