Tags: Jay Cross, Mark Cuban, Mac, MacBook Pro, MBP, Apple, Vyew, Web Conferencing, E-Meetings, Virtual Conferences, Virtual Meetings, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Lenovo, Lenovo 3000, Windows, Productivity Tools, Knowledge Tools, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Social Software, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Computing, Knowledge Tools, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM, Knowledge Sharing, Knowledge Management

As I continue to read how some of the folks out there on the blogosphere start making their transition successfully from their Windows to a Mac based machine, I continue to enjoy the experience myself very much so with my  own MacBook Pro. So much so that over the last few days I have been consolidating all of the different work-related tools that I use on a regular basis and I am in the process of creating another blog post where I am detailing what those different tools are. However, today I just wanted to mention briefly one of those tools that will become essential to my on the Mac from here onwards.

It is actually a Web 2.0 offering that I have been using already in the past, although perhaps not as heavily as you would have expected. But now that I am on the Mac I can see how I will get busier and busier with it from here onwards. If you have been off my ITtoolbox blog you actually know about it already, but just in case here you have a couple of weblog posts that detail some more the initial experiences I have had with this particular Web application:  Vyew 2.0 - Free Web Conferencing and Always-On Collaboration and Vyew 2.0 - Free Web Collaboration.

Yes, I am talking about Vyew, perhaps one of the most solid and competent e-meeting tools available out there at the moment, and, best of all, free of charge. In a world semi-dominated by Windows based virtual meetings applications, it has always been refreshing to actually find another offering that is not only browser independent, but also operating system independent. That is what Vyew is all about.

A couple of days ago I was actually attending a live demo with a lovely slide deck of some of the new functionalities from this particular offering, and at the time while we were going through them, I was actually making use of my Windows Lenovo 3000 N100 machine to attend the session. Making use of Flock, of course. While we were being explained why Vyew is one of those essential tools for any knowledge worker out there wanting to conduct effective virtual meetings, I decided to be brave and try out whether it would work in my Mac machine.

Well, it did! Yes, indeed, it worked beautifully! I was actually having two sessions, one from my Windows machine and the other from Mac, using Flock in both of them, and getting the most out of it. Performance was incredibly fast and reliable, despite the fact that there were a whole bunch of folks in it. We didn’t notice a single glitch and while I was making use of it on the Mac machine I noticed how I was getting an even much better experience. The Mac experience. I am sure those of you who are Mac users would understand what I mean. If not check out this quote from Jay Cross on something that I can certainly identify with him big time:

"[…] today the action has moved from the desktop to the web. web connectivity may flake out, but it’s not going to disappear forever as did my PC’s hard drive. relationships (the web) trump nodes (the desktop).

I plan to buy a mac to use as a terminal and to make the web my primary platform."

Yes, that is right. The Web user experience is way way different and if you give yourself a chance and try it out with Vyew, both on a Windows and on a Mac computer you would be able to see what I mean.

I was looking for an e-meeting tool that I could use in order to conduct ad-hoc e-meetings on the fly. Without hassle. Without hassle to install extra software. Just sharing a single URL address and off it goes. From your favourite browser! How cool is that?

Well, my search for an e-meeting tool, something that I use on a very regular basis, is now over. I have found my ideal productivity tool to conduct those virtual meetings effectively. Vyew is the word. Vyew is the application and if you haven’t tried out I strongly encourage you all to go through the set of features put together for the current version 2.5 and enjoy the ride. Because I am sure you would.

There are lots and lots of things I could say about Vyew and why I like it so much. Instead, I am just going to sum them up with a couple of words: Free, easy to use, instant access and works beautifully on the Mac. Need to say more?

Tags: Mac, MacBook Pro, MBP, Apple, KISS, RSS, Atom, Feed Readers, Windows, Omea Pro, Mac, endo, NetNewsWire, Shrook, Google Reader, NewsFire, BlogBridge, Simplicity, Ease of Use, Productivity Tools, Vienna, Freeware, Knowledge Snippets, Knowledge Tools, Information Tools

One of the things that I have been very conscious about this time around over the last few weeks, while I am putting things together to make my MacBook Pro my default work machine vs. the Windows notebook, is to actually apply the K.I.S.S. principle. Something that perhaps I should have done a long while ago, but that I didn’t. This time though I am learning my lessons and throughout the entire process I am keeping up with that minimalist flavour to get the most out of the Mac without having to clutter it right away.

And when I put myself to the test I knew that things were not going to be easy in certain areas. One of those being using a competent RSS / Atom feed reader client, one of the various essential tools that I couldn’t live without nowadays. On my Windows machine, and over the course of the last few years, I have probably tried out for a number of weeks / months several RSS / Atom feed clients. Most of the times running concurrently to test them out and see which one would make the winner.

For the last few months, this winner has been, still is, Omea Pro. To me, it is one of the best feed readers for offline reading available out there! No doubt! I would recommend it any time to anyone who may want to get things going. Still do. However, on the Mac things are different.

To start with, there is no Omea Pro for the Mac, so I had to dig in quite a bit and try out a number of different feed reader clients that I have been getting through recommendations, performing several searches or just by bumping into their Web sites and decided to try them, just in case. That is how I got to try out endo, NetNewsWire, Shrook, Google Reader, NewsFire, BlogBridge, etc. etc. The list goes on and on and on.

Overall, most of those readers do a pretty decent job. However, none of them cut it for me for one reason or another. Surprisingly for something so relatively simple as basic functionality. Perhaps at some point in time I will detail why each of those feed readers fails to meet my needs at the moment. And this is where Vienna comes into place, because after having played around with for a few days I can share with you all that it has now become my default RSS / Atom feed reader for the Mac.

You may be wondering why, right? Well, because apart from being freeware, which we all know is an attractive option for us all on its own, it also applies the K.I.S.S. principle very nicely: subscribe to the feed, get the subscriptions / articles, read them, flag those you want to keep and delete the others. Believe or not, this is where most of the other feed readers I have tried failed to come up front with what I would call some key basic functionality: delete what you don’t need and keep what you just need.

It may be pretty simple, but you would be amazed as to how many of those readers would not allow you to delete items you are not interested in. You would expect that the tools would allow you to keep things clean and tidy, but alas, it is not going to happen with most of them. On the other hand, Vienna does this job beautifully with just a single key stroke, which for filtering and quickly scanning through feeds is just … ideal!

So much so that I have been using it for the last week or so and it has become one of those tools I cannot live without in my Mac. Just brilliant, how can such a piece of simple software can get the job done without the hassle, the clutter, or complicated features that most of us are not going to make use of. Yes, I knew I was right when I decided to go minimalist on the Mac, and so far the software I have put together to be as productive as ever, if not more, has been working out like a charm. Vienna has got all you ever wanted to have in an RSS / Atom feed reader client and before you pay some $$$ for some piece of software I can certainly recommend you give it a try. I bet you will stop your search there. Just like I did. For good.

Vienna, simplicity at its best on the Mac!

In a time where more and more knowledge workers nowadays are starting to look after their online presence on the (social) Web, sometimes it is actually a bit difficult to get things going. Probably more than anything else because of the huge amount of resources to get started that are available out there. So with the intention of helping out in this particular area to those folks who may thinking about it, but who may not be quite sure where to go, here is a weblog post that I guess I should have shared over here a little while ago. I know. Better late than never.

I am sure that you are now expecting from me to put together a number of different tips on how to get things going, right? Well, not quite so. In the spirit of knowledge sharing and, specially, re-use, I am actually going to point you folks to a couple of weblog posts from one of my IBM fellow colleagues, David Ing (Co-author of Coevolving), who has been making use of those resources in order to get a bunch of other people online and in charge of their own online presence. And quite successfully.

Check out, for instance, "The Why and How of Establishing Your Web Persona" where David gets to put together a very thorough article sharing some really good tips on how you can manage your own online persona to match your needs, interests and whatever else. Here is a quick, brief outline of what you would be able to learn in there:

"A. Why would I want to take control of my Web persona?
B. The first two steps: A webmail address and a domain name search
C. A blog on WordPress.com is free, and it’s easy to move content elsewhere (If you decide so, later)
D. Offer e-mail subscriptions to your blog
E. Write content!
F. Move the content to your own hosted domain"

You would be able to see how David has included some really good explanations for each of the different entry points, but at the same time you will see how he has put together a pretty dense set of helpful links that would provide you with that additional edge of everything you would need to know about. Pretty impressive and incredibly helpful. (I have gone through it myself and I have found a few tips that I was not really aware of and which make just perfect sense). Totally recommended, to say the least.

But that is not all of it, because talking about the topic related to the creation and maintenance of your own blog on the Web, here is another superb blog entry that David has put together and which basically explains how you can go ahead and create / maintain your own blog in your own domain: "Installing and Customising WordPress on Your Own Domain".

To give you a little bit of an advance of what you can expect on that second blog post from David, here is the outline from the article itself:

"A. Some Web site steps leading up to installing Wordpress
B. Install Wordpress
C. Select and upload some themes
D. Activate a style, and set up the basic look
E. Set Options
F. Create a user persona as editor
G. Install plugins
H. Edit the Blogroll and "Hello World" post"

Yes, I know, both of those articles are rather extensive and would need some digesting further, but, I tell you, if you are looking for an extensive user guide on how to get things going with your own online persona beyond the firewall and on to the Web, these David Ing’s blog posts are probably as good as it gets: rather fundamental and resourceful to help you make it successfully.

(A big massive thanks to David for putting together such insightful resources and, much more importantly, for sharing them with us all! Well done, David! Thanks!)

Tags: Web Presence, Online Persona, Persona, Metablogging, Technology, IBM, David Ing, Coevolving, Web Persona, WordPress, Blogs, Social Software, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Media, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Personal Knowledge Management, PKM

Tags: Nokia, N95, Wi-Fi, No Gateway Reply, Wireless, Router, Troubleshooting, WEP, WEP Key, Encryption

One of the different consequences that I suffered from last week, while I lost my Internent connection for several days, was the fact that when I got everything back to a normal status I could no longer connect my Nokia N95 to the Wi-Fi network. I tried everything I could think of and nothing. It wouldn’t connect. I talked to a whole bunch of folks and most of them advised me that it might have been a problem of incompatibility between the N95 and my new wireless router, so was kindly asked to check that out with my Internet provider

However, before spending some time doing that, I thought I would check things out through our good friend Google and see if folks were having the same problems as myself with that nasty error message: "No Gateway Reply". And lo and behold plenty of folks have been having similar issues to the ones I was experiencing. Very nice! Things were looking good!

Unfortunately, none of the solutions offered in the various forums, I tried them all, did the trick for me. A bit disappointing, seeing how many folks have encountered a similar problem in the past. Was starting to get a bit frustrated as well, thinking that I was not going to get the N95 to work again with the new router.

Then, all of a sudden, I remembered something that really did the trick for me. And, like usual, it was a rather simple solution. Yes, indeed, simple things work the best, don’t they? In this case it was a problem with the WEP key that I was using for my wireless router and which my N95 apparently accepted in the first place, but still didn’t allow me to connect to it.

That is right, to fix the "No Gateway Reply" error on the N95 I just needed to change the WEP encryption key from the 13 alphanumeric combination that the router came with by default to a string of 26 Hexadecimal (Hex) characters (0-9 and A-F). And voilá! Problem fixed! I can now browse again the Web with the N95 in the same protected environment I was having before the router crash. Way cool!

And, of course, since I couldn’t find this other solution to such error, I decided to blog about it, hoping that those folks who may be searching for this problem are able to find another solution to the problem, apart from the ones that other people have been suggesting all along.

Time now to continue experimenting with that fascinating world that Mobile 2.0 really is …

Tags: del.icio.us, social bookmarks, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Metablogging, ClustrMaps, Twitter, MyBlogLog, Flickr, widgets, elsua, WordPress, Plugins, ClickComments, Blog Comments, YouTube, Screencast

A couple of weeks back I was actually browsing through the Knowledge Management related bookmarks from del.icio.us and I bumped into a couple of them from different weblog posts that I have shared over here in the past, where next to the links themselves there was also a number of different comments indicating how heavy this weblog was to load up. That got me thinking and put me into the case of finding out what was actually causing the problem. And after investigating things a bit, I found out that most of the problems were caused by a number of the widgets I have been using for a few months now.

So instead of leaving those widgets hanging around as part of the template, I have gone ahead and removed most of them, at least, the ones that were creating the most problems when loading the page. If you are reading this weblog post from my syndicated feeds, you may not have noticed the change, but I have removed everything and just left ClustrMaps, my Twitter badge, MyBlogLog and my Flickr badge. The end result is that from now on, whenever you would try to load elsua.net it should load way way faster. At least, it loads twice or three times as fast as before, when the widgets were there.

But this weblog post is not just to let you all folks know about some of the different changes taking place over here. I would also want to share something else with you. Something that I have been enjoying myself in several other weblogs that I visit on a regular basis and which has helped improve the overall user experience of WordPress blogs. Yes, that is right. I am talking about one particular WordPress plugin that I have put together a few days ago already and which if you are reading this from a syndicated feed you may not have noticed just yet.

Check out ClickComments. A fine and very helpful plugin that is not only really simple to put together, but quite effective in what it tries to achieve: help weblog commenters share their thoughts on the stuff they read without not necessarily dropping a comment. On the contrary, just with a single click! Yes, that is right. A single click.

For a few days now, every time that I get to publish a weblog post over here you would be able to see a number of different icons underneath the weblog entry that you would be able to click on to rate the content of that particular weblog post in a number of different ways: cool stuff, inspired me, entertaining, write more, creative, insightful, touched my heart and great find! So not only would it be possible to make the overall experience a bit more enjoyable, but you would also be able to participate in the kind of content that I get to share over here. And all of that without leaving a comment, if you don’t want to, that is. You know that comments are more than welcome! Always.

Finally, I should probably mention how the good thing that I like about this particular WordPress plugin is not only how simple it is to set up, but also the fact that they have made use of YouTube to share a screencast of how it actually works. You can find the link for it over here, but for the sake of showing you how it works, so that you can start participating from it right away, here is the embedded version of the clip:

Very shortly, I will be sharing some further changes that I have made into the template and the actual content of the weblog, including some minor changes of the About page, which is just about to go through some major updates in the next few days, but that would be the subject for another weblog post.

Hope you get to enjoy ClickComments just as much as I do whenever I get to visit a number of WordPress blogs where I have seen it running already… Now, who said that blogging is boring, eh?

(Previously, on elsua - The Knowledge Management Blog, at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Quintura, Blinkx, Search Engines, Search 2.0, Knowledge Tools, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Knowledge Sharing, Content Management, Google, Visualisation, Video, Video Search

You may remember how there have been a few times that I have been talking in both of my Internet weblogs about one particular search engine that, as time goes by, I am really starting to be very fond of: Quintura. Yes, that is right! I know that most people out there would say that why should you bother with other search engines when you have got Google, the one and only, right? Well, I have said this in the past, and I guess I will be saying it as well once more: just because of that very same reason. Because it is always a good thing to check out things from the other side and see if they would still stick together for you.

In my own case, Google doesn’t stick together as much as I would be hoping for. There are times where I am looking for something a bit more innovative than just another regular search engine and in that particular case I have got a bunch of dedicated innovative search engines that I have grown to become very fond of. One of such pack is Quintura and by the looks of it, I am not sure what you think, but it seems that things are getting even better. And not just for Quintura.

You probably have seen this already elsewhere, but still I think it would be a good thing to include it over here as well for the sake of the flow from this weblog entry. A couple of days ago I got an e-mail from Yakov where he was announcing that Quintura and Blinkx are to Visualise Video Search. Now, how cool is that? Or, better, how innovative is that? *Very*. Well, here is an excerpt of the announcement:

"Blinkx, the largest video search engine on the Web, has announced that Quintura, a visual discovery engine dedicated to finding web-based entertainment easier and more intuitive, will use blinkx to power video search on www.Quintura.com.

Quintura employs a unique graphical user interface with an interactive tag cloud to visually navigate and easily refine searches. Quintura’s neural networking technology discovers related search terms to the initial query and presents those terms as the interactive tag cloud. Users can then refine or narrow down their searches by clicking on any word or phrase in the cloud.

Under the terms of the agreement, blinkx will power a video search functionality on www.Quintura.com, allowing Quintura to leverage results from blinkx’s index of over 7 million hours of rich media content."

Are here you have got a couple of quotes from both parties involved:

""blinkx’s large video index is a perfect compliment to our graphical user interface,"said Yakov Sadchikov, CEO and Founder of Quintura. "As the Web becomes more visual and rich with content, people are looking for better ways to find video online. blinkx’s video search index combined with Quintura’s visual discovery engine provides users with a unique search experience. This new service has become possible due to technology innovations of our companies in visualizing search and indexing online video."

"We are excited to be powering video search for Quintura," said Suranga Chandratillake, CTO and Founder of blinkx. "Through blinkx’s advanced speech recognition technology, we are able to deliver better results than typical rich media search engines, giving Quintura users the ability to find, experience and share all forms of online video.""

Yes, indeed, I will say it again. How innovative is that? In an Internet world where more and more rich media is being produced all over the place there is a time where you probably need to step away from conventional search engines to still be able to find all of that social media content, because there is probably a time where you would need to watch that video or find that important presentation recorded in video format, or watch that particular screencast on how a particular tool works and so forth, and perhaps there may be certain search engines not apt for the job.

Well, definitely both Quintura and Blinkx are not having that problem, because this particular announcement is certainly going to help them become a whole lot more attractive from the perspective of being able to not only provide the right content at the right time, but also from a wider range of social media tools, which is, after all, what we are all probably looking for. A single point of entry where we can search for any kind of related content to the topics we are interested in. And both Quintura and Blinkx certainly do a great job in that, I tell you.

I know that in the past I have not been weblogging much about Blinkx, but I have still been using it quite extensively all of the place, because otherwise where do you think am I getting all of the different inspiring videos I have been sharing all along And certainly now with the joint work put together between Quintura and Blinkx things are going to get easy, way *too easy*, to find all of the content you would be interested in the first place. That is for sure.

This is just what innovation is all about and in an area that you probably thought it was all done and invented, right? Well, not quite. Here you have got two interesting players showing us all that we may not have reached the limit just yet…