mobrec

So
I just discovered another custom web page creation site called protopage. It seems that it is (for now) really only intended to be a startup page (unlike the more functional netvibes). As such the functionality is limited to creating groups of web page links and small note snippets. Still, it seems great that being able to create web pages has gotten this easy.

So
Jewelcase is another incredible utility for the Mac. Jewelcase is a plugin for iTunes that displays the CD cover art and artist/track title/album title info in a very cool 3D spinning display.

My only grumble with it is that it doesn't automatically retrieve the cover art; if it is not already in your iTunes library, it simply displays a generic CD cover. In the mean time, you can always use something like the FetchArt script to nab cover art for you.

So
Sound advice from 43Folders regarding Writing Sensible Email Messages

So
I stumbled across netvibes this morning. This is very cool. Though Netvibes is currently in early beta, you can create your own web page that aggregates RSS feeds, local weather, gmail, and the ability to add notes to your site (sort of like web stickies. You can drag and drop to arrange things as you like. There is definitely a huge amount of potential here to make this a very compelling tool.

Alas, no Safari support (yet). Firefox for OS X works fine, though.

Looking around a bit more, this seems to be very similar to start.com functionality wise. Start suffers from being a MS sponsored project as well as not having as clean an interface as netvibes.

I also discovered meebo , which is apparently trying to be a web-based IM aggregator (much like I wished that google talk was web-based).

Overall, it looks like commercial grade AJAX apps are starting to take off. And, no, Microsoft, we don't need your bloated, ill-conceived, proprietary 'rich client' software. Thank you very much.

So
LibraryThing is sort of like flickr for books. You can enter in titles and it will search the Library of Congress and Amazon for matching information to allow you to build you library without having to manually enter in all of the fiddly little details.

What would be really impressive is if something which allows you to easily scan bar codes for books (like Delicious Library) would also allow you to export to LibraryThing, the upfront input ramp-up for LibraryThing would be greatly eased.

So
If web security is at all of interest to you then get yourself over to the webgoat project at the Open Web Applications Security Project. Installers are available for Linux, OSX and windows.

WebGoat is a full J2EE web application designed to teach web application security lessons. In each lesson, users must demonstrate their understanding by exploiting a real vulnerability on the local system. The system is even clever enough to provide hints and show the user cookies, parameters and the underlying Java code if they choose. Examples of lessons include SQL injection to a fake credit card database, where the user creates the attack and steals the credit card numbers.

So
In light of all of the other questionable activities post-Katrina, this is absolutely reprehensible (emphasis below added):

Project on Government Oversight – Big federal contractors have scored a major victory with yesterday's news that House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) and Representative Kenny Marchant (R-TX) introduced legislation that will waive meaningful taxpayer protections and competition in contracting whenever Congress or the President declares a national emergency or there is a disaster. It is rumored that the legislation will be included in a manager's amendment to the next Katrina relief bill. Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has donned the legislation (H.R. 3766) the “Disaster Profiteering Act.”

The Davis legislation would allow agency heads across the federal government to treat all purchases related to national emergencies as “commercial items,” meaning that contracts can be made under a no-bid process and that the government would not have the authority to audit purchases after they have been made. A second, unrelated provision deals with Katrina volunteers.

via Agonist

The only hope is that this 'proposed' legislation won't actually pass.

So
WiredReach looks like an interesting idea for sharing content without using shared servers:

The WiredReach Platform allows users to selectively share content with others in a completely decentralized and secure manner. That means your content does not have to be uploaded to any central servers but rather can be shared right from your desktop or device. We use the term “content” very loosely to include things like presence, blogs, bookmarks, documents, calendars, music, photos... virtually any type of social media.

From following the download link, there is a wiredreach.com which provides the development support for the opensource project.

It appears that it is all based on opensource using Java JXTA for some of the underlying network capabilities. There are a number of plugin projects going on to add blogging and various other content type sharing to the core project.

Downloading the Mac OSX version now. More when I have a chance to work with it a bit.

\======

Updated 14 September 2005: Granted I didn't dig too far, but there is really not much to see from what they have available at this point. It looks like many of the plugins and other functionality is not quite there yet. The ability to add a few links to a page and have some rudimentary 'forum' functionality is not terribly compelling beyond what you get 'out of the box' with a Wiki. The claim in their blurb above about supporting 'any type of social media' appears to be a forward-looking statement at this point.

Without setting it up on several machines and emailing notifications to myself, there didn't seem to be much meat. It would have been nice if there were one or two 'sample' sites available that one could connect to get a better feel for the software.

I'll check back on this in the future, but for now (for me) it doesn't seem very compelling (and I had high hopes of an awesome JXTA-based application).

So
According to Wired:

Flock advertises itself as a “social browser,” meaning that the application plays nicely with popular web services like Flickr, Technorati and del.icio.us. Flock also features widely compliant WYSIWYG, drag-and-drop blogging tools. The browser even promises to detect and authenticate all those user accounts automatically. It's a clear attempt to be the browser of choice for the Web 2.0 user.

Interesting that they are attempting to aggregate all of that stuff in the browser — that was one of the reasons that I created this site was to have one place that I could link in all of my 'social software' (del.icio.us, flickr, last.fm, etc). Maybe Flock is a tool that we help me do what I am already doing better (or maybe I just don't have a clue).

In addition to linking in some other functionality on the web, I have also been toying around with adding some information to the site using FOAF and some of the microformats that I have been reading about.

I signed up to be notified of when invites were going out. Maybe I'll be one of the lucky early testers.

So
It looks like Cingular has finally (and quietly) released the long awaited Nokia 6682 with a sticker price of $299. I still think that this a better all around phone than the hyped up 'iTunes Phone' (aka Motorola ROKR E1).

Considering that I have only had my 6620 since early July (and have been completely happy with it aside from the low resolution of the camera), I think I will wait a bit and see if Cingular drops the price (as they always do). No need in paying the first mover penalty as many people did with the Motorola RAZR when it first came out. Besides, getting my 6620 through Amazon and cashing in on the rebates at the time, I basically earned $25 dollars in buying the phone.

I just checked on Amazon, and they have the 6682 listed at $174.99 with a $150 rebate. Unfortunately, it is also listed as 'not currently available'. As the phone was just released today, that will likely change in the next few days.