Month: April 2003

Tog's got answers. Bruce Tognazzini (Tog) on Apple…. Bruce Tognazzini (Tog) on Apple Squandering the Advantage, on interface innovations Apple could make. Lists extra screen objects including: Piles (stacks of documents); visual cues on folders; various object/application collections.  [Interconnected] Lots of great ideas enclosed. Bruce is one of the grand old men of User Interface… Continue reading Tog's got answers

OPML is the way to go. Synchronicity. Jon Udell has posted the topic for his keynote talk at OSCOM. Perhaps I'll talk about OPML and directories. I want to zero in on something we can all do together to move Content Management forward. I want to see OPML directory renderers in all environments, not just… Continue reading OPML is the way to go

BuddyZoo.  AIM Meets Social Network Theory [Slashdot]  BuddyZoo just got Slashdotted.  Another form of identity browsing – AIM buddy lists are by far, the largest collection of identities out there today. Unfortunately it's controlled by the mother of all closed shops – AOL. BuddyZoo takes your buddy list and compares it to everyone elses – and… Continue reading BuddyZoo

We are the enablers.  Stewart Alsop On Server Side State. We are moving to a server side state world. Client side applications are fine, but they are simply the local glue to make server side data more manageable…Entrepreneurs, over to you. [VentureBlog] ISPs, are you listening?? [Scott Mace's Radio Weblog] Andrew Anker and Stewert Alsop… Continue reading We are the enablers

Sputnik ships!. Orbit achieved.  Sputnik has come out with its first hardware product: The AP 120 wireless access point. It's an enterprise thingie with auto-configuration (plug one into your LAN, it figures out where to get control commands, puts up a dynamic firewall, and immediately becomes a smart but unobtrusive member of the corporate hive… Continue reading Sputnik ships!

Jabber & PingID.  Well, 15 months after starting PingID, I feel privileged to have the opportunity to connect my past with the future. In this phase of the Jabber/PingID relationship, we've integrated Ping's first product (SourceID – www.sourceid.org) into the Jabber's eXtensible Communications Platform (this integration is being demo'd this week at the RSA conference in SF).… Continue reading Jabber & PingID

Piles of documents. Some interesting speculation on Mac Rumors about Apple integrating a finder feature called Piles that creates a finder metaphor based on the physical act of viewing/sifting through a pile of documents on a desktop in meatspace. Here's a description from an earlier Tog article. Apple holds a patent on this one. Developed… Continue reading Piles of documents

City Scan: Connecticut's Civic Smart Mobs. In City Scan projects, citizens prioritize desired improvements to the physical environment of their community and gather information on how well government services deliver results. On city streets, residents (from age 14 through 70) collect data about neighborhood conditions (e.g graffiti, potholes) with handheld computers, custom-designed software, wireless modems,… Continue reading City Scan: Connecticut's Civic Smart Mobs

How do we win the peace in Iraq?  We need to help and not just with money.  It can also not only be self-help.  Where are the hordes of educational experts, health experts, (non-exploitive) business experts, agricultural experts, etc.. ready to enter Iraq after the war is over?  Why are we only willing to send… Continue reading John Robb's Radio Weblog

Dear MSN and Yahoo So, you want to beat Google, huh? Well, you have your work cut out for you. It's not impossible to get me to switch, though. I've switched search engines twice before. It might look hopeless right now. I do admit Google has a special place in my heart. When I reinstalled… Continue reading

Dear MSN and Yahoo

So, you want to beat Google, huh?

Well, you have your work cut out for you. It's not impossible to get me to switch, though. I've switched search engines twice before.

It might look hopeless right now. I do admit Google has a special place in my heart. When I reinstalled Windows XP on my main system yesterday, what was the first third-party app I loaded? That's right. The Google toolbar. It +is+ that important to my life.

The other day I started counting how many times in a day I use Google. I lost count at more than 50.

OK, some history of search engines and the Web (my wife says I need to make my point in fewer words, so I cut out a whole bunch of engines that simply didn't matter).

First, there was Yahoo. It was a directory kept by people. It was awesome. I went there and found cool stuff. One problem. Soon I started publishing. Soon I had the number one NetMeeting Web site