2007

Chris DiBona’s response to News Corp/NBC YouTube competitor. This past week’s feature was originally going to be about why I think News Corp and NBC’s efforts to build a YouTube competitor will fail. But I’d much rather stay positive, bring new ideas to the table, and focus on making an existing product better. And the great thing about blogs is that if I’m not covering it, someone else is. Chris DiBona with the key point:

The managers, the lawyers, the executives, the ops people, the accountants, the lawyers, the programmers, the lawyers, the qa teams, the lawyers, the secops people, the users, the producers, directors, key grips and craft people. The talent, the fx houses, the compressors, the vast use of ffmpeg and all that entails. All from all the different companies.

Public Library Geeks Take Web 2.0 to the Stacks. One of the key concepts I had when deciding to become a consultant is that any group, not just businesses or global networks, can improve through better online communications tools. This Wired article is about a program called Learning 2.0; it’s freeware for librarians(or anyone) to experience new media technologies like podcasting, RSS, wikis, folksonomies, Flickr, etc.

“The last thing we want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look,” said Christine MacKensie, director of the Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne, Australia, which just finished a four-month version of Learning 2.0. “And they certainly won’t now.”

WiPeer: Wireless Peer-to-Peer Networking for your PC. If there’s one thing that I hate, it’s trying to network together a couple of computers just so I can quickly share some files.

WiPeer sets up wireless peer-to-peer networks between PCs, no router, access point or internet required.

You can use these ad-hoc networks to share files, chat and even play games with other WiPeer users. Suppose, for instance, you’re at a lunch meeting with some co-workers. There’s no Wi-Fi network to be found, but you need to share some files. Instead of passing a USB flash drive around the table, you could connect two or more machines via WiPeer.