Greetings!

As the days starting getting longer, we hope this finds you all getting ready for spring. This month we chose to focus on wikis and the potential they have to change the way we collaboratively work.
If you missed our letter last month, be sure to check out our new website this month at www.e- richards.com. Hope you had a wonderful Saint Patrick's Day!

Doreen Gebbia

The first WikiWikiWeb began in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, originally as a means of discussing design practices within a domain. Today, a wiki is software where HTML pages can be easily rewritten, and each individual change that is made to a page is recorded. At any point, the page can be put back to where it was at any of the previous stages.

In the usual corporate work group, documents are rewritten, revised, and restructured hundreds of times before they get sent out to clients or prospects. All these revisions are emailed back and forth, across the country or the world, for everyone's approval and insight. That makes for huge quantity of emails with attachments that clog up systems and email boxes.

Acting as a type of bulletin board database, wikis can allow work groups to collaborate without wasting time and space in individual inboxes. What makes them especially useful is the efficiency and ease of use. Teams can easily change data and bounce ideas of each other in real time. Also, wikis can have completely open access or they can have restricted logins, making them as public or secure as need be.

It is remarkable how versatile wikis have become. While some support only basic text editing, others allow for images, numeric data tables, or even interactive data collection. Make sure to stay on top wikis in the news - and what they may do for you and your company.

Wikipedia is the largest wiki, but others can be found here.

Canyon Ranch, the most renowned "wellness lifestyle company," has a wonderful website with tricks and tips for a healthy lifestyle. There is a very interesting page listing the twelve favorite foods of Lisa Powell, Director of Nutrition at Canyon Ranch in Tucson. Lisa Powell, M.S., R.D., specializes in digestive disorders, cardiovascular disease, nutritional supplements, feeding healthy children and teens, inflammatory disorders and eating for optimal health. With her extensive experience, the following remain her favorite top twelve foods:
Olive Oil, Garlic, Green Chili, Baby Carrots, Steak, Goat Cheese, Avocado, Nuts, Berries, Chocolate, Coffee (in moderation), and Low-fat Yogurt.

Click here for more from Canyon Ranch
 

The Wal-Mart Effect, by Charles Fishman (Jan 2006)

An award-winning journalist breaks through the wall of secrecy to reveal the many astonishing ways Wal- Mart's power affects our lives and reaches all around the world. The Wal-Mart Effect: The overwhelming impact of the world's largest companydue to its relentless pursuit of low priceson retailers and manufacturers, wages and jobs, the culture of shopping, the shape of our communities, and the environment; a global force of unprecedented nature.

Click here to purchase
 

Ask eRichards

This Month's Question: "I was recently having a conversation with one of our IT guys, was half paying attention, and was wondering if you could catch me up by explaining a "bus network" in layman's terms?"

A bus network is a network where all the computers are connected by a shared communications line (the bus). While these networks are easy to set up, the cheapest network to implement, and good for temporary situations, they do have drawbacks.

Problems arise when two or more clients (computers - the purple circles in the diagram above) both want to transmit information on the same line. Because of this, there has to be some type of moderating done on the line. Most of the time these networks are passive, which means that the computers don't move the signal along, they just wait for it. They are tough to troubleshoot and have very low security. In fact, these networks are very out of date and uncommon now.

Again, we invite you to send us your questions on IT issues in your work place. We apologize that we can't respond to them all. We invite you to email us with any questions - small or large - that we may be able to answer in our newsletter. Please send all questions to ask@e-richards.com.