November 18, 2005
Virtual file systems
FUSE: Filesystem in Userspace. "There has been a lot of buzz this week about Flickrfs the virtual filesystem for Flickr. Using Flickrfs you can interact with Flickr tags and photos just like your regular filesystem. A similar service is GmailFS which lets you mount a Gmail account as a large virtual filesystem. Both of these services are built on top of FUSE. FUSE makes it easy to build fully functional filesystems inside of a userspace program. Users can script and manipulate files just like their regular files. FUSE is now part of the main Linux kernel with release 2.6.14. Check out the list of other interesting filesystems built using FUSE. Of particular interest: WikipediaFS, SMB for FUSE is similar to Network Neighborhood, SSHFS, btslave to mount torrent files, and djmount is a UPnP AV client."
hack a day
November 15, 2005
Programming anything
First PC Programmable Flashlight: Angus Noble Indium. "Via a PC the flashlight can be programmed to show complex sequences of strobes, fades and Morse code."
I4U News
November 11, 2005
Embedding one app in another
Internet Explorer in a Firefox tab!. "IE Tab, an extension from Taiwan, features embedding Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox. This extension is derived from the famous extension IE View, but they are quite different. While IE View always open IE-only pages in newly launched windows of Internet Explorer, IE Tab can open them in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox."
Lifehacker
November 01, 2005
Online database of anything
Google Base: All your base are, in fact, belong to us. "Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free. Examples of items you can find in Google Base: • Description of your party planning service • Articles on current events from your website • Listing of your used car for sale • Database of protein structures. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local."Ars Technica
October 12, 2005
Helping with tagging
Tagging Help With Tagyu. "The basic premise of Tagyu is to let other people help you tag your content. Tagyu compares what you’re writing to what other people around the web are writing. It looks at how they’ve tagged their content and uses that information to give you some ideas about how to tag yours."
Lifehacker
October 10, 2005
Adjusting to open source
Opening Up to Open Source. "Although startups still predominate, in the past year all the major technology vendors have made significant open-source moves, either by releasing their own software under free licenses or by acquiring smaller vendors to bolster their open-source support. Open source has not, as some predicted, been the death of the corporate software model. But it is indeed transforming it. "I firmly believe that the pressure from open-source projects has already upped the ante for large corporations to adapt" to opening up their businesses to open-source opportunities, said Greg Roy, senior systems engineer at Flight Centre North America."EWeek
October 05, 2005
Simple, collaborative note-taking
JotSpot Live: Collaborative Pages. "JotSpot Live provides a light-weight Wiki-like solution to collaborative note-taking. Users create pages that can be edited in real time by others within an invited group. JotSpot aims—and succeeds to a point, although the site still has a fair number of bugs—to make the process easier and more transparent to the average business user than a traditional Wiki. The interactive editing tools feel like a word processor, which is a huge plus in my opinion."
Lifehacker
Searching just the sites you want
ROLLYO. "Are you tired of wading though thousands of irrelevant search results to get to the information you want? Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust? With Rollyo, you can easily create your own custom search engines, and explore and save those created by others. "
Rollyo
September 27, 2005
Running apps off external storage
U3 Preps PC on a USB. "U3 LLC is readying its new USB drives, based on a “smart computing platform,” allowing you to basically carry around your entire PC on a USB drive—independent of any other storage device, and not tied to any specific computer. Vendors such as SanDisk and Verbatim are looking to supply the hardware, and software companies including AOL and Mozilla are planning to announce products that “run directly off the USB smart drives.” "
Gizmodo
September 21, 2005
Social networks and online services built in
Killer Buzz Flocks to New Browser. "Flock advertises itself as a "social browser," meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It's a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user. "Wired News
Hacking the phone
Embracing The Mobile Hacker Ethic. "First is Nokia’s release of the Python programming language for its Series 60 smartphone environment. The port of Python is a full implementation with a high degree of portability from the desktop environment, opening mobile development to a whole new class of programmers—which was its primary goal, says Erik Smartt, the program manager of Python for Series 60. “By choosing a developer-friendly, easy-to-learn language, Nokia is making it possible for casual developers to tinker with their mobile phones and innovate without the typical investment costs for embedded system development,..."
Gizmodo
August 30, 2005
Online/Offline hybrid OS
GoogleOS? YahooOS? MozillaOS? WebOS?. "I'm looking at the rest of the most commonly used apps on my Powerbook and there's not too many of them that absolutely need to be standalone desktop applications. Text editor, IM[3], Word, Excel, FTP, iCal, address book...I could imagine versions of these running in a browser."kottke.org
Digital schools
Look, Ma, No Schoolbooks!. "Gypton said he assigns readings based on websites, lists postings to news articles, uses online groups and message boards to keep the students connected on weekends and asks them to comment on each other's work. "Wired News
August 25, 2005
Community lending
Ripple. "Ripple cuts the banks right out of the picture by allowing anyone to act as a bank and grant credit within the Ripple system to anyone they know. The system keeps track of the source of all IOUs, so that debts that are not repaid are automatically borne by the issuer."
Project Homepage
August 24, 2005
Machines on the network
Giving Machines the Gift of Gab. "As raw material heads down the line, each production machine connects to a central server via an Ethernet cable and automatically downloads a specific program for the job, then cuts the metal as specified. Once finished, the machine then downloads another program for a new job, letting the production line build many different models without a hiccup. It's part of a manufacturing trend growing as both wireless and wired network technology drops in price: Machines on the assembly line are becoming more interconnected, giving manufacturers tight control over every part of their shop floors."Business Week
August 23, 2005
Human attributes as data
HumanML, the Human Markup Language. "HumanML wants to represent human characteristics (cultural, physical, psychological, etc.) in such a formal way it can be delivered as machine readable subtext via the use of extensible markup language (XML)."Tech Trends
August 10, 2005
Visualizations of services
Del.icio.us Visualization with Vox Delicii. "Vox Delicii is a really cool Web application that lets you view a "heat mapped" visualization of the current week's popular content on Del.icio.us. As you can see in the small shot above, you can mouse over different nodes and it'll highlight and tell you the name of the post that node represents."
Lifehacker
Scripting web applications
Ajax: The New Web Interface Design Development Approach Everyone Talks About. "Most of Ajax's benefits mirror those of sophisticated screen-based applications. However, there is a big hurdle to creating these sophisticated applications: they are full-fledged programming environments that require advanced programming skills and a long-term commitment to proprietary technology. This makes creating interfaces in this way expensive and time-consuming. Because Ajax applications are built using nothing more than current web standards, they are relatively easy to create."Robin Good
July 18, 2005
eBay-like donating
Aid Recipients Might Have the Best Ideas About Allocation. "Their base of operations is GlobalGiving, a company they set up three years ago to use the Internet to connect small donors with worthy international aid projects. So far, they've raised more than $1.5 million from about 2,000 donors to finance all or part of about 400 small-scale projects. They've already built, ripped up and rebuilt a consumer-friendly Web site. And they've developed partnerships with dozens of nonprofit organizations around the world that vet all projects."Washington post
June 30, 2005
Social content sharing
Yahoo! My Web 2.0 beta. "My Web lets you save, tag and annotate Yahoo! web search results and make them public or private. This latest release lets you search only pages your friends (address book, Messenger buddies or Yahoo! 360 contacts) have bookmarked and recommended. Similar to Google's move toward personalized search yesterday, it seems the web search heavyweights are moving away from spammable PageRanked results and toward creating little universes of trusted content for each user."
Lifehacker
June 27, 2005
New UI for existing services
del.icio.us on crack - Del.icio.us Direc.tor. "Newly-released bookmarklet Del.icio.us Direc.tor turns the Del.icio.us bookmark service into a gorgeous, lively, dynamic application that just about popped the eyeballs right out of my head."
Lifehacker
June 10, 2005
Location aware tasks
Place Mail location-sensitive to-do list for cellphones. "The app, called Place Mail, can send a reminder whenever you're near a particular location. So, for instance, if you're near the video store, it can remind you of a movie you wanted to rent."
Engadget
May 11, 2005
APIs for media providers
BBC Backstage: tools for remixing the Beeb to your spec. "BBC Backstage is a collection of feeds, APIs, and other tools for remixing the BBC's digital offerings, to "make your stuff using our stuff." They want the world to convert the BBC's raw material into individualized, idiosyncratic and wildly imaginative applications. It's the Flickrization of the Beeb and it's so exciting I can scarce contain myself."
Boing Boing
Productivity management
Getting Things Done TiddlyWiki. "GTD TiddlyWiki tracks all your Getting Things Done lists - Next Actions, Projects, and context lists - in a you-won't-believe-your-eyes dynamic web page made up of editable chunks."
Lifehacker
May 09, 2005
Wiki + Blog + lists
Backpack personal organizer. "Backpack's a fun combination wiki, weblog, to-do list and calendar that's featureful but not overwhelming. Make a page that contains check-offable lists, images, dated notes, and files about a project or idea. Link pages and share them with others for collaborative editing. Set up reminders that get sent to your email or mobile device about project deliverables - or to water the plants or pay the rent. Subscribe to page changes in your newsreader, and reminders in your calendar applicaton."
Lifehacker
April 25, 2005
Mixing up web services
Google Maps Meets Craigslist. "The cross pollination of two of the best resources available on the internet-- Google's new mapping service, and the classified listings page, Craigslist."
Cool Hunting
April 08, 2005
Mobile banking grows
CNN: Almost a million Koreans bank by cellphone. "Almost a million Koreans now do their banking via 3G cellphones, according to CNN. The service was first offered by Koomkin, South Korea's largest bank, about two years ago, and now all of the country's major banks offer mobile banking services."
Engadget
April 01, 2005
Virtual desktop through phones
VNC By Phone, Hitachi's micro-VNC. "VNC is synonymous with remote desktop control for many, and micro-VNC brings the concept to mobile phones in a way I haven't seen before."
Gizmodo
March 10, 2005
Merger of games and the rest of the world
Sony offers pizza feature for hungry gamers. "Sony has built the ability to order pizza into its latest online multiplayer game. Type the command "/pizza" while playing Everquest II, a fantasy game with 330,000 active players, and get the Pizza Hut Web site, where you can place orders for delivery."
CNN.com
Online banking replicated offline
A.T.M.'s Pick Up Web Site Tricks. "According to a report last month from the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a research organization based in Washington, online banking was the fastest-growing activity among Internet users in the last five years. The report said that 53 million people, or 44 percent of online users in the United States, did their banking online, an increase of 47 percent from late 2002."
The New York Times
March 09, 2005
Digital note taking
EverNote Product Overview. "With EverNote 1.0, you can easily store and quickly access typed and handwritten memos, webpage excerpts, emails, phone messages, addresses, passwords, brainstorms, sketches, documents and more!"
EverNote
March 07, 2005
Open source hardware
Turn that Jobo Giga Vu into, well, whatever you want. "...a recently released SDK for the device opens wide the device's warm, chewy inner Linux center, making it ripe for all sorts of hacking, from loading up PDA software (Qtopia, for instance), to loading up Doom - they have a step-by-step for that one."
Engadget
February 21, 2005
GPS + web services
Developer links GPS to Google Maps. "While this may never take the place of dedicated mapping software, the idea of getting your GPS to interface with the Web has its appeal; we'd like to be able to go a step further and be able to, say, run a search on Moviefone.com and have our GPS transparently plot a route to the theater without us having to punch in the adddress."
Engadget
Browser plug-ins
Flickr Firefox = FlickrFox. "Firefox web browser extension FlickrFox lets you browse photos in the sidebar from photo-sharing service Flickr."
Lifehacker
January 27, 2005
Business visualization tools
ADVIZOR Updates Business Visualization Software. "There is a growing need to interact with data in a more visual manner, to improve the overall value of data analysis and exploration," said Kurt Schlegel of the META Group. "This coincides with the trend toward more intuitive, self-service business intelligence solutions."
EWeek
November 30, 2004
Searching locally
Autonomy, Mamma.com Join Desktop Search Ranks. "Not to be left out of desktop search, two search vendors on Monday leaped into the growing space for managing e-mail, documents and other hard-drive data."EWeek
November 26, 2004
Workflow software
IBM's Solid Stake on the Desktop. "IBM launched a bold foray into desktop computing last spring, when it took on Microsoft's desktop monopolies -- Windows and Office -- with its own Workplace product. Now it looks like Big Blue's package of collaboration, communications, productivity, and desktop management software has struck a chord."Business Week
November 19, 2004
Complexity, complexity
Consumers Too Dumb' to Use Mobile Phones . "The research revealed that although 78 per cent of consumers now own handsets through which they can access data centric mobile services such as games, ring tones and information services only a third of consumers are using them. 76 per cent of respondents were not using them as they were too complex to access and operate, with only 10 per cent citing cost factors for lack of use and only 6 per cent lack of interest in the type of mobile services that are currently on offer."160Characters Association
November 02, 2004
Crowd participation
Backchannel Notes - Bleecker. "Last night we ran an experimental "backchannel" during Julian Bleecker's talk in the Zemeckis Media Lab. Backchannel refers to making the crowd chatter public, the idea that the students or audience can discuss during a lecture in a way that becomes part of the shared intellectual space."
just in teractive
November 01, 2004
Business wikis
Wiki startup JotSpot draws crowd for product beta. "JotSpot seeks to make wikis more accessible by adding a "what you see is what you get" editor that even novice users should be able to work with. Additionally, to make wikis more useful as a collaboration tool, JotSpot gives each wiki page that it hosts an e-mail address, allowing users to add an archive of e-mail messages to pages."InfoWorld
October 22, 2004
PCs in hospitals
In the E.R., Learning to Love the PC"Here, the system allowed us to very quickly determine his disease process very specifically and see how he was treated, and that allowed us to also act very quickly, address the pain and make sure that he didn't have an expanding heart attack."
The New York Times (may require free subscription)
October 11, 2004
Shared note-taking
RSS Feeds From Your Notes. "What is particularly useful about this free tool, is that you can create an RSS feed for any particular note page that you create. If you are sharing your notes with friends or colleagues, they can subscribe to the feed and thereby be notified whenever you make edits to your note page."RG News
October 09, 2004
Reusing online data
Visionaries outline web's future. "Amazon already has 65,000 developers who are working on ways to plunder information on its site for their own ends. The payback for Amazon is the selling of more stuff through its site."
BBC NEWS
October 08, 2004
The interet continues to change peoples behaviors
Ten years ten trends. "Ten years after electronic portals to the Worldwide Web were first opened to millions of computer users, ten significant trends have emerged that vividly illustrate how the Internet affects America, according to findings from the comprehensive year-to-year study of the impact of online technology by the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future."USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future
September 23, 2004
Better presence representations
BuddySpace - Instant Messaging Maps Semantics = Enhanced Presence Management for Collaboration, Learning, and Gaming. "Of particular interest is the role of graphical metaphors for presence, including maps, logical layouts such as building schematics and project timelines and abstract artistic layouts such as graffiti walls."
kmi.open.ac.uk
September 22, 2004
P2P collaboration
Great Presentation Showcases Groove V3 Best Collaboration Features. "This excellent audio-visual streaming presentation showcases Groove version 3 new key features and it provides visual examples of how the new features and facilities can be used."RG News
Wikis for document collaboration
Blog Wiki = Web Collaborator. "A wiki at its foundations, Web Collaborator has been designed with maximum ease-of-use in mind, and with an extra layer of security and control over who gets to contribute and who gets only to read the output of the collaborative process."RG News
September 17, 2004
Hacking together systems
Request a library book...via Amazon. "I still can't get over how cool this is. Jon Udell's little wizard lets you generate a bookmarklet for requesting a library book - based on the Amazon page you're currently viewing. It's clearly a flawless lifehack."43 Folders
August 06, 2004
Better information/news management
Flow. "Flow allows you to create, collect and store the information you rely on -- from documentation, contact information, and correspondences to web pages, images, and files -- in an intelligent and integrated manner."
Near-Time
August 04, 2004
Better electronic record keeping
The hospital of the future. "The hospital of the future is here today, but it's not in the US; it's not even in Europe--it's in Thailand. Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok is an all-digital hospital, with one giant database containing everything from patients' billing to medical history to digital images of their X-rays instead of film."WorldChanging
August 02, 2004
The semantic web
August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com). "A work of fiction. A Semantic Web scenario. A short feature from a business magazine published in 2009."Ftrain.com
July 15, 2004
IM interoperability
The Great Enterprise IM love-in. "AOL, MSN and Yahoo! are backing an "unprecedented collaborative effort" to support Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005. Using the software, companies can reach customers etc. through all the major IM networks."The Register
June 24, 2004
Government involvement in IT
Gingrich, Kennedy Pushing 'Wired' Hospitals. "On Monday, the political partisans put their party differences aside to tout electronic prescriptions, online patient records and an integrated, paperless health-care system."EWeek
June 17, 2004
Storing stuff online
Hyperlinkomatic : Introduction. "You can grab links, makes notes, set multiple categories, search links, import links from web pages, upload bookmarks, create bookmarks files, share links, publish links. It is, in short, a place to keep your links."
Hyperlinkomatic
June 14, 2004
Problems with defending intellectual property
The Patent Busting Project. "We're especially interested in patents that target tools of free expression, such as streaming media, blogging tools, and voice over IP (VoIP) technology. Most importantly, the patent-holder must be aggressively enforcing its patent and suing (or threatening to sue) alleged infringers."EFF
May 28, 2004
Better offline experience
BEA rethinks the browser for mobile workers. "Dubbed Alchemy, the technology extends the idea of a Web browser by adding an additional memory cache for fetching and storing information that a user might want to view offline."InfoWorld
May 21, 2004
What if all small/medium business services move online?
Web veteran turns to world of work. "Through the On Instant software, firms can manage customer contacts and sales leads, recruit staff, find funding, publicise what they do, search for partners and talk to staff and other network members."BBC NEWS
May 20, 2004
The semantic web
Berners-Lee extols Semantic Web at WWW Conference:. "The aim of the Semantic Web is to add metadata to information placed online, to allow it to be readable by machines. That context would enable automation of a variety of interactions. An online catalog could, for instance, connect to a user's order history and preferences, and to a calendar, to automatically pick out available times for a product delivery."Inforworld
May 19, 2004
Importance of searching locally
Google Moves Toward a Direct Confrontation With Microsoft. "Google software project, which is code-named Puffin and which will be available as a free download from Google's Web site, has been running internally at the company for about a year."
The New York Times
May 18, 2004
Software services
Gartner Says Web Services Ready for Prime Time. "The new focus, he said, will be on high-value business applications that either have to process high data volumes - such as credit-card validation, order status, inventory and Social Security benefits - or that have to process complex proprietary code and business algorithms, such as loan risk assessment."EWeek
May 17, 2004
Mixing the web apps and local apps
IBM's Bisconti: Under the Hood with IBM Workplace. "We're trying to marry the low-TCO, centralized-management qualities and ubiquitous access qualities of traditional Web apps with the rich-function offline support user experience and other qualities of traditional thick clients."EWeek
May 11, 2004
Mobile phone business automation
London cabs switching to Pocket PC Phones. "London cabs are getting rid of their two-way radio links and replacing them with XDA II Pocket PC Phones so they can do all their dispatching over the Internet or even do things like have a photo of the person being picked up sent directly to the phone."
Engadget
Applications that run on anything
IBM Launches Alternative To Microsoft Office. "Part of IBM's Lotus Workplace strategy, the software includes email, instant messaging, word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software. Unlike Microsoft's products, however, the applications are not tied to Windows or Mac systems, and can run on Linux, Unix or proprietary operating systems used in handheld computers and cellular phones."CRN
March 31, 2004
Perils of CRM, and adoption by SMB
CRM: Trickle-Down Tech. "Not only can it tie each customer's information together all in one place -- making it easy to track complaints, billing problems, order changes and the like -- outfits can also set it up to monitor trends, such as shifts in buying patterns in different regions. The temptation is to try to do it all."BusinessWeek
March 15, 2004
Onfolio: Browser based information manager
Onfolio. "Onfolio is a PC application for collecting, organizing and sharing information you find online. Fully integrated with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Office, Onfolio has tools for capturing a wide range of content including links, text snippets, images, web pages, and documents."Onfolio.com
March 01, 2004
Access to eBay through web services
eBay to Expand Developer Access "eBay's announcement meshed with one of the key themes outlined during the opening day of the conference: that major Web players such as eBay, Amazon and Google are increasingly becoming platforms themselves as they provide connections into their services and databases."eweek.com
February 26, 2004
Chicago police department & IT
Grand CIO Enterprise Value Award Winner 2004 - The Chicago Police Dept "Accessing mug shots: From up to four days without CLEAR to four seconds with CLEAR. Pulling a rap sheet: From four hours from request to receipt, down to seconds. Logging in seized property and evidence: From three hours, down to one hour. Checking offenders' prison status and release dates: From 30 minutes, down to one minute."CIO Magazine
February 17, 2004
eBay as a service
eBay to Expand Developers' Access With Beefier Web Services. "At the ETech conference on Tuesday, eBay officials said the online marketplace plans to add SOAP and Java support to its Web services program for developers. Experts said it and other major Web players increasingly are becoming application platforms."eWeek.com
February 03, 2004
IBM developing for verticals
IBM is releasing packages of software and services aimed at specific vertical markets, like banking, insurance and the financial sector.CNET News.com