Dan G

The training course I have been on this year has resulted in me being flooded with paper. Why do people give us so much? It's hard to store, to search, is bulky and difficult to access, and above all there's not the time to read everything we're given.

Today I took great pleasure in going through my files and removing all but the most useful paper documents - the rest will be recycled!

However it would be a lot easier if everything was in electronic form. It's portable - laptops, USB drives, online storage - and easy to search (the online file stores have search functions too).

Paper files could easily be converted to PDF, say via Scanr. Yes, doing it the first time is a chore, but being able to distribute any number of copies via a few clicks - how useful would that be? Plus, many of our bulkier documents were word processed in-house in the first place - just make them available in electronic form too, please!

Use of paper is deeply ingrained. Everyone understands it. Yet laptops are a revolution in productivity - so much information can be carried in one device. Many people don't want to "make the switch" though - there's a steep learning curve, often too steep for people to climb. And often they don't even realise the benefits, as they often only become clear later.

Sadly this makes moving to a paper-less working style trickier, as so many people are still wedded to their messy desks awash with paper. These people don't know how to use online file stores and other forms of online collaboration - often even e-mail is beyond them.

A simple comparison. I was under the impression that myspace was *far* larger than blogger - apparently not! Maybe myspace has more accounts, but blogger is getting equal traffic which suggests that it used just as much.

So right now I'm trialling Box.net and Omnidrive, to the point where I've installed Firefox again (the 1.5 series is a lot better than the 1.0s) to make full use of their internet interfaces.

As I've said before Omnidrive has the most promise - here's their blurb:

"Omnidrive is what you expect hosted storage to be - easy to use, accessible from anywhere and unrestrictive. Omnidrive will make your life easier by allowing you to store, access and stream your files from almost any web connected platform."

Sounds great, doesn't it? But speaking as a private beta tester, their service is nowhere near that description yet - the online interface works, but none of the desktop intergration does. Although you get a Omnidrive icon in My Computer, if you edit any files from there using, say, Office, and save them there, none of the changes show up in the documents viewed through the web interface. There's no synchronization going on.

Similairly, if you open a document via the web interface, make some changes, and save it again, the file is actually saved in some temp folder on your local machine and the web files are, again, not updated.

The one thing the desktop intergration does do well is bulk uploading - I dragged and dropped some 100Mb of files into the Omnidrive explorer window and they all uploaded without a hitch.

They've also gone rather quiet about future updates to their service to get them closer to their goal. I've not given up hope entirely, but certainly for now Omnidrive remains just a nice idea.

The other service I'm trialling is Box.net. It's a simpler system - simply a well made web file store. There's a Java based drag-and-drop bulk uploader which works well, and the web interface itself is very good (at least when viewed in Firefox). However right now there's no synchronization features - if you want to update a file after editing it, you have to save it locally and then re-upload it.

Box.net do say they're working on a desktop app which will add synchronization and possibly "web drive" like features - sounds like it could become very much like what Omnidrive promises.

One feature I really want that both seem to lack though is mobile device intergration. Ideally, I want be able to acces files on my PDA via the internet, edit them, and then be able to later view the updated files on whatever other platform I chose - be it a work computer or my home PC.

I can dream...

These shrunken PCs aren't up to much...

this! A small personal computer with full GPRS and WiFi access. Combine it with a mobile data sim card, and that would really be something...

If only I had £1,300!

Some people seem to be missing the point of the new service FeedPass.

If you list your RSS feed on your site you have two main options: just list the RSS link, or put a host of "subscribe to this feed in X" badges on your pages. If you chose the first method, your readers often have to copy and paste the link into their feedreaders (not all Firefox users want to use Live Bookmarks and I don't like Opera's feedreader). If you chose the second method, your site looks a mess. I did put a Bloglines link on my page, because Bloglines is my favourite reader :-).

Where FeedPass comes in is that if someone clicks on your sole RSS link, they'll be offered many different options for signing up to your feed - much more intuitive than copy and pasting, and much neater than dozens of badges. The fact that FeedPass can also generate you income and FeedPass themselves have a business model from the get-go is no bad thing either.

I rather like.

Zooomr's "next week" has become "sometime". Omnidrive has been promising an update recently too, but their dates have slipped several times.

A date is good as users can make a note of it, get the update, and then rave about it to everyone else :-). When dates are met! But when dates slip, it just doesn't look cool. Neither is not setting a date at all - people will soon stop checking regularly, and will drift away.

So set a date, then add a fortnight to give some breathing space.

Posticky.com just launched and it's something I have been looking for for a long time - simple, straight-forward web-based persistant notes. Syncnotes promised similar but had a pretty horrid interface; this couldn't be more simple - just a series of very Post-It like notes that you can position anywhere in your browser, access from any web-connected device, can mail or SMS, or even set reminders for.

I'm finding this - and Google Calendar - very useful.

I missed this for a few days as like many, I use a feedreader to read TechCrunch. However the site design is important especially for first-time visitors, as I was a few months ago.

One thing stands out - lots more advertising. It's also been carefully positioned for maximum clicks, but it's made things like search harder to get to.

The new navigation bar is very good though - stands out, is easy to read, and takes you to very useful places. Having "About" as the first entry is very good - it's the first thing a new visitor to a site will want to read.

So there you have it - much more monetization, which is fair enough, and better navigation. The colour - the green - is a little strong, but it's distinctive and eye-catching - you'll remember visiting TechCrunch! Overall, I like it.

"There's no such thing as bad publicity" has been proved right, with a spammer's attempts to block an anti-spam site becoming big news.

A spammer by the name of PharmaMaster tried to bring down Blue Security, apparently fearing the loss of his business. In the process, TypePad and Tucows was hit.

Blue Security provides the Blue Frog client which forwards spam messages to Blue Security, who then fight back.

I can't recommend this software enough. I've even installed Firefox so I can use the system to report my Gmail spam, which is currently over 3,000 messages a month.

The promised version 2.0 update to Zooomr never appeared, and there have been no blog posts.