Information Management Research Results

• Improving information management
• |
• silicon.com videos

Don't Rush to Technology

I believe that too many organizations rush to technological solutions to their problems.  The technology can help, but depending on the problem, it will not be a complete solution to the original problem.  It is important for the organization to understand the problem clearly and completely.  For example, I believe that an enterprise architecture is an important undertaking for most organizations and there are many technological tools that facilitate the capture, storage, retrieval, and correlation of enterprise architecture information.  The question is: what exactly is the problem that the organization wishes to solve by developing its enterprise architecture?  When the problem is well-understood, the best decision will be made.  It might be appropriate for an organization to first make behavioral changes without technology and let the new behaviors become well established before introducing new technology.

Technology and Families

One area in which I am very interested is how technology impacts family life, or more specifically, how it affects family life satisfaction.  In the information-rich environment in which many live, it seems to be tempting to live a life without specific focus or with misdirected focus.  On the other hand, the relative ease with which most can access information may enable the disciplined to live a very focused life and live a more personally fulfilling life than they would otherwise.  Masses of information could decrease family life fulfillment or, as this article suggests, it could lead to greatly satisfying family life.  This article from BBC news reports some interesting research findings.  I haven't seen the actual research, but I am interested in the details of how the research was conducted. 

Sharing Large Files

LifeHack Magazine published an article in which they review 7 ways to send huge files.  It is a fine list for starters, however as you begin searching you'll soon discover that there are much more than just the 7 ways described in the article.  Some of these tools provide online storage of files which is a central site for sharing large files.  The storage capacity is limited on some of the sites (unless you choose to pay for increased storage capacity), and others automatically purge files after a certain time has passed.

Concept Maps

Just found this great web site in which several concept and mind map sites are consolidated and summarized.  The idea of concept maps/mind maps is intriguing to me because of the application to information relationship discovery and management especially across an enterprise.  

Visual display metasearch

KartOO is a very cool metasearch engine (searches using multiple search engines).  It presents search results in what looks like an idea cloud or map and puts them in context of relationships to each other and classifying subjects. 

Personal Financial Information Management System

Mint has only been available for about a year, and has already won several awards.  Check out the web site for more details.  It is very easy to use and provides great features!  I signed up in 5 to 10 minutes and immediately was able to see an analysis of my spending over the past 90 days.  It also gave me suggestions for improving my savings plan to earn more interest than I currently earn.