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.