More pointers from earlier this month:

The Semantic Enterprise
On Collaboration 2.0, Oliver Marks shows a video overview of the semantic web, and shares his thoughts on its complexity: “Enterprise search, currently a huge challenge, particularly across multiple applications and their associated databases, will be transformed into a powerful context engine. The productivity and efficiency gains of this approach will be substantial, but more importantly the ‘knowledge is power’ factor provided by these rich referrals will create smarter minds more quickly. This also has major implications for training and learning management systems.”

Seven reasons cloud computing works in a tough economy
Instead of a conservative approach, companies may need to be more aggressive in finding new technologies like cloud computing to reduce expenses writes Kathleen Lau in ComputerWorld: “When introducing a new application, hardware is a significant upfront cost, said Armijo. But cloud computing means the IT department can acquire the resources by paying the provider “by-the-drink” while not spending on hardware up front, and “and this allows you to spread that cost over time, and also to really manage that cost.” So, the required 10 servers by application, once successful, can be purchased incrementally.”

The Essential Time-Saving Guide for Busy People
Meant as a guide to conquer the holidays, Leo Babauta’s advice on Zen Habits can easily be adapted to everyday life: “Pick the top 2-3 things you need or want to accomplish today, and get those done first. While on other days you might push these important things back (and possibly not get them done at all), if you do them first the rest of your day will be gravy. In fact, if you have the freedom, you can sometimes even call it a day after you get the important stuff done – the rest can wait until tomorrow.”

Security in a Unified Communications Environment
Richard Grigonis writes about the difficulty of securing a UC system given the increasing number of users and the diversity of remote location access, and what top players are doing to address them. “Customers also want to be able to deploy security as seamlessly as possible, preferably from Day One onwards, rather than building a UC system first and then securing it later, which can lead to various issues, such as limited options in the way they can secure things. We’re also are trying to solve some of the interoperability problems.”

Online Stimulus
A Baltimore Sun opinion piece opinion piece on the need to invest in Internet infrastructure to help various parts of society, as well as the need to proceed with caution: “Beyond education, other potential benefits of high-speed Internet are apparent. Wider access would lead to more efficient and effective health care, spur entrepreneurial efforts, particularly in rural areas, and promote the arts, science and social interaction. Mr. Obama himself has shown how the Internet can be an effective tool in promoting a political agenda and spurring wider participation in the democratic process.”

Dynamic Infrastructure: Networking Industry’s Biggest Hope
Gregory Ness of Seeking Alpha talks about the shifting focus from speed to flexibility and easier to manage networks: “When you combine rising (manual labor) costs on a per IP address basis with the ongoing expansion of the network (more IP addresses) within the context of a global recession you have the makings of a wake up call for vendors and CIOs: a wake up call driven by rising operations expenses, increasing outages and fixed or even declining budgets as networks become more operationally significant. Those who embrace the power of automation will crowd out those who fail to see the implications of new demands.”

Seven corporate resolutions for an austere new year
The Financial Times’ Andrew Hill made a humorous list of what top businessmen and policymakers should do in the coming year. “Learn a new skill or seek a new challenge. Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of UK Financial Investments, and John Kingman, his chief executive, have taken up juggling. Their task in 2009 is to balance UKFI’s aim of increasing the value of taxpayers’ stakes in banks with the same taxpayers’ desire for the banks to extend more loans to them.”

7 Work Life Culture predictions for 2009
Judy Martin gives her personal take on what offices across America should expect in the year ahead: “In response to rising unemployment and battered stocks a flood of risk takers will emerge as entrepreneurs. Although the economic climate is not ripe for taking chances, people will be working harder and longer because their retirement funds have dwindled down to nothing. In the face of adversity, we might see more small home based businesses and entrepreneurs emerging from the retirement pool as getting a job after 60 can prove difficult.”