Download Squad

• REALBasic Personal - A rapid development tool that also exists for Linux and Windows.
• Iris - An image manipulation program.
• Interarchy - One of the oldest -- and most versatile -- file transfer programs for the Mac.
• Flux - This is like Dreamweaver on steroids. I really like Flux and have been contemplating writing a separate post just about it.
• Scribbles - A fun sketching program.
• TaskPaper - Really nice task manager. I love TaskPaper.
• WriteRoom - Jay reviewed the mobile version yesterday and the OS X version is totally great for writers.
• Stuf - Clipboard manager that lets you share items over your network.
• Mariner Calc - Very good spreadsheet app.
• HoudahSpot - Spotlight on crack.
  

The Mac Sale will be going on until August 18th, so you've got two weeks to get in on the deal.

Update: Slashdot is reporting that CentOS co-founder, Lance Davis has reappeared and that the domain, trademarks and artwork are now under the stewardship of the CentOS Project. Let's hope they file the proper legal forms ASAP.

For users or businesses that want to use Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) but don't feel like ponying up the required subscription fee to get the binary, CentOS has been a great option. Essentially, CentOS take the source from RHEL (which is released to the community), repackages it and offers up the binary for free to anyone who wants it. Although RHEL isn't really my favorite server-based Linux distro, one of my web servers uses CentOS, and it's a pretty decent solution.

Yesterday, some of the developers and maintainers of the CentOS project posted an open letter to Lance Davis, the co-founder of the CentOS proect.

It reads, in part:

You seem to have crawled into a hole ... and this is not acceptable.

You have long promised a statement of CentOS project funds; to this date this has not appeared.

You hold sole control of the centos.org domain with no deputy; this is not proper.

You have, it seems, sole 'Founders' rights in the IRC channels with no deputy ; this is not proper.

(...)

Please do not kill CentOS through your fear of shared management of the project.

For quite some time, it appears, Davis has been absent from meetings, unresponsive to messages and requests and just generally unavailable to the other project developers. As one of the co-signers of the letter, Tim Verhoeven points out in his own blog entry, this is problematic because not only is the centos.org domain in Davis's sole control (and he has now secured it with an anonymizing service so the owner of the domain isn't visible), the accounts from the Google AdSense ads and the PayPal accounts where donors have contributed to the project are also completely in Davis's control.

That creates a problem because money individuals think is going to help the project is really just going to one person who is doing God-only-knows-what with it.

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Because I work almost exclusively in remote-based teams, I'm always looking for new tools and services that can help me manage my daily tasks and effectively collaborate with my team members. One of the biggest problems I have with some collaboration systems is that they require everyone to login and collaborate using the web app itself. This is great if you are always in one place or in a more traditional office environment, but it becomes less problematic if you are on the go frequently and already have tools and practices in place to try to manage your life.

This is why I think that WizeHive has real potential. WizeHive was launched in late 2008 after its founders, who were unsatisfied with the current crop of web-based collaboration and task management tools, decided to scratch their own itch and launch their own service. Over the last six months, WizeHive has rolled out additional features and today, WizeHive is releasing a bevy of new features and enhancements with the aim of bring WizeHive to the masses.

I talked to WizeHive's co-founder, Mike Levinson on Monday about the product and its development and what the new release brings to the table. I was most impressed that Mike and his team use WizeHive internally to manage various projects and activities not just including WizeHive's development, but for other business tasks as well.

After playing with WizeHive a bit, I think the best way to describe the service would be that it is Basecamp meets Backpack, with a dash of Yammer on the side. Unlike some collaboration solutions like Box.net, which really do an excellent job of replicating or replacing SharePoint, WizeHive is a more streamlined way to share files and communicate details back and forth, or to keep track of task management.

After creating a WizeHive account, you can create a different workspace for various teams or projects you might be working on. Within that workspace, you can choose who you invite to collaborate in that space. Once you have invited someone to your space, they can share documents with you, make comments, assign or complete tasks, etc.

You can also create pages within a workspace to further drill down your focus. In my DLS (for DownloadSquad) workspace for instance, I can have pages for Posts, Features and Ideas. Each page can contain its own task and its own set of comments.

The thing I like best about WizeHive is how easily it integrates with other services. You can create a new task (or even a new page) using e-mail, but you can also send messages, tasks and reminders using Twitter. By sending a direct message to @wizehive, after your account is verified, you can communicate directly with your workspace and the people in your group will get notifications and can reply by e-mail, Twitter or using the web site.

Here are some of the new features WizeHive has introduced with this release:

• improved UI for tracking and managing a large numbers of shared files
• enhanced file management and version control
• an increase in the number of files that can be uploaded at one time to 50
• bump in the maximum uploaded file size to 100 MB
• embedded image viewer
• streamlined collaborative editing of documents and spreadsheets

Although you can create and edit documents using ZoHo (it is integrated) and you can save revisions, the real focus of WizeHive seems to be on tasks and communication.

WizeHive is still in beta, so you can sign-up for a free account with unlimited users. You're limited to 50MB of storage space (an additional 3GB is $8US a month), but you get every other feature and you can use the service at least until the end of 2009. Personal accounts, limited to 3 users and 50MB of space are also free. Teams or Small Businesses can get an account with support for 10 users and 3GB of storage for $39 a month.

I'm going to give WizeHive a try and see how well I can integrate it into my life.

Web-apps that utilize the Twitter API are a dime a dozen these days, thanks to the micro-blogging services skyrocketing popularity.

Dan Benjamin has just joined the mix with his own creation: Overlapr. Overlapr is an easy way to find out how many followers (or friends) overlap across two Twitter accounts. Enter in two Twitter usernames and you can easily see how many followers they share and with one click, find out how many friends they share as well.

Overlapr is similar to other Twitter apps like DoesFollow, Followerlap and TwitterCompare, but it is unique in that it lets you view the overlap numbers for both followers and friends.

On the main Overlapr page, you can see recent and most popular overlaps, and the results are often hilarious. The results use a smart URL, like http://overlapr.com/friends/film_girl/downloadsquad.

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