No. 24

August 30, 2000

 

Technology:

Visto.com

Here is another gem from the ASP treasure chest: Visto.com. This free service offers an impressive blend of well chosen features that, combined, form a highly intuitive "virtual office", particularly suitable for individual users but equipped with enough sharing options to make it into the "groupware" category of tools. Each subscriber to the service receives his own, password protected starting page offering access to a personal calendar, address book, to-do list, e-mail account, as well as storage areas -15 MB total - for files and bookmarks. There aren't many personalization options, but a few important ones are present: the storage area can be organized into nested folders; e-mail from existing POP3 and Web accounts can be downloaded into Visto; filters can be setup, directing incoming messages into appropriate folders; calendar offers several views of schedules.

Collaboration capabilities are also modest but probably quite sufficient for small groups (up to 10 members) not concerned with such nimble features as version control, document routing, check-in/check-out, etc. Owner of a Visto.com account can create one or more groups, whose members will then be able to use a group calendar, participate in a discussion board, store files in a common area (25 MB per group), and look up each other in a member directory. Alternatively, account owner can easily create a "guest site" - a mirror of his Visto.com site, where visitors are given limited (i.e. read only) access to selected files, bookmarks, and events from the original site.

Visto.com is a relatively new service, whose list of features has been expanding in the months from its introduction. Most notably, a wireless access (from a mobile Web phone) to one's e-mail, schedule, address book, and to-do list has been added. Users can setup automatic notification of incoming messages, which will send alerts to their wireless phones, pagers, ICQ accounts, or alternate e-mail accounts. Finally, importing of calendar and address book data from Palm devices is also supported. Unfortunately, two-way synchronization is offered only for users of Outlook, ACT, and Lotus Organizer on Windows PCs.

Visto.com (click on thumbnail):
File folders 
E-mail

For more information please visit the Visto.com site or search the ACT database of Groupwork Tools.

Initiatives:

ASP/OSS Workshop
"Making Advanced Technology Work for Community Serving Organizations: the Potential Impact of OSS and ASPs"

This 2-day, intensive workshop sponsored by the Alliance for Community Technology and held in mid-May 2000 at the University of Michigan Media Union brought together 30 participants with pertinent expertise in an attempt to forge "a strategy for improving the quality of software applications available to organizations that serve their communities but have limited resources."

Two important developments in the world of information technology provided inspiration and focus for this event: the growing significance of the OSS (Open Source Software)  movement and the proliferation of solutions coming from the ASP (Application Service Provider) model. There is a widespread hope that these developments will further democratize access to powerful IT tools, opening up new opportunities for small businesses and non-profit organizations, who have not been able yet to partake fully in the benefits of the IT revolution, largely due to limited funds and/or lack of technological know-how. The goal of the workshop was to examine the two trends and to look for ways to leverage their potential in the service of  grass-root organizations.

I would like to encourage all persons interested in these issues to visit the site at http://www.communitytechnology.org/asp-oss/, where they will find the joint statement resulting from the workshop, list of its participants (with short bios), background materials, collections of annotated links to relevant Web resources (sites, articles, books), contact information, and more.

Conference:

EDUCAUSE 2000
  • Converging and Emerging in the 21st Century -- Coming Together in Nashville to Think IT Through
  • Held October 10-13, 2000 in Nashville, TN
  • The EDUCAUSE annual information technology conference is one of higher education's preeminent educational events. The following general fields will be highlighted in conference programming: Infrastructure and Basic Services --- Information Systems --- New Technologies: New Capabilities, New Opportunities --- Teaching and Learning --- Managing Information Technologies and Resources --- Signature Sessions: Patterns of Converging and Emerging
  • More than 35 preconference seminars will cover a wide range of current issues of interest and importance to those who make decisions on the use and application of technology in higher education.

She said, he said:

"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage, and those who manage what they do not understand." --- Putt's Law


© 2000 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology