More Social Business In Depth

Google's next act: Diversify and conquer

Center stage at this year's Google I/O was a company honing its vision for a future beyond search

What to expect at SAP's Sapphire

SAP's Sapphire conference kicks off next week in Orlando, setting the stage for the company to sell customers on its visions for cloud-based applications, in-memory computing and mobility.

Collaboration in Microsoft Office: Painful but not impossible

Microsoft Office has long been the gold standard for creating, editing, and formatting serious documents. Google Docs and other Web-based competitors, however, have outpaced Office by making it easy to share and co-edit documents in real time.

Facebook and Minnovation

Facebook's big announcement was a big "so what?" and minimal innovation at its finest

Oracle strategies to get real-world verdict at Collaborate user event

Oracle's sprawling annual OpenWorld conference doesn't kick off until September, but next week the Oracle user group-backed Collaborate event will be held in Denver.

Social Media Certifications Prepare Students, Employees for Social Business

Using social media to market your business or collaborate internally means more than having a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook. To teach college students that lesson, Syracuse University adopted HootSuite University's certification program. Syracuse isn't alone: Social media certifications are a growing trend, but is a training course right for you?

Google Keep vs. OneNote vs. Evernote: We name the note-app winner

Google shook things up last week when it dusted off its old Notebook service and relaunched it as Keep. Google's new software muscles in on the space currently dominated by Microsoft OneNote and Evernote, two note-taking apps that save your text, Web links, photos, audio recordings, and more, helping to keep your life organized.

Social Networking Drives Business Processes at Pandora and Rosetta Stone

Pandora and Rosetta Stone have embraced social business tools and the cloud to cut costs, increase productivity and improve collaboration. Learn how these two companies overcame security concerns, gained executive buy-in and more.

How to tell if your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn efforts are paying off

As businesses make more use of social networks, the number of engagement, analysis and monitoring tools has exploded. Enterprises are trying to understand their return on social media investments, to find out if their Twitter and Facebook marketing campaigns are actually delivering customers. They want to track social mentions across multiple networks and be responsive to both kudos and complaints.

Cautionary tale from a Twitter 'share-cropper'

Twit Cleaner is a popular web app that has been used by hundreds of thousands of Twitter users to clear deadwood from their accounts.

Twitter adds line breaks, draws mixed response

Do

Slideshow: SXSW in photos

South by Southwest Interactive is such a massive technology conference with so much activity and many ideas being thrown around at once that it can be hard to give an overall feel for the Austin, Texas, extravaganza using just words.

Yahoo's Telecommuting Problem Is Management, Not Collaboration

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's controversial decision to ban employees from working from home led some to question the value of social business tools. Two executives from social business providers say Yahoo's problem isn't about collaborating. It just needs to manage better.

How we manage our social networks

Gibbs analyzes the results of his "How do you manage your social networks?" survey

Analytics boost social marketing efforts

Big-name companies including General Electric and Best Western are maturing their social marketing programs and integrating social metrics with back-end systems.

LinkedIn open sources its database change capture system

OK, lots of interesting stuff for you this week. First up, LinkedIn has open sourced a system called Databus, a real-time database change capture system that provides a "timeline-consistent stream of change capture events ... grouped in transactions, in source commit order."

Premier 100 IT Leader profile: JR Gamez

This IT leader employed online videoconferencing to make his police department more efficient and responsive to citizens.

Office showdown: Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps

The war between Google and Microsoft is heating up. Each tech giant offers a productivity suite serving the essentials for serious work online: word processing, spreadsheets, email, and calendars. Should you ally with Google Apps for Business, or root for Microsoft's Office 365 for Small Business?

Predicting the Tech Future

For my recent column of predictions for 2013 I polled a huge number of IT people to see what they are expecting, and ended up getting more than 400 responses.

At IBM Connect, IT execs talk about betting on enterprise social

Unused intranets. Siloed departmental portals. Excessive email use.