Bob Stepno's Other Journalism Weblog

Monday, May 3, 2004

New Tools for Online Research & Communication

Furl things first... J Baumgart takes a look at a beyond-bookmarks Web page archiving system called Furl.

One of my clients asked me to review Furl, a service that archives Web pages at the request of its users. I took a quick look at it tonight using its demo mode. Some of the useful features include the ability to add comments and categories to the pages, a search engine, and the option to e-mail what you save to other people. There's a Furl button to add to a Web browser to make it easy to archive pages. Users can import bookmark lists from selected browsers and export their Furl archive. Each account has an RSS feed. There's a system so users can recommend pages to each other. [j's scratchpad]

Next, some new tools for TV journalists:

Italian TV journalists use videophones to submit stories. Using a solution jointly developed by Italian 3G mobile operator Tre and financial TV news channel CFN/CNBC, the network's journalists have begun using Tre videophones to capture and submit stories directly to the TV studios. [unmediated]

Also a phone book case of social networking, or a new kind of "power curve" application... which could give "the usual sources" a new meaning.

SWORD of Damocles? British Telecom is testing a "Small World" phone directory service called SWORD. The pilot version is an internal directory of corporate BT phone numbers for use by BT employees. It tracks who calls whom and adjusts search results accordingly. It notes your social network of colleagues (people you have called or who have called you), and colleagues of your colleagues -- so if you look up "John Smith" and there are 500 John Smiths in the directory, those John Smiths who are your colleagues show up first, colleagues of colleagues show up next, and so on... [Smart Mobs]

And folks at Educational Technology issue a reminder about infrastructure:

What Network? - Darrin Woods, techLearning. Regardless of what fancy, new-fangled services you've added to your network, without the proper infrastructure, you might as well throw your money out the window. Many times, network infrastructure get left behind or forgotten when new equipment and se [Educational Technology]

Meanwhile, it's always good to hear about older forms of communication media that still make the grade:

Boy Gets Response to Message in Bottle (AP). It didn't make it across the Atlantic, but 7-year-old Dylan Goodman got a long-distance answer to a message put in a bottle that was thrown in the ocean.

3:15:04 PM comment []