Collaboration Cast

Just recently, Sun Microsystems sponsored a collaborative environment for building and hosting social widgets that can run on Facebook apps, Meebo apps, OpenSocial apps, iPhone apps, Google Gadgets, embeddable widgets, and other social applications.

The difference of Zembly versus other widget platforms/sites is that you can post your widget on Zembly and allow other people to use it to create their own widgets.  Development is fairly easy and according to Sun, it only takes one line of code.

Vendors already using Zembly include:  Amazon Web Services, Dapper, Flickr, Google, Meebo, Twitter, Yahoo Developer Network, YouTube, Zillow.com, and Zvents.

The benefit for Sun is that its Solaris OS, Java, Glassfish application server, and MYSQL are being used.  Also, the SUN’s network.com cloud computing platform is in use.  Consequently, SUN gets a lot of marketing from all of this.

In an attempt to re-invent itself, Netscape is planning to launch itself as the news service of the future.  While most sites cover today’s news, Netscape is planning to cover tomorrow’s news, looking 10 years out and letting people vote on where they think the future is headed.  

Behind the covers this to me looks like a blog site with Ideastorm like functionality (www.ideastorm.com) and maybe some more advance idea market features, such as the ones offered by Spigit (www.spigit.com).  

A friend of mine, Andy Fundinger, had the same idea as Netscape.  He started the site memebox.com.   Memebox covers futuristic news issues and lets people comment on these issues.  So far Andy has received some comments on his blog.  

My opinion is that if Netscape is able to seriously grain critical mass and build a pretty user friendly site that incorporates such innovation market tools into their site’s content, then they may transform they may have a compelling offering.  People are curious to find out what the future holds and will for sure share their opinions.  Maybe they can even find a way to allow people to financially bet on future waves.

 The leader of this re-invention is Jason Calacanis, 35,  general manager.  He made his name as a publisher of the Silicon Alley Reporter magazine, entered the blogging world by starting a popular blog called Engaget.com and eventual sold webblogs.com to AOL for $25 million.  It seems like Netscape has the right person for the job, the name recognition, and an interesting model.  

I wish them best of luck on their re-invention.  If they pull it off, this would be a good success story to document.  

Collaboration,Collaboration News,Collaboration Podcast,Collaboration Research,

I would like to thank all of you for your support and interest in Collaboration Blogs. I have received many requests from you to expand my offering and provide more industry news and information. In response to your request, I have decided to launch a larger news service called Collaboration Cast (www.collaborationcast.com). The purpose of Collaboration Cast will be to continue covering collaboration technologies, but in addition to blogs we will offer additional broadcasting and information features such as: podcasts, an expert locator, product guide, highlighted research ,and a job board. The first release of Collaboration Cast is already available, and we will further integrate Collaboration Blogs in the next few weeks.   Let me know what you think and if you have any interesting news stories I could share. Also, I hope to post all your bios in our expert section.  Thanks again.