Socialtext announced Socialtext Unplugged at Le Web 3 yesterday. The idea is to allow for offline wiki edits that can be synced back to the system once the user is online again. This is similar to Scrybe's biggest selling point, OfflineSync, which allows users to work offline.
Working offline is the next big step for Web 2.0 apps. We've gotten to the point where web apps have become mature enough to actually replace traditional desktop apps, thanks to AJAX and the collaboration bonuses that come with a centrally-stored application. I use GMail for non-critical email (basically everything non-school), but I use a desktop client and my Treo for the emails I need ASAP or have a need to review later whether or not internet access is available. I use NetNewsWire because reading feeds keeps me entertained and in the loop if my connection is down or I'm in a place where no access is available. Syncing between my laptop and desktop works about 95% of the time, but on occasion I have to deal with having read items marked unread or getting subscribed to the same feed multiple times.
The thing I need to make the jump: offline access. If I could go to GMail whether or not I was online and find an old email, I'd use it over my desktop client. If I could catch up on my feeds in Google Reader while sitting on a plane, I'd use that over NNW. I don't mean to pick on Google, they're just the one with apps most likely to solve my current needs save for this one drawback.
I really hope the unplugged icon catches on and we get some type of standardization for offline mode. Imagine it being as simple as subscribing to an RSS feed: click on the blue icon and Firefox automatically downloads the sync information. Next time you hit the site, Firefox checks for the live site; if it finds it, you go to that, otherwise you go to a locally cached version. Now you can answer emails, star your feeds, whatever, and the changes are updated next time you get online.
Technorati Tags: Socialtext, wiki, offline, web 2.0, ajax, unplugged, RSS, web apps, Scrybe, OfflineSync
From the LyricWiki site:
LyricWiki is a free site which is a single source where anyone can go to get reliable lyrics for any song from any artist without being hammered by invasive ads.
This is a great alternative to having to visit those bulky sites riddled with ads, popups and flash when you want to know the lyrics to a song you're listening to. Best of all, anyone can contribute lyrics so even if you do have to visit one of those awful sites, you can add the lyrics to the Wiki so no one else has to go through the same trouble.
They have a Firefox search plug in, but I hope that in time their Google Juice gets high enough so that anytime you search "'song name' lyrics" in Google, you get them instead of the bad guys as the top result.
Technorati Tags: LyricWiki, lyrics, Wiki, song, music, Google, Google Juice, Firefox, search, plugin
I love Wikipedia. It is so much better than any other encyclopedias. Since each entry can contain inline links to other Wikipedia articles and so you end up jumping from entry to entry and end up at a topic completely unrelated to the one you started on. It would be interesting to see some network statistics of the relationships between entries.
Anyway, the other day I was reading the entry on hurricanes and through various links I ended up reading the "request for deletion" pages regarding some of the schools I went to. Here's just a few things I've learned from Wikipedia in the past couple of days:
- After the list of names for hurricanes is exhausted, the Greek alphabet is used. (What happens if a Greek-lettered hurricane has to be retired?)
- There are six lists of names that are used on a rotating basis, with particularly damaging hurricane names being retired and replaced.
- Southern hemisphere hurricanes are rare (only three cyclones have been observed there) and spin in the other direction.
- Global warming has little to no effect on hurricane creation.
- Cincinnati Bengals Wide Receiver Chad Johnson went to my high school, as did Sin City star Mickey Rourke.
- Adam Curry was the first owner of mtv.com, but when he left his VJing job there, MTV sued him for it (they settled out of court).
Technorati Tags: hurricanes, wikipedia, wiki, web 2.0, Adam Curry, MTV, Chad Johnson, Cincinnati Bengals, football, alumni, Miami Beach
voo2do is a simple web-based to-do app utilizing AJAX. I've tried a couple of online list apps, including 37 Signals' Backpack and Ta-Da Lists and the excellent (and completely self-enclosed) TiddlyWiki. They never really stuck, though, since they weren't very time management-oriented but more organizational-oriented. The deal breaker for me was that I couldn't assign due dates to tasks.
In comparison to the aforementioned alternatives, voo2do is more like the Tasks/To-Do function of a PIM than a simplified Wiki. For example, voo2do lets me assign projects to tasks and add notes to them, as well as letting me add time estimates a la Joel Spolsky's Painless Software Schedules system, none of which any of the alternatives allows me to do.
Here's a quick overview of all of voo2do's features:
- The Dashboard tab gives a general overview, providing a list of tasks on the left hand side and (the latest?) notes on the right.
- The Tasks tab is where the action happens. On this tab, you can create new tasks, edit their details, mark them as completed or delete them. This tab is split between Pending Tasks and Recently Completed Tasks.
- The Projects tab lists your different projects, listing the number of tasks, the number of hours a project will take and the number of hours remaining for each project. In addition, you can create different "views" that will allow you to group any number of projects together. I can see this appealing to Getting Things Done fans who will most likely use voo2do views as GTD projects, voo2do projects as GTD contexts and tasks as next actions.
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The Notes tab will display the notes attached to all your tasks. It provides a convenient "delete" button to eliminate the hassle of going through and having to click multiple times to get into a task and delete each note the long way. I would like to see a way to free-standing create notes that aren't attached to any task, but I suppose I could just create a task called "Notes" to get around this limitation for now.
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The Deadlines tab displays tasks by due date. Overdue tasks are listed at the top, followed by tasks due today, then tasks due tomorrow and finally, tasks due this week.
Though I haven't used it much yet, I'm already a big fan of voo2do. It is a simple app which only does one thing, but it does that one thing very well.
The bottom line is, if you need central repository for text that's available online, give Backpack or TiddlyWiki a try. If you're like me and need an online to-do list application, or are looking for the best app to implement GTD with, voo2do is the best I've found so far.
Technorati Tags: organization, ajax, wiki, gtd, getting things done, to-do, tasks, backpack, 37signals, web2.0, pim
