Linksys users benefit from peace of mind in their home networking environment.

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Powering this vision is a suite of IBM products such as Lotus Notes for email, contacts, and calendaring, Lotus Connections, the social networking environment, Lotus Quickr, the document repository, and Lotus Sametime for unified communications and real time collaboration such as web conferencing and instant messaging.

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Social networking in a corporate environment should now be a listening exercise rather than a post-a-day marathon.

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We feel that sharing pictures within a family unit and participating in family communications through to do lists, calendaring, and chatting is a great way to introduce children to social networking in a controlled environment.

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But social networking is not a controlled environment and that scares bankers.

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Additionally, a subscription-based business model that relies on stable recurring revenues will decrease the downside risk in a weak spending environment like the one the networking industry finds itself currently in.

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Its vision was to build a computing environment that closely resembles the social networking experience that its employees have at home, but with a business focus.

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They will allow it to offer classes and training (for both consumers and small businesses), display its devices and test in-development gadgets, provide a lab-like environment for startups, and a networking platform for local businesses.

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In short, it was just about the perfect environment to conduct a small, high-speed networking experiment.

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