Social computing is a fast-moving technology, and many of the concepts
grow or change every year. Use this book as part of your research for
how you will implement any of the social computing applications, but
also use online research for keeping updated on new changes to this
exciting area of software today. Although social computing applications
can be written on any framework or even on their own, we have taken a
unique approach to help you understand the landscape of social computing
as it relates to SharePoint 2007. Each chapter introduces you to the
concept of the chapter, for example, the RSS chapter gives a brief
overview of what RSS is and the history behind it. Then the chapter
provides a section of how this is possible with SharePoint 2007.
Finally, if there are any extensions that would make it easier to work
with social computing and SharePoint, such as open source code or
products you can buy, we briefly discuss these options so you are aware
of them for your organization. This book was written for anyone who is
approaching social computing applications for an enterprise. This would
include developers, managers, directors, and even C-level executives.
This book is designed to help decision makers learn about the concepts
and understand how they might implement them in their own company.
Although this book does reach out to developers, most of the chapters
give examples with either built-in options and configuration or show how
to use code already installed on SharePoint. Anyone interested in social
computing and the topics covered in each chapter could read this book to
get an understanding of what each concept has. The You Try It sections
do require having SharePoint 2007 and some of the features installed to
actually attempt them. If you are not an IT professional or developer,
this is the perfect opportunity for you to start a discussion with your
technology group to try out some of these wonderful tools. The book is
designed to allow the reader to start from not knowing about social
computing to being able to have an understanding of the concepts and how
he or she would use them in his or her company. To accomplish this, you
can read the book from front cover to back, or you can pick the specific
chapter that your organization is interested in. Because so many people
want to know exactly what the topics are and what they are about, we
have organized the book into chapters that work together, but stand
alone and provide complete coverage of a topic. We have also used a very
simple and direct naming of each chapter so you can quickly recognize
what the chapter is about and what it covers. This book covers the major
concepts, applications, and implementations of social computing and
shows how they are built with SharePoint 2007 today. As you noticed
earlier, this is a fast-moving area of computing. Where SharePoint 2007
does not have the capability today, we made sure and explained how you
could extend SharePoint 2007 with open source or products you can
purchase. We did not cover every product on the market, but we gave you
any idea of what you can look for when you are trying to extend
SharePoint. The first two chapters provide the introduction for people
new to social computing and how people will have to manage a social
computing project. The following chapters break out each concept into a
chapter to make it easy to get up to speed and understand what the topic
is about.

* Chapter 1 provides the introduction to what social computing is and
the concepts behind social computing applications and discusses some of
the technologies your organization might use to implement these
concepts.
* Chapter 2 describes how to build a successful project around social
computing. This chapter takes you through steps that can make your team
more successful, discusses the adoption of the application, and points
out pitfalls that may get in your way to avoid them.
* Chapter 3 discusses content tagging as one of the fundamental pieces
of social computing. This chapter shows what content tagging is and how
to use it to effectively build a solution with more visibility.
* Chapter 4 demonstrates how to use wikis to build solutions for your
organization and gives you hands-on examples of what the wiki can do for
your company.
* Chapter 5 covers the popular topic of blogs. This chapter shows you
how to set up your own blog for your organization as well as discuss why
you would even want a blog.
* Chapter 6 delves into RSS and shows you what the XML is all about.
This chapter covers what RSS is and how to consume it in your
organization to successfully increase communication.
* Chapter 7 gives an overview of social networking and SharePoint 2007
My Sites and what is required for social computing in a company.
* Chapter 8 demonstrates what podcasting is and how you might
implement this concept in your organization. Podcasting is a
fast-growing concept that many people are using for communication and
entertainment. This chapter will show how to use SharePoint 2007 to
enhance the communication in your organization.
* Chapter 9 explains what mashups are and how you might use them
today. Mashups are still growing in organizations and still need some
customizations to make them powerful, but you will understand the
concepts and an overview of how to create these powerful applications.
* Chapter 10 covers presence and OCS/Windows Live as a central part of
social computing. This chapter helps to understand how you might enhance
your projects just by including a valuable part of social computing and
being connected to other people.
* Chapter11 discusses some of the forward-looking technologies such as
interactive media, video, and communication. These technologies are
still being transformed from the general use applications to powerful
implements that include pieces of many of the social computing concepts.
* Chapter 12 talks about social computing search and how to use search
to find the information you are looking for. In social computing
applications, finding data is critical to the success of the
application, and this chapter introduces how to accomplish that with
SharePoint 2007.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/047042138X/



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