I was asked on Mastodon what role Aaron Swartz played in developing RSS, since he is often credited with co-developing it. This is what I wrote. “There was a lot of confusion about what RSS was until RSS 2.0 came out and the NYT adopted it. There was a thread based on RDF, and Aaron was credited as a contributor to that. I would ask those people what he did. I never worked with him. I saw some of his posts on their mail list and met him a few times at conferences. He was a precocious young person, obviously smart, but he didn’t seem interested in what I was working on. That’s about it.”#
5 Jan
Scripting News Annex 
Posted by Ewan Grantham on January 5, 2007 at 7:28 am
I’d suggest looking at the RenPy engine (http://www.renpy.org/wiki/renpy/Home_Page) which allows you to create your own visual novels/games using a very straightforward syntax and standard file formats.
I think it falls under both 4 and 6 since it gives folks new ways to easily communicate their concepts and make the available for others. For example, you could create a VN presentation allowing the customer to see for themselves the long term effects of choosing option A or option B…
Just my .02 worth…
Posted by Paul Cooper on January 5, 2007 at 8:12 am
I’d recommend EGS http://www.enterprisegroupwaresystem.org/ from a company called Senokian (http://senokian.com/). It’s an Open-Source web based business management suite (CRM, ERP, Project management, wiki, etc) so it would fall under #1-3.
The MD is a friend but I have no financial interest in the company.
Paul
Posted by Steve Borsch on January 5, 2007 at 8:23 am
Worked with this web conferencing company as a consultant in 2006 and they’d make a *perfect* addition: http://www.yugma.com
Posted by Peter Cranstone on January 5, 2007 at 8:36 am
What about 5o9 Inc (http://www.5o9inc.com) Data communications platform that enables “Who, What and Where (GPS)” information in real time from a mobile device to a web server.
Cheers,
Peter
Posted by Mike Lopez on January 5, 2007 at 9:00 am
Trac (http://trac.edgewall.org/) is my favorite and covers a lot of those categories collaboration, tracking, publishing, communication. It’s for software development. They won an award recently as the best linux/oss developer tool at the UK Linux & Open Source Awards (although it runs on windows too). http://www.edgewall.org/blog/news/trac_best_dev_tool.html
Posted by Jeff Cheney on January 5, 2007 at 9:09 am
I recommend UserLand Software:
http://www.userland.com/
A leader in providing web publishing solutions since 1997. Their products were among the first used to create weblogs, to integrate RSS and to syndicate podcasts. Thousands of customers the world over know that UserLand’s powerful web tools make it easy to create and manage websites, weblogs and collaboration portals.
Posted by Coyote Gulch on January 5, 2007 at 9:27 am
We’ve been using Jive software’s products for a good long while now: http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/
We really like the IM server (Wildfire) and client (Spark), along with the Knowledge Base which is morphing the Clearspace.
Posted by Jacob Levy on January 5, 2007 at 9:29 am
Whats the method for suggesting a company or project that isnt ready yet to have their name on a public page indexed by Google but which will definitely be ready by the conference deadline?
Posted by Marjolein Hoekstra on January 5, 2007 at 9:42 am
I’d vote for the talented guys behind Touchstone (http://www.touchstonelive.com). Touchstone basically scans your browsing history, your bookmarks, e-mail, documents and other stuff that characterizes your personal attention stream.
You then select the sources that are likely to produce information that might be of interest to you. It makes sense to use web feeds for this of course, or people could develop their own input adapter.
I appreciate this method of managing information overload because the Touchstone engine will only display bits of incoming information if they match your attention profile above the granular thresholds that you determine. The more important that information is to you, the more persistent and disruptive its presentation.
With lots of bloggers talking about handling information overload and attention management, I believe Touchstone provides a viable solution for a real pain.
Ties: the CEO’s a Skype buddy of mine and he once paid me dinner.
Posted by Steven Fuchs on January 5, 2007 at 9:59 am
I run a website called portaportal, its an online bookmarking utility and its used heavily by teachers to streamline internet work in wired classrooms.
I’m currently doing 2 miilion pageviews a month, but no one knows about the product because my users are regular people who have never heard of Technorati or Digg. But they like the site because its simple, and it works with browsers back to IE 5 for Mac, which sad as it seems many schools are still using.
Posted by Joe on January 5, 2007 at 10:28 am
Shameless self promotion check out putplace.com
Help home users find, organise, secure and share their digital content across multiple devices and websites using open APIs that let the users choose their own backup, sharing, and tagging services.
Posted by Tom Morris on January 5, 2007 at 10:44 am
I second the vote for UserLand Software. ;->
What it may lack in current development activity it makes up for in humanity and smart ideas.
The other company whose products I can’t live without is Remember the Milk. They’ve been steadily making their product better and listening to user demands. They get serious whuffie points from me.
Posted by debbie on January 5, 2007 at 11:46 am
guys, userland is great, but hardly under the radar….
Posted by christopher carfi on January 5, 2007 at 11:53 am
of the categories, there, we’d probably fall into category 2: collaborate.
what it is:
social networking for business. (not, it’s not like linkedin, or facebook.)
the url:
http://haystack.cerado.com
here’s what folks have said about us, so far…
http://del.icio.us/Cerado.Haystack/
Posted by Nathan on January 5, 2007 at 12:28 pm
Dave,
Scoble has mentioned a couple of times that you are looking for a surround sound system. You should checkout the Klipsch booth at CES. It’s supposed to be in the Convention Center’s South Hall.
I may be a little biased since I’m the webmaster at Klipsch, but I think we make some pretty kick-ass speakers! They sound really good for movies but they particularly sound great for music because they are horn-loaded.
Anyway, as a daily reader of your blog and Scoble’s blog (via RSS of course!), I just thought I would throw that out there as something to check out while you are CES. I wish I could go, but I can’t ever come up with a good enough excuse for the company to pay for me to go. Oh well.
Posted by Mike Lopez on January 5, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Oh ya Flock is a cool browser too – based off Firefox it integrates with flickr, online bookmarks such as del.icio.us and also has blog posting features. http://www.flock.com/
Posted by tablaneyc on January 5, 2007 at 1:56 pm
Tablane Technology Ltd. http://www.tablane.com
This tiny company (one and half persions) has produced 1)Tablane Browser – the only browser has multiple-lane view.
2)TClipper – capture web content with personal content management and delicious like tagging system.
3) And yet soon will release publisher for publishing structured web page, example as: http://www.tablane.net/yc/opml/scoble.htm
Demo on Scoble show:
http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1278/demo-of-tablanes-tclipper-web-research-tool
tablaneyc [at] gmail.com
Posted by Rob Greenlee on January 5, 2007 at 2:47 pm
Mobile Phone Podcast Listening and Viewing Platform provider Melodeo Mobilcast at http://www.mobilcast.com and mobile phone created video and upload site MoboFLIX at http://www.moboflix.com.
Posted by Baiss Eric Magnusson on January 5, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Category 3. Track – Time, Expenses, Budgets, Accounting, HR
Track-Your-Finances.com
Posted by Allen Day on January 5, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I recommend Tinytube. It’s a mobile site for video.
http://tinytube.net
Posted by Robert Safuto on January 5, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I would like to submit Raw Voice at http://www.rawvoice.com for category 4, Publish.
We have developed a media network engine called the Raw Voice Generator (RVG). The RVG currently powers the Blubrry.com podcast community as well as forthcoming sites developed for our clients.
This tool publishes RSS feeds with enclosures and iTunes tags for a virtually unlimited number of channels. RVG also includes a built in flash media player, social networking features, OPML support and more.
Posted by Warren Miller on January 5, 2007 at 6:53 pm
I’d like to mention Qunu.
From their site:
“Think of Qunu like a search engine that returns people instead of documents — a mashup of search, tagging and instant messaging.
“Qunu was originally dreamt up as a way for people to get free, live chat tech support for products, direct from those who were most passionate about those products — other passionate users. The concept has resonated hugely, and since launch in July 2006 we have amassed over 3,500 experts donating help sessions in over 10,000 topic areas, which suggests that Qunu has grown beyond just tech support.
“Qunu is tightly integrated with existing IM software which means you can help when it suits *you*. Invitations will only pop up on your computer whenever your presence is set to ‘available’.
They’re also about to go open source too, which means anyone can make use of their stuff if they want to allow their passionate users to help out… 😀
Posted by Andrew Wooster on January 5, 2007 at 7:19 pm
In categories 1 and 2, I nominate Dabble DB: http://www.dabbledb.com/
Posted by Mike Lopez on January 5, 2007 at 8:02 pm
woops, dabbledb.com already won, and flock too… an earlier event I guess http://undertheradarblog.com/2006/03/03/and-the-winner-is/
Posted by Matt Terenzio on January 5, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I love the idea of using s3 as storage but there are some issues with the way you describe the functionality.
s3 has permissions yes, but on objects and buckets, so in order to apply different permissions to OPML elements, you’d have to split it up into many objects.
It’s possible, but then you’d need as many HTTP requests to gather them back up. Not really ideal.
What you could do is store user, group, and world versions of the OPML files and simply update them when a user makes a change, but you definiyely need a server application to perform the work.
I’m pretty sure, anyway.
Posted by John Keegan on January 5, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Our BlogHarbor weblog hosting service at http://www.blogharbor.com would be a candidate in category 4… “Under the radar” fits, perhaps we’re just a “hidden gem”. 😉
Posted by Trudy W. Schuett on January 6, 2007 at 9:04 am
Blog City. Everything a blog should be, and more. They have actual people providing tech support, a user’s forum, and are constantly evolving.
http://www.blog-city.com/
Posted by th0m on January 6, 2007 at 10:10 am
How about SIMILE or libAVG … these projects reach high on their tip-toes on top of giants…
Posted by Casey Muller on January 7, 2007 at 1:22 am
For number 6, Jamglue is web 2.0 music mixing, maybe it’d fit?
http://www.jamglue.com
Posted by Rashmi Sinha on January 11, 2007 at 9:27 am
I would like to suggest Slideshare. Think of it as a YouTube for Powerpoint.
You can upload your presentations (in Powerpoint/OpenOffice) and we will render it in a nice Flash format that you can embed into your blog, website. We launched in October and are rapidly growing. It would fit into #4 and #2.
http://www.slideshare.net
Posted by Benjamin Curtis on January 12, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Perhaps you’d be interested in my project ConferenceMeetup. It provides a private social network site geared towards conferences — attendees and presenters. Conference organizers can use the site to help the attendees meet and greet while at the conference, making more efficient use of that valuable time, and to help attendees and presenters interact before, during, and after the conference.
Posted by nanek on January 12, 2007 at 12:33 pm
Opportunity Knocks comment. I love Amazon S3, but based on your requirements it sounds like the wrong tool for the job. You might want to consider using a database to store the subscription information. This is will give you much greater flexibility in presenting multiple views. S3 is much better suited for static content, not dynamic information such as subscriptions. Either way, good luck with your endeavors.
Posted by Matt Terenzio on January 12, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Nanek,
You’re right about s3.
Nevertheless, I tried to adhere to Dave’s proposal when I created a first pass at http://dev.glistn.com and I do see advantages to storing the OPML on S3, which that app does.
What might be cool, is if using something like SSE, an opml file owner could authorize other services to edit and update their files. I envision this Attention propagation scenario in a distributed way, rather than the silos that currently power our relationships with vendors.
I’m hoping t have the equivalent functionality of the share.opml.org site by the end of the long weekend, but I don’t know what Dave has in mind.
I’m kinda just interested in the space.
Maybe Dave can shed more light on where he wants this to go.
Posted by Deirdre Newsom on January 12, 2007 at 5:40 pm
I recommend http://mosaicglobe.com/
A professional, easy-to-use, website hosting service for people who need to showcase any variety of interests without the hassle of learning HTML or CSS.