This sounds like a barebones version of Groove:

“WASTE is a software product and protocol that enables secure distributed communication for small (on the order of 10-50 nodes) trusted groups of users.”

However, it looks like perhaps AOL made Nullsoft dump WASTE from their site because the link went 404 yesterday afternoon.

Of course there’s already a mirror, which I found @ blueyonder.co.uk via the Slashdot Thread:

• Windows Installer
• Source

As a fan of Groove, I’ll need to set aside some time to check this out.

Congratulations to Matthew and Mike on the release of WordPress, which is the official fork in the b2/cafélog blog tool.

On a test server I converted the data from my current b2-based blog to WordPress with very little trouble. Especially helpful was the handy upgrade script included with WordPress.

For the most part everything seems to be working well. I was even able to get the search-engine-friendly URLs working. I may in fact upgrade my live b2 blog with the new WordPress code. However, I want to run a few tests and see if any bugs pop-up before I take the plunge.

One downside is that I was hoping the initial release would include the Smarty Template Engine like the other b2-derivative b2++. However, I see that Smarty integration is in the works, which is great!

So, perhaps I’ll wait until that happens before I upgrade. Probably not; I’m too impatient ;-)

Just in case you have too much free-time while driving, it might be nice to get in a quick game and a movie or two, with this.

<wink>I stopped answering these after the first page because I overloaded the check-box buffer of my browser.</wink> (link via Doc)

“PSX will offer a DVD recorder, a 120GB hard drive, a TV tuner, an Ethernet port, a USB 2.0 port and a Memory Stick slot.” (via CNet)

Add in a TiVi-like service and I’m sold!

I can’t say that I agree with Mr. Conway of PeopleSoft in regard to his comment about .Net last week…

“PeopleSoft president and CEO Craig Conway has described Microsoft’s .Net initiative as the information technology equivalent of asbestos.”

“Conway then added that, in his opinion, Microsoft’s .Net strategy will not help business to control the costs of their enterprise applications, as it assumes code will be executed by PCs.”

Specifically, the second quote certainly seems a bit hypocritical since PeopleSoft up until version 7.02(?) was a hard-core Client/Server based application environment.

However, perhaps it is a sign of how far these titans of client/server computing have progressed in the last 5 or so years.

As far as this goes with .Net, in the short-term, PCs and especially Windows-based applications are not going away — Especially in the enterprise. It’s not something you can ignore or displace. Their ubiquity is a reality.

IMHO, .Net provides a means to enhance disparate desktop applications and provide the edge-glue to integrate with business process and enterprise legacy applications a like.

I was looking forward to an epic Memorial Day ride today, but the current downpour seems to have put a damper on the plans. Perhaps I need one of these for the trails. (Thanks for the link Ed!)

Expressions seems to be filling an up-and-coming blogging niche and at $2.50 per month, it’s certainly reasonably priced.

More here…

“Expressions! is a hosted media blogging system that makes it easy for anyone to create and maintain their very own photo or media blog. It has been designed and developed by fellow photographers, artists and bloggers to meet your specific needs.” (via Ben)

Ok, I suppose my post is a reaction or vote to
Microdoc News Dynamics of a Blogosphere Story study, which not surprisingly is tracking on Blogdex.

Whatever the case, and the label for what I’m doing here, I do find Microdoc’s study to be quite interesting. In particular, the following quotes…

Microdoc News has developed a picture of how a blogosphere story gets started, how that story develops and then how it then comes to an end. While each blogosphere story has its own pattern of development, the similarities between one story and another is intriguingly similar. The smallest blogosphere stories can have as few as fifteen bloggers, the average story has between 40 and 60 bloggers, while the largest one to date had about 285 bloggers involved. A blogosphere story can be as small as 180 posts in total, while the largest we studied has numbered 7,540 posts in total.
[… and later …]
“Perhaps the last conclusions we came to in this study is that blogs cannot be read in isolation from each other. Blog stories are understood and appreciated in aggregate and not in isolation. On the other hand, mainstream media stories tend to be read in isolation rather than read and compared.

In total, Microdoc News believes blogging to be a radically different world than that of mainstream media.”

I’ve been intrigued by the promise of RDF and followed the history from Guha’s MCF HotSauce application, through Tim Berners-Lee’s Semantic Web

Although, like Tim Bray, I too have been looking for the RDF killer App. At one time I even had aspirations of what it could be.

It’s been a long time coming for RDF and as Tim rightly puts it, “… the killer [RDF] app that would make you want to View Source hasn’t arrived.”

However, I do think there are some very interesting applications and trends that have been emerging recently, like for example:

• Rob McCool and Ramanathan V. Guha’s TAP project
• Semantic Blogging @ HP
• Trusted Blog Search Tool
• The ‘friend of a friend’ project: FOAF

And I’m sure, many-many others that I’m either forgetting or I don’t know about (feel free to chime in with links).

Yet perhaps Tim Bray’s RDF challenge may inspire another round of apps that are indeed “killer”

Tim Bray’s RDF challenge: “To the first person or organization that presents me with an RDF-based app that I actually want to use on a regular basis (at least once per day), and which has the potential to spread virally, I hereby promise to sign over the domain name RDF.net…”

I sure hope so!