Sunday 19 February 2006

Videoblogs in Croatia

The first croatian videoblogging tool is released and can be found on www.4ytv.net.

Their aim is to become premier place in Croatia for sharing video content over the internet.
Noble aim, indeed.

Currently, broadband connections are on the rise in Croatia, but far from the point where network effect could be sustainable and beneficial for videoblog service providers.

For the production of 4ytv.net is responsible croatian team Tramot d.o.o. - a Zagreb web developing company with 20 employees. At least, that's what could be found in the notice.

The users can create account with 100 MB free space for their videos ( all kinds od files are supported ) and put them on their blog.
It's very fresh service , and not completly finished ( I would say half-finished and rushed ) so users will have to - yet to come.

What makes me confusing is the fact that for the backend of blog engine is responsible BlogSystem – a commercial engine which could be bough for 499 dollars .

So, whether backend was acctually designed in Croatia or customized ? I don't know.

What makes me happy is the fact that croatian cyberspace follows current trends on the global web.

The proactive and fresh approach started, IMHO, in year 2004 with the advent of croatian blogging tool Blog.hr. Since then, many ideas about newest web apps were popping up over the croatian web, and enthusiasm grows every day and we are reconnected with global web trends.

Since then Pogodak.hr, Vau.hr , X portal, and the now 4ytv.net find their place under the sun or eventually they will.
It's ideas that matter and execution will come.

We'll see what follows next.




Friday 10 February 2006

PBWiki perfect for online notebook

Several times in the last year I was looking for appropriate wiki engine. I wanted to have a wiki web page .

I used some free wiki farms before and played with ''simple'' free wikis .
But it sucked.
After a while I wouldn't have passion to return and write wikis. Even Wikipedia engine was too cluttered for my taste.

Then I had stumble onto something called PBWiki. Immediatly I fell in love with the simplicity and control I have over my wiki under choosen subdomain.
Bonus – it had password protection. Now, that was killer for my taste. See PBWiki FAQ to understand my passion more.

Although before I have allways had a goal to use wiki with other contributors as a community resource, this time was different and I felt I could use it for my simple personal organizer and online notebook.

It felt right for the first time. Nothing to get killed or bored ;) Simple interface, simple navigation. Search function works fine.

I allways had a attitude that wikis are ugly and not for the average users. Mostly, that's mainstream view and it's probably true.
If they are not ugly, they are too geeky. If they are not geeky, they are feature-rich and user is very often lost .

PBWiki changed the view I had.

Today, I am using PBwiki to add and sort blog posts , newspaper articles or, most often, articles I do not publish somewhere else.
It's simple my writing portfolio and it's there for future reference.

It's my organizer of writing portfolio defined by categories related to web and internet techonologies and essays about social impact of these technologies.
For my eyes only.

Moreover, I organized in the sidebar all my links I need in my daily surfing habits. These are all web related links to the stuff I use and do on the web: like my blogs, contributor Ids, rss, wiki, chat, forums, VOIP, bookmarks, podcasts, photo sharing, web analytics, hosting. It looks nice in the sidebar.

Other parts of my PBWiki are pages created to fill in my writings. There's one box commited to generation of random ideas. Just like in normal notebook.

It's simple and useful. But , please, don't edit your wiki in a hungry mood. They have a sandwich logo for PBWiki and even copywrite sentence ''wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich''.

They have a FAQ and tour to take and it'll explain in more detail.