Web 2.0+ in Education
PageFlakes offers a start page service that looks very sharp. They provide 90 modules known as Flakes. Some are built PageFlakes developers and others by the user community. I have to give PageFlakes a plus for design and offering the ability to share with others as mentioned by Mike in the comment he left on the post on NetVibes.
Do you use a start page to organize your information? Which one do you prefer?
Windows and Mac OSX users can download the free wiki application named ZuluPad. You can ZuluSync your pages to the developer’s server so that you can view them from another computer via a browser or sync the documents to other computers running ZuluPad.
ZuluPad
Why ZuluPad?
For one, it’s the only cross-platform personal Wiki. Downloads are currently available for Windows and OS X, and a Linux port is in the works.
With Wordpress getting traction, more features, and the famed five minute installation process. Oh, one can get a free Wordpress weblog at Wordpress.com. I imagine Six Apart had to bust a move like it did.
Six Apart - Movable Type News - Movable Type is Free for Personal Bloggers
I liked the search engine that came with Start.com since the early beta days. The start page, while useful, still lacks the connectivity with other services as NetVibes and PageFlakes does.
If you found Mooglets to be a cute little piece of programming, visit the “older mature brother ” Protopage which also uses the widgets metaphore.
Protopage v2 released - free AJAX start pages now with RSS news feeds, sticky notes and bookmarks
Mooglets reminds me of Protopage Start Page Service when it started out. Protopage, uses the widget metaphore, as well. This is clearly Alpha stage. It is a nice showcase for the skills of the programmers.
I made some mooglets and clicked on save page state. I then closed the browser and returned to the page and it remembered my settings without needing to login. There is no registration process.
Time will tell where this technology with style goes.
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If you use NetNewsReader, you can download the development version 3 now. This will be a free upgrade for NetNewsReader users. Brent is already getting comments on his post.
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inessential.com: Weblog: Comments for ‘NetNewsWire 3.0d7: Super Early Sneak Peak’
You can download it here. (But I warn you with big red letters that it’s a work in progress, and you shouldn’t try it out if you’re not comfortable with it.)
The big new thing—the thing I’m personally excited about—is the brand-new, totally rewritten Combined View.
The old Combined View (like a newspaper or river-of-news view, for those who don’t know) had some performance issues because every single news item was a separate webview. If you had 100 items, that was like 100 mini-web-pages.
The new version uses just one webview—but, even though it’s a single web page, you can still navigate with the space bar and arrow keys, you can still expand and collapse. It still has the concept of a selected item.
(Or you can just scroll and point-and-click. It works with both styles of reading.)
Here’s a screen shot of the new Combined View. Here’s another screen shot