New conferencing tool

An attempt to conduct on-line meetings in a participatory environment

A NEW informal method of organising/conducting conferences, using Net technologies, is getting acceptance among a section of the tech community. This edition of NetSpeak takes a look at BarCamp, yet another fascinating phenomenon triggered by the Net.

The distinct feature of open-source software development lies in its provision to keep the production process public and to allow the beneficiaries to be a part of it. As mentioned in the past, the concept is being tried out in many other areas as well. We have seen the application of open source concepts in a variety of ventures that include open source radio (http://www. hindu.com/biz/2005/05/30/stories/2005053000251600. htm) and open source books. The latest segment hit by the open source culture/philosophy is conference management. In this context, you may check out the piece `Open-Sourcing Conferences' (http://www.linuxjour nal.com/article /8392).

In a conventional sense, a conference means a meet planned by a small group where a select few present papers and the others silently listen.

BarCamp (http://barcamp. org/) is an attempt to conduct a conference in an open-informal and participatory-environment. Here, no one is barred from attending the conference or making a presentation. Complete planning is done through Net based communication tools (blog, IM, e-mail, Wiki and the like) and word of mouth. As the BarCamp kind of conference is conducted in a totally unconventional fashion, it is also known as `Unconference.'

Unlike an invite-only traditional conference, here, the conference schedules are not pre-planned by the organisers. Anyone with something to say can post the topic on to the BarCamp Wiki or grab a vacant slot in the presentation board and the schedules evolve in an organic fashion. You are free to attend/present and also leave anytime you want.

The organisers provide a good Net connection (generally with Wi-Fi support) and other minimum facilities. Attendees come equipped with laptops and other materials. Live blogging of the presentations, hosting of conference materials on the Net for sharing with the public and active interactions by participants are the hallmarks of a BarCamp.

The BarCamp unconference fever, started in California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcamp), is catching up like wildfire worldwide. BarCampDelhi (http://barcamp.org/BarCampDelhi) is the first of its kind held in India. Many more such camps have been scheduled. This author had the opportunity to attend a recent BarCamp at Chennai (barcamp.org/BarCampChennai) for a day and was really moved by the love, commitment and collaborative spirit shown by the young IT professionals/entrepreneurs. Though the concept is popular mainly among IT enthusiasts and experts, it has the potential to be adopted by professionals in other fields as well.

On-line database

We have come across several on-line applications meant for data analysis, document creation and the like (Irows and Writely). Recently NetSpeak stumbled on a web-based application for creating/sharing on-line databases.

Many netizens store details of favourite web sites for future use. Some keep them in the browser's bookmarks area, some others on an on-line bookmark service and the more tech savvy ones keep them on personal blogs under different categories.

An alternative tool for storing such information will be a database that offers multiple ways to retrieve the content. And if we can create a site database on-line with relevant/customised fields such as URL, subject and description information management can be easier. Also, if a site's data can be fed to the database directly from the browser while we are on it, we can populate the database with ease.

The on-line database creation service, Lazybase (http://lazybase.com/) may come handy in dealing with such problems.

The free service Lazybase lets you create/share a database on your browser with a few mouse clicks. To create a database, just provide your e-mail address and database name and push the `create' button. The service will send you two links: one for administering your database and the other for public viewing of it. You can create several tables (here items) in a database. An excellent feature of this service is the facility to generate a bookmarklet for entering the data directly from the browser. You can create a data entry bookmarklet that automatically fills up some fields using the information from the page (like selected text, page URL and page title) being viewed.

On-line repositories for videos

Even ordinary netizens can store videos, keep them private or share them with others

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The free on-line service 'Scratch list' helps you store a bookmark on its server and keep it there for a month.

A PLETHORA of video hosting services meant for storing/sharing videos created by ordinary netizens have emerged on the Net. This edition of NetSpeak profiles the features of a few of them.

Thanks to the widespread availability of video creation gadgets/tools such as web cam and video-enabled cell phones, even ordinary people can create short movies. If you want to demonstrate the features of a product, or share the antics of your newborn child with your close relatives/friends or take a small lecture, the best solution is to shoot a video and post it on to the Web.

In the past, to upload such materials on to the Net, you needed a web site or access to an on-line storage service. Now, thanks to several feature-packed free video-hosting services, hosting/sharing/viewing videos can be done with a few mouse clicks.

Video storage services let you store videos, keep them private or share with others and provide tools for accessing them in multiple ways. Also, most such services offer facilities for embedding the videos found on them to your site or blog.

YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/), one of the most popular video hosting-services, allows any registered user to upload/share any number of videos. The duration and size of the video are limited to ten minutes and 100 MB respectively. While posting a video, for easy access, you can tag it with an appropriate label and assign it to one or more subject-specific channels provided by the service. The service allows you to organise/search videos under diverse categories or channels such as sciencet/technology, education, news, games and sports. Videos shared by other users can be searched through tags or channels. Also, the service allows you to embed videos from it on to your blog if desired.

Besides YouTube, a multitude of such services are available in the fast growing video hosting service segment.

Among them, Google Video (http://video.google.com/) is worth a look. PhotoBucket (http://photobucket.com/) is another video/picture hosting service, gaining popularity. A notable feature of this service lies in its support for a wide range of video formats that include avi, mov, mpeg, mp4, and 3gp. Free video hosting service, VidiLife (http://www.vidilife. com), which accommodates a variety of video formats, has no restriction on the video length.

If you want to post a video on the Net but are not keen to go through a host's registration process, you can use a service like Zippyvideos (http://www. zippyvideos.com/). Here, when you submit a video, you will get a link to it for sharing it with others or posting it on to your blog.

Though you can view all the shared videos on the services mentioned above for free, you need a high-speed link for smooth viewing. However, you can download them on to the local storage and watch them comfortably. You can use the free download service, Keepvid (http://keepvid.com/) to download videos from various video-hosting services. To download the video from a service, just paste its link on to the Keepvid's input box and click on the 'Download' button. The service will immediately display a direct link to the video file, which can be used to download it. Keepvid supports several video hosting services that include Google Video, YouTube, Vsocial,VidiLife, Zippyvideos and so on.

An offshoot of the popularity gained by the free video-hosting phenomenon is the proliferation of innumerable user-created video content. Tens of hundreds of videos are being launched on to such services daily. This offers immense opportunities for a netizen, who can watch selected videos anytime from anywhere. It is almost like having multiple personalised TV channels at your disposal for free.

To access a site at a later stage, we use the browser's bookmark feature or enlist the service of an on-line bookmark application. But you may not always be keen to bookmark all the sites visited and still may need to revisit a non-bookmarked site.

For this, you can note down the links in a scratch pad for a short period. The free on-line service `Scratch list' (http://www.scratchlist.com) meets this need. It helps you store a bookmark on its server and keep it there for a month. If you wish, the storage period can be extended. To use the service, you do not need to go through any registration process. By clicking on the 'Set me Up' button you get a unique ID and the bookmarklet `scratch this!' for storing the link details on the scratch pad directly from the browser.

Intelligent Thesaurus

If you enter a word, say, wonderful, on a usual Thesaurus service, it lists out several related words such as marvellous, great or fantastic. But, what about an intelligent Thesaurus service that can learn from a couple of terms and produce a list of related terms? For instance, if you enter two words "Kerala, Karnataka" and get a list of several Indian States from the Thesaurus service, it will certainly be useful. The Artificial Intelligence based Thesaurus service Questsin.net (http://www.quest sin.net/) provides such information. Besides giving you related words/terms, it even produces the next term in a number sequence if you enter the first number.

Zoka: Del.icio.us live

Scanning the front page of the social bookmarking service, del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/) helps you discover new web links encountered by netizens worldwide.

In the past, NetSpeak featured the application, Livemarks (http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com /livemarks/), created for continuously displaying the links being posted on del.icio.us. However, Livemarks, though an awesome tool, can become unwieldy as it funnels everything posted on to del.icio.us without any filtering. Rather than viewing all the links being posted on to the service, you may like to watch only the ones related to your interests. The new on-line service Zoka (http://sandbox.sourcelabs.com /zoka/) is an attempt to incorporate this feature while showing you the del.icio.us links in real-time. You can join the channels already available or create new ones. The service allows you to create channels based on specified tags.