Lone Remaining Burmese Blogger Uses Lightweight Messaging Service to Broadcast to the World
The story of the monk-led protests in Myanmar, or Burma, and subsequent police crack-down is a widely reported one - but the story is not over yet. Bloggers have been particularly important as the events unfold, posting news accounts and photos to the internet from a country that very few outside reporters have access to. At least one blogger remains active in the country, posting to a lightweight messaging service with an embeddable widget for output; those entries appear live here on the left.
This morning the UK Times Online runs a story about bloggers now hunted by the Burmese government after the bulk of the action in the street has quieted. Computers in the country are all government licensed, ISPs are closely monitored and internet access has become increasingly intermittent as the protests proceeded.
Dow Jones MarketWatch Goes Social
The MarketWatch financial news web site is getting a fresh coat of web 2.0 paint today with the official beta release of the MarketWatch Community. The community site adds commenting, tagging, and rating to every article offered by MarketWatch. The site also ties in standard social network features, such as bios, avatars, and friends lists.
The community features will be rolled out to the MarketWatch at large site conservatively via a sidebar widget. The widget will allow any member of the community site to rate, tag, or comment on articles throughout the site. Other new features will only be available via the dedicated community area.
Microsoft's Muddled Web Office Strategy Continues - Office Live Workspaces
Microsoft has today announced a new online office service called Office Live Workspace, plus re-named its Office Live service to Office Live Small Business. Both moves are attempts to complement Microsoft Office, its dominant desktop office suite - rather than replace functionality present in MS Office.
Office Live Workspace will allow users to store, access and share 1,000+ documents in an online workspace. It will also synchronize contact, task, and event lists with Outlook. The service is free and is being marketed as an "online companion to Microsoft Office". It's basically a storage solution with sharing features, intended to allow people to have one central place to store their Microsoft Office files. Certainly there is still no sign of an online version of Microsoft Word (or Excel or Powerpoint for that matter). In that respect, this doesn't challenge Google Apps. Indeed Office Live Workspace reminds me more of services such as Egnyte, which combine online storage with sharing functionality. This is something the many online storage services are also increasingly offering.
