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Showing posts from July, 2009

Corporate screen saver costs US$122,000

Yep cost per year for screen saver running 24 hrs a day 365 days a year was US$122,000. Our organisation was looking for cost savings and a new corporate screen saver came out at about the same time. There was some comment about how much it must have cost, even though it looked good and everyone felt part of the team now they had it. I got to thinking, how much is it actually costing for everyone in our division, about 800 people, to run this new screen saver. So I opened up a power cord, got out the volt meter and measured 10 or 12 monitors and 10 or 12 different PCs to find out how much power they were using. It took a few lunch times worth of work but by the end of the week I had some numbers. I was looking to contibute something to our whole organisation, about 8000 people at the time so I was hoping for multiplier effects. What I found was very interesting but did require some assumptions due to our division and the organisation being spread all round the globe. My hypoth

Intranet incentives

My Edmonds cookbook The following is one of the many ways of "influencing" those you need on side to do intranets well! It is also great for those folks that help you out with paper prototyping and usability studies, I bake mine in muffin tins so that I can give each participant one. Edmond's Banana Cake (Page 18, of my book) Add the ingredients to a bowl in the order listed, mixing constantly 125g (4oz) butter (soft, or part melted) 175g (6oz) white sugar cream together 2 eggs 2 mashed bananas (we put brown ones from the fruit bowl in the freezer until you need them and then use those) mix ingredients Put two tablespoons of full fat milk in a cup and boil in the microwave. Add 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Mix till mixture is frothy. Add frothy bicarb/milk to the main bowl. Add one teaspoon of baking powder to 225g (8oz) white flour, sift into the mail bowl of ingredients Mix well. Bake in muffin or cake tins at 180 degrees Celsius (350F)