Library clips

Gabmail allows you to use your webcam to record a video clip and will host it. Then you can place a link to this clip in an email…isn’t this just like linking to a YouTube clip.

I guess Gabmail is a place to record and host these video messages rather than using YouTube, which is more a generic service.

What needs to happen is that you can watch the video within your email, and this is what helloWorld exactly does.

Mashable also points to Gigya, and Flixn.

Fwiki seems to be an RSS Reader that you can make private or public, not only that you can tailor its look and even blend it into your blog.
The main premise is that it is not only an RSS Reader, you can further create spliced feeds, each called a master feed, basically a river of news…see more.

Add feeds (and tag them) or view a list of tagged feeds to choose from and add, you can view these in the Feed Reader, from these feeds you can create a Fwicki ie. a spliced feed with a page to view it (kind of like a folder river of news), make as many as you like (you can even tag your Fwicki’s).

Other Public RSS Readers

MySyndicaat
Top 10 Sources
Technorati Favourites
SuprGlu
FeedRaider
Feedpile
Feedshow Public
Bloglines Public
PageFlakes Public
Protopage Public
BozPages
Blogdigger Groups
Kinja
Feedbite
FeedCollectors
kickRSS

Newgie is a social RSS Reader similar to Rojo and NEooWS as you submit stories from within your Newgie RSS Reader, only these stories are not tagged by the users, they are categorised by the machine into topic streams (feeds).
Visitors can subscribe to a topic feed in their own RSS Reader or use the Newgie RSS Reader.

NOTE: you don’t have to submit stories, it just learns by your actions (page views, saved items, discuss and share, recommended, etc…)

Basically you have a fixed feed set, but there is just too much to read, so Newgie gets a community to subscribe to these feeds, users find certain stories interesting by viewing it, saving it, etc…then Newgie picks up on this by using it as a filter for worthy news, it then pushes these stories through a machine to be labelled with a topic (and a feed).
There you have it, filtered news (according to a community) based on a fixed feed set, and organised into machine topic streams.

NOTE: You not only have a space to subscribe to feeds, but there is also a section to subscribe to topic/category feeds.

I guess digg does this for the world at large, as it is not based on a feedset, it’s just based on webpages you come across…but it mostly of reminds me of Feed Butler as it is submitting worthy stories based on a fixed feed set.

See how it works.

The people using the Newgie RSS Reader are doing all the work, as their submissions are populating these Newgie topic feeds, and unlike Rojo or NEooWS the stories the community submits are organised by the machine into topic feeds, ie. machine tags (eg. Tagcloud/ZoomCloud), not user tags.

Your account will be divided into:
- “Todays Newsy” headlines
- “My Category” subscriptions
- “My Communities” subscriptions
- “My Feeds” subscriptions

NOTE: It seems you can add your own feeds, but these are listed in your “My Feeds”, and are not added to the directory…you have to suggest a feed by filling out a form. Since you can subscribe to outside feeds, this means you can submit these stories.

NOTE: It seems that you can also submit a story from outside Newgie via a manual form.

You can also form Newgie groups, where everyone in the group uses a Newgie RSS Reader and submits stories to the group, kind of like digg, but in groups.
I guess submitting a story to a group will also submit it to the general community, but only the users within the group can submit a story to the group.

I guess another way is the network option or the user centric option, ie. instead of subscribing to a group general stream or one of the group topic streams, what about subscribing to a users submitted stories.
This is a less formal approach as you are not setting up anything, you are just adding lots of users to your space so you can see a friend/s stream of stories…and I guess these stories can be organised into topic streams.

NEooWS is a social network RSS Reader that looks like a start page.

Browse feeds or submit feeds, then read them as a box or list view, you can also vote, save and tag stories, which can be accessed like tabs in a start page.

Since it is a social place (community) you can browse for feeds, browse/search stories and save them, or even find stories via a tag cloud, and even subscribe to a tag, so far this is the same as Rojo.
NOTE: if you subscribe to a tag, this subscription will live in your “My Tags” page, keeping separate from your “My Feeds” page, so I guess these tags don’t have an RSS feed for non-NEooWS readers to add to other RSS Readers…I don’t think Rojo have the ease to subscribe to tags, but I do remember each community tag has an RSS feed.

I guess NEooWS really promotes the social aspect with its layout and easy features, whereas with Rojo your more on your own to find this out.

You can add friends like Rojo contacts, but unlike Rojo you get to see a minimal user page, that is you just get to see their recommended stories, you can’t see their tagged stories or subscriptions…but it does feel they are pushing this from a community to a social network.
It is one thing to share content to form a public aggregate stream, but it is another thing to view a users world…Spokeo even lets you can add a user as a subscription.

Recap

- List view or box view
- Flagging a story is missing
- Communal feed directory (users of the system can add to this, but unlike Rojo you can’t tag your own feeds, or even discover feeds by tag)
- Communal story discovery (stories come from all users subscriptions)
- Recommended stories (find stories as recommended by the users of the system)
- Communal tags (find and subscribe to a tag stream of stories populated by the users as they tag their stories)
- My Network (add another user as a friend and see their recommended stories)

So far, they have got the communal part right, they need to just build into the social network part; “My Network” has to be more social:
- view a users subscribed feeds
- view a users subscribed tags (and subscribe to a user tag/s)
- view a users saved stories…this lacks tags (and subscribe to a user tag/s of their saved stories)

Tagging a story seems to be purely unselfish, as it does nothing for you personally, whereas saving a story adds it to your personal collection. At the moment this doesn’t feel right, I think tagging a story could save it for you as well (blend these two functions into one).

- view a users recommended stories
- view a users network
- subscribe to a user
- message a user

I dont know why an RSS Reader in a community verging on a network environment took so long, I really think it is a great idea.

Adesso Tubes acts as a virtual pipe between you and your friends to share files; notes, music, apps, documents, emails, etc…

Firstly you have to download the software to send/receive files, then all you do is put files in a special desktop folder/icon, and these files will instantly distribute to who ever is on that list, to what ever device they use (as long as tubes is installed), good way to send stuff from work to home.

Gigasize is good for big files, but it is not as simple as dragging a file into a folder which automatically gets distributed to multiple people, and the other great feature of tubes is it also works offline and synchs when you are back online.
Also when members of the tube makes changes to files, everyone is synched, kept up to date with the latest version.

An alternative for synchronous one to one file distribution is GoogleTalk.

Again you can use a file hosting/sharing service like Box.net, but it just doesn’t have the distribution capabilities, it’s just the usual email.

Another way to share files is using Zapr, where you can create a link for folders and documents on your PC, and others can click on these links to see these documents…but again this is just access, you still need to manually notify a list by email or IM, etc…

Anyway, all these tools deal with file sharing/distribution some how, but not with the ease and direct power of tubes…check out the post by Don Dodge, it evens explains using a tube for document collaboration.

A great use case would be in education, teachers could distribute homework to the whole class in one click and drag…students could even hand in homework with one click and drag.

A lot of the time when I’m RSS Reading I like to send the same friends some links, and I was tired of emailing these links even though I can do it from within the RSS Reader. The next choice was to clip these links with Google Reader and then get my friends to subscribe to the RSS feed of my clips page, but since they are not all RSS savvy even convert the feed to email…this is all too much.
I think a tube is the answer, I can make a tube called “Links for friends” and throughout the day I can just drag these links to the tube, these links will automatically distibute to my friends on the list. All that I require from them is to respond to my initial email and download the software.
The next logical step is tube widgets, or plugins, from within my RSS Reader I could send a story to a tube.

[ADDED 08/01/07: TubesNow is the new URL]

[ADDED 08/01/07: FolderShare and OnShare]

[ADDED 15/01/07: BoxCloud]