December 23, 2003

Simple, Private File Sharing

As others have predicted, we will see more an more of these…

“MUTE File Sharing is a new peer-to-peer network that provides easy search-and-download functionality while also protecting your privacy.”

I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems to be similar to Waste

December 19, 2003

Heliodisplay- Interactive Free-Space Display

IO2 Technology has demonstrated a 42″ prototype of what they are calling “Heliodisplay- Interactive Free-Space Display“, which is essentially display without a “screen” …

“The Heliodisplay projects full color streaming video into free space (i.e. air). It is plug-and-play compatible with most video sources (TV, DVD, computer, etc.). These non-holographic images can be fully interactive, allowing a hand or finger to select, navigate and manipulate — as if it were a virtual touch screen.”

December 18, 2003

Social Bookmarks Manager Right-Click Context Menu

Last night I hacked together a bit of JavaScript to add a right-click context menu posting option to Joshua Schachter’s Social Bookmarks Manager.

It works in a similar fashion to the bookmarklet, but is accessible via the right-click context menu in IE. It also adds the feature of pulling in any text selected on the page into the “extended” description field and remembers your del.icio.us/user path after the first invocation by storing it in a cookie.

December 17, 2003

Syndication Friendly Longhorn

Others have mentioned the impact of the embedded RSS capabilities that will be in Longhorn. This time however, it’s Scoble talking about the broader implications of a syndication friendly OS

“In Longhorn you can store a ton of metadata with your files. You can also find those files much more easily. Why is that important to syndication? Because now you have a file system that supports sending files out via a syndication feed, storing them locally, and then letting users get to them in new and interesting ways.”

December 16, 2003

Social Networking in the Enterprise

Ephraim Schwartz writes in InfoWorld about how Social Networking Software is targeting the corporate enterprise, with startups such as
ZeroDegrees,
Interface Software,
ContactNetwork, and
Spoke targeting CRM…

“Leveraging advances in communication and integration, a new kind of application — corporate social networking — is being folded into the CRM feature set.”

“Companies like Siebel and Salesforce.com are watching this space. These social networking companies will be gobbled up real quick,”

In addition, I believe that Microsoft and IBM are watching this space as well, because in my opinion Social Networking Software is a natural extension to enterprise messaging software such as Exchange and Domino.

December 15, 2003

Searching RSS Channels for News

Ray Matthews of Utah State Library Division has published an excellent tutorial on the various methods for searching RSS feeds. I think the best part is the comprehensive list of RSS-related search engines and tools.

December 12, 2003

Open Groupware Knoppix CD

Build a test Open Groupware server simply by rebooting your system with the
OGo Knoppix CD!

“OGo Knoppix CD is a bootable CD which contains a complete Debian GNU/Linux system, a fully configured OGo installation, a Cyrus server and some more Linux software.

I think this is worth a burn and reboot!

December 11, 2003

Building a Low-Budget TiVo Substitute

Gen over at PVRBlog pointed me to an excellent Slashdot thread that’s talking about building a homebrew digital video recorder on a budget, which is very timely for me.

In fact, I just updated my wiki with a rough spec for my own PVR. Now I need to refine and price out the equipment because I think I’m already over budget.

December 10, 2003

Blog without Blogging

No time to blog? Try Drunk Men Work Here’s free weblog service and utilize their Zero-Click posting technology

Best of all, there’s no learning required!

December 8, 2003

Social Network Search

You can create a social network search interface by using Micah Alpern’s ‘Blogs I Read’ Google Hack and/or Feedster. However it appears that Eurekster has taken it one step further:

“Eurekster uses the six-degrees of separation concept to learn from your extended network of contacts and deliver you prioritized results based on the success and proximity of the searches they have done.”

The public beta currently available seems to require a bit more effort than the average consumer “searcher” would be willing to afford. However, I would like to see how well this works within the corporate enterprise — assuming of course you can integrate much of the social network mechanics with existing enterprise directory services such as Active Directory or other LDAP-compliant systems.