TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki -  a reusable non-linear personal web notebook Looks very interesting

Welcome to TiddlyWiki, an experimental MicroContent WikiWikiWeb built by JeremyRuston. It's written in HTML and JavaScript to run on any browser without needing any ServerSide logic. It allows anyone to create SelfContained hypertext documents that can be posted to any web server, or sent by email. If you like it, do please EmailMe and let me know. If you're interested in FuturePlans for TiddlyWiki, keep an eye on this site.

Mathmatica

Wolfram Research presents Mathematica - the advertisement's of which I used to drool, when I started my career 

LMI

LMI

Leadership Management, Inc. ( LMI ) has invested over 35 years defining "What Matters Most" as a focus rather than a question.  A "What Matters Most" focus generates organizational clarity and builds a results-based leadership culture.

Voltaic backpack

Voltaic Systems presents

The Voltaic™ backpack is a mobile power source, designed to charge your gadgets without tying you to a power outlet.

Embedded in the back of the bag are three tough, light weight, waterproof solar panels, which generate up to 4 watts of power.

Inside the bag is a Li Ion battery pack. As in a solar powered house, the battery stores energy so it is available when you need it, not just when the sun is up.

The battery pack can also be charged using the included AC travel charger or car charger. So you will have power when you need it, whether you are in the city or the middle of nowhere.

The Voltaic™ backpack is powerful enough to charge most portable electronics (other than laptops) including: cell phones, cameras, two way radios, GPS's, PDA's, even iPods.

The bag includes: a set of standard adaptors for common cell phones, a set of universal adaptors, and a cigarette lighter socket so you can use a standard car charger. A full range of optional adaptors are also available,

newsmap

newsmap

Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator. A treemap visualization algorithm helps display the enormous amount of information gathered by the aggregator. Treemaps are traditionally space-constrained visualizations of information. Newsmap's objective takes that goal a step further and provides a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.
Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. It's objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news, on the contrary it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it.

Net Snippets

Net Snippets: Can be useful

Online research is time consuming, but finding the information is only the first step. Collecting and managing the information for future use in a focused, structured and organized manner is as important as finding the information in the first place and essential for maximizing the effectiveness of online research.  

Net Snippets provides a suite of personal and collaborative solutions for managing online research. Using a simple and intuitive drag and drop interface, Net Snippets allows for the basic capturing and aggregation of content, research sharing & collaboration, in addition to report generation and delivery.

ReadySET

readyset.tigris.org

ReadySET is an open source project to produce and maintain a library of reusable software engineering document templates. These templates provide a ready starting point for the documents used in software development projects. Using good templates can help developers work more quickly, but they also help to prompt discussion and avoid oversights.

Facts about India

Stephen Knapp points out

1. India never invaded any country in her last 1000 years of history.

2. India invented the numerical system. Aryabhatta invented 'zero.'

3. The world's first university was established in Takshila in 700 BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.

4. According to the Forbes magazine, Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software.

5. Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans.

6. Although western media portrays modern images of India as poverty stricken and underdeveloped through political corruption, India was once the richest empire on earth.

7. The art of navigation was born in the river Sindh 5000 years ago. The very word "Navigation" is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH.

8. The value of pi was first calculated by Budhayana, and he explained the concept of what is now known as the Pythagorean Theorem. British scholars have last year (1999) officially published that Budhayan's works date back to the 6th Century, which is long before the European mathematicians.

9. Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India. Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th Century; the largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 106 whereas Indians used numbers as big as 1053.

10. According to the Gemological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source of diamonds to the world.

11. USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion amongst academics that the pioneer of wireless communication was Professor Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.

12. The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.

13. Chess was invented in India.

14. Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted surgeries like cesareans, cataract, fractures and urinary stones. Usage of anaesthesia was well known in ancient India.

15. When many cultures in the world were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization).

16. The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India dating back to at least 100 BC.

Season for new web designs

Microsoft and Mozilla Firefox have a new web-site design

 

PowerPoint For Techies: How much is too much?

Kathy Jacobs write this

One reader of this series e-mailed me with a common problem. One person who presents regularly always tries to fit “25 pounds… into a 5 pound bag.” How do you prevent this from happening with your presentations? Try these six tips…

Tip One: Figure out what the audience needs to know, not what you want to say
Tip Two: Design from summary to detail
Tip Three: Hide the details
Tip Four: Create FAQ slides
Tip Five: Nest information
Tip Six: Tell them where to find more information

 

Great Presentation Showcases Groove V3

Robin Good writes this

 A lovely friend pointed me today to a Groove presentation which I hadn't seen before.

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.

Groove v3 is really an outstanding collaboration platform for users on any platform (just add some Blended Groove if you are on a Mac, Linux or Internet cafe type of computer).

I have recently seen a PC Magazine review comparing a small suite of collaboration tools which included Groove, Intranets.com and Basecamp. While I strongly felt that apples and oranges were being compared, I was rather appalled to see Intranets.com, a traditionally asynchronous-only Web-based collaboration technology with an aging interface being given awarded the Editor's Choice.

With all the respect for Intranets.com, which has recently added to its offering a not-too-friendly third-party conferencing facility from Netspoke, and the enormous respect I pay to the information design and usability bonanza offered by the guys at Basecamp, I must say that Groove is just not comparable to these other tools. It really stands in a different category.

Online secure shared workspace. A true virtual office.

I highly recommend you to download their free preview version

Incrementalists & Completionists

Rands In Repose says

Incrementalists are realists. They have a pretty good idea of what is achievable given a problem to solve, a product to ship. They're intimately aware of how many resources are available, where the political landscape is at any given moment, and they know who knows what. They tend to know all the secrets and they like to be recognized for that fact.

Completionists are dreamers. They have a very good idea of how to solve a given problem and that answer is SOLVE IT RIGHT. Their mantra is, "If you're going to spend the time to solve a problem, solve it in a manner that you aren't going to be solving it AGAIN in three months." I used to think that architects were the only real Completionists in an organization, but I was wrong. Architects are the only RECOGNIZED Completionists in the company, but the personality is hiding all over the place.

Links to Information Architecture Research

semanticstudios has links to some real gems

What do we really know about information architecture? Do we know what works? Can we defend our designs? Are we improving?

In preparing for my upcoming seminars, I revisited the role of research in the design process, and surveyed the literature most relevant to the practice of information architecture.

Before we dig into the research itself, it's worth considering the myriad inputs that shape design. They include:

    * Goals and Scope. The stated project goals and scope which may be conveyed in an RFP or as functional specifications.
    * Constraints. The budget, schedule, project team, and technology infrastructure.
    * Discovery. Project-specific research to learn about your unique blend of users, content, and context.
    * Competitive Analysis. Reviewing what everyone else is doing and borrowing from the best.
    * Expertise and Experience. What you already know, including explicit and tacit knowledge.
    * Guidelines. Published heuristics and guidelines derived from research and/or practice.
    * Published Research. Results of academic or corporate research in human-computer interaction, library and information science, cognitive psychology, etc.
    * Usability Testing. Iterative project-specific testing of prior designs and new prototypes.

<some great links here>>

eBay data center technologies

This is a piece from eweek where their senior vice president of technology lays out what they had and have.

Our job was to move from crisis to world-class in short order. To do that, we went about deconstructing and re-constructing the site—while it was live, while transactions were happening. In the course of about two years, we re-architected the infrastructure and the software for the site.

The 9 keys to naming success.

Laura ries gives a clue

Some powerful brand names include: Lexus, Red Bull, Google and Starbucks. The 9 keys that follow will help you pick the best name possible for your brand. Don’t expect a name to meet all the nine requirements but if it covers more than a few you’ll know you have a winner.

Key #1: Short.
Some examples of short names: Tide, Apple, Crest, Nike, Gap, TiVo, Rolex.
Some examples of names that are too long: Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Deloitte & Touche, Bausch & Lomb, TIAA-CREF.

Key #2: Simple.
Some simple brand names: Coca-Cola, Nissan, Google, Hennessy.

Key #3: Suggestive of the category.
Some suggestive names: Blockbuster Video, Curves, Roller Blade, SnackWell’s, Palm, PlayStation.

Key #4: Unique.
Some great and unique brand names: Lexus, Xerox, Kodak, Kleenex, Sony, Kinko’s.

Key #5: Alliterative.
Some alliterative names: Gold’s Gym, Dunkin’ Donuts, Jelly Belly, Weight Watchers, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Volvo, BlackBerry, Grey Goose.

Key #6: Speakable.
Some speakable brand names: Target, Subway, Polo, iPod, Wonderbra.
Some unspeakable brand names: Chipolte, Isaac Mizrahi, Hoechst, Dasani, HSBC.

Key #7: Spellable.
Some easy to spell names: Target, Amazon, Old Navy.
Some difficult to spell names: Daewoo, Hyundai, Abercrombie & Fitch.

Key #8: Shocking.
Some great shocking names: DieHard, Yahoo, Monster, Woot, Virgin, Yellow Tail, Red Bull, Starbucks.

Key #9: Personalized.
Some great personalized brand names: Dell, Orville Redenbacher, Newman’s Own, Atkins, Papa John’s Pizza, Craigslist.com, Disney.

Running an efficient board meeting

BeyondVC has a great piece on the subject

Board meetings can be a gigantic waste of time if not run appropriately. On the flipside, they can be a valuable source of input and guidance for a management team in the pursuit of maximizing shareholder value. While there are a number of different ways to approach and run a board meeting, I thought I would outline a few of my philosophies on them, and what I expect from my portfolio companies in terms of content.

1. Be prepared
2. Timing
3. Content:

Company Summary by CEO
Sales Review
Professional Services (usually incorporated in context of sales discussion for smaller companies)
Marketing
-Competitive positioning update
-Product roadmap
-New product launch plan, etc...
-Lead generation statistics
R&D:
-Summary development plan of key features to be delivered for quarter and current progress
-Bug report broken out by severity-should also track resolution and time outstanding against prior months/quarters
Customer support:
-Statistics on level 1, 2, 3 calls and performance as measured by time outstanding versus prior months/quarters
Finance:
-Plan vs. budget - income statement, balance sheet, cash flow statement

 

SAS 70: Main Index

SAS 70 : Welcome to the first Internet resource fully dedicated to the SAS 70 auditing standard and third-party assurance for service organizations. This site has been developed to provide the public with general information on SAS 70 and related topics.  Your feedback and input are welcome

Statement on Auditing Standards (SAS) No. 70, Service Organizations, is an internationally recognized auditing standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).  A SAS 70 audit or service auditor's examination is widely recognized, because it represents that a service organization has been through an in-depth audit of their control activities, which generally include controls over information technology and related processes.  In today's global economy, service organizations or service providers must demonstrate that they have adequate controls and safeguards when they host or process data belonging to their customers.  In addition, the requirements of Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 make SAS 70 audit reports even more important to the process of reporting on effective internal controls at service organizations.

UI Patterns and Techniques

Jenifer Tidwell has this on general framework for UI design concepts

There's nothing new here.

If you've done any Web or UI design, or even thought about it much, you should say, "Oh, right, I know what that is" to most of these patterns. But a few of them might be new to you, and some of the familiar ones may not be part of your usual design repertoire.

Each of these patterns (which are more general) and techniques (more specific) are intended to help you solve design problems. They're common problems, and there's no point in reinventing the wheel every time you need, say, a sortable table -- plenty of folks have already done it, and learned how to do it well. Some of that knowledge is written up here, in an easily-digestible format.

By the way, when I say "UI," I mean Web sites, desktop applications, and everything in between (Web forms, Flash, applets, etc.). I believe that over the next few years, Web applications will become more richly interactive than they are now, and the smartest Web designers will use the desktop world's hard-won knowledge of how to design good interactive software. Likewise, desktop applications will gradually look more like Web sites, with better graphic design and more Web-style navigation. I will make no assumptions about how or when they will converge -- they may not, ultimately -- but stylistically, there is some common ground already. Thus, you will see examples from both worlds in here.

These patterns are intended to be read by people who have some knowledge of UI design concepts and terminology: dialogs, selection, combo boxes, navigation bars, whitespace, branding, and so on. It does not identify many widely-accepted techniques such as copy-and-paste, as you probably already know what they are. But, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, some common techniques are described here to encourage their use in other contexts -- for instance, desktop apps could make better use of Toplevel Navigation -- or to discuss them alongside alternative solutions.

(Many of these patterns were originally written by other people in the field. Where appropriate, authors are credited in the pattern descriptions.)

If you're running short on ideas, or hung up on a difficult design quandary, read over these and see if any of them are applicable. And don't take them as the gospel truth, either -- what matters is whether your design works for your users.

If these are useful to you, please tell me. If not, or if you have anything to add, tell me that too.

Jenifer Tidwell
jtidwell @ alum.mit.edu
http://jtidwell.net

the5k.org

the5k.org

The idea behind the contest is that the rigid constraints of designing for the web are what force us to get truly creative. Between servers and bandwidth, clients and users, HTML and the DOM, browsers and platforms, our conscience and our ego, we're left in a very small space to find highly optimal solutions. Since the space we have to explore is so small, we have to look harder, get more creative; and that's what makes it all interesting. Just celebrating that is all.

Illuminated furniture

Generate Light has a good product set on multi-function furniture & lammps

Freeware replacements for common commercial apps

here

ASCII Art Editor

Sig Software has a cool tool, called Email Effects for creating ASCII diagrams and art.

Email Effects is a program for Macintosh or Windows which allows pictures and drawings to be used in email, source code or any other plain text medium. It is the world's premier ASCII art creator and is being used for greetings cards, signatures, program flow diagrams, maps, chemical structure diagrams, logos, and much, much more.

• Convert pictures or drawings instantly to text.
• Create text using standard Figlet fonts.
• Create exploded "big text", rotate or flip selections.
• Draw or erase lines, circles, rectangles or freehand.
• Works directly with Entourage, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Eudora, Emailer, Mailsmith, PowerMail or QuickMail (Macintosh), or any MAPI email client (Windows).
• Comprehensive documentation and context-sensitive help.

The J2EE(TM) 1.4 Tutorial

Sun has this tutorial

The Codehaus - Home

Codehaus is

an open-source project repository with a strong emphasis on Java, focussed on quality components that meet real world needs. We believe in open source as a pragmatic approach to software development, and all our projects are business-friendly in terms of licensing

 

Idea Recording

Charles Cave gives a good summary of tool-set

Have you ever been doing one of the following activities when you suddenly had a flash of inspiration but had no means of recording your idea? You thought you could remember the idea until a convenient time to write it down, but you found the idea had vanished as quickly as it appeared?

• Taking a shower
• Sitting on the toilet
• Driving to work
• Taking the dog for a walk
• Washing the dishes
• Listening to music
• Sitting in a boring meeting at work

Types of recording materials

• Journals and Notebooks
• Inventors Notebooks
• Index Cards
• Coloured pens, pencils
• Micro-Cassette Recorder
• Computers
• Others
      *  Writing on napkins or drink coasters (in restaurants or pubs)
      * Electronic diary
      * Palmtop Computers such as Palm, Psion, PocketPC
      * Post it Notes
      * White boards - make sure you leave a selection of coloured whiteboard marker pens.
      * Email program. Type the idea into your email program and send it to your home email address.
      * Simple text editor programs on your computer, such as Notepad, SimpleText or WordPad.
      * Perspex sheet and wax crayon – useful for the shower or swimming pool.
      * Stick sheets of butcher’s paper behind the toilet door and hand a pencil on a string. Encourage visitors to your house to add graffiti.
      * Hire a  personal assistant to follow you around and take shorthand.
      * Use your mobile phone to ring home and leave your idea on your home answering machine.
  

Recipe Visualization

Cooking For Engineers has cool visualizations of cooking receipes. If I ever decide to cook, I will find this extremely useful

Basic Tiramisu (serves 8)

about 20 lady's fingers		dip	layer & spread twice	cover
2 shots espresso	mix & chill
1/2 cup coffee
1 cup heavy whipping cream	whisk to stiff peaks	fold
1 lb. mascarpone cheese	mix
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons rum (or brandy)
cocoa powder
shavings of unsweetened dark chocolate

GettingThingsDone - Summary

MineZone Wiki has a good summarization of the GTD process

 SUMMARY

   1. keep everything out of your head
   2. decide actions and outcomes when things first emerge on your radar, instead of later
   3. regularly review and update the complete inventory of open loops of your life and work

How does the eye scan a news web-site

www.poynterextra.org reports how the human eye traverses when looking at a news website

The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page.

Open-Source MS-Project Alternative

Open Workbench - Finally

Open Workbench is an open source Windows-based desktop application that provides robust project scheduling and management functionality and is free to distribute throughout the enterprise. When users need to move beyond desktop scheduling to a workgroup, division or enterprise-wide solution, they can upgrade to the Clarity™ system from Niku, an enterprise portfolio management system that offers bidirectional integration with Open Workbench.

Samsung SPH-V5400: First Cellphone with Hard Drive

Gizmodo reports another step in the right direction

The phone, though! It's called the SPH-V5400, has a 1.5GB hard drive, and is going to cost around $800 when it launches - far too much money to be anything more than a curiosity, but it certainly could be noted as the first step towards the eventuality of a phone playing double duty as an iPod. It's stuff like this that makes Apple's team up with Motorola less of a one-off and more like a hedging of bets. In five years I bet there won't even be an iPod that doesn't come inside a cellphone.

Proxomitron.Info

Proxomitron is a free, highly flexible, user-configurable, small but very powerful, local HTTP web-filtering proxy.

    *  Stop windows that pop-up, pop-under, or pop-over
    * Stop those un-closable endless banner chains
    * Stop pop-up JavaScript message boxes
    * Remove web-branding and other scripts tacked on by "free" web providers.
    * Convert most ads and banner pictures into simple text links
    * Freeze all animated gifs
    * Make blinking text appear as bold instead
    * Remove slow web counters
    * Stop web pages from "auto-refreshing"
    * Prevent pages from changing fonts
    * Get rid of or replace web page background images
    * Protect against getting "trapped" inside someone else's frames!
    * Make all frames resizable
    * Close top or bottom frame banner windows
    * Protect against getting "trapped" inside someone else's frames!
    * Make background MIDI songs play only when you choose.
    * Remove status bar scroll-texts
    * Remove "dynamic" HTML from pages
    * Disguise your browser's identity and version from JavaScripts
    * Remove style sheets
    * Un-hide URLs when the mouse is over a link
    * Disable frames or tables altogether
    * Change or delete cookies
    * Change your browser's user-agent and other identifying fields
    * Hide where you've been previously from inquisitive web servers

Password generator bookmarklet

angel.net has this absolutely splendid bookmarlet for securing good passwords - it's different for every site .. yet can get it with a simple master password.

I mean, I don't mind making up and memorizing the really important ones but what about all those e-commerce and community sites that want me to create accounts? I used to end up using the same password at all of them and then I felt stupid knowing that one SQL Server exploit or disgruntled admin could cost me my whole identity.

So, I wrote a bookmarklet to make up passwords for me. It asks for my master password, which is all I have to remember, and uses it to make a unique password for each site. It even types the password into any password fields on the current page for me, whether I'm registering for a new account or logging in on a subsequent visit.

Here's the bookmarklet: Generate password. You can drag it to your browser's bookmark list or button bar to keep it handy. Or just click it right now to test it on the form below.

How does it work? It gets the hostname from the page's URL and mixes it together with your personal master password using a little cryptographic magic we call MD5. It will always get the same result if given that hostname and master password, but will never get that result if either changes. (Well, once in a few billion times it might.)

Note that this bookmarklet works on Safari and Mozilla but is too long for Internet Explorer which I believe to have been written by trained otters.

ASCII Generator - Cool

ASCII Generator: You can have your own text here

_/  |_|  |__   ____   _____    _____ ______  \   __\  |  \_/ __ \  \__  \  /     \\____ \  |  | |   Y  \  ___/   / __ \|  Y Y  \  |_> > |__| |___|  /\___  > (____  /__|_|  /   __/            \/     \/       \/      \/|__|         __                                  .__       |__| ____  __ _________  ____ _____  |  |      |  |/  _ \|  |  \_  __ \/    \\__  \ |  |      |  (  <_> )  |  /|  | \/   |  \/ __ \|  |__/\__|  |\____/|____/ |__|  |___|  (____  /____/\______|   

Wikipedia vs. Britannica Smackdown

Freedom to Tinker reports

On Friday I wrote about my spot-check of the accuracy of Wikipedia, in which I checked Wikipedia's entries for six topics I knew well. I was generally impressed, except for one entry that went badly wrong.

Adam Shostack pointed out, correctly, that I had left the job half done, and I needed to compare to the entries for the same six topics in a traditional encyclopedia. So here's my Wikipedia vs. Britannica Online comparison, for the six topics I wrote about on Friday.

Princeton University: Both entries are accurate and reasonably well written. Wikipedia has more information. Verdict: small advantage to Wikipedia.

Princeton Township: Britannica has a single entry for Princeton Township and Princeton Boro, while Wikipedia has separate entries. Both entries are good, but Wikipedia has more information (including demographics). Also, Britannica makes an error in saying that Morven is the Governor's Residence for the state of New Jersey; Wikipedia correctly labels Morven as the former Governor's Residence and Drumthwacket as the current one. Verdict: advantage to Wikipedia.

Me: Wikipedia has a short but decent entry; Britannica, unsurprisingly, has nothing. Verdict: advantage Wikipedia.

Virtual memory: Wikipedia has a pretty good entry; Britannica has no entry for virtual memory, and doesn't appear to discuss the concept elsewhere, either. Verdict: advantage Wikipedia.

Public-key cryptography: Good, accurate entries in both. Verdict: toss-up.

Microsoft antitrust case: Britannica has only two sentences, saying that Judge Jackson ruled against Microsoft and ordered a breakup, and that the Court of Appeals overturned the breakup but agreed that Microsoft had broken the law. That's correct, but it leaves out the settlement. Wikipedia's entry is much longer but error-prone. Verdict: big advantage to Britannica.

Overall verdict: Wikipedia's advantage is in having more, longer, and more current entries. If it weren't for the Microsoft-case entry, Wikipedia would have been the winner hands down. Britannica's advantage is in having lower variance in the quality of its entries.

Bloglines Trick

wingedpig.com reports a possible useful trick

And if you still don't like the two-frame interface, you can get to a single-page interface by just using the following link:

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs_display?all=1

 

 

Work space quality - References

Joel on Software has a discussion item on this topic

This post is a summary of and collection of links to information about the quality of workspace provided to software developers. Perhaps it can be useful to other software developers in a position to influence managers or may someday be in a position to make decisions about workspace design themselves.

Superb: The New Honda Accord Ad

SteelCitysFinest.com has a flash replay of the ad. Fabulous.

 

Picasa: Its Free

Picasa, recently bought over by our friendly Google is now available free. It used to cost about $30 or so. Funny because, a few months ago, I tried out an evaluation version, loved the software and wanted to buy it. Yet their payment gateway refused to process my card. Thus Picasa lost a customer. Blessing in disguise

Here's what you can do with your free copy of Picasa 1.6:

Find all your photos -- and make photo albums, quickly and easily.
Edit with ease -- Crop, reduce red-eye, and enhance with one quick click.
Print at home -- No mistakes. No waiting. No hassles. Just beauty.
Share photos online -- via email or Picasa's Hello technology.
Make slide shows -- set to your own MP3 music files

silverorange | building powerful web-based systems

silverorange : A Collaborative Tool

he silverorange Intranet is an award-winning web-based communications system. The tools of the Intranet allow you to centralize your communications and keep everyone aware of the information they require to keep on top of their work. Collaborate on projects from anywhere and keep in touch. Get your organization communicating more effectively and more efficiently with the silverorange Intranet.

Jakob Nielsen, respected web usability expert, named the silverorange Intranet the ‘Best Intranet of 2001.’ In 2003, the intranet won again for its new and improved version in the Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual: Best Intranets of 2003. Explaining their decision, the authors wrote, “In our first design annual in 2001, we selected ten winners and from them, one best intranet - silverorange. Now, two years later, this same company has produced yet another excellent intranet, its third version, that we feel deserves a very honorable mention among this reports winners.”

* Messages - The general all-purpose post that contains a text message.
* Tasks - A task can be assigned to a single user or a group of users. The priority, due date, and progress of a task can all be set and tracked.
* Events - An event can be announced on the Intranet with dates and who should attend specified.
* Work Reports - Employees can post work reports specifying what work was completed and the time used.
* Checklists - Checklists can be created to list tasks that require completion. Completed and incomplete tasks can easily be tracked.
* News - News articles, accompanied by a photo, can be posted with corporate, organizational, or departmental news to keep everyone informed.
* Files - Files such as documents, images, movies, and templates can be posted for universal access and archiving.
* Custom Item Types - If your organization uses a specific type of report or communication, please contact us to see if we can develop a custom item type for your use.

Ephemera: Photos by Derek Powazek

Ephemera - Entertaining photo blog. Derek even offers a deal

Here's the deal. I take pictures. I put them on this site for you to enjoy, and I hope that you do! If you enjoy one so much that you'd like to put it on your personal site, I've whipped up an easy way for you to do that. Just use the Ephemera Image Widget on the left.

Google Fight

Google Fight lets us have some fun on good Google PRing. Try India Vs China

The Visual Spreadsheet

Tableau Software : There are claims that this is the next Google. I don't believe it ... though they seem to have an innovative product set

A Visual Spreadsheet is an interactive canvas that allows you to explore, analyze and create reports from databases. It lets you display, filter, sort, group, drill-into, calculate and summarize data using a "live" interactive window into your databases. The results are remarkable: You can answer questions quicker than you can with any other data analysis tool.

 

How do Visual Spreadsheets work?
They are remarkably simple. Tableau is a desktop PC application, just like Microsoft Excel. So you simply connect to a data source and start analyzing. Every time you drop a field from the database onto the Visual Spreadsheet, you get a new view of your data. Sometimes these views are composed of text tables or crosstabs that summarize information. Often, they are graphic visualizations that show trends, relationships, problems and outliers.

Openexchange Server

Suse has introduced this Outlook alternative with a fair license policy is a hallmark of SUSE LINUX. Thus, the e-mail core functions of Openexchange Server are free of license fees, and the license fee for the groupware is lower than that of most competitor products, as numerous independent studies show.

 

The open architecture of SUSE LINUX Openexchange Server constitutes the basis for its excellent function scope, flexibility, and user friendliness. From an operating system, database server, e-mail server, and web server to groupware, collaboration, and messaging - SUSE LINUX Openexchange Server is a highly integrated all-in-one solution.
Open for Other Software

A precisely documented WebDAV/XML interface for the calendar, contacts, tasks, and documents enables the smooth exchange of data with third-party products and custom programs. Data sets from various applications such as ERP, project management, CRM, or MS Office can be synchronized with Openexchange Server in real time.

From HK with love - A Cyber Girlfriend

BBC News reports

For men without a partner, help may be at hand - in the form of a virtual girlfriend.

The Hong Kong company Artificial Life, which developed the new game, says the girl will appear as an animated figure on the video screen of a mobile phone. But there is a downside to the virtual girlfriend - she will require more flowers and gifts than many real women. Artificial Life is hoping to launch the new game later this year, on the latest 3-G mobile phones. All virtual girls will look the same - but each girl will behave differently - depending on how much money is spent on her. On top of a general subscription, men will be charged a fee to buy flowers and gifts for the virtual girlfriend. In return, she will introduce them to different aspects of her life, like letting them meet her female friends - also electronic images.

Another alternative to MS Word

Flexbeta reviews AbiWord and has some real nice things to say

 

I am kind of disappointed I just found out about AbiWord a few months ago; I would have loved to have this application around back when I was running Windows 98 on my Compaq Presario with 64MB of RAM. Instead of having to purchase MS Word for nearly $200 I could have downloaded AbiWord in a few minutes (with dial-up) and had a top notch word processing application at my disposal. With all the features that were mentioned earlier, and the fact that AbiWord is free, there is no question in my mind that AbiWord would make a great word processing application. Even if you already own and use MS Word, AbiWord would make a great companion since it can read and write various file formats. The fact that AbiWord is under 5MB in size really surprises me; I can't imagine such a magnificent word processor being so small. You can download AbiWord from AbiSource.com.

The Science of Word Recognition

Microsoft Research has this  engrossing paper on how humans recognize words when they read. Great read