New tools for social applications
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Web based development infrastructure makes netizen's task easy
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Floating on-line services with built-in community/networking features is entering an exciting new phase.
THIS EDITION of NetSpeak features a couple of applications developed for helping netizens easily build/access web based social applications.
Of late, we are witnessing an explosion of a wide range of on-line services with the `social' tag embedded in them such as social bookmark services, social news aggregators, social calendars and so on.
The uniqueness of a social application lies in its collaborative tools for helping a user add value to the service in addition to just using it.
This trend of floating on-line services with built-in community/networking features, set by the on-line bookmark service del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/), is entering an exciting new phase now.
As mentioned earlier, open-source packages such as Scuttle (http://sourceforge.net/projects/scuttle/) help you easily create on-line applications similar to del.icio.us. But to create an application using such free programs you still need some technical knowledge and access to a web server with the required features.
The new web based application development infrastructure Ning (http://www.ning.com/), developed for helping a netizen easily build social applications, makes all those constraints a thing of the past.
Online applications
Ning allows you to build an on-line service within a few minutes — provided you have an interesting idea. For this, you do not need any programming or database skills. That is, you can launch your own social bookmark service, with a few mouse clicks and by filling up a few text boxes in a form.
When you access Ning, you will find links to several types of on-line applications — all bundled with networking/social features. If you find an application interesting and would like to start another with more or less similar features, Ning lets you clone it.
For instance, to create a social bookmark service similar to del.icio.us, obtain the free developer account, access the bookmark service hosted on Ning (http://bookmarks.ning. com/), click on the `Clone this app' button and fill-up the input fields. Now, you have your own on-line service, with its own domain name (like: http://your- name.ning.com)!
Ning permits you to customise/improve the newly created application in whatever manner you want. If you are a developer you can examine the codebase, modify/add to it with the `Application Manager' interface. In fact, this facility can be used as an excellent teaching tool for learning the internals of an application of this kind.
The availability of such an application playground may trigger more innovative ideas and unleash new applications covering new frontiers.
Flock: A new browser
Browsing/searching the web and checking e-mail are some of the usual tasks accomplished with a browser. With the advent of new applications such as social bookmark services, blogs and the like, a savvy netizen needs a generic browser with features for accessing all available services from it. It seems modern browser developers recognise this need. The search box integrated with almost all modern browsers attests to this observation. The newly launched open-source browser, Flock (http://flock.com/), is an attempt to fill this need.
Flock provides a range of tools for helping a netizen access various on-line services without having to visit each one of them. A feature that sets apart Flock from normal browsers is the facility to post directly to social bookmarking services.
Currently only a few services are supported (like del.icio.us ) — more services will hopefully be integrated in the later versions. The browser also features tools for posting on to various blog systems such as Blogger and WordPress.
Integrated local/web search facility is another notable feature of this browser. Assume you need to go back to a recently visited web site whose URL you do not remember. Though a recently visited page can be unearthed from the history pages, for a netizen who visits innumerable web sites daily, locating the relevant one from the huge history database will not be that easy. If the browser provides a facility to search its history page, life will be less cumbersome. Flock supports this feature. As soon as you type a search-string on its search box the browser displays a menu with matching web pages from its history database.
Clipboard recorder
The Clipboard tool enables you to transfer data from one program to another. Normally, when you add new data to the clipboard you will lose the original. If you want to get the old data back, you need to copy it again from the source.
Clipboard managers help you keep the old content intact and retrieve them in any order anytime. The free software, Clipbord Recorder, is one such manager. Once the program is on, it will start tracking all the data being copied to the clipboard.
Check out: http://www.lw-works.com/node/23.
On-line spell checker
On several instances you may need to enter text on to a web page such as contributing an article to a Wiki, filling-up forms and so on. Unlike word processors, current browsers do not have any built-in spell-checking tool. Obviously, submitting text without spell checking will be disastrous. You can easily overcome such situations with the help of the on-line spell-checking service, Jacuba (http://www.jacuba.com/).
To access the service directly from the browser, first drag the bookmarklet `Jacuba Spell' on to the browser's toolbar. Whenever you need to enter text on to a web page, click on the `Jacuba Spell' button; this will make the page's text area spell-check enabled.
From now on the service checks the spelling as you type. To correct a wrong spelling, right-click on the word and select a word from the list displayed. Also, by right-clicking on a word you can obtain its meaning from Jacuba's dictionary service.
J. MURALI
He can be contacted at: jmurali@gmail.com
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