Five Handy Tech Tools

Open Media Network: The founders of Netscape have launched an online distribution system for video content that uses Kontiki, a BitTorrent-like high-speed peer-to-peer downloading technology, RSS-based notification and a TiVo like programme guide. Content can be delivered to PCs, iPods, mobile phones and TVs. First version only works with Windows and IE. Because Kontiki strips out any unauthorized copyrighted content, look for this tool to be quickly eclipsed by less restricted portals.

MoonEdit: MoonEdit is a simple wiki-like document collaboration tool that can be used in conjunction with a Skype conference. Each member of the conversation has their own colour and cursor, so participants can see who is contributing what to the shared document. Not yet available for Mac.

Browster: This is a very promising tool that scans search result pages (and you can use it on other web pages as well) and places a small button in front of each link on these pages. Then, simply by moving the cursor over the button, you get a complete display of the target page. In a search, this allows you to quickly scan all the results target pages without clicking on them. This has some fascinating potential and some interesting implications. I suspect that it will register as a ‘page visit’ to all target pages, of indeterminate length, potentially playing havoc with page count tools if this technology becomes popular. I tried it out on my home page, as a means of allowing me to browse my 400-link blogroll without clicking on each link. Alas, this was too much for the system to handle — after the 50th link it crashed my computer. Never got to see if it would also display my comments and trackbacks without having to click on them. But if bandwidth and cache issues can be resolved, this technology could really break out. This version works only with Windows and IE.

YouSendIt: This tool keeps a copy on YouSendIt’s server of any file you send it for seven days, no matter how large, and a message to the person you want to send it to with the link. So regardless of size limits of your, or your recipient’s mailbox, you can ‘send’ large multimedia files to them. Some discussion group users are using this tool to post the address of these files, allowing anyone to access them.

IHMC ConceptMap: This tool allows you to prepare sophisticated concept maps and system thinking diagrams. Unlike mind maps, which are simple tree diagrams, concept maps allow you to document n-to-n relationships of concepts, and feedback loops. All users need to download the free software, which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. ConceptMaps kept on the vendor’s server can be shared and collaborately changed by multiple participants, as explained by the concept map shown above. (Thanks to Roger for the link)