An online notebook
I’ve been redesigning the layout for this blog, using a cool new theme by Andreas Viklund.
I like the fact that the whole width of the screen is used, and having two sidebars means that I can pack in some more useful widgets. Still no ads, though, yet!
I’ll be writing about some of the new stuff I’ve put on the site in subsequent posts, rather than cramming loads into this one. In the meantime, please do visit the blog and let me know in the comments what you think about it!
Some great notes on what you can do to make your wikis a success.
Via Beth Kanter.
Google’s been doing plenty of work, and buying, to create an office suite which runs online. Those who see it as a potential Microsoft killer are always challenged on the fact that the online tools are great while you have a live web connection, but are not so cool when you are stuck somewhere without one.
Desktop applications, of course, don’t need a web connection to work, and so are of far more use when one isn’t available. Microsoft triumphs again.
But Google has released something which might change all that. Gears is a system whereby online information can be downloaded and used offline. As the home page so succinctly puts it:
Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:
- Store and serve application resources locally
- Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
- Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness
Amen to that!
There’s only one Gears application at the moment, but it’s a cool one. It’s for Google Reader, the best of breed online RSS aggregator, which lets you download your feeds and read them even when not connected to the web. Excellent!
The potential with this is significant, of course. Being able to use Docs and Spreadsheets, and the forthcoming Presentation app whilst offline will seriously increase their usefulness. Indeed, wiki editing whilst offline would be very nice, and even blogging, using the built in editors that come with WordPress and Blogger, rather than third party applications should be possible. Exciting times.
Two fairly similar services here, brought to my attention by the ever reliable TechCrunch.
Demofuse allows you to create ‘tours’ of your websites, to demonstrate functionality, say. It looks very useful indeed, and will be something I will be using for some of the services I’ve put together.
Screencast-o-Matic is a service that lets you create screencasts – that is, the recording of what happens on your PC screen – within the browser for free. Cool! Screencasts are great for recording demos of how to do stuff on the PC, whether online or not.
Jason Calacanis has launched Mahalo, a human edited search engine, based on the MediaWiki platform used by, amongst others, Wikipedia.
It’s funny, I remembered immediately the blog post Jason wrote about buying the Mahalo domain and not knowing what to do with it back in November last year.
Here’s how the FAQ page explains the model:
Mahalo is the world’s first human-powered search engine powered by an enthusiastic and energetic group of Guides. Our Guides spend their days searching, filtering out spam, and hand-crafting the best search results possible. If they haven’t yet built a search result, you can request that search result. You can also suggest links for any of our search results.
Interesting – so it’s Google crossed with DMOZ crossed with Wikipedia. Kind of.