All posts tagged: webservice

co.mments

I “jot”:http://ichris.ws/2006/02/05/30-boxes-cocomment about “coComment”:http://www.cocomment.com/ in early February and had been using it on and off. Aside from the annoying fact that you need to change your commenting habit to make it work (click a bookmarklet before hitting submit), its biggest flaw was not being able to track comments made by non-user of their service. They also require blog engines to modify their code & template to work with their service.

The application idea was great, but that last 2 facts ruined any chance of it really becoming useful. The creator had of course had more than earfull of this feedback, and said to be “working on it”:http://www.cocomment.com/teamblog/?p=49 since early March.

co.comments logo Then “co.mments”:http://co.mments.com arrived on the scene. It doesn’t require blog engines tweaks, tracks all comments, and even work without you needing an account.

I don’t know if co.mments _borrowed_ the idea as well as the service name idea, but it’s not something someone whipped up on a free weekend. The post crawler is intelligent enough to understand most engines I tried it on. And the “no-account mode”:http://wiki.co.mments.com/Registration works well.

Right now, my 2 peeves about co.mments are

* It sometimes get the post title & content wrong. When this happens, it either use the first sentence of a post content as title, or display no titles whatsoever. Having said that, being able to do this much without any change on author’s side is an amazing feat already.
* I have to scroll a lot on the _Track_ page to find new comments. A collapsible interface ala coComment will be very welcomed. (Assaf “said”:http://blog.co.mments.com/2006/03/18/site-redesign/ he’s working on it.)

P.S. A few days after I started using co.mments, coComment’s host was down for a long period with DDoS attack. Not a good week for the coComment folks.

CL2: Sneak Peek at Google Calendar

“TechCrunch”:http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/03/08/exclusive-screenshots-google-calendar/ has many screenshots of an early beta version of Google Calendar, or CL2. As with many commenters there, the first thing I thought of is “30 Boxes,”:http://30boxes.com which I am using daily. Similarities: * public & private sharing (and separated feed for each) * human language parser for adding events * E-mail and SMS […]

Box.net V2

I had the chance to try out version 2 of “Box.net”:http://box.net before its imminent re-launch, and I have to say it’s very well done.

Online storage, as a sector, doesn’t get your heart pumping. But it often irritates. Saving and loading files are such basic tasks that we tolerate very little roughness in the process. And thankfully, Box.net make it real smooth.

Of course, I’m still waiting for the desktop sync application, but the ability to drag-and-drop upload in bulk (multiple files or multiple folders) still makes it very usable. (It’s flash/java, and very fast)

Box.net drag-and-drop window

Box.net upload progress bar

Other highlights for me are

* the AJAX UI makes managing files very convenient
* livesearch for your files
* 1GB file size limit
* File RSS for collaboration

*Update:* It’s open for public registration now.

Rojo

I’ve been playing with “Rojo”:http://rojo.com for about a day. I have been exploring alternatives to “Bloglines”:http://bloglines.com for a while now, and this one looks promising. Basically, I need online feedreaders with tagging. And Bloglines doesn’t seem to be offering that anytime soon.

Rojo Screenshot

Read more after the jump.

Measure Map bought by Google

The good news broke this morning, via an e-mail from Jeff Veen and then “an announcement”:http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/here-comes-measure-map.html on the official Google blog. “Measure Map”:http://measuremap.com is now part of the G empire. The news is a bit surprising to me, because Measure Map is a very young service, unlike “Urchin.”:http://www.urchin.com/ But it’s quick, simple, blog centric, and […]