hyprtext

I’ve been beavering away on a new collaborative blogging project, which is called hyprtext. It’s going to be covering web and tech news, mainly. The feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/hyprtext.

I’ve already signed someone up to cover copyleft and drm issues and am looking for a couple more contributors. One I need specifically is someone who can cover the open source angle a lot better than I can. We’re looking at a few posts per week, I reckon, not a huge commitment. If anyone is interested, drop me a line.

There are still a few issues to iron out with the site layout. I’m trying to get an RSS feed to publish in a sidebar using the WordPress RSS widget (just the standard one that comes supplied with the sidebar widget plug-in); and I can’t seem to get my MyBlogLog thingy looking anything other than lame. I’ll get there though, I guess.

The All New Blogger

Blogger

 Google have finally got round to releasing the brand spanking new Blogger. They’ve been justifiably criticised over the lack of movement on the product since acquisition, and have since been easily overtaken by the likes of WordPress.com and TypePad. Even with this release, it’s fair to say that Blogger has some way to go to truly compete.

You can also now sign into your blogger account using your Google account ID, and Google has made editing the template and posts significantly more user friendly, such as by implementing what sounds like a widget style drag and drop approach.New features include the addition of tagging, which, this being Google, is called ‘labels’ and an option to make a blog private, viewable only by people that you specificy.

This is all hardly groundbreaking stuff, and the launch blog post seems to acknowledge this, stating that the work on Blogger is “far from done”. Are Google back in the blogging game? Possibly.

One feature I’d like to see Google implement is to integrate Blogger into their Google Apps service, which desperately needs some form of dynamic web content creation, rather than the static Page Creator that’s currently in place.

Has anyone tested the ‘new’ Blogger? We’d be interested in any comments you have.

[tags]blogger, google[/tags]

The shape of GoogleOS?

Google

Read/WriteWeb have another of their articles trying to predict what a Google-produced operating system might be like. There’s no reason to suggest that Google are even developing such a thing, but that doesn’t stop the guessing game being fun.

Their conclusion is that it will be a stripped down Linux, which literally just boots the computer into FireFox to connect with Google’s many web services, rather than a Web based OS like YouOS, or a fully functional Linux distribution.

It’s a cute idea, and one which I think has some legs – even if Google themselves don’t do it. I do believe, for example, that the future of the web is mobile – maybe a Blackberry sized device that boots into Firefox via wireless connections and then hooks up with web services like those offered by Google and of course Zoho and others.

This approach would completely knock out the need for any kind of syncing between the mobile device and a desktop workstation, because the systems and interfaces you are using are exactly the same.

One of the problem with this approach is what you do with data. Will people be happy that every file they own is stored online, with Google’s ad bots running through them picking up on everything we do with our computers? It’s obvious that business will have a problem with this although whether that is true of the average home user, I don’t know.

Another fundamental issue is over the technology that is being used to produce so many of the web apps that are out there, and specifically Ajax. Bill Thompson puts it much better than I could:

There is a massive difference between rewriting Web pages on the fly with Javascript and reengineering the network to support message passing between distributed objects, a difference that too many Web 2.0 advocates seem willing to ignore. It may have been twenty years since Sun Microsystems trademarked the phrase ‘the network is the computer’ but we’re still a decade off delivering, and if we stick with Ajax there is a real danger that we will never get there.

It’s an interesting debate though, and one that hyprtext will be keeping a close eye on.

[tags]read/writeweb, google, googleos, bill thompson[/tags]

Zoho go all wiki

Zoho

Zoho, one of the challengers to Google’s online office crown – and a damn good one at that – has unleashed its wiki service, to go along with the whole raft of other services they provide. The editing functionality comes from Zoho Writer, so is very easy to use with full wysiwyf functionality.

TechCrunch covers the story:

Two things make this product stand out. The first is that the Wiki supports embedded data from other Zoho products. For example, a spreadsheet from Zoho Sheet can be embedded directly into the Wiki. Any changes to the spreadsheet, whether they are made in the Wiki or in Zoho Sheet, will be synced. The Wiki product also has a single sign in with other Zoho products.

Second, the entire Zoho suite of products is on the same overall architecture, making syncronization and new feature releases much easier between applications. Contrast that to Google’s suite, including two acquired products (Writely and JotSpot) and one mostly home-grown one (Spreadsheets). It will never be as homogenous as what Zoho has created.

I agree that Zoho is a great looking suite of applications and is probably the closest thing there is right now to a workable, integrated online office platform.

But is there room for a small fish in this pool full of giant sharks? It’s a shame to say so, but maybe Zoho’s eventual best hope of success will be to be bought up by a competitor to Google.

[tags]zoho, wiki, google, online office[/tags]

AskX looks cool

AskX

Ask have launched a preview of their new search page design, nominally called AskX. Appearing in a three column layout, which is similar to their AskCity product, it now displays results from other information sources inthe right hand section, as well as the usual results in the middle. The right column is reserved for narrowing or expanding your search.

It’s quite cool. I did a test search for my hero, Brian Clough, and as well as the web results, it dragged up stuff from Ask News search, their blog search and Wikipedia.

The main problem is the speed at the moment, but I guess this is something they can work on…

[tags]ask, askx, search[/tags]

Vecosys launches

Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher, erstwhile editors of Techcrunch UK have launched their own site covering ‘Web 2.0, mobile and new technology firms in Europe’ called Vecosys.

Not sure what I make of that name, and the domain forwarding thing they have got going there is pretty annoying – all the pages seem to be held on a Glaxstar server.

The incident which caused the two to leave Techcrunch was explained from TC head honcho Mike Arrington today. It sure is a mess.

Update: Sam Sethi has counterposted giving his version of events. It is difficult to know who to believe, but as much as I like reading TechCrunch, my instinct is to side with the underdogs…
[tags]TechCrunch, Vecosys, Sam Sethi, Mike Butcher[/tags]

Loïc on LeWeb

Loïc Le Meur responds at length to the many criticisms going round the blogosphere about LeWeb3:

I apologize to the speakers and audience for the last-minute changes to the second day program and take personal responsibility for those changes. For opening the program beyond bloggers, however, I have no regrets

…

Criticism focussed on the politicians I invited at the last minute.

The background is that we in Europe are fighting a battle to raise interest about the Internet and its deeper changes to society. We do not yet have the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but opening an exchange with our politicians is a start. We need to talk to them and they need to understand us.

We need to encourage risk taking in Europe, teach entrepreneurship at school, make fiscal reforms to encourage creation of more start ups supported by investment from business angels and venture capitalists. The Internet creates millions of jobs in the United States. Why not in Europe?

[tags]Loïc Le Meur, LeWeb3[/tags]