Are You A Peepel Person?

What is Peepel? (www.peepel.com)
Peepel is an Online Office Suite, it provides the users with the freedom to communicate and work online (and, before long, offline) without the expense of propriety software, the technical hassles and the inevitable pain of upgrading both operating systems and applications. They have spreadsheets, word proccessor and more...

It is very impressive and holds much promise, this is an alternative to the web based docs and spreadsheets that promises soon to allow the use off and on line of the app and related files.

I have used the Google apps to much utility in the past 2 months or so and find now that I fire up the web based apps first to do my work unless I need to really make a complicated doc or spreadsheet. Having the ability to work in one browser page makes this new application unique. You can have both a spreadsheet and document open on the same "desktop", I like the speed and look of the app so far. You have a toolbar floating above the windows, it changes like the ribbon bar on Office 2007 and more importantly changes as you change windows.

What Peepel Offers:

• Peepel Desktop is the technology that enables multiple PeepelWindows and applications opened in the one browser window.
• Peepel WebWriter is a simple word processor. It can be used from any modern browser.
• Peepel WebSheet is a spreadsheet. Access your spreadsheet files from anywhere.
• PeepelPanel stays at the top of Peepel Desktop and changes for each application you are using.
• Peepel TaskBar allows users to easily see what files are open by bringing the relevant PeepelWindow to the top of the Desktop.
• Peepel WorkSpace Manager is used to save a desktop layout, and return to it anytime easily.

Bottom Line:
Peepel is a unique approach to online office applications, allowing multiple applications to run in the same window. Users can open as many applications as they wish in multiple resizable PeepelWindows within the one browser window. Peepel is in early stages at the moment, but keep an eye out for tight integration between all the applications.

Peeple Demonstration Video:

Guy Levin

Joost - Web TV and More?

What's Joost?

Joost is a new way of watching TV on the internet. With Joost, you get all the things you love about TV, including a high-quality full-screen picture, hundreds of full-length shows and easy channel-flipping.

The best thing about it is that it's free. :)))
hundreds of full-screen shows at your own time.

See the Quicktime promo: What's Joost

Only TV??
Nope.
You get great internet features too, such as search, chat and instant messaging, built right into the Joost software – so you find shows quickly and talk to your friends while you watch. And with no schedules to worry about, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you like – as often as you want. Joost is completely free, and works with most modern PCs and Intel Mac-based computers with a broadband connection.

With Joost, you're in charge. No more schedules – watch what you want, as often as you like.

Spotback Is Out There (and out of Beta)

First let me start by saying that my very good friend works at Spotback and I know the hard work the spotback team has done in the last few days - Great job guys!!!

Now, lets start the review...

What is Spotback? (www.spotback.com)
First, there were Spotback News (http:\\news.spotback.com) . After a couple of hours playing with it, I fell inlove with it and since then I am using Spotback News something like 2-3 times a day, reading articles according to what interests me.
Spotback News is a really great concept, you enter tags that interests you (e.g. computers, web 2.0 and etc.) and you get articles and news according to them. Brilliant, easy and fast is the way that I would describe it.

Second, Spotback just released the Rate Everything widget that anyone can put on his site and get ratings from users. The interesting thing about this particular sidebar widget is that it is not a plugin, you just put the code into your site or blog and Spotback does all the hard work for you.

Spotback widget gives your three things:

• Tags
• Ratings
• Recommendations
  

To start using the widget just look below each and every post in this blog. You will find a small slider and a little button marked tags. From there forward just click on the slider to cast your vote! Click on the tag button to add tags. That’s it, as simple as that.

Ok, I added the widget, what now? What is it good for?
Well, I will try to answer that question with a few questions of my own "Do you value your users input? Do you want to give added values to your site or a blog? Do you want more traffic coming your way?".

Also I think that this widget is a great way for the blog owner to track what his readers like and dislike. Most readers will not take the time to comment but, they may take the time to leave a rating. If a user does not want to take the time to look in the sidebar for the widget they can also click on the “like it? Get more” link beside the tags button. This will bring up the sidebar widget right there. If you check out the Spotback widget on this blog you will notice a new tab, “Recent Raters”. This tab tells you who has been on your site rating things.

The first two questions onyone can understand but the last one requires a small explanation. When people are rating your posts or something else the data goes to Spotback and is shown at their site, and you can get a few more people coming to your site from Spotback.

What's next?
The Spotback home page is a bit low on inputs right now but I’m sure that will change once more people will sign up and more sites will use it to rank posts, articles or whatever.

Personaly, I think that Spotback should make their own toolbar that you could rate a site from that toolbar, search the Spotback News with it and get your related articles alarms to it. Also, the Spotback News is fading away and it is a damn shame because it was one the thing I really liked in Spotback. I am willing to give them my www.spotgnome.com domain, just keep the Spotback News guys!

Bottom line?
Spotback blends social bookmarking with social voting. Your profile page on Spotback tracks all of your (i.e. bookmarks) and allows you to change my votes at any time. When I click on someone else’s profile, not only does it show me what they voted on (but not their rating) but, if we voted on the same thing it shows me my rating.

Guy Levin

Using A Blog as Project Management Tool

During the last time a have constantly feeling that awareness about projects state is poor. Top management often doesn't know project status and weekly reports don't help. Yes, maybe project manager articulates some problems, but when discussion turns into details, there is a lack of information.
This problem especially important for remote teams.

One solution is using a blog. Project manager or team lead may post all interesting events in project flow on a daily basis. Solved problems with brief solution description, new problems, feelings about progress and possible risks, personal thoughts about overall project status and so on. Blog is informal, and I like it. This is a project diary with comments that holds all project's history.
During a "lessons learned" phase blog will help a lot. Such blog definitely should have RSS feed and comments as a minimum. Sometimes RSS feed is even more usable than email notifications (depends on personality). The other useful feature might be an integration with project management system to insert direct links on user stories, bugs or documents.

Also consider integrating Wiki and use it in some sort of a bug control in a project or version changes. In the bottom line, take Blog + Wiki and give an RSS to everyone who needs to know all the changes in the project and you got a pretty nice project management tool :)

Guy Levin
CVO & Co-Founder
Commerix LTD.
Technorati Profile

Jott - Beta 2 Released

What is Jott? (http://www.jott.com)
When you need to send to yourself a reminder. From your Cellphone, just call to Jott phone number (1-877-568-8486) and leave a message. Jott will send you an email with your audio message as well as the transcribed text.
The registration is simple, you register your Cellphone number and enter few info/password and voila, you can start using the free service immediately!

Jott has recently rolled out a much improved version of Jott. There are small changes and big ones. If you haven’t given Jott a try recently, this release makes it worth your while.





Features:

• Just Jott:
  Jott creates email and text messages completely hands free. No more driving with your knees as you type (please!). With V2, you simply Jott to yourself, other people, or groups. This means there is a change in our voice menu: we simply ask “Who do you want to Jott?”… For a jott to yourself, just say “Myself”.
• Instant Jotts:
  If your message to someone has to get there immediately, use Instant Jott. Simply press 1 after recording a message to someone, and we will deliver the jott as audio right away, with no transcription.
• Jott for Groups:
  Do you hate having to make phone calls to multiple people saying the same thing? Has the soccer game shifted to another location? Jott “Soccer Team”. Flight delayed? Jott “The office”. A little late filling the tank? Jott “carpool”. With V2, simply say the name of a group you’ve created, say your Jott, and you’re done.
• Contact import:
  We now have a tool which makes contact importing trivial. It works with Outlook, Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and others. Having your contact list up to date unlocks the power of Jott; it’s a voice powered address book at the other end of a simple phone call.
• Better User Interface:
  We’re fanatical about simplicity, and we think our new web inbox is both easy to use, and keeps your jotts better organized.

Quick tours of all of this are at http://www.jott.com/jottinaction.aspx.

Screenshot:

Guy Levin
CVO & Co-Founder
Commerix LTD.

HiTask - Project Management Online

What Is HiTask? (www.hitask.com)

HiTask is a simple task management application that is designed to satisfy both sophisticated followers of David Allan’s “Getting Things Done” methodology and anyone who just needs a quick and easy tool to manage their everyday tasks. HiTask gives you maximum comfort with minimum features to make your working day run smoothly and easily. Anyone can register and use HiTask service for free.

The interface is AJAX, very smooth and also very easy to use. You can drag and drop almost everything on the screen like meetings, reminders and even arrange tasks or the order of the main screen features which makes HiTask a very usefull tool for every working person!

In overall this is a very good web application, but it lacks all the finance related things that can be very usefull in project management.

Features Of HiTask:

• Drag and drop interface:
  Sort, schedule and assign tasks using only your mouse. The HiTask interface allows you to drag and drop tasks onto the Calendar to schedule them, and into the My Team section to assign them. You can also reshuffle and prioritize items on your task lists by dragging important tasks to the top.
• Personally prioritize & sort:
  Avoid assigning your tasks arbitrary priorities. Simply review your task list and arrange it accordingly to what YOU would do first. To sort tasks click and hold the sort icon on the right-hand side of the task bar and drag it to the appropriate slot on the task list. You can also rearrange tasks within the groups themselves.
• Work as a team:
  Get your team together at HiTask to assign and receive tasks. Invite or search for your team-mates and assign them tasks by dragging tasks onto the team-mate’s name.
• Group tasks in projects:
  Using Projects you can lay out consecutive tasks together. Or you can just group together tasks that belong to one category or project. To add a task to a project simply drag and drop the task onto the project. To create a new project click on “Project” link and then on the “Add Project” button. After you have added the task to a project the project’s name will appear next to the task name on the task list.
• Scheduling your tasks:
  Schedule your tasks, meeting and reminders by dragging them onto the Calendar. You can also change the duration of the task by dragging the event borders up and down in the Calendar. If you drop the task onto a date in the Calendar without specifying its duration it will automatically become a whole day event.
• Chat with your team:
  Chat with your team-mates to exchange instructions on assigned tasks or just discuss the latest news. To chat simply click on the team-mate’s name and enter your message. You can switch between several conversations at the same time.
• Task grouping:
  Switch between different grouping options to view your tasks in different perspectives. Date grouping allows you to view your tasks in chronological order. Project grouping allows you to bring together consecutive tasks. Use Color grouping to tag your tasks with color for arbitrary categorization. User grouping allows you to view assigned and received tasks grouped together.
• Tag tasks with color:
  Tag your tasks with a choice of eight colors to highlight important tasks or categorize them. You can instantly switch to color grouping by clicking on the Color grouping option above the task list.

Some Screenshots:

The main screen:



Reminders interface:

Guy Levin,
CVO & Co-Founder
Commerix LTD.

Google Developer Day 2007

Google announced they’ll be holding a worldwide developer day on May 31st, 2007 (you can sign-up now).

The live-streamed event will happen in Mountain View, Sao Paulo, Madrid, London, Paris, Hamburg, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and Sydney. During the day, you can meet Google engineers and go through different sessions, learning about such topics as:

• “Developing with Geo: Google Maps, Google Earth and SketchUp”
• “Tools for Better Web Development: The Google Web Toolkit, Open Source and Other Developer Initiatives”
• “Mashups and More: AJAX, Google Gadgets and the Google Data APIs”
  

If you don’t mind the promotion angle (hey, it’s free... I think!), this might be a nice way to learn new stuff.

A small update:

The day itself will vary in format from location to location, but the goal is the same: bring Google’s developer community closer together, share our knowledge, and of course have fun in the process. In the meantime, here are just a few of the Googlers we have lined up across the globe:

• Guido Van Rossum, Google software engineer and creator of the Python programming language (Beijing);
• Chris DiBona, Google open source programs manager (London);
• Mark Stahl, Google data APIs tech lead (Madrid);
• Bruce Johnson and Joel Webber, co-creators of the Google Web Toolkit™ (Mountain View);
• Bret Taylor, group product manager for Google developer products (Mountain View);
• Lars Rasmussen, Google Maps™ senior engineer (Sydney);
• Greg Stein, Google engineering manager and chairman of the Apache Software Foundation (Tokyo).

We’re excited to be inviting everyone. To find out more, and to let us know if you can make it, please visit the Google Developer Day site.

Maxthon - New Kind Of Browser?

Today I came accross the Maxthon Internet Browser software (www.maxthon.com)

Maxthon is a powerful tabbed browser with a highly customizable interface. It is based on the Internet Explorer browser engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that what works in the IE browser will work the same in Maxthon tabbed browser but with many additional efficient features like:

• Tabbed Browsing Interface
• Mouse Gestures - This feature is really great, you hold the right button of the mouse, and when you move it to the left and release the right button it is like you pressed "back",
  when you do the same but to the right it is like you pressed "forward". Very usefull and easy to use.
• Super Drag&Drop
• Privacy Protection
• AD Hunter
• RSS Reader
• IE Extensions Support
• External Utility Bar
• Skinning

You can download it by clicking the following links:

• Download Stable Version
• Try 2.0 Beta Version

Maxthon Access:
This is a very usefull addon to the Maxthon browser and best of all - It's Free!

Maxthon Access is a whole new FREE service that allows you to remotely access your home or office computer from another internet-connected computer - all through your Maxthon Browser.

Want to play any tune in your music collection? Share a favorite photo? Access that file you forgot at home? If it's on your PC, and your PC is connected to the Internet, simply log on to Maxthon Access from your Maxthon Browser, select the computer you want to browse, and navigate to the file you need. Then you can choose whether to share it with a colleague, or download it for enjoying or editing.

• Learn More
• Install Maxthon Access Now!

P.S.
I have also read that google recently bought a few shares of the Maxthon company, could this mean that google is on a road to make her own / co-own internet browser to compete with microsoft internet explorer?? Maybe they should rename it from Maxthon to GBrowser??

Guy Levin,
CVO / CTO
Commerix LTD.

Building a new web 2.0 site

Before building a new web 2.0 site there are a few basic steps before you can even begin:

Step 1 - Form an idea
The idea can be simple or complicated, but it should be one that will attract many people to your site. In most cases it should be something unique, a service that is unique to your site.

Step 2 - Check your competitors

Step 3 - Look for audience

Step 4 - Choose your platform and database

Step 5 - Make a web 2.0 logo