Splattering graffiti across Web with ShiftSpace
I will admit that I still don't 100 percent understand what I'm supposed to be doing with ShiftSpace, an open-source "browser plug-in for collaboratively annotating, editing, and shifting the Web."
Using Greasemonkey at its heart, ShiftSpace is supposed to make the Web a more active experience. Earlier this month, ShiftSpace came out in version 0.11 and with a revamped Web site.
The annotation and highlighting part I get. Basically, it allows me to mark up Web pages with my own commentary and then have that available for future reading (by myself or by others, if I so choose). This makes sense.
Other features, such as the ability to "image swap," do not. ImageSwap allows me to take a picture from one Web page and then swap it with the picture on another Web page. This would be great...if I could figure out a reason that I'd want to do that. For example, I pulled Microsoft's "heroes" off an InfoWorld page and replaced it with a Mona Lisa graphic (as at right). I suppose it was mildly entertaining, but useful? Nah.
Then there's SourceShift, which allows you to re-tool a Web page with HTML. On the InfoWorld page in question, I changed the title to something more to my liking. While a momentarily fun act of graffiti (harmless, because it's just an overlay only visible to ShiftSpace users), it doesn't really serve much of a purpose.
In other words, ShiftSpace is mildly interesting, but I don't (yet) see the point. Can someone enlighten me?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
