Sunday, May 19, 2002

The following are classifications of knowledge searches that KM software is targeted at improving. I find it interesting that each of these searches needs to be addressed by KM software differently, yet most times people are conducting several of these searches simulataneously. It will be interesting to see how software melds the needs together. Taken directly from Susan Feldman's January 1, 2000, article in The Answer Machine: 1. Broad subject searches -- fishing expeditions about a topic unfamiliar to the searcher. Appropriate terminology is hard to determine at first. 2. Narrow, well-defined subject searches on a familiar topic with known terms. 3. Comparative, information-seeking -- which company is the biggest, has revenues of more than $X, or more than 100 employees? 4. Known-item searching for a specific title, author, or publication. 5. Continuous monitoring of a subject. 6. Pattern matching for emerging trends: foraging for matches to a description of an event or a profile of a competitor or other entity. 7. Fact or statistic location -- who, what, where, when, how? 8. Chronological reconstruction of events or actions 1:59:56 PM     For our final project, our group is looking at KM software. The following information was culled from Martin White's March 1, 2001 article for Information World Review entitled "The ins and outs of portals". It describes a KM tool -- the corporate portal, aka enterprise information portal. White's basic definition of a portal is "a software platform that enables a user to create a customised view of information and applications". A portal generally allows a user to: 1) customise information received and how its displayed on the screen 2) categorize information received 3) integrate information from multiple databases and file formats 4) work collaboratively. Portals can also provide a range of content creation and publishing options. Technology providers? There are a considerable number of start-ups, but Microsoft and IBM will also deliver products. I view my weblog as a personal portal/journal: 1) I can customize the information that I receive and how it is displayed 2) I can work collabroatively through a multi-user weblog... though my attempts at this have crashed my system :-) 3) Multiple file formats can be integrated. For my ideal personal portal, I would like to be able to categorize incoming information. I would also like it to integrate across multiple databases (my work files, school files, online WSJ subscription) in order to keep a full recording of my thoughts and ideas. Obviously, that brings up issues of privacy, but this is an "ideal". 1:21:18 PM     After several searches of Radioland via google, I still haven't been able to discover how to attach documents. Has anyone figured out how to attach? 12:34:57 PM

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