Web-Style Audience Responses in Real-World Meetings

Traditional thinking tends to always favor in-person meetings and training over virtual Web-based replacements. Most people would say that while Web-based meetings and conferences have their place, especially when travel is difficult or too expensive, in most areas they fall behind a face-to-face meeting.

But anyone who has used Web-based conferencing extensively knows that there are certain advantages over real-world meetings and conferences that extend beyond the travel savings. And one of the biggest is the ability to instantly quiz and poll meeting and conference attendees to track their knowledge and grasp of the information being presented. This kind of real-time feedback can be invaluable when it comes to customizing and even changing presentations on the fly.

And it is also much harder to gather in person. In small meetings you can ask for a show of hands, but this doesn't work with complex questions and there's the reality that people will change their vote to match the rest of the group rather than be the only person without a hand up. And when it comes to auditorium-sized conferences and training, shows of hands are pretty much useless.

If you're lucky enough to work in a modern university environment, or have a business with advanced and dedicated training facilities, you may have access to audience response systems built into seats and desks. But these are very expensive to deploy and can't be taken to any conference room or meeting environment.

This problem is why I was interested in trying out Turning Technologies' ResponseCard AnyWhere, part of its TurningPoint Response System.

Downloading Flash Movies Made Simple

When it comes to Web-based video, Adobe's Flash format dominates. From YouTube to MySpace to eWEEK video, the majority of video on the Web is Flash.

But while Flash has lots of benefits for developers and content producers, consumers often find it an unfriendly format when it comes to using video outside of the Web.

If a user wants to download Flash video to his or her desktop for use on a mobile device, or for fair use such as in schoolwork or research or for (let's face it) less legal reasons, there are many roadblocks that make this difficult, from sites that make it hard to download Flash files to the lack of support for the Flash format itself on many mobile devices.

There are some free tools and browser plug-ins available that attempt to help users download Flash files, but in my experience these don't always work and can be difficult to use. That's why when the $29.95 GetFLV application crossed my desk I was intrigued enough to give it a try.

Google Wants to Make the Web More Lively

Three-dimensional virtual-reality-based social networking! Just saying it can make you want to cringe. Didn't we already go through this with "Second Life" and its ilk?

We all know the problems. Most of these programs like "Second Life" are big fat applications, essentially video games. They have a high learning curve that discourages casual users. And they don't integrate well with Web sites and other social networking tools.

But what if instead of a big fat application you had a small browser plug-in? And what if it had a relatively low learning curve? And instead of people being forced into a big virtual world in order to connect, customized virtual spaces could be easily dropped into Web sites and collaboration systems? With that you might actually have a 3-D virtual-reality-based social networking system that people and businesses would embrace.

This is the concept behind Lively, which was just released as a beta by Google. Lively runs as a plug-in to Firefox and Internet Explorer and with it sites, businesses and people can quickly get up and running with virtual spaces that enable avatar-based collaboration, chat and social networking.

Adobe Reader Gets Connected

REVIEW: Just about a week after Adobe released version 9 of Acrobat, the latest version of the tool that most people use to read PDF files was also released. For most users, Adobe Reader 9 won't seem like a major departure from the previous versions of the free PDF reading tool.

The interface has been streamlined a bit, making it simpler to view multiple page PDF files. And search can be easily done across multiple PDF files.

However, the majority of the new features for Adobe Reader 9 fit into two camps: increased integration with the Acrobat.com Web site and support for new features introduced in Acrobat 9 (click here to read my review of Acrobat 9).

Acrobat 9: The Web/Desktop Hybrid for Documents

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REVIEW: When it comes to document collaboration and sharing, there can be little argument that most of this activity is moving to the web. But there can also be little argument that the current slate of Web-based tools come up short in features and capabilities when compared to desktop tools.

Perhaps what is needed is a hybrid approach, something that combines the strong feature set of a desktop application with the easy collaboration of a web-based approach. If this is truly the case, then Adobe may be on the right track.

That's because the latest release of their flagship Acrobat document platform is definitely focused on combining Acrobat's strong document editing and creation features with broad web-based collaboration, sharing and conferencing tools.

To do this Acrobat 9, which was released in June, relies heavily on the recently released Acrobat.com to provide web-based collaboration and sharing tools, as well as leveraging other products from the Adobe portfolio to add conferencing and live document reviewing features. And while there are few completely new capabilities in the core Acrobat feature set, many of been overhauled and improved to such a degree that they feel like completely new features.

Testing Out Google Labs

Over the last few weeks Google has been busy launching some new applications and gadgets as part of their Google Labs. The Labs is where Google tries out new ideas and applications and everything from Google Maps to Google Docs has gotten its start as a Google Labs project.

Over the last couple of weeks I've been trying out some of the new Google Labs projects and have found some that may be new favorites and some that I could probably live without.

Several new Google Labs projects have been added to Gmail and have even been added directly to the Gmail interface. Users now see a test-tube icon in the upper right hand corner of Gmail and clicking on this brings them to a screen showing all of the Google Labs apps that they can enable within Gmail.

Firefox 3: The Next-Generation Web Browser

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REVIEW: At first glance, it doesn't look that different from previous versions of the browser. And while there are nice improvements from a usability standpoint, there's nothing radically different for Web users.

But appearances can be deceiving. And with its release today, Firefox 3 is poised to usher in a new phase of Web browsing that will change how Web applications are built and delivered, and even how most of us use and think of the Web.

That's because most of the innovations of Firefox 3 are under the covers. Among the major new features in Firefox 3 are its offline capabilities and its ability to seamlessly interact with Web-based applications and services. With these enhancements, Firefox 3 makes it possible for sites to deliver applications and content that people can use—even when they aren't connected to the Internet—and that work with a browser in much the same way that traditional applications work with an operating system.

In this way, Firefox 3 may make it possible to finally deliver on the old promise of the Web as operating system. Because of these features, along with many welcome usability, security and performance enhancements, I am awarding Firefox 3 an eWEEK Analysts' Choice Award; as of this moment, it is clearly the top choice in Web browsers.

Opera 9.5 Syncs Up Web Browsers

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REVIEW: It has a tiny percentage of market share compared with the bigger players such as Microsoft and Mozilla. And if you ask your non-techie friends if they've every heard of it they'll probably say that they don't like opera music.

But one can easily make a very good case that, outside of the early Mosaic and Netscape Web browsers, no other Web browser has been as innovative or introduced more new features and interface standards than the Opera browser.

And with the release of Opera 9.5, Opera has succeeded in some small innovations in browser usage and has streamlined and improved what was already the most powerful and customizable browser interface available today.

But this isn't as groundbreaking or innovative as some of the past Opera releases. And while Opera 9.5 adds some new security features and capabilities, these don't live up to the innovation and ease of use one normally expects from Opera.

Can You Digg the New Flock Browser?

Click for larger screenshot

The makers of the Web browser Flock like to refer to their product as "the social Web browser". And it's probably a fair description, as the main focus of the free Firefox-based browser is to make it easy for users to follow and use social networking and media-sharing Web sites.

But one of the problems with Flock is that it is only social for some social networking and Web 2.0 sites, which means that, for example, if you rely on LinkedIn or MySpace instead of Facebook, then Flock may not be all that social for you.

Of course, the makers of Flock realize this, which is why the main new features in the recently released Flock 1.2 are focused on adding support for new sites and services.

Protecting Your Site from Google Hacks

Most people understand that if there is information visible on the Web, then Google knows about it. But what about the information that many people think is invisible? Chances are, Google knows about that too.

That's because many Web sites, including big corporate sites, expose much more information than they realize. Everything from customer credit information to administrator passwords has turned up in Google searches.

In corporate Web security, this is clearly a serious problem. But many companies pay little attention to it because they don't know how to perform the Google hacks that can find this sensitive information. Until now of course.

GoolagScanner is a free open-source tool from the Cult of the Dead Cow that makes it possible for Web site administrators and security personnel to quickly perform tests to see if their sites are exposing sensitive information to complex Google searches. The tool is mainly based on Johnny Long's Google Hacking Database, which lists all of the potential Google hacks (or googledorks, as he calls them) that can be used to find sensitive information on Web sites.