Like so many people, I tend to have 10-30 tabs open at once throughout the day as a way to keep track of the myriad tasks, followups, read-later, and more. I've been experimenting with ways to build productivity, keep track of all these in-process & to-do's, while not getting too distracted. You noted the big ones that I've been playing with - Firefox with addons, iGoogle with gadgets, and few minor RSS feeder sites working to be more, even MSN & Yahoo are working to become fully customizable.

One issue I'm finding is that with so many unique addons, gadgets, widgets, dropins, etc, I am starting to see a number of issues that these technologies will need to resolve before corporate business will fully approve of their use internally.

You of course already mentioned the security issue, and that is the biggest deal breaker. A system like SocialText that allows a firm to build out these kinds of web2.0 tools internally, allowing controlled customization of tools is likely the strongest path to rapid success in that market.

As I build up and customize a portal with features and functions, I also see that the mix and match of all these tools do not always play nice together, frequently crashing my browser. This is exactly why I switched to Firefox rather than IE, since Firefox has more robust auto-recovery features. But, corporates are not as quick to permit multiple browsers (another major application to learn and support). As more and more of our business functions use and even subsist on the internet, either Microsoft will need to follow Firefox's example of simple yet robust auto-recovery, or corporate will need to look to replace Microsoft as the browser default.

I've also noted conflicts in my PC's internet access. Each widget, gadget, addon, etc all have their own settings for refreshing their content. Understandable, since you many need to see some things updated more frequently than others. The problems is that as portals, and their customization options proliferate, a standard default for content refreshes needs to be established, and each new tool added needs to default to that preset master value, say, as part of a theme setting. Once downloaded to the user's default, then the user can reconfigure that refresh rate if needed.

Finally, while still very nascent, I'd like to add a wish list of shorts for what I feel would be two highly valuable tools if added into the design of personal portals to the corporate world.

1. Unified Messaging - there was a CIO.com article a month or so ago about stopping the use of email for all communications and as a means of data storage, and instead finding a way to use all the means of communication for their best purposes and timeliness.
* IM for quick communication interchanges and truly urgent needs;
* Email for communicating on slightly longer timelines, but without the necessity nor timeliness for response as IM (and pointing to centrally stored data, links, calendars and logs instead of attachments);
* Enterprise Blogs & Tweets for collaboration and storage of ideas and status / progress, with collaborative feedback and sharing to the group;
* RSS for distribution of materials and information (individuals and teams and choose which feeds to subscribe to, feed administrators can approve/reject subscribers for appropriate access control, etc);
* Archives and central storage for white papers, files, work-in-progress, production copies, etc.

Part of the beauty of this idea is that the use of tags and contextual data could automate how information is transmitted and stored. And just as we use priority settings in personal portals, so too should we be able to personally configure the priorities of what corporate content gets communicated to us, including how (means / channel) and how often.

2. Collaborative Corporation -
Collaboration takes people working together. We can all see the benefits of extending the power of collaborative teams geographically via the internet, and in fact many companies are at the forefront of that. However, social networking tools may offer us even more opportunities to do this (Web 2.0 Crucial to New Information Workplace), simpler and less costly than the dedicated means currently available for enterprise use. The issue again is security, but in this case, I'm referring to "person"-al security.

When we collaborate in-person, live and face-to-face we smile, we use body language, we make mistakes, and we open up our personalities to some degree to each other. And in that we develop (or degrade) social relationships that define the culture of a team and of a company. Most electronic mediums lose all or major portions of that social connectiveness that is the building block of true collaboration. But social networking may give some of that openness, some of that relationship building cohesion back, if we're careful.

In effect, social networking via the internet makes each of us a "systems administrator" into the data of our own lives. We are creating roles and authorities, permission levels and accesses for selected groups and individuals into the unique aspects and moments of our lives. Inappropriate compliance and access controls can permit others to see too much or inaccurate data about yourself. [Like the common concern that employers may see what you're really like in FaceBook.]

What we need is the means to improve this new electronic social process into the context of the enterprise, allowing teams to form and share more of themselves than just work-related information, just as an on-site, face-to-face team would. This would require enterprises to allow teams to self-control what is shared between them, including some level of agreed and understood security about non-team members gaining access to that information. Pushing this down further, individuals would need the ability to monitor and control access to their own information, as well, such that their moving on to another team or project could trigger a re-alignment of information shared and available, and to whom.

These kinds of accesses and permissions are still being played out in the wild in the true social networking systems, and our culture and the world is still defining what is acceptable and not. But, to get us started, I think we can look to use corporate's existing enterprise administration and compliance tools as our guide. Combining those tools with online interactive and collaboration tools we could create new levels for roles and access authority, pushing down administrative rights down to projects, teams, and individuals.

That was a bit longer than your standard reply! :-D But you hit on a current topic I'm researching personally, and so thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts.

Mark Cummuta