You can see more about the new UI and other changes below, but this video gives you a visual journey through the new huddle before it opens tomorrow. After reviewing other free online collaboration and project management tools (Zoho, GoPlan, ActiveCollab, Project2Manage) for the past 2 weeks, this looks very promising.

To learn even more about all the changes and updates keep reading…

New ‘Meetings’ tab:
Create meeting times, dates, details and invite your colleagues to attend, meetings automatically added to the unified dashboard calendar. Free Huddle teleconferencing tool included (Enterprise level teleconferencing options available.) Web conferencing tool coming soon.

Improved File options:
New file actions menu & buttons to enhance usability with one click to download and lock file for editing. Improved online editors – files now open in a full window to improve visibility.

Enhanced navigation in the header bar:
Simple Search tool & quick access to Profile and Account settings.

‘People in my workspace’ side-bar:
Ability to quickly email individuals, or all users within a workspace. Minimize button to increase working space.

New ‘Features’ option within workspace settings (enterprise packages only):
Switch off tools within each workspace – i.e. only display Files & Tasks tabs to users.

Quick-links to invite users, upload a file etc. now available on every page within workspaces:
Simple links to major tools in Huddle workspaces – saves you time.

Tab name changes:
People tab (replaces Teams) & Settings tab (replaces Workspace Manager)

Support Center improvements:
Personalized support depending on package  – click the Support Center link in Huddle to login. ‘My Support’ area for Enterprise license holders – view your full ticket and resolution history.

Improved subject lines for email notifications:
Find and organize your Huddle notifications more easily in your inbox.

The email from the Furl team that showed up in my inbox less than 10 minutes ago reads.

Dear Furl Users,

The Furl team is very pleased to announce that Furl has become part of Diigo.com. We worked hard to find Furl a home where loyal users like you could continue to benefit from best-of-breed social bookmarking and annotation tools. Hands down, Diigo.com was the winner due to its innovative approach to online research tools and knowledge sharing.

The Diigo team is dedicated to making sure you continue to get top notch features and service. They’ve got a crack team of technologists who love making research and knowledge sharing as easy and efficient as possible. Exporting your data from Furl to Diigo is super easy.

Just follow this link: http://www.diigo.com/import_all/transfer_furl

We feel fortunate to have been able to serve as your social bookmarking site provider and can’t thank you enough for your loyal support over the past four years. We’ll miss you and we wish you the best as part of the Diigo community.

Regards,

The Furl Team
LookSmart

625 Second Street

San Francisco California  94107

United States

So I guess that is it for furl, the message left on the front page says furl is to be phased out….

It is definitley saddening to see this.  Most people “from the outside” just view these sites as “tools” or “recreation”, but some have made it a home and have built up friends on this site.  It is hard seeing a community go.  Sure they will still be able to network and talk still, but having met under an atmosphere that will no longer be there is something that is not easy to get used to.

Quake Live is a multi-player first-person-shooter game that runs directly from your web browser.  The game will be released as a free version of Quake III: Gold (Quake III and its expansion pack, Team Arena) and claims to support 30 maps. During the last year’s QuakeCon 2008 keynote speech, John Carmack stated that Quake Live will have no mod support but will be continually updated and may include officially approved user-made maps. The game has been in live beta for a little over 24 hours and there is a great amount of praise coming from the various gaming communities, if you need an invite please put your email in a comment and I will send you an invite.  If you already have the beta, then add me as a friend “Flaxton”. You might want to act fast because as of this morning when I logged on, there were close to 20,000 in the queue.  Which gave me time to come here and post a blog.

The interface and game are all webased and the install takes a little over 2 minutes depending on PC performance.  Game plays like glass on all 3 of my Windows XP based machines (Sempron, Athlon, & 64bit cpu’s), and  I will be trying it out on my G3 iMac tonight.  The game is as simple as it gets, run, jump, shoot; my 4 year old daughter sat down and could instanly feild the controls and move with ease.  I will be posting some of my own screen shots and possibly some in-game footage of my owning some noobs once I get in there.  Yes I am still in queue…

I would also like to add that we will definitely be seeing this at the upcoming Quakecon in Dallas.

Online registration for QuakeCon will begin at 9:30pm EST / 6:30pm PST on March 6, 2009. Participation in the BYOC, tournaments, exhibits, conferences, and all other events is free of charge.

The Hilton Anatole will be hosting this event, and is now taking room reservations for QuakeCon 2009 through their custom QuakeCon Reservation Page. To receive the specially negotiated room rate of $145 (single, double, triple or quad occupancy) and the special daily self-park rate of $7 (regularly $15 per day), you must request the group rate for “QuakeCon 2009″ or book through the link above when making your reservation. Rooms at this special rate are limited.

Companies interested in receiving information on sponsorship opportunities should contact me.

The largest threat is, of course, pirated copies of windows– of which Ballmer says.

“Number two market share goes to Windows pirated, or unlicensed. That’s a competitor that’s tough to beat, they’ve got a good price and a heck of a product, but we’re working on it.”

Which we know is an issue Microsoft will never be able to resolve. As much as I can’t stand Ballmer, he does make a good point though. Good Price is something Steve Jobs at Apple can’t give the people, and in a changing and depleting economy– that could be a very big factor.  Now Good Price is something Linux can offer, being free and all.  Ballmer did have a few things to say about Apple as a threat.

“I think depending on how you look at it, Apple has probably increased its market share over the last year or so by a point or more. And a point of market share on a number that’s about 300 million is interesting. It’s an interesting amount of market share, while not necessarily being as dramatic as people would think, but we’re very focused in on both Apple as a competitor, and Linux as a competitor.”

I do think that is a good point, out of 300 million PCs that were shipped worldwide, only about 10 million of those were Macs.  It might seem, in North America, that the Macs are a huge competitor, but on a global scale they just can’t add up.  I still think Microsoft’s biggest competitor is themselves and their own past operating systems.  Working in the IT business I fix problems of all kinds, but I can’t tell you how many times I have been called to work on a “new computer” with Vista that has is sitting next to an 8 year old computer running NT, 2000, or XP with no problems.

In the end I think Ballmer is just out of touch, Apple is a completely separate ecosystem from Microsoft’s. Microsoft’s most valuable asset are OEMs, that is where Linux is making their impact, and you can bet they are looking at Apple with a great amount of envy.  Apple is free to innovate while Microsoft lays shackled to the sleeping giant with it’s nineties era technology. Linux is what could set them free and Microsoft knows that. Just imagine a ThinkPad with custom built Linux that boots under 15 seconds and has all the eye candy. I took ThinkPad as an example since it is already differentiated from most laptops, but right now it’s just hardware that differentiates it. Any manufacturer could re-design and customize Linux to create a unique experience. It’s inevitable and Microsoft knows it.  Makes me happy inside.

I am Travis Harshaw, I have had over 13 years experience in the design and corporate branding world.  I have created, developed, and consulted numerous companies on their online identities and image relations, both on an international and local scale. A true revolutionary in the digital world, I  see trends before they happen and know right where they are headed. As an expert on web & data analytics I can take logs created from your website traffic and interpret the data “in plain English”, so that you know everything: from, what site your visitors are coming from– to, the keyterm they typed in the search engine to find your site. I have been working in the Houston IT business for over 10 years, and have many trusted clients. If you are looking to contact Travis for consultation or advice, the best way is to message him through one of the many platforms listed below.

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

Clay starts off,

“I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing– there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn’t until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders–a lot of things we like–didn’t happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.”

To read a transcript of this speech, go here.