When Web 3.0 Arrives, BT BizBox Will Be Primed and Ready
Just when the global community was starting to comprehend the wonders of Web. 2.0, the term Web 3.0 has made its way into the digital lexicon.
Fortunately for those still trying to grasp all of the concepts and features of Web 2.0, they haven’t been left behind. Web 3.0 is still considered a phrase describing the future of the World Wide Web, which has an infinite amount of possibilities and just as many differing opinions on what those possibilities will be.
Visionaries looking at the future may have alternating views on how it will evolve, but the one thing they agree on is that the digital future, as did the digital past, will have a profound social impact, especially due to the growing participation in online communities.
“In only a few years, social networks have become a staple in the Internet landscape as the social networking phenomenon allowed people to ‘put their lives online,’ ” Chris De Wolfe, co-founder of MySpace, told The Guardian recently. “A person’s profile became a representation of who they really were in the offline world, and allowed them to transfer their offline world online.”
The offline and online worlds are likely to intersect more and more as the Web continues to evolve into 3.0 status. It’s as if a population is colonizing a virtual world, and online communities are the cities, towns and hamlets housing the inhabitants. Those cities are expanding at a rapid pace, too, according to a U.S. study conducted by the University of Southern California prestigious Annenberg School.
The 7th annual study, titled The Digital Future Project, found that U.S. membership in online communities has more than doubled in only three years, with more than half logging into that community daily and 71 percent of members saying their community is very important or extremely important to them. Furthermore, the study found that online communities have a major impact on social and political causes.
“There are so many ways the Internet has changed people’s lives,” said Sarah Laycock, spokeswoman for Tierlinear Ltd., maker of the Web-based productivity tool BT BizBox. “People having a voice online and being able to reach out to like-minded people has simply been a phenomenon. Sites like Facebook, My Space and Twitter are connecting people in ways we’ve never seen before.”
The 3.0 era will take the Web to an entirely different level, with its most intriguing byproduct being the Semantic Web, where artificial intelligence will start to play a major role as software becomes so smart it can reason by using a set of rules that express logical relationships between concepts and data.
British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee is recognized as the visionary behind the Semantic Web concept. In 1999, he expressed the future of the Web:
“I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”
When the Semantic Web comes to fruition, it will streamline inefficient and time-consuming tasks that often impede productivity and cut into profits. Devices like Tierlinear’s BT BizBox – which includes microformats, OpenID and Open Data Portability – will drive applications to talk to each other, even without the end user knowing. For example, a user could have information stored at Google, Yahoo! and another application, but a main dashboard application aggregates them together and shows a user the information in real-time based on a historical pattern.
“Products like BT BizBox will be able to assist small businesses in identifying their busy and not so busy periods,” said Laycock. “It will know what they are interested in seeing so it will learn what information needs to be sent to them in real-time. It’s something few imagined would be possible a decade ago.”
Laycock says that the BT BizBox in its Web. 3.0 form would create nirvana for small business, connecting suppliers, customers and the business. For example, a supplier would send out their product list in an open standard format which BT BizBox would read. BT BizBox then processes the file and identifies which customers like which products.
The end result would be that the BT BizBox would be capable of taking information from the Web (via RSS) and resign that data, resending it out in RSS feeds (via email, etc.) to the business customer base automatically. This would result in businesses that sell exactly what customers want and flip their traditional business model. Businesses over time will simply become distributors of product and offer service, which the suppliers are incapable of offering.
“The current version of BT BizBox is an online Web-based application, which can be accessed from anywhere by any Internet enabled device,” said Laycock. “This makes it ideal for the rising number of home/flexible workers as they can access all the centrally stored company information away from the office making them more productive. In the Web 3.0 world, BT BizBox will be extremely powerful tool for every small and medium-sized company.”
New Look and Feel
The new design will be rolled out to the live production environment this evening. We have completed the final testing and will start the migration at 9pm tonight. The current site will be unavailable for no more than one hour from 9pm.
Regards
Sarah
Coming soon……
Hi all,
We are in the final stages of developing the new look and feel and are now working on our planned roadmap for 2008.
So, what is coming soon….?
The plan is to launch the new BT BizBox in the middle of June.
Along with the new look, there are improvements to the project management tool, the finance module, the address book and the dashboard.
We have made some significant improvements, which make the BT BizBox project management tool a very powerful tool for organising your business. The level detail has been increased with projects, sub projects, tasks and the ability to store documents centrally. You can track deadlines, view owners and keep on top of your project team.
The finance module has the ability to help you manage your cash flow effectively. You can create quotes and invoices for your customers quickly and simply. You can track the conversion rates of your quotes into invoices, see payments made and payments due in order for you to stay on top of your cash flow. The next stage of the finance module is expenses with the ability to raise purchase orders with your suppliers.
All of the finance module will be closely linked into the reporting suite so you can see your customers behaviour, which will help you manage them more effectively and in the long terms bring more business to your organisation.
As I have previously stated the address book has seen some improvements, you no longer have to manage separately your customers, contacts and employees they are all managed together in the one address book.
The dashboard is a unique tool, which provides you with the ability to manage all elements of your business at a glance. We have designed it with a number of widgets, both internal and external. We have chosen a number of external widgets, which we think will benefit you, however we are always looking for your feedback so we can add more 
The most exciting thing, which are working on now, is the i-marketing tool for BT BizBox. This will be a fantastic tool for your organisation and the great thing is that it is all going to be developed into the one CRM solution you are currently using to manage your business - more on this later.
So, lots happening…. expect to see an increase in posts over the coming weeks as we launch the new look and continue to improve the functionality.
Don’t forget to give us you feedback on our forums.
Thanks
Sarah
More screenshots of the new look and feel
Hi all,
Work has been continuing at BT BizBox on the new look and feel and we are now in the final stages. The plan is to launch the new look and feel by the middle of May.
The last couple of weeks have been spent on developing the new calendar and diary view.
I have attached a screenshot for you to review and provide us with your comments.
The calendar and diary view captures all information regarding meetings, employee tasks and employee holidays. This information is easily accessible and viewable company wide. We appreciate that time is critical for all of you so we have made the calendar as simple and clear as possible so all events across the organisation can be viewed quickly and easily. We hope we have achieved this however, we won’t know until we get your feedback, so please let us know.
As we come to nearing completion on the new look and feel I will publish our final launch dates, in the meantime I will keep you updated with screenshots of the functionality.
Thanks
Sarah
This week at BT BizBox
Hi,
As promised I am writing to give you an update on where we are with the new look and feel for BT BizBox.
We have created the designs for all the functional areas and are now completing work on the coding before we going into the testing process.
In addition to the actual application, we are working on creating online tours. For the initial launch of the new look we will have online tours created for the address book, dashboard, calendar, project management and document management. These tours will demonstrate the full capabilities of our business CRM solution.
We are also reviewing our marketing pages to include pages on;
1. Customer management using BT BizBox
2. Contact management using BT BizBox
3. Employee timesheets within BT BizBox
4. Customer online quoting and invoicing
5. Employee tasklists and project management
6. Document management
7. Employee and customer meeting management
At the time of new look launch we are also producing a number of articles. The first article will look at Open ID and Data Portability and how we at BT BizBox are intending to implement them. The second article will be looking at where the Internet is going socially and why we at BT BizBox feel it is important to participate in the action to stay above your competitors and be successful.
If there are any other subjects you would like us to discuss at BT BizBox please let us know.
So, this is just a quick update on what we are up to, we are keen to get your feedback, so please contact us.
Thanks
Sarah
What are the BT BizBox team working on?
Hi all,
It has been a while since our last blog, however we have been extremely busy at BT BizBox.
I know we have a number of new users, so welcome to those of you who have just signed up for your BT BizBox accounts, I hope you are finding the application useful, please let us have you feedback, either here or on our forums
So, what have we been working on? I mentioned back at the beginning of February that our focus was on the usability of the application. This is still the case, however I am now in a position to share with you some screenshots of the new dashboard, addressbook and the project & task application.
It’s exciting times as you can see, the new dashboard has been design to incorporate internal and external widgets. For those of you not familiar with widgets they are virtual tools that provide you, with services showing you a calendar, latest news, time, your meetings & tasks. BT BizBox is creating the dashboard so you can incorporate your key functions from within the application, whether they be the calendar, meetings or tasks along with any external links you regularly use for weather, news updates etc…..
The address book has incorporated customers, employee and contacts all into one central location, making it easier and simple to use.
The project management application has been adapted to be clean, clear and simple to use.
Each of the pages will have brief page hints, there will also be short online tours for users to familiarise themselves with the all the functionality within the application.
There is still a significant amount of work to be completed on the usability, so we will not be rolling it out to live until April/May. However, to ensure we get the feedback we need, I will be posting regularly updating you on our progress and providing you with screenshots.
Thanks
Sarah
Teleworking: Working from Home.
The morning commute to work is a ritual that is cemented throughout almost every society, yet the trend of telecommuting continues to chip away at that old routine as the way we live and work changes rapidly.
In the UK, U.S. and everywhere in between, technological evolution has allowed a workplace revolution to take place in the form of telecommuting. The workplace of the future has gone beyond the cubicle and corner office. It’s at home, the coffee shop, the beach and anywhere the mobile worker can flip open his or her notebook computer or wireless handheld device.
The crush of cars on freeways and highways has no doubt led to the telecommuting – also called teleworking – trend that has reached more that 12 million employees in the United States that spend more than 8 hours per week working away from the office, according to Gartner Dataquest, a leading information technology research and advisory company in the U.S. The number from Gartner shows a dramatic increase from the year 2000, when just 6 million Americans put in 8 hours a week outside the office.
Meanwhile in the UK, more than 2.1 million Brits work from home and around 8 million more spend at least some of their working week in their homes instead of at the office, according to the Office of National Statistics.
“The growth in employees working outside the office in both the U.S. and UK is substantial,” said Sarah Laycock of Tierlinear, a UK tech company which has developed a business productivity tool ideal for today’s telecommuters called the BT BizBox. “Telecommuting is going to be a fact of life for all businesses; it’s just a matter of time.”
The numbers certainly point in that direction. According to Gartner, 27.5 percent of Americans will be teleworking by 2009. The trend is likely to continue in the UK as well, as more and more employers in both countries are coming on board. A survey from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reported in September 2007 that 46 percent of British firms now offer workers the opportunity of telecommuting, compared to just 11 percent in 2004.
As is the case in the U.S., the stimulus behind the popularity of working outside the office are due to inadequate transportation systems and advances in digital and mobile technology.
“That teleworking has quadrupled in three years is testament to how far and fast firms have come in adopting new technologies for the benefit of staff and the business,” CBI deputy director general John Cridland said in the report.
It’s technologies like Tierlinear’s BT BizBox that has made businesses more comfortable and confident with the idea of telecommuting. The BizBox incorporates several methods of functionality for the small and medium-size business, with secure forms of customer, employee and contact management, as well as quoting, invoicing and scheduling mechanisms. It’s a simple solution that works in sync with the 21st century mobile world.
“BT BizBox is an online web-based application, which can be accessed from anywhere by any Internet enabled device,” said Laycock. “This makes it ideal for the rising number of home/flexible workers as they can access all the centrally stored company information away from the office making them more productive. BT BizBox is also launching new functionality that helps the traveling sales people by providing them with an easy to use route optimization tool.”
The phrase “telecommuting” was coined by Jack Niles, who in 1973 was Director for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Southern California. Niles began his research into telecommuting and teleworking during the early 70s in an area primed for such an event. The Southern California basin, with its notorious traffic congestion, high fuel costs and parking problems, was where telecommuting had the opportunity to really take off.
After a slow start, the rise of personal computer, followed by the Internet and mobile devices has put telecommuting into overdrive. The improvement now in broadband is offering workers new choices in the way they live and work. Tierlinear’s partner, British Telecom, is fostering that mobile environment with advances that have increased bandwidth and other high-speed broadband services throughout Europe.
Telecommuting has its pluses and minus, but at its current state, the advantages are outweighing the disadvantages for both worker and business. Telecommuting provides employee flexibility, allows working parents more freedom, increases employee productivity and allows companies to outsource and hire employees that would otherwise not be available.
One of telecommuting’s major drawbacks is ensuring a secure environment for company data. With a workforce more spread out and less centralized, companies face an increased risk of confidential data being lost or misused. It’s an issue that companies supporting the teleworking world like Tierlinear are well-versed in.
“Security is of utmost concern with BT BizBox,” said Laycock. “All data is securely behind firewalls and is monitored 24 hours per day by security specialists. Software, hardware and human intrusion detection systems and methodologies constantly monitor the systems ensuring no one is accessing the servers that is not supposed to be.”
Along with products like the BT BizBox, a host of other products like webcams and video conferencing software will see a sharp rise over the next decade as companies downsize office space and increase workers’ ability to access remote locations.
With all these tech toys, along with PDAs and email, the teleworker could conceivably be on the clock 24 hours a day. Telecommuting may give the sense that workers can basically do whatever they want if they don’t have the boss looking over their shoulders. But the reality is that workers are going to have to prove that they’re worth their salaries by communicating their value.
“Telecommunicating doesn’t come without its pitfalls for the worker,” said Laycock. “It’s going to be an environment where you have to sell your self-worth a little harder, while setting limits and boundaries to avoid burnout.”
Our plans for BT BizBox
Hi All,
It is always busy at BT BizBox, in parallel with our development roadmap we are working on the usability of BT BizBox to make it constantly easier and simpler for you, the customer to use.
We have been working on this for a few weeks and are in now in a position to share with your our plans.
We are planning big changes, but don’t worry the new application will include tool tips and will be completely self explanatory. None of the currently functionality will be removed, so it will not affect any of your current data stored in the application. The new designs will make it easier for you to see all the functionality available to you and enable you to access it quicker.
An example of this is we are planning on removing the need to have separate tabs for your customers, contacts and employees but to categorise them all into one address book. Also the calendar will be changed so you can add and edit tasks, meetings and notes quickly and easily, in addition enable you to filter the information so you can see only the information you want to.
I have attached a screen shot as a sneak preview of our plans.
As we progress further with the usability I will continue to update you.
Thanks
Sarah
What’s new…..?
Hi All,
Good news - this weekend we launched to live the new alerting system.
We took a new approach to rolling out this functionality by launching it to live last week while we were testing and then implemented some changes this weekend - out of hours, to enable you to see the functionality in its beta state and for you to provide comments prior to full launch, what did you think to this approach?
For those of you who haven’t seen the new alerting functionality it is available under the tools menu.
You can set alerts to aid your meeting management, you can set alerts for 15, 30mins, 1, 2 and 4 days before your meeting and these alerts can be via pop-up, email and SMS. The email address used is the one recorded against your account along with the mobile number in your account details. These can be edited at anytime by going into “My account”.
The other alerts are for task management, & quotes and invoices, once again these are via pop-ups, email and SMS and can be set at the same various times before they are due.
As always, let us know what you think to this functionality - does it meet your needs - are there any improvements we could make???
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Thanks
Sarah
Sneak preview
Hi All,
Last week I gave you an update on the functionality that we have been developing. While the development has now finished, we are adding the final touches to the usability and I just wanted to show you the screenshots for the important information module and the alerting system. We have shared with you the alerting ones before but we have made some changes based on your feedback, have a look…
The alerting screenshot shows that you can set up alerts on your meetings, which can be via E-mail, SMS and Popups, these alerts can be set for minutes before the meeting or days. Not only can you set alerts for your meetings but also for your tasks, quotes and invoices etc…
The important information module screenhots show how you can set up your own categories for the information you wish to store. The example we have shown shows passport information and insurance information. This information can be made available for an individual only or can be viewable across all the end users on your company account. Alerts can be set against each items to remind you of any renewals etc.., these once again can be via SMS, E-mail or Popups and can be set days or months in advance.
So, exciting stuff, let us know what you think. We will be looking to roll these to live next week but I will keep you posted.
Thanks
Sarah
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BT BizBox is a simple to use, "Business in Box" solution aimed at small and medium sized businesses.
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