Tech4Communicators

For anyone that has a job that involves using technology to communicate.

January 13, 2004

from Jon Udell's weblog:

yesterday I sat in on two fascinating demos. The first was with Bill Appleton, creator of SuperCard, whose new product, DreamFactory (see Paul Krill's InfoWorld article yesterday), offers a really exciting way to compose graphical interfaces that wield Web services. The second was with Mark de Visser and Kent Mitchell of Agitar, whose new product, Agitator, takes a dramatically innovative approach to the automation of software testing. As the first WebEx was ending, it struck me that I might have been able to record it using Windows Media Encoder. So I experimented during the second WebEx and sure enough, it worked -- apart from my fumbling of the audio, that is.

In order to use such material, I'd obviously need to clear it with the presenters, but I expect that for briefings not under non-disclosure, a number of folks would be willing to let me post AV excerpts. I can't wait to try this!

Updates: Ray Ozzie says that they're getting great results at Groove using Qarbon to capture software demos for Flash playback. In other news, the Agitar team has a blog.

8:33:11 PM

Moving pictures.

I wanted to demonstrate the SpamBayes plug-in for the school, and I realized I ought to try the screen-capture feature of the free Windows Media Encoder 9. The results were stunning. I set up a new session, pointed it at Outlook's main window, and began encoding. Then I talked through a demonstration of SpamBayes' configuration manager, its Delete and Recover toolbar buttons, and my techniques for integrating SpamBayes with Outlook's filtering and foldering. Along the way I pointed with the cursor to items of interest, opened and closed dialog boxes, and drove the Outlook interface as I normally do.

The resulting six-minute video had the same format as my Outlook window, which happened to be about 750-by-620. The file came in at just under 3MB. I FTP'd it to my Website and, because I'd chosen the progressive-download option, playback was immediate. It was also perfectly readable and audible. Elapsed time from the moment I thought of trying this to the end of playback: about 25 minutes. Next time it'll take 10. Why don't more people do this? Because it wasn't this easy before. Now, it is. [Full story at InfoWorld.com]

I wanted to post that video here, but I'm afraid I can't because it reveals too much of the contents of my inbox. However, I'll definitely be using this technique in the future. One killer application, if you sit in on a lot of WebEx demos as I do, is the ability to record them, play them back, and publish excerpts from them. ... [Jon Udell: InfoWorld]
8:29:14 PM

One of the innovations flowing out the Share Your OPML site is the idea of reading lists. An expert in a given area puts together a set of feeds that you would subscribe to if you want a balanced flow of information on his or her topic of expertise. You let the expert subscribe to feeds on your behalf. I've gotten the first taste of what this is like by reading the aggregator page on the Share Your OPML site. As new sites come on the Top-100, as the aggregated interests of the community shift, I automatically start reading sites I wasn't reading before. I don't have to do anything. I like this. So at last Thursday's Berkman meeting I asked two of our regulars, Rick Heller and Jay McCarthy, to start doing these reading lists, and Rick is ready with what he calls a list of "political blogs that provide a balanced diet of liberal and conservative views." Now I have more work to do, to create a user interface that lets Rick edit his list at will, and presents an easy way for you to subscribe to his list so he can automatically subscribe you to new feeds (and unsubscribe you from others). The technology is not that hard, but it's essential, imho. Two comments. 1. I'm talking with other developers about building around this idea, so there will be another round of open formats and protocols building on RSS, OPML and XML-RPC; and 2. No patents. [Scripting News]
8:21:12 PM

from Christopher Allen's site:

Christopher Allen on Social Network Services…

Posted Jan 11, 2004, 11:11 PM ET by Judith Meskill

Christopher Allen, founder of Alacrity Ventures, an angel capital investment firm, writes a two part series in his weblog — Evaluating Social Network Services and Followup to “Evaluating Social Network Services”……… — on the accounts he has created with Ryze, Tribe.Net, LinkedIn, and Friendster. Chris reflects, on what works and what doesn’t work for him with each of these services. He concludes his first post with a description of what he feels would be “The Perfect Social Networking Service”:

My ideal service would have the the multiple professional affiliation features of LinkedIn, but also allow me to show non-professional affilations. It would allow me to form intentional communities like Tribes.Net, but would also let me do a Wiki in addition to a message board. It would have meeting/party invite services like eVite, and blogging features like LiveJournal. It would have an endorsement system like LinkedIn integrated not only with professional endorsements, but personal endorsements as well, and you could even endorse intentional communities. It would let me better map and control my network, giving different friends different privileges. It would handle the release of my personal information like Ryse, but less clunky.

What would your “Perfect Social Networking Service” look like?

5:19:54 PM