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Archive your Web life with ScrnShots

ScrnShots is a community for hosting screenshots. It's a companion to a desktop application that will grab and automatically upload in a similar fashion to Plasq's Skitch. Both sites have a social element, with commenting and tracking popular shots. The big difference is that ScrnShots is cross platform and will work on both Macs and PCs. You can also simply use it as an image host if you're using another screenshot utility like TechSmith's SnagIt, or OS X's Grab.

The service launched in private beta back in April, and has since opened up to everyone. … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 750: 7 deadly spams

On today's Buzz Out Loud, why "your stupid face" works to get you to install malicious software, why eBay just flat out isn't for small sellers anymore, and why you shouldn't trust your IT guy...or at least not one in three of them. Also, EA releases Creature Creator, people create porny creatures, and EA attempts to crack down. Something about this picture just doesn't add up. Like, how novelty-sized bosoms can even exist on the side of a cow. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 750

One ton ‘Baby’ marks its birth … Read more

Six Apart's handy Blog It service hits the iPhone

This morning, Six Apart unveiled its newest iPhone creation, a very svelte-looking port of Blog It, which the company introduced back in April. The simple tool lets you write and cross-blog a post or status update to several services at once. The company is hoping people will use it as a home base to manage all their updates. It's also a somewhat early look at some of the features users will be getting in the upcoming native blogging application announced on Monday.

The tool started out as a Facebook app and has since pulled in about 10,000 users. … Read more

Microsoft readies revamped database, security software

Microsoft on Tuesday said it's set to release near-final versions of its key database server and other business-oriented software.

The company announced a "release candidate" of SQL Server 2008, along with test versions of security and identity management software, at its TechEd conference in Orlando, Fla.

Also on tap for later this month is a release candidate of Microsoft Application Virtualization, version 4.5, the company said. Microsoft also announced a server-virtualization validation program, which lets software developers test and validate their code running against Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of the operating system.

Microsoft Senior … Read more

5 reasons to love the new SnagIt 9

Whatever you might envision of Tuesday's release of the redesigned SnagIt 9, it probably wouldn't be as a Microsoft Office clone.

Before you Microsoft naysayers begin your shuddering and muttering (you know who you are), have a little faith in TechSmith, the publisher that also brought to market the top-rated Camtasia Studio. Thanks to the new features and look, SnagIt 9 is a familiar, intuitive, and much more varnished capture utility whose image editor has finally come of age. Here are five ways SnagIt 9 has caught our attention. Check out the video below for a snapshot, or … Read more

Papyrophobic but love sticky notes? Try Postica

Postica has to be one of the more single-serving Web apps I've seen in a long time. The service lets you create a slew of tiny sticky notes that can be maneuvered around the confines of your browser with ajaxian flair. They don't hover over pages you're looking at like Diigo or Fleck; instead it's all about your personal note space. Whatever notes you create are saved, and can be accessed from wherever. You can also share them with others, and they can send notes to your workspace, too.

Each note is confined to just 140 … Read more

Paglo launches public beta with "share-its"

Paglo is billed as "The Search Engine for IT." I think that is a pretty accurate description of the company's product. They take a Web 2.0 approach to gathering and displaying data about a network and the devices in it. If you want an in depth look at how Paglo works and all that it has to offer, I would recommend checking out my review, from November. For the purposes of this post, I'm just going to cover what they're doing now.

Paglo is launching the public beta of their service today. Currently, Paglo … Read more

The open-source industry is worth $60 billion

John Powell, CEO of Alfresco, has declared that the open-source industry is worth $60 billion, not necessarily because of its vendors' collective revenue, but rather because of the value of the cost savings for customers.

That's the right way to think about software: From the customer's perspective.

Open source is now the world's largest software industry....You measure it in the savings people are making in licence fees....Licence fees don't add any value to the product and are purely a transfer of wealth from consumers to software vendors.

Subscription-based business models are ideal for customers because they focus the vendor on delivering constant, consistent value. License-based businesses? Not so much.

As a case in point, Alfresco (Disclosure: I work for Alfresco) just closed a deal with a large US federal agency. The project is worth over $50 million, with Alfresco at the core. But if all of that $50 million were going into my pocket it would be a success for Alfresco and a failure for the customer. Why?… Read more

Open-source IT "for the long run"

I just left a meeting with a large enterprise that dumped Microsoft Sharepoint for Alfresco for content management and collaboration. While that makes me smile, the thing that I loved hearing most from the vice president of IT was her general thoughts on open source, and why it's getting more play within this media company, including Alfresco, MySQL, Liferay, and more:

The culture here is about freedom and the ability to impact things ourselves. We're adopting more and more open source because we want to be in control of our own destiny....

In some cases, open source has meant higher implementation costs upfront but lower costs over the long run.

There is a resistance here to being framed into a long-term proprietary path: Closed APIs, closed standards, and closed source force us onto a vendor's licensing treadmill - we don't want that. We want flexibility and choice. We think about IT for the long run.

Music to my ears, and money in her pocket. I meet more and more IT people just like her, people that are tired of having vendors dictate their possibilities.… Read more