Category: web 2.0

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SimpleTicket gets Dugg

simpleticket open-sourceI love to talk open-source because I just love the whole idea behind open collaboration and trusting users enough to ask for their help and ideas to make your product prosper. Now, I’m a capitalist (no doubt), but there’s just enough ‘left’ hidden under my gruff, conservative exterior to really, really appreciate open initiatives.

Alexander Muse sent me a link earlier letting me know about SimpleTicket and it is really, really neat. For businesses that want a ‘simple’ solution to IT trouble tickets, this is a great option.

SimpleTicket was written using Ruby on Rails and has some neat Web 2.0 features like Ajax. In fact, those two items, plus the fact they released the source code, inviting developers to assist them contributed to the fact they recently got dugg to the front page of Digg.

Neat product and even neater presentation. Oh, did I mention they support TAPI (VoIP) and have RSS feeds for your IT department? That is just icing on the cake. 🙂

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Attensa Looks Good

smart rssMatthew Bookspan of Attensa gave me a tour of their new RSS reader right before they released it. I was particularly impressed with the ease of Outlook Sync.

My first negative thoughts were on privacy issues, but their privacy policy is pretty clear and I have no concerns there anymore.

It does beg the question, “what happens when Office 12 comes out and Outlook has RSS built in already?”

Some thoughts:

1. Attensa offers online sync ($20 a year) so that when you are not home you can check your feeds from any web connection. Mobile RSS is optional but will probably be a pretty hot ticket for them as well.

2. Is there an easy OPML export?

3. It’s Enterprise-level service so you should expect extreme stability. Compared to Bloglines, and other free services that’s pretty darn important.

4. The sync is almost real-time if you push the sync button and within 30 mins if you don’t. I think that’s pretty important.

5. The attention-stream part will be exciting to advertisers at some point I’m sure.

All in all, it was enough to induce me to download and install the demo.

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YackPack Says Back-Up Skype!

After we all watched with irritation at what Skype’s latest version did to their open-source developers when they integrated all their cool features into it without any renumeration or warning, we were ticked off to say the least. Well,…

Tell ’em BJ! Shame on you Skype!!!

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Kweschun Is a Hit

kweschun.gif

What is Kweschun? Well, even Chris Nolan didn’t say, though he’s overly tired from coding, and probably from playing around with eh list. He promises to post further soon.

My thoughts are:

  • the sign-up process is easy and the movement, on screen (Ruby?) is pretty
  • by clicking on advanced I was able to write a good description for my Kweschun
  • tags (I <3 tags)
  • allows preview because once someone answers your Kweschun, there’s no more editing
  • drag and drop answers (very cool)

Here’s a mash-up of the Canadian election, and there’s a nice sampling of user-createds on the site as well.

My only problem with Kweschun so far is that it’s not the prettiest font/design out there, but I guess that doesn’t really matter. Functionality seems on the mark and I’ll probably add Kweshun to my blog tools. Interesting concept for social users, and aren’t we all social…? I’m going to play with it more and probably post on it later this weekend on the Social Networking blog.

I did go ahead and post a question of my own. Click the screenshot to answer it. I chose to allow others to add their own answers, I may regret that (kinda like the Washington Post huh?). But, I’m a risk taker 😉