Big Blue is Jamming

The Financial Times reported today that Big Blue will launch "jamming," an online brainstorming technology, born out of the company's desire to listen to its 300,00 worldwide employees. IBM has recieved interest from financial, telecom and packaging industries for this technology that enables employees to be involved in crucial decisions including merger integration, corporate strategy and customer relations.

As someone who believes companies would be much more successful when enabling input from the employees on the frontlines, I see this as a very momentous announcement. Imagine if companies like Cingular could tell employees about what day new phones are coming out before they unwrap the box the night before or seeing it in the Sunday weekly ads.

Voicemail 2.0

The New York Times' David Pogue discussed that technology is now available to convert voicemail that can be sent to you via text messages. My question to vendors, what took you so long? There are still some challenges as voice recogniation software has to become better and you might be charged double for airtime, fowarding and text messages...and unfortunately for me, I have Sprint. As a result I will probably stay away initially but SpinVox and SimulScribe are worth a look if you hate checking your voicemail like me.

I like Sprint because my night minutes start at 7 p.m. but they don't have very good service and all the hidden charges really bug me. But Cingular and T-Mobile are worse. I think I'll try Verizon next but this is a totally different story...