Apparently technology makes you unproductive. According to Reuters, " Americans work more, seem to accomplish less." The reason is because technology prevents us from concentrating on one task anymore. We multi-task far too much and allow electronic distractions like email, instant messages and phone calls distract us from the tasks at hand. The articles includes some interesting statistics including the fact that workers get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of which are unsolicited. The most worrying line comes at the end of the article, where a consultant explains that there's a sense among employees in most companies that no matter how much they do, it is considered never enough.

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Jeffrey F. Rayport of Best Face Forward fame, has written a thoughtful article on why CIOs and CMOs need each other in the business world. He explains that each time you see significant dysfunction in the way a company or a brand interacts with its customers, its because marketing and technology aren't talking to one another. Once you've finished reading that article, don't leave CIO.com Also take a look at Christopher Lindquist's article on how enterprises can use the technology that makes Google look so cool - Ajax!

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Avenue A | Razorfish has partnered with Google's Enterprise Division to implement Google's enterprise products. Our Enterprise Solutions practice believes that tools that enable employees to communicate, collaborate and knowledge share should be as easy to learn and use as best in class consumer facing websites - this is a philosophy that Google's enterprise division both shares and endorses. Avenue A | Razorfish has already implemented the Google search appliance for some key clients.

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According to Businessweek who have been energetically covering workplace trends over the last few months, the answer is yes. In a news analysis piece for Businessweek, Stephen Baker believes that internal blogs are catching on because they're easy to setup and very cheap to run. He cites McDonald's Chief Operating Officer Michael Roberts who launched a blog recently as an example. Michael Roberts uses his blog to spread information through the company's global operations and receive feedback. McDonald's is distributing blog access to thousands of employees.

Blogs are certainly becoming popular on both sides of the firewall. However, blogging behind the firewall has had mixed results. Employees at some companies are reluctant to share information and therefore shy away from blogging. Others treat blogging to disseminate the mundane information only. Rather, we're seeing that blogging technology and the RSS format is getting a lot of traction when integrated with existing corporate intranets and content management systems.

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More than 1.4 million officers and soldiers of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) visit their intranet which integrates various political departments at the PLA (People's Liberation Army) Headquarters and major military units. The PLA's Intranet also includes recreational channels including movies, music and greeting-card services.

Avenue A | Razorfish has worked with the U.S Navy on the redesign of their intranet (Navy Knowledge Online).

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Forrester Research recognized Interwoven's Worksite product as the best kept secret in document management. Worksite is a document management and team collaboration tool that can be integrated with an existing intranet or employee portal or function independently. It includes advanced document management and collaboration functionality enabling employees to collaborate around a specific project or topic.

According to Forrester, Interwoven "excels at ease-of-use for both users and desktop administrators." Having worked with Interwoven's full suite of products, we can say with confidence that Forrester is spot on. Another key feature of Interwoven's worksite product is its tight integration with the Microsoft Office applications.

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The enterprise marketplace is inundated with technology solutions that enable employees to collaborate better. But most organizations still struggle with collaboration whether it be via their intranet or through solutions like Documentum's erooms. This is largely because most communication and collaboration continues to happen in employee email inboxes.

One company hopes to address this challenge by leveraging employee inboxes to capture and share knowledge. Kinomi Limited's software anonymously analzyes email inboxes to extract knowledge and store it in a central database that can be searched. Solutions like these that recognize employee work habits without forcing them to change their behaviors will succeed in the marketplace.

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A recent study found that British workers' IQ test scores drop by an average of 10 points when they juggle phones, emails and other electronic messages. The study also discovered that the drop is greater than after smoking marijuana or losing a night's sleep. The findings jive with some of the research done by Gloria Marks at the University of California, Davis. Needless to say, while we have great technology in the workplace, we still need to think hard about how it is being used and what its side affects are. Pat Frend, a client partner at Avenue A | Razorfish, pointed us to this study.

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It's obvious that technology in the workplace is hot. Business Week draws attention to the subject online via this podcast which discusses the origins of podcasting and the role it plays in the world.

Talking of which, their February 13th print edition covers digital dashboards and how they're being adopted by enterprises across the country. Titled "Giving The Boss The Big Picture" the article covers why dashboards are hot, how they're designed and what benefits they provide to enterprises. According to Forrester Research, 40% of the 2000 largest companies in America use the technology and CEOs like Steve Balmer at Microsoft and Ivan G. Seidenberg at Verizon Communications to Robert L. Nardelli at Home Depot are hooked to it. The author also covers the challenges that need to be overcome when changing a company to be more dashboard oriented.

We believe dashboards are a vital business tool to track the real time health of a company. Not only do CEOs need dashboards but also their direct reports and their own direct reports in turn. Choosing the appropriate technology and designing the dashboard can be challenging to say the least. Our advice - tie it into your intranet. Dashboards shouldn't be about just numbers but need to truly track all facets of your organization.

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Here's an example of how on demand software, ajax and the social media revolution is changing learning. Savvica Learning Management is the first eLearning service for individual instructors. The free service allows anyone to post course content, interact with students and evaluate home work.

Imagine how employee training could change if services like this one were offered to employees in a company via the intranet. Every employee would be able to setup a virtual classroom, invite students and run virtual courses. Training would become a democratic phenomena where every employee can be both an instructor and a student in no time.

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Visit Information Research if you're looking for an open access, international, scholarly journal, dedicated to making accessible the results of research across a wide range of information-related disciplines. The journal covers book reviews like one on Information Seeking & Retrieval to papers on combining ethnographic and clickstream data to identify browsing strategies and Information and Knowledge.

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Michael Jung, a principal at JPMorgan Partners, blogs about Web 2.0 and how it is changing the enterprise. He discusses how the "web as a platform" concept is getting attention within the enterprise as well. In his insightful blog, Michael wonders how the world would change if employees could start building their own applications on the fly and distributing them via an electronic marketplace. What would those applications look like? How would IT feel about them? Would they generate business value? His thoughts fuel some interesting questions on the relationship between companies and their technology departments. Also check out Jeremiah Owyang on Web 2.0 and how business and IT must work together.

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