Sociocorpus

New “web 2.0″ NZ TV listing site http://throng.co.nz works like I’d want a TV listing site to work, if I wanted a TV listing site. It shows what’s on now, soon and tonight, with weightings for popularity. That’s three out of four, but Throng also tells me “Members may personalise their listings to highlight their favourite shows and hide ones they’re not interested in.” Thing is tho, most of what’s on TV, I am not interested in. What I want is to see the odd rare thing that I might actually be interested in watching. So, rather than just hide all of it, I think I’ll ignore Throng. If there’s something on that you think I’ll really like, would you please let me know.

The Sept. 19 issue of the NZ Herald quotes me as saying “Email has won”. It’s not actually my quote, or anything to do with lottery scams. It’s the reason that we’re doing OnlineGroups.Net and GroupServer. Email is the tool that is most used in people’s attempt to collaborate online, but it sucks for many to many messaging and file-sharing. The main problem is that email has no shared entitity for a group, and that’s what we provide. With GroupServer and OnlineGroups.Net, the group has a name, a url and an email address. Its messages, files, membership information are all visible online, to authorised users. People can participate in group conversations and file-sharing using both email and the Web. And all this can take place on a website that has regular pages and custom presentation. Sounds simple, yes? Well it’s taken us nearly four years but we’re nearly ready for prime time. Rebuilding registration is our last nasty task before we’ll be ready for tens of thousands of users. We’re also rebuilding the way groups are displayed, and adding a CMS/wiki-equivalent module. With plans for a release before Christmas, and to attract new site administrators to OnlineGroups.Net, you should be hearing a bit more from us online.