Solution Grove is busy these days, and we are doing a lot of new AJAX-based UI work. I will be documenting and demoing it in our blog so we can make the rest of the community aware of pieces we are creating. We hope to work with the community to bring these pieces back to the toolkit, but some demos will be client-specific implementations that will probably need adapting.

This is a demo of a "Carousel UI" integrated into OpenACS to allow users to pick images.

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(photo courtest of dangering) Lars Ploughman follows up to his 10-to-1 email rules post. Basically email is never ideal as the only collaboration tool, but should be part of an overall collaboration toolset. OpenACS is a collaboration tool that offers some good email integration while preserving the benefits of a collaboration toolset. For example, the discussion forums can be email enabled to send out new posts by email and to accept replies to those emails. This way, someone can refer later to a post by URL and all the email is archived in one place, and indexed for full text search. Other collaboration tools in the OpenACS platform can be enabled in the same way. Almost every applicaiton supports notification of new items and changes by email. Another tool that is becoming more common is RSS syndication. In this way the user chooses to be notified in a news reader instead of by email. To reply from there they can just click on a link and go to the collaboration web site within their browser. A collaboration toolset like OpenACS gives users the option to work with email, rss, or any combination. Of course, new communication mediums such as SMS can also be integrated with the right code. A mix of tools that fit each users work style while preseving a searchable centralized history and current status of the collaboration is a good solution taking advantage of the technology we have now.

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I left my microphone behind when I went to AMIA and had to buy a new one. This time, when I went to Radio Shack I bought the most expensive microphone available, about $40 from Logitech. I believe the old microphone was a $20 from Plantronics. I think the sound quality from the new mike is indeed better, but you can decide for yourself.

• Old Microphone: Tour of our social Bookmarking app
• New Microphone: Tour of our drag and drop portals

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From Creating Passionate Users - "How to be an expert"

So the world conspired to encourage me to attempt to learn a new skill – Video. What lead me to foolishly believe I could learn to put videos on the web?

1. Last week I read an interesting article about students using cell phones for video.
2. I was chatting with Cesar Brea who has big plans to install a blue screen and do video interviews.
3. I wrote a post on Revver a profit sharing video hosting service.
4. I also have a shiny new cell phone, the Motorola Q, and it does make videos.

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We had a client ask to try out the OpenACS chat package so today's wblog is on Chat:

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I have been reading Web 2.0 for Business Advantage: A Personal Guide to Profiting from the New Web by Kathleen Gilroy of the Otter Group. She says, "Find your personal style" when you blog and I think I may have finally found mine. I think I'm a Wink-er!

I have a confession. I hate to write. Well maybe not hate it. I can do it and in running a business I get lots of practice. But I sure don't love it. It doesn't put me into "Flow" as Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users puts it. But I do love discussing web sites and web ideas. I enjoy showing people sites and talking about how those ideas could be used to solve their problems.

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My new found joy with Winkcasting has peeked my interest in video blogging. I have a couple interesting finds.

Beth Kanter pointed me to Revver. Revver puts ads at the end of your videos and splits the profit with you. This seems cool and I was excited to see if I could create winks describing OpenACS, host them there and maybe collect a few cents for me or for the dotLRN consortium. Unfortunately, they don't support swf, which is the format wink creates.

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The magical combination at the exhibition - free software AND free beer. The exhibition this year seems to be composed mainly of universities offering health and biomedical informatics courses, and with far fewer commercial exhibitors. Opposite the 3M stand (the one offering the free beer) is one from OpenACS (see med.openacs.org)

http://www.rodspace.co.uk/blog/2006/11/amia2006-free-software-and-free-beer.html

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Solution Grove's Mashup Demo was featured in the blog: Portals and KM. I thought some people might want to learn more so I created a video demo to take you behind the scenes. I demonstrate editing a content portlet and a few of the mashups. The video also looks at some clients sites where we used this technology to show different looks and to demonstrate a few more features.

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Basic Effects http://www.solutiongrove.com/blogger/one-entry?entry%5fid=266153 http://www.solutiongrove.com/mashup/tutorial1 Using Ajax http://www.solutiongrove.com/blogger/one-entry?entry%5fid=266155 http://www.solutiongrove.com/mashup/tutorial2 Drag and Drop http://www.solutiongrove.com/blogger/one-entry?entry%5fid=268010 http://www.solutiongrove.com/mashup/tutorial3 The flash presentation : http://www.empressr.com/viewPresentation.aspx?pres=d1oNvrWG10E%3d# SG Web Desktop http://www.solutiongrove.com/ - demo drag and drop - demo mashup, integration with google maps, yahoo weather, google ads MyCSM Portal http://www.mycsm.com/xowiki/portal - demo calendar MyCSM Ajax FS http://dev.mycsm.com/ajaxfs/ - ajax tree view, loads branches in the background - drag and drop (but it's a bit clunky), drag a file to a folder to copy, drag a file to the trash can to delete Streaming Search and Tag Could http://www.3ecompass.info/library/web2 - searchable tagcloud - streaming search results - preview url in search results by hovering mouse over URL icon Google Maps Integration http://tech.contextsensitivesolutions.org/content/gen/state-profiles/CA - mouseover markers - click Case Studies and Organization & Contacts links Blog Comments http://www2.pps.org:8000/news/one-entry?entry_id=5144 - background submission and updating of a section of the webpage via ajax - example of graceful degradation, try to turn off javascript and then try to comment Javascript Charts http://uptime.solutiongrove.com/uptime/reports?monitor_id=831 click "Visitors" link - more google maps integration - javascript charts using tschartlib

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