May 2016 | TeamPage Mobile App, Improved Document Management
Traction® TeamPage Spring 2016 Release introduces: the first release of a new Traction TeamPage Mobile App for iPhone and iPad; a new TeamPage Document Management user interface; the first release of a new JSON API for mobile devices, bots, and other external clients; improved external search engine integration; bug fixes, improvements, and other changes.
Daily Report 日報 = Observable Work: Takashi Okutsu
Takashi Okutsu of Traction Software's Japanese Business Office recently posted an update to his Daily Report TeamPage plugin. Takashi writes: "In some Japanese companies, it is common to look back what an employee did in the day, write a summary, and submit it to his/her boss. This is called "日報" (daily report or daily journal) and it's a way of sharing information between employees and bosses in the hierarchy. If you are interested in the ways of business in Japanese companies, you may find this blog post interesting." This example of Observable Work is very simple to understand and use. Quality Management and other TeamPage solutions follow the same pattern.
TeamPage iOS Application
The Traction® TeamPage App connects to a TeamPage server and makes it easy to stay up-to-date with the latest activity in your Traction® TeamPage server. You can download the free TeamPage App from Apple's iOS App Store.
Dec 2015 | Quality Management, Signature Requirements
Traction® TeamPage Winter 2015 Release introduces a new TeamPage Quality Management option. The Quality Management module adds Feedback, Non-Conformance, and Corrective Action forms and dashboards to TeamPage's standard support for authoring, delivery, and tracking of quality and compliance documentation. The new Quality forms and dashboards make it simple to manage the full life cycle for manufacturing, operations, and other procedures based on ISO 9001 or other compliance standards. Signature Requirements is a new capability which lets you require people to sign TeamPage articles either once or on a recurring basis. Signature Requirements can be used to collect approvals for publication, confirm that a document has been reviewed or a process followed, or for any other situation where a set of users and groups must explicitly acknowledge that they have reviewed an article. Signature Requirements is included with the Quality Management option, and is also available as separately priced independent option, please contact us for details.
Nov 2015 | Traction continues to punch above its weight - Real Story Group
Real Story Group released the latest version of their Enterprise Collaboration and Social Software Evaluations Report with updated reviews of Google, Igloo, Jive, Liferay Social Office, Telligent/Verint, and Traction® TeamPage on Oct 26, 2015. Real Story Group analyst Kashyap Kompella writes:
Nov 2015 | Teampage Plug-ins from Traction Software Japan
Takashi Okutsu, Director of Traction® Software's Japanese Business Office has been on a roll. His new Traction® TeamPage plug-ins include: a new Bootstrap3 skin; a new JQuery Mobile skin; Customer Support Request and Customer Quick Reference plug-ins. Takashi is also the author of Gantt Chart, Traction Poll, Mind Map, Pop-up Annotation, and other plug-ins, free to Japanese and International Traction customers.
Shaka, When the Walls Fell
"Pooh?" said Piglet.
"Yes, Piglet?" said Pooh.
"Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," said Piglet.
"Shaka, when the walls fell," said Pooh.
— Michael G. Munz (@TheWriteMunz) November 17, 2015Oct 2015 | Personal Worklists, Quick Forms
Traction® TeamPage Fall 2015 Release introduces Personal Worklists: Track and share what you plan to work on. It's easy to add, rearrange, organize, checkoff and share items on your personal worklist. New Quick Forms make common actions simpler using a right click action or keystroke. Traction TeamPage now automatically checks for updates and notifies your administrator.
Original Traction Product Proposal
I hope you'll enjoy reading the original Traction Product Proposal, dated October 1997. Many early Traction concepts carried over directly to the Traction® TeamPage product first commercially released in July 2002, but we've also learned a lot since then - as you might hope! The Proposal and its Annotated References may be helpful to students interested in the history and evolution of hypertext.
Teampage hypertext journal: Design concepts, by Takashi Okutsu
Takashi Okutsu of Traction Software's Japanese Business Office wrote a blog post, Teampage hypertext journal: Design concepts. Starting from Chris Nuzum's Tripping Up Memory Lane presentation, Takashi explains how TeamPage's append-only journal models editable content, links, and relationships − while maintaining a full audit trail. See this Google English translation.
July 2015 | TeamPage Live Task Lists
Traction® TeamPage Summer 2015 Release update introduces TeamPage live task lists: drag and drop to reorder tasks for a project or milestone, everyone sees the live update. Use shared task lists to keep everyone in synch on order of execution for tasks as well as planned start and end dates. A live Presence bar shows who else is watching the same page.
Tripping Up Memory Lane
Last week I gave a talk at the Hyperkult 2015 conference. It was an honor to present there, especially since it was the 25th and final time the conference was held. This was my proposal for the talk:
Eat your spinach: Email is good for you, but it could taste a lot better
Takashi Okutsu of Traction Software's Japanese Business Office says that email is like spinach. It may be necessary for a healthy business, but not everyone likes spinach. He says that it's not reasonable to think that Social Network Software replaces email. It's better to look at how SNS extends and complements email. Takashi's July 3, 2015 TractionSoftware.jp blog post explains how, see this rough Google English translation.
My Part Wor ks
About 50 years ago, Andy van Dam joined the Brown University faculty with the world's second PhD in Computer Science (earned at the University of Pennsylvania). Today many of Andy’s friends, faculty, students and former students are celebrating his 50 years at Brown with Stone Age, Iron Age and Machine Age panels. [ June 9, 2015 update: See event video: Celebrate with Andy: 50 Years of Computer Science at Brown University ]
May 2015 | TeamPage Bookmarks, interactive filters, and Japanese search improvement
Traction® TeamPage Summer 2015 Release introduces a new TeamPage Bookmarks sidebar and interactive filtering. Interactive filtering makes it easy to focus on what interests you; bookmarks make it simple to return to any filtered or standard view with one click. The release also: improves searching and hit highlighting of Japanese text using the TeamPage native search interface; adds new classes to the TeamPage SDK; includes bug fixes, updated internationalization, and performance improvements.
March 2015 | TeamPage 6.1 Burn-up charts, interactive tables, SDK extensions
Traction® TeamPage 6.1 Spring 2015 Release focuses on improvements to the TeamPage Project Management suite, including a new "Burn-up Chart" for tracking progress; user-defined interactive tables to dynamically summarize activity; and better tools for understanding the big picture of a project or milestone. This release also includes major under-the-hood improvements to TeamPage's forms SDK to make it easier for developers to create custom forms, or customized variations of standard forms.
Dec 2014 | TeamPage @ Mentions
Traction® TeamPage Fall 2014 Release Introduces inline @ mentions. An @ mention makes it it easy to bring any TeamPage item to someone’s attention just by typing their name. Automatic inline completion makes @ name lookup easy. When a person is mentioned, TeamPage will automatically notify them of follow on comments. Reply to the inline or email notification to add a quick response from your smart phone, tablet, or a Web browser. This is a great way to bring someone into a conversation without sending a hand authored email, text message or other message. @ mentions extend TeamPage's Work Graph model using notation that's familiar from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other Web services.
Enterprise 2.0 - Are we there yet?
Andrew McAfee writes Nov 20, 2014: "Facebook’s recent announcement that it’s readying a version of its social software for workplaces got me thinking about Enterprise 2.0, a topic I used to think a great deal about. Five years ago I published a book with that title, arguing that enterprise social software platforms would be valuable tools for businesses...
Why did it take so long? I can think of a few reasons. It’s hard to get the tools right — useful and simple software is viciously hard to make. Old habits die hard, and old managers die (or at least leave the workforce) slowly. The influx of ever-more Millennials has almost certainly helped, since they consider email antediluvian and traditional collaboration software a bad joke.
Whatever the causes, I’m happy to see evidence that appropriate digital technologies are finally appearing to help with the less structured, less formal work of the enterprise. It’s about time.
What do you think? Is Enterprise 2.0 finally here? If so, why now? Leave a comment, please, and let us know."
Ada Lovelace Day | Emmy Noether, Mathematician
Ada Lovelace Day celebrates 
the contributions of women in science and technology, follow @FindingAda for news and events. This year I've chosen to write about mathematician Amalie "Emmy" Noether. At the time of her death in April 1935, she was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Herman Weyl, Norbert Weiner and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics. Noether’s First Theorem is a fundamental tool of modern physics and the calculus of variations: every symmetry corresponds to a conservation law. "It was her work in the theory of invariants which led to formulations for several concepts of Einstein's general theory of relativity." [J J O'Connor and E F Robertson, 1997]. Of her later work, Nathan Jacobson said: "The development of abstract algebra, which is one of the most distinctive innovations of twentieth century mathematics, is largely due to her – in published papers, in lectures, and in personal influence on her contemporaries." Einstein wrote Noether's obituary in the New York Times, May 5, 1935:
Named Data Networking - Boffin Alert
On Sep 4, 2014 the Named Data Networking project announced a new consortium to carry the concepts of Named Data Networking (NDN) forward in the commercial world. If this doesn't sound exciting, try The Register's take: DEATH TO TCP/IP cry Cisco, Intel, US gov and boffins galore. What if you could use the internet to access content securely and efficiently, where anything you want is identified by name rather than by its internet address? The NDN concept is technically sweet, gaining traction, and is wonderfully explained and motivated in a video by its principle inventor and instigator Van Jacobson. Read on for the video, a few quotes, reference links, and a few thoughts on what NDN could mean for the Internet of Things, Apple, Google and work on the Web. Short version: Bring popcorn.
Sept 2014 | KMWorld names TeamPage a Trend-Setting Product of 2014
On Sept 1, 2014 KMWorld recognized Traction® Software's TeamPage as a Trend-Setting Product of 2014. KMWorld editor Hugh McKellar writes: "This year, we looked at more than 600 products. Traction® TeamPage was selected by the panel because it demonstrates thoughtful, well-reasoned innovation and execution for the most important constituency of them all: the customer.” Traction Software is honored that KMWorld has again selected TeamPage as a Trend-Setting Product. TeamPage customers such as Alcoa and Athens Group show the value of integrated action tracking and collaboration in support of knowedge management, quality management, project management, and similar business activities. Read KMWorld Trend-Setting Products of 2014
Linked, Open, Heterogeneous
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Art, Data, and Business Duane Degler of Design For Context posted slides from his 5 April 2014 Museums and the Web talk, Design Meets Data (Linked, Open, Heterogeneous). Degler addresses what he calls the LAM (Libraries, Archives, Museums) Digital Information Ecosystem. I believe the same principles apply when businesses connect internal teams, external customers, external suppliers, and partners of all sorts as part of their Business Information Ecosystem. Read Degler's summary and slides, below:
Aug 2014 | Providence Business News - Social tools being adapted for Web-based QC tool
Writing in the 8 Aug 2014 Providence Business News, Staff Writer Patrick Anderson interviewed Traction® Software VP of Sales Jordan Frank and Thomas Cogdell, DTA quality manager for Houston-based firm The Athens Group. The oil-rig consulting firm purchased Traction® TeamPage to support its push for ISO 9001 certified rig inspection, verification and technology assurance services. Anderson quotes Cogdell: “The reason we chose it is because it is Web based with a good security audit and trail feature,” said Thomas Cogdell, DTA quality manager for Athens Group. “Every change to every document is tracked and reported on, and nothing gets lost. It gives us the flexibility to encourage employees to add to the knowledge base freely and the quality control we need.” » Read the full story
July 2014 | TeamPage Notifications
Traction® Traction Software Summer 2014 Release New features include inline-page push Notifications, extending TeamPage's email notifications. Notifications make it simple to focus on activity that's important to you. Get more details, or send a quick reply whether in your office or using your smartphone or tablet. Change what you watch when your priorities and interests change. Available now, contact us for more information or a free trial.
Hello! Greetings from Takashi Okutsu
Hi everyone. I am delighted to introduce myself to you as a member of the Traction Software Team. As some of you know, my name is Takashi Okutsu, and I am the director of Traction Software's Japan Business Office, located in Yokohama.
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