07 September 2002

Sighting: Flash Community Server SERVER WATCH.com -- Most of the time, new products do not earn four and a half stars, but Flash Community Server is different. Macromedia has been offering various aspects of this server for years. The Community Server is "robust . . . (and it) delivers communications and rich media with fine granularity; small pieces of functionality can be combined in almost infinite ways."

Open Briefing Book KILKENNY, Ireland -- We should begin an Open Briefing Book by assembling core knowledge on important topics. Jerry Michalski points out that consultants at firms like Mckinsey and Accentuate look smart because they can call on their firm's knowledge, assembled in briefing books on important topics. This would be an important collection in the field of connected technologies in Ireland. An Open Briefing Book would show we know more than any of us could hope to know alone.

Klog Apart Bookmarks Phil Wolff -- If you got the time to read 600k of info, Klogzilla's reference list is worth perusing.

Project Management Reporting Tips DIJEST.com -- Phil Wolff blogs his project updates. He uses a 5-minute tool. The technique works if you can distill your thoughts into a well structured, bullet-heavy, one-pager that you would normally use for staff meetings. All reports should be linked to expanded details. His ideas would help reduce the time I spend in project management meetings. He has two Project Flash Report html templates that help you manage a project blog. x: Phil's project management channel

RSS Inching Towards Convergence RAELITY.oorg -- RSS is a standard means of summarizing you most timely web contents in a way that they can be instantly parsed and sent around to other people. RSS is the core technology under my news aggregator. I open my RSS feeds and I have a personal news reader better than anything in the print world. Rael explains the new convergence in RSS which means the various RSS camps are all coming around to the same place. This is a big deal.

Pinging to a Category KIRBYCOM.com -- Tim Kirby is "pinging to a category" but I don't know what that means. So I'll keep looking.

Dreamweaver Supports Radio Weblogs SANTRY, Ireland -- We need to set aside one hour of training in our Macromedia Dreamweaver course to show how to support Radio in the program. Macromedia make it easy, because Dreamweaver MX supports Radio with "extensions for website building and application development. The extensions help display data in PHP applications, add functions to the file menu in Dreamweaver, and edit themes for sites developed using Radio Userland for editing weblogs."

Text Messages from the States FLAGSTAFF, Arizona -- In her first month of college, Misty writes: I'm not afraid to admit I don't know much about technology. I remember being impressed several years ago when I visited my Dad in Ireland and he was constantly sending typed messages through his cell phone to other cell phones. He called them text messages. Sure enough, this year (FINALLY) the United States cell service providers decide to give us the same opportunity to send text messages; but it is an add-on package, and I figured I'd never use it. With a normal call phone plan, you can have 50 free incoming "ping pong" text messages. One day, in class, I recieved two. My friend, Tory, also attending NAU was writing to me about how boring his class was, and the other was from a long number I didn't recognize. Turns out my Dad from Ireland can send me text messages! I know I don't have international long distance, so I couldn't call that number and talk without spending an un-Godly price per minute, but I hit reply and typed a message back. I am so amazed that Dad and I can keep in touch this way, in fact, I'm going to add the text plan to my phone. Who would have thought I could have ever sent a text message to Ireland when just a few years ago I had no clue what it meant? (Misty Star wrote to this blog by using Hotmail from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona.)