Michael Fioritto: Technology

Wed, 23 Jul 2003 02:48:08 GMT

Groove tackles project management. Groove Networks on Tuesday rolled out a project management version of its desktop collaboration software designed to help distributed project teams work together more effectively. [InfoWorld: Top News]

Mon, 16 Dec 2002 19:16:15 GMT

Bowstreet streamlines portal development. Tighter integration with IBM WebSphere added [InfoWorld: Top News]

Mon, 16 Dec 2002 16:24:34 GMT

The power of voice. ... [Jon Udell: InfoWorld]

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 15:09:30 GMT

Data compression technology
iOra Floats Navy's Offline Portal [Line56: B2B News]

Tue, 10 Dec 2002 15:37:25 GMT

Portals that Work [Line56: B2B News]

Wed, 04 Dec 2002 14:57:24 GMT

Vignette Resets Portal Message [Line56: B2B News]

Mon, 25 Nov 2002 23:20:09 GMT

Microsoft updates intranets solution. Software features improved collaboration via pact with Groove [InfoWorld: Top News]

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 15:11:34 GMT

IBM and partners offer hosted midmarket apps. Big Blue continues push to win small, medium-size business customers [InfoWorld: Top News]

Sat, 23 Nov 2002 15:11:12 GMT

Portal players forge business processes. IBM, Plumtree, Vignette build process capabilities into enterprise portal hubs [InfoWorld: Top News]

Wed, 20 Nov 2002 15:54:05 GMT

Intranet ROI case studies. Gerry McGovern has posted a few intranet ROI case studies on his site, primarily from PeopleSoft, Cisco Systems and Hewlett Packard. To quote: An intranet can deliver return on investment (ROI) by either reducing the cost, or expanding the ability,... [Column Two]

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 21:38:25 GMT

WebSphere Portal 4.2 [Line56: B2B News]

Wed, 13 Nov 2002 21:58:27 GMT

Bad Intranets [Line56: B2B News]

Tue, 05 Nov 2002 15:00:59 GMT

Portals, Blogs, & RSS: Why They Are Your Future. HTML Slide Show presentation connecting the dots between portals, blogs and RSS, from the point of view of librarians. [Hypergene MediaBlog]

Tue, 29 Oct 2002 16:54:04 GMT

Fasten Your Seat Belts.....

Roll Up Displays in 2005?

"Cambridge Display Technology group has acquired its rival Opsys, fusing the two companies together in the hopes that flexible, rollable TV and computing displays might see the light of day by 2005. As we've reported before, Organic LEDs will be the Next Big Thing™ in flat panel displays, and Kodak, IBM, and CDT are racing furiously to get a grasp on the emerging market. CDT owns a patent relating to one of the major OLED production technologies, but this acquisition moves the target date up, so it seems....

While the energy efficiency and wide viewing-angles of OLED technology is exciting to me, what really gets me going is the idea of a roll-up display. Since an OLED-based displayed needs no backlight and can be printed on flexible plastic, it's a real possibility. What can I say, Semi and I want our Globals! Imagine a visual communicator with a retractable screen that fits inside something the size of chapstick. Or how about a pull-out display built into your dashboard that can display anything from maps, to TV, to websites?...

I would like to see maps that get updated via bluetooth, and/or are synched to a GPS unit, allowing for a constant update of the users postion. Imagine if you bought a subcription ($10/year) to a map service that automatically updated your atlas, with options for countries, history, and higways.

Further uses: Flooring tiles: change the pattern of your flooring whenever you want, as the tiles are all networked together allowing you to have ever shifting patterns, video feeds, maps, or visualizations that are synched to music all on your floor. For that matter, your ceiling as well. Heck, any flat surface that they can be mounted to could be used.

Buy one game board and have it include all kinds of games, chess, checkers, backgammon, monopoly, parcheesi, trivial pursuit, all from one master board, and all you buy is the data of the game and any pieces that you might need.

Instead of buying the newspaper every day, have it fed via RSS to your livepaper via bluetooth either at home from your computer, via your cell, or at a newsstand when you walk by (since you've subscribed, right?) via 802.11. You could get all your magazines in this manner, simply subscribing online, and everytime you are in range of a stand, the paper automatically checks to see if there is anything new that you are due to get. Leace the paper in a cradle overnight to recharge and gather feeds while you sleep eat, etc, and that way it's always up to date.

Given enough RAM, the paper could serve video as well, so the shows that you missed last night that you recorded on your PVR are now watchable in a comfortably sized format while you commute into the city. If you have a fat enough pipe while mobile, you could get live feeds from news channels as well, and watch what is happening in real time as you go." [Ryan Greene's Radio Weblog]

I don't have much else to add to this except to echo Ryan's thoughts. Pardon the pun, but this rolls into one "device" much of what I talk about in my presentations - constant information feeds (RSS style), The Heavenly Jukebox, mobile labs (OQO + VKB + roll up monitor), etc.

Notice, though, that Ryan doesn't mention libraries anywhere in his speculations. And why should he? Have we proven ourselves yet that we're ready for this brave new world of digital content, delivery, and preservation? We need to make sure we stay in the dissemination and distribution loop so that we can serve patrons (like Ryan) with these types of devices.

As a whiplash turn to make the point, witness the lack of understanding about the role librarians can and will play in a society drowning in information. Even Tom Peters doesn't get it:

"Round two of the revolution is underway. We have a term for job positions occupied by travel agents, stockbrokers, bank tellers, librarians, receptionists, reservationists, and many customer-service oriented jobs--Toast! Not crunchy, cooked-just-right toast. We are talking about burned to the crisp and then left on the counter for three days toast. The kind of toast that leaves a thin layer of toast sweat on the counter. Toast that’s only palatable if you soak it in milk for an hour, plug your nose and swallow." [People & Places that Rock, link courtesy of Simon Chamberlain]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Mon, 28 Oct 2002 15:23:01 GMT

A New Company Tries to Sort the Web's Chaos. Grokker software, which is intended to allow personal-computer users to visually make sense of collections of thousands or hundreds of thousands of text documents, is creating a buzz. By John Markoff. [New York Times: Technology]

Tue, 22 Oct 2002 21:38:01 GMT

Portals-Know What You're Getting Into [Line56: B2B News]

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:13:50 GMT

IM: Enterprise Ready? [Line56: B2B News]

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:12:47 GMT

The enterprise Mac. IN MAY 2001, Apple began shipping OS X on new Macs. Six months later, at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer and Web Services conference, it was clear that a sea change was under way. The open-source geeks who flock to these events were flouting Microsoft not with PC notebooks running Linux, but with PowerBooks running OS X. Displayed on their gorgeous Aqua screens was the Mac's newest and most unlikely killer app: SSH, the secure shell, in all its 80-column, 25-line splendor. [Full story at InfoWorld.com.] ... [Jon's Radio]

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:12:01 GMT

Mitch Kapor's open source PIM to use wxPython. Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation has emerged into blogspace, where Mitch says he'll chronicle its progress. The first project: a powerful, easy-to-use personal information manager for Linux, Windows, and Mac. Mitch writes: ... [Jon's Radio]

Mon, 21 Oct 2002 17:09:58 GMT

The Emerging SuperPortlet. From PortalsMag.com: First-generation "portalized" views of enterprise applications, as presented by portlets, gadgets or other branded tools, give users a... [E M E R G I C . o r g]

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 17:28:14 GMT

IBM introduces WebSphere Portal - Express. Designed for small and medium-size businesses, IBM's new WebSphere Portal - Express requires just one server, installs with five mouse clicks and is affordably priced, says the company

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:22:02 GMT

I'm falling a bit behind: it's awesome to learn that Sam, Greg and others are diving into some Groove experiments - particularly in the area of web services. Based upon what I've seen thus far, it's going to be really interesting to see what might be possible .. particularly in the area of aggregation and integration. Sam and Greg ... thanks! [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]

Thu, 10 Oct 2002 03:16:46 GMT

Suprise Launch of Emergic Freedom. One of the delights of being an entrepreneur is how unpredictable days are. Yesterday had started off like any normal... [E M E R G I C . o r g]

Wed, 09 Oct 2002 19:33:40 GMT

The One-Stop Portal [Line56: B2B News]

Tue, 08 Oct 2002 14:35:45 GMT

Yahoo's Enterprise Messenger [Line56: B2B News]