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With all the hype over Web 2.0, it’s hard to figure out a solid initial strategy to make a corporate Web site more dynamic. Here are our top 10 tips, taken from leading experts and IT managers who already have paved the way. These will help you get your feet wet and understand the productivity, power, and problems with the genre.

1 Start a blog with WordPress or TypePad

Both sites offer free hosting and simple tools that can take just a few minutes to learn. Both also sell a corporate version of their blogging software (TypePad’s is called Movable Type) that can be run from inside a corporate firewall, should that be of concern.

All blogging software allows for simple creation of Really Simple Syndication data feeds that can be used to keep track of new content and used by collaborative teams to keep each other current with new postings to the site.

David Meerman Scott, whose latest book is called The New Rules of Marketing And PR (Wiley, 2007), talks about why RSS is so important: “RSS is my preferred method in my work tracking markets, companies, and ideas,” he says. “Having the information come to me in my browser as an http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/defineterm.jhtml?term=RSS&x=&y= feed is just so much easier than in the days when I had to go looking for it myself. And it also bypasses the increasingly crowded and annoying e-mail channel, too.”

2 Start a wiki as your intranet or extranet

Wikis are Web sites that are easily editable by users, who can change pages and upload their own content. There are free hosting sites such as WetPaint.com, and Jive Software’s Clearspace has a hosted version that is free for up to five users and $29 per user per year for larger-scale implementations, with an option to install the software on your own servers.

“Blogs and wikis are pretty good points of entrance because they are community driven and lightweight,” says Eric Raarup, the VP of IT strategy and planning for developer Inetium. “Today’s users are creating their own content, responding to content they see on discussion boards, uploading their own documents; that is all part of being in communities of interest.” And Scott says “a wiki works well for many organizations as a way to show potential customers that there is a vibrant community of people using their products or services.”

A great example of this is what is happening with Regence, the largest health insurer in the Pacific Northwest/Mountain State region with Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans in four states. Regence established last year a series of moderated discussion forums covering topics such as parenting, nutrition, and grief issues.

“We have tapped into Jive technology to involve our members in being active in their own care,” says Will McKinney, who is VP of consumer directed health Systems for Regence in Portland, Ore. The company also uses its Interwoven to maintain a series of “live journals” or stories written by real people, using their own names and talking about issues like weight loss, for example. The company also has a team of in-house content editors who travel throughout the region and videotape members’ stories to post on the member Web site.

“We want our members to be engaged and talking among themselves,” says McKinney. “Our theme is to reach out to the entire community, involve people beyond chronic diagnoses. It helps to ask the doctor a few questions and make sure they understand your needs. The interest, response, and speed of acceptance happened more quickly that I had thought. Our customers are very anxious to talk and post their thoughts.”

“Wikis can aggregate things for internal consumption very nicely,” says David O’Berry, the director of IT for the South Carolina Department of Probation. “They can be used to raise awareness within an organization and help synthesize business knowledge for our subject matter experts.”

“Clearspace can be deployed both inside and outside a corporate firewall,” says David Hersh, the CEO of Jive. “It can be used to share ideas and show best corporate practices, and establish communities. We provide a mechanism for organizations who want to have its employees and its customers collaborate. We also have a single architecture and a unified way to start blogs, wikis, and podcasts all at once.”

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A Chicago man is being charged with leaking the season premier and three other episodes of the TV show 24 by uploading it onto a Web site.

Jorge Romero, 24, is accused of uploading copyrighted material to a publicly accessible computer network knowing the work was intended for commercial distribution. If convicted, he could face three years in federal prison.

The criminal complaint contends that Romero uploaded the first two episodes of this season’s 24 to the LiveDigital.com Web site on Jan. 6, which was eight days before it was broadcast on the Fox television network. He also is accused of uploading the second two episodes of 24 to the same site on Jan. 7.

And according to the criminal complaint, Romero on the same day also allegedly posted links to the uploads on other Web sites, making it easier for people to find the unauthorized episodes online.

Fox broadcast the first episodes of 24 on Jan. 14 and 15, and later released the four-episode season premier on DVD.

According to an affidavit, Fox employees discovered the illegal uploads on LiveDigital on Jan. 8. On April 4, special agents with the FBI interviewed Romero, who admitted that he had obtained the pirated copies from another Web site, that he uploaded the episodes of 24 to LiveDigitial before their airing by Fox, and that he put links to the uploads on another Web site, the affidavit noted.

The http://www.fox.com/24/ as agent Jack Bauer, who works in a fictional anti-terror unit in the U.S. government. The show is presented in real time, with each season representing a day in the life of Bauer.

In what is shaping up as something of an Apple alumni reunion, Palm is betting that its http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/06/palm_finally_se.html, announced after weeks of takeover speculation, will allow the company to respark growth while competing with much larger rivals such as Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung.

Palm will to private equity firm Elevation Partners for $325 million in a deal that brings in a former Apple senior executive as chairman and adds another to Palm’s board of directors.

Palm’s shares climbed 8.5% as investors hoped the cash infusion and the appointment of Jon Rubinstein, formerly senior VP and general manager of Apple’s iPod unit, as executive chairman would revive the Palm brand — while perhaps leading to an alliance of some form with Apple, which later this month will launch the iPhone, the most anticipated new mobile device in a decade.

Rubinstein’s “role will be in strengthening and fine tuning our products engine,” Palm chief executive Ed Colligan said on a conference call. “This is about allowing us to put a team in place to enable us to capture a leadership position.”

Elevation co-founders Fred Anderson, Apple’s former CFO, and Roger McNamee will join Palm’s board, replacing Palm chairman Eric Benhamou and director D. Scott Mercer, who will both resign once the deal closes.

The reorganization follows last week’s release of the Foleo, a mininotebook device designed as a large-display, full-keyboard companion to Palm’s flagship Treo smartphone. Though Palm co-founder Jeff Hawkins described the Foleo as “the most exciting new product I’ve ever worked on,” the Foleo was met with http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199703590&subSection=News from the mobile and wireless community.

In fact, Monday’s senior management turnover could be seen as a gentle shove aside to Hawkins, who is viewed as a genuine innovator for his hand in creating both the Treo and the Palm Pilot, but has not produced a breakthrough device since the 2002 debut of the Treo.

“The problem Palm had was that they created this top-secret ’skunkworks’ team to develop the Foleo, but there was nobody allowed to perform a sanity check on whether this device was salable,” one market observer said after last week’s Foleo release. “Jeff Hawkins is a god at Palm, so nobody bothered to question this.”

The addition of Rubinstein, considered one of the architects of the iPod phenomenon, means that Palm now has a stronger hand at the tiller — and someone who can overrule Hawkins when necessary.

“While Palm has numerous near-term challenges, we are upgrading Palm shares … in view of Palm’s announcement [of] a private equity involvement by former Apple executives, as well as a valuation of around $17.50 [per share] for the Elevation Partners stake,” Bear Stearns analyst Andy Neff said in a note to clients. Neff added that he expects alliance talks between Palm and Apple to emerge.

Such an alliance could be complicated by the unfolding stock-option backdating scandal at Apple. Anderson, the former Apple CFO, reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in April over backdated stock options at the company. Anderson claimed that he relied on Apple CEO Steve Jobs in handling 2001 stock option grants that became the subject of an investigation and civil lawsuit. While Jobs has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the backdating practices, the investigation is ongoing.

The Palm deal is the largest investment to date for Elevation, which earlier took a $200 million stake in Forbes magazine.

Reuters contributed to this report.