May 26, 2004

Pop Goes the GMail

At this point, PGtGM looks to only be a proof-of-concept, but essentially it is destine to be a POP3 proxy for Google’s GMail.

This is/will be a cool hack, but probably be a moot point once some of the rumored features of GMail start to roll out (namely POP3 and RSS/Atom).

May 20, 2004

Gmail in the Enterprise

I’ve been disconnected all week in PeopleSoft training, but during lunch today I caught Steve Gillmor’s eWeek column from last week about Gmail where he cites a potential example of the “Google Platform” in the enterprise.

“By the time the Gmail beta period ends in three to six months, Brin and his team have promised to enable forwarding and POP3 access. However, more is required of a corporate mail service. Those capabilities must be extended to allow Gmail to provide disconnected operation and IDE for packaged applications.”

May 18, 2004

Frontier goes Open Source (soon)

After dabbling with Frontier over the last five years, I often miss the outlining features of Frontier’s built-in IDE when working in other environments. I’m intrigued however with
Dave Winer’s latest announcement regarding the eminent release of the Frontier kernel as OSS.

It will be interesting to see what OSS license UserLand chooses and if they intend on releasing any of the non-kernelized code such as part of the CMS framework, Manila and/or Radio.

May 14, 2004

Google Groups Beta 2

Google opened beta 2 of Google Groups. They’ve integrated it with Gmail, which gives you the ability to post to Usenet newsgroups as well as create new groups.

All these “new” features are strangely reminiscent of what
My Deja News offered back in 1998…

Hey wait a second! Google purchased Deja back in 2001. What took them so long to integrate services?

I’m not sure, but there is progress however…

For example, you can now get an Atom Feed of your favorite newsgroups.

May 12, 2004

Open Source Search Results Clustering Framework

My smart search buddies over at BA-Insight (who need to get their blog online!) pointed me to Carrot2, which is described as “ a system for clustering textual data“. (the site is a bit slow)

Generally speaking, Carrot2 is an Open Source alternative to Vivisimo. (Nice!)

Carrot2 has some other interesting features too. Like for example, it can be used as a meta-search component. In addition, it can be integrated with full-featured text search engines such as the Open Source Egothor and some other lesser known engines.

May 11, 2004

IBM’s Web-Based Desktop Apps

Based on a news.com story and /. thread, it seems like we’re “gonna party like it’s 1999” Again! (remember myWebOS)

However this time IBM may possibly be able to pull this off. I don’t think IBM’s effort will significantly deplete MSFT’s 90% market share of the desktop software market, but perhaps they will carve out enough to make it a viable and cheaper alternative.

From the news.com story: “The new software, part of IBM’s Lotus Workplace strategy, is a bundle that includes e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet and database applications aimed at business users. The package also includes server-based management software, as well as software to run productivity applications on handheld devices.”

May 10, 2004

Command Line Frontend to MovableType

I must have missed this, but back in December 2003, Johann Schmidt released the latest version of MTshell, which as the subject says is a CLI for MovableType.

“MTshell is a perl program which allows you to maintain your Movable Type blog from a command line prompt. If you’re a Linux/Unix user and run an instance of Movable Type on a server which you have shell access to you’ll probably be interested.”

May 6, 2004

Adobe Designer 6.0 preview

As expected, Adobe has come back at MSFT’s InfoPath with the preview release of Adobe Designer 6.0

Jon Udell of course is spot on with a review in his blog of Designer, which can also be found in this weeks print edition of Info World:

From Jon: “Despite evident weaknesses, the Designer/Reader duo offers two key strengths: digital-paper fidelity, and a ubiquitous runtime. Using the free Reader, I was able to fill out a Designer-built form, print a high-fidelity copy for my records, and post its XML data to a Web server. No matter how the future of e-forms unfolds, that’s going to be a popular scenario.”

May 3, 2004

Boot. Play! Retro-style

Give that old PC a new life by turning it into a retro gaming console with the KnoppiXMAME Live CD Linux Distro.

“KnoppiXMAME is a bootable CD/DVD image with hardware automatic probing and configuration for playing MAME games. No games are included, but they can be added to the ISO image, as well as new versions of X-MAME, gxmame, and the Linux kernel”

Of course you’ll need to legally obtain a few MAME ROMs, but you knew that anyway ;-)

April 30, 2004

More on E-mail for Everything

Ironically, the week my InfoWorld subscription seems to have lapsed in the renewal process, Jon Udell, in his latest column, makes some of the very same points I mentioned yesterday regarding the bastardization of email for file sharing.

Jon writes:

“It drives me nuts when people send me multi-megabyte files as e-mail attachments. Don’t they know a better way?”
…
“E-mail is a poor file-transfer solution in many ways, but it makes perfect sense to users. An e-mail with an attachment compresses notification and delivery into a single step.”