Google buzz and outlook 2010 social conn…

Since the launch of Google Buzz last Tuesday, we’ve been hearing more analyses from professionals and bloggers warning of a possible showdown of sorts between Google and Microsoft in the social space. Buzz is Google’s social connection with its Gmail; but Microsoft already announced last year its own social connection with its mail platform: the forthcoming Social Connector plug-in for Outlook 2010, due for release with the rest of Microsoft Office 2010 this June. The latest release candidate for Office 2010 was distributed to private testers earlier this month.

Social Connector promises to transform Outlook 2010 into a live network teeming with contacts who share not just e-mail, but chats and texts through Windows Live and documents through SharePoint. Messages received from a “live” contact will be adorned with that person’s availability, location, and a record of recent activities. Though LinkedIn has already signed on as Microsoft’s first third-party partner, connectivity with Facebook probably distributed by Facebook, not Microsoft appears likely.

So much of the same kind of functionality folks are seeing with Buzz, will likely appear in Outlook as well, although slanted more toward professional tasks rather than personal friends and acquaintances. Microsoft’s early response to Buzz was covered last Tuesday by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley was that the company felt there were already enough social networks to go around without Google building another one.

But that response came from a Windows Live product manager someone defending a product that Microsoft is building into a social network. As Mary Jo and others who’ve also covered Microsoft for decades know full well, the other end of the Redmond campus may as well be a different hemisphere.So although the initial implication of that response appeared to be a defensive strike, the truth of the matter is, Social Connector is being designed to connect to social networks, not to become one.

I'm the leader of a 9 people team. I was told by my professor to put together a schedule/timeline so we all know what's due when. I haven't been able to do this since I needed to find out certain information from the rest of the team otherwise the dates I would assign wouldn't make any sense. Am I supposed to just put it all together with tentative dates and just change dates once I find out what are the realistic due dates? Should I also write down what tasks are supposed to begin on certain dates as well as their due date? I find it really difficult to put this down into words/schedule since it feels like we are playing it by ear since we need the team's input for a lot of these decision. We got in trouble today for not having the timeline ready, we are one our 5th week of the project for which we only meet 2 times a week. What's the best way to do this? I don't have microsoft project. I wish it was something I was as familiar with as word or powerpoint.
by Judy @ September 26, 2007 12:01 am
Of course you need team input. You need a list of all the steps that must be done to complete the project - then you need to figure out what tasks need to be done before others can be done. Then you'd put times on each task. The team together should develop the list of tasks, the dependencies, and time estimates for each task. Then you'd need to decide who is going to do each task - be careful that one person doesn't have 300 hours of work to do in one week. After you have all of this put together, it falls into a timeline, which is basically a schedule. The timeline will show both start dates and end dates.

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