PodCamp Toronto 2007

Ryerson played host to one serious geekfest last weekend. Propellerheads, cameras, microphones and more practical tips & tricks than you can shake a stick at. Yup, my first podcamp.

Sessions spanned such topics as advanced editing, business strategy, search engine optimizaion for your podcast, how to sound your best without spending twenty grand, and most importantly, how to enjoy yourself. A special shout-out to Leesa Barnes, Mark Blevis, Mitch Joel and John Wall for sharing so many of their insights.

The best part, they taped it all. Check out the videos here.

Tag: PodCampToronto2007

Adobe Acrobat Connect

Formerly known as Breeze, Adobe has changed the name of this offering to Acrobat Connect after its acquisition of Macromedia. Besides the sweet new logo (shown above), I enjoyed this product because it’s easy to setup, easy to invite and bring other colleagues into a virtual meeting, and of course, it’s fairly intuitive.

The official copy from the Adobe website describes Acrobat Connect as:

“a scalable, highly customizable, extensible web conferencing solution. It brings real-world functionality to online meetings that enables business professionals to communicate and collaborate instantly with up to 2,500 participants through easy-to-use and easy-to-access online personal meeting rooms.”

This hosted solution includes features such as live video, participant chat and screen sharing. You can also control the other persons terminal remotely if need be. Here is how easy I found my free trial:

Step one: Create a space.

Step two: Invite other users to your meeting space.

Step three: Rock & Roll

Unlike some Adobe programs, which can come with a learning curve steeper than the Matterhorn, I give Acrobat Connect and its ease of use two thumbs up on this one. Try it out free for thirty days here.

Tags: Acrobat Connect

Toronto Tuesday Meetups

Two meetups I will be attending this month include:

Toronto Wiki Tuesdays happening tomorrow evening @ Rowers Pub on Harbord Street. Details are here.

 

The following week at Third Tuesday finds Anthony Williams, co-author of Wikinomics, speaking at The Pour House on Dupont Street. I recommend arriving early to ensure a good seat. Details:

When: Tuesday, February 20, 2007, 6:00 PM

Where: The Pour House /182 Dupont Street

Description: This year’s must-read book is Wikinomics. And the book’s co-author, Anthony Williams, will be our guest speaker at the February Third Tuesday. Wikinomics pulls together and reorders into coherent patterns the disruptive changes in community and collaboration that we associate with social media.

Hope to see you there!

Update: The location for Third Tuesday has changed. New details are:

When:

Tuesday, February 20, 2007, 6:00 PM

Where:

Bier Market
58 The Esplanade
Toronto , ON M5E 1R2
416-862-7575

• Info/Map

Tags: TorontoWikiTuesday Wikinomics

IBM QEDwiki

It looks like IBM may have a contender to do serious battle with Google’s JotSpot.

Their recently released QEDwiki (shown in this video), looks impressive with its ability to mashup content in all kinds of inventive combinations. It seems to have all the great features that we saw with JotSpot (shown in this demonstration). Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Google has been spending so much time honing JotSpot before they reopen public registrations.

Thanks to Scoble for his camera work.

Tags: IBM QEDwiki JotSpot

SiteScape Forum ZX

Can you guess what the CDC, Shell International, the Standards Council of Canada, T-Mobile, and the U.S. Navy have in common? The answer is they all use SiteScape services to help collaborate across teams.

SiteScape’s flagship offering, Forum ZX, is a feature-rich application that combines multiple modes of communication in one piece of software. A few of the features that make ZX worth investigating as a collaboration option are:

1) Threaded discussions. These are handy for maintaining context when team members are not online at the same time. They can also receive instant message or email updates notifying them that a new discussion has been started. These updates contain embedded links, which can bring a team member right to the new discussion area.

2) Zon. Forum ZX has its own IM client called Zon, which can consolidate contacts from most of the popular IM clients such as AIM, Yahoo, Messenger, and even Outlook. You can easily tell who is online at any given time and what members of a project team are virtually available.

3) Web Conferencing. Another cool feature of ZM is the conferencing option in which users can review docs and make edits in real time. There is also a whiteboard that can be used by multiple participants simultaneously. You can also choose to record the conference session for future accessibility.

Other attributes of Forum ZX include: document sharing, action item management, presence and impressive search capabilities. You can watch many of the program demonstrations after completing a brief registration form found here.

Tags: SiteScape Forum ZX Web Workspace

Confluence 2.3.1

 

Atlassian announced an upgrade to their enterprise wiki software last week. Confluence, already the most popular commercial wiki in the marketplace, is now version 2.3.1. A few of the enhancements since the 2.x iteration include:

1. WYSIWYG editing
2. 30 second autosave when drafting
3. Labels (or tags) for easy sorting of pages
4. RSS Feed Builder

After login you start in the main workspace.

On the right side of the workspace is four navigation choices. From here you can browse the contents of the wiki, add a page to the wiki, add a news item, or invite another person to join your space by email invitation.

The Dashboard view (shown above) lists your different workspaces on the left and the files for that particular space on the right. A cursory glance at the dashboard shows you the most recently updated content.

Working with attachments is as simple as browsing your computer and selecting a file you would like to upload. It’s just as easy to download or move the files to another page or workspace.

I also like the Space Activity screen which displays interesting stats like most popular content, most active content and most active contributors.

Confluence is currently offering free personal wikis that allow full privileges for two users. One important caveat: you need to host the free version on your own server.

Tags: Atlassian Confluence Wiki

Blog + Wiki = Bliki

First things first. What the heck is a bliki?

According to the cyn.in (pronounced sign-in) website:

A bliki is a web based collaboration and publishing system that marries the concepts and benefits of a blog based publishing software and a wiki based collaboration system.

Blog: A Blog or a weblog software is a specialized form of Content Management Systems specifically designed for creating and publishing content in a chronological manner, just like a web based diary.

Wiki: A wiki is a web based application that allows its users to easily add, remove and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website, or to certain specific wiki sites, such as an online encyclopedia like Wikipedia.

Blikis are about interactive blogging.

Interacting with a blog usually means leaving a comment at the bottom of a post. With a bliki, you can edit the original post and attach files to the page it is on. Rest assured, you can always go back to a previous post.

This happens through the magic of “automatic versioning” which creates a new copy each and every time a user updates a note, post or page.

 

 

The RSS capabilities give each user the option to publish and subscribe to notifications for different projects, groups or posts through tagging (called SlashTags here).

 

 

I recently reviewed the cyn.in bliki and was impressed with both its functionality and ease of use. It’s a neat platform which, although might appear a little foreign when you look at the initial blank screen, really picks up steam after you begin creating a few notes or posts. It also nets high marks for its refreshingly uncluttered user interface.

Tags: cyn.in bliki

BrainKeeper Enterprise Wiki

For those of you who have previously used a wiki for project work, you will find navigating around BrainKeeper a breeze. For those of you about to hop on the wiki train, you will find BrainKeeper a great place to start. It’s an easy ride with a clean layout and intuitive controls.

Once you have signed up for an account (which takes about five seconds), your main navigation area is called the dashboard.

You can manage all of your different workspaces, and pages within those spaces, from your dashboard. You can browse by projects

or you can browse by recent changes

Not all projects or pages are meant for every group or employee. BrainKeeper makes granting access permissions a snap.

When you create a new workspace, you can choose from Company (which is everybody can view the content), or Restricted (only people you grant access can view and contribute to the workspace. You can easily add or remove a person from a restricted space at any time.

You can try your own 30-day trial of BrainKeeper Enterprise Wiki here. Although the trial has reduced functionality, you can still see what a great service this is.

Being an administrator has never been so easy. Hats off, BrainKeeper team!

Tags: BrainKeeper Wiki

Hello world!

Welcome to my brand new space!

Please be patient over the next few days while I finish unpacking and arranging things.

I’ll be back up and running shortly.