Tekarma was built by a team that includes a number of former eBay executives and engineers. The idea for the site, as Tekarma's Alex Kazim pointed out to us today, was to provide a comprehensive homepage for every product that would allow users to get tech support, read FAQs, and discuss the product with other users. The content on the site is completely user-generated, though Tekarma also uses Shopping.com's APIs to pull in product specs, which, however, can later be edited by the users.

Features

Every product page features four main sections: FAQs, Reviews, Web Resources, and Surprises. Surprises is actually one of the most interesting sections here, as this is where users can share information that is often left out of standard reviews such as the ground clearance of a car that a buyer would only notice after using it for a longer period of time.

While Tekarma features a price-comparison widget, Kazim told us that shopping is not the focus of the site. Instead, Tekarma, at least in its current iteration, focuses on providing support after a user has already bought the product. In the long run, once the site has more content, Kazim envisions that this may shift a bit, depending on how the users end up utilizing the site.

We liked Tekarma's user-interface, which makes browsing the site extremely easy. As Kazim pointed out to us, the team incorporated a lot of the lessons it learned at eBay into Tekarma's interface. One nice feature, for example, is that the service displays a list of your last search results in the left sidebar. Thanks to this, you don't have to constantly click the back button when searching for a specific product.

Good Start - Now All it Needs is More Users

Overall, while Tekarma is not necessarily revolutionary in its approach, we think that it has enough compelling features to set it apart from similar services like FixYa or product-specific forums. At the same time, though, Tekarma, like most services that rely on user-generated content, will have to attract a sizable number of active users to add content and fill the gaps in its current catalog.

Invites

If you would like to try out Tekarma and maybe add some of your own expertise to the system, you can follow this link. It will be valid for the first 100 readers who sign up for the service.

A company called FaceTime Communications, based in Belmont, California, recently introduced their new inspection and classification technology called "ACE," which simply stands for Application Control Engine. This patented security technology is capable of scanning a network and identifying more than 1400 Web 2.0 applications and more than 50,000 social networks widgets distributed by sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut.

Scanning for rogue applications on the network is nothing new for I.T., but what's interesting about FaceTime's ACE technology is its focus on scanning for the technologies that often fly under I.T.'s radar: web apps.

The Danger of Web 2.0 Behind the Firewall

As we've mentioned before, I.T.'s failure to adapt to the changing needs of their user base, now younger and more digitally savvy than ever before, has led to a lot of self-provisioning of the easy-to-use applications found on the web. These tools can include anything from Facebook groups to standalone apps like the SharePoint-lite team pages found on Google Sites.

Of course, when users become their own I.T. department, they're unknowingly introducing inherent risks into the previously hardened network infrastructure. Just because a web app is easy to operate, that doesn't make it safe and secure for enterprise use. As users upload and share sensitive files through these unapproved backchannels or have business-related conversations through web-based IM chatrooms, they might not only be putting their company's data at risk, they could also be breaking various compliance laws as well. 

The Difficulty of Monitoring Web Apps in the Enterprise

For I.T., the challenge is keeping up with the barrage of new web apps out there and shutting down those that present a threat. In an independent study commissioned by FaceTime Communications, 62% of I.T. respondents said that there were eight or more Internet applications installed on their enterprise networks - a 300% increase over the first study conducted in 2005. More importantly, the respondents noted that about one-third of their users downloaded the applications they wanted to use - regardless of company policy. Those apps were a mix between apps for business and those used for personal reasons.

I.T. has traditionally struggled to shut down many of today's web applications because they are not all strictly browser-based. Knowing that their adoption rate is dependent on behind-the-back installs on company desktops, many of the apps make sure they can't be blocked by a URL signature. The apps may also masquerade themselves as HTTP, FTP, SMTP and Telnet traffic while exhibiting evasive techniques that help them penetrate the company firewall and escape detection by the current crop of Unified Threat Management systems.

With FaceTime's ACE, though, more than 1,400 of these web applications can be identified and even more social networking widgets can be isolated, too. Those apps can be discovered and shut down regardless of the port, protocol, or evasive technique they use. In addition, the ACE software developers kit (SDK) allows third party solution providers the ability to extend their offerings in order to help their customers manage instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing, social networking, Web 2.0, voice-over-IP, anonymizers, IPTV, multimedia, games, virtual worlds, and unified communications. 

What This Means for Enterprise 2.0

If FaceTime's ACE or other similar technologies become a mainstay in the enterprise I.T. toolkit, the explosion of Web 2.0 for business use, a trend typically called Enterprise 2.0, may be dealt quite a blow. The only Enterprise 2.0 apps that will succeed given that scenario will be the ones that worked with the I.T. admins from the very beginning to assure them of their safety. The apps reliant on a slew of the company's rule-breaking users for adoption, however, will be out of luck. Perhaps being sneaky may not have been a great business model after all.