Jotspot acquired by Google

Was a bit surprised to find this (in my gmail box no less):

We’re writing to let you know that Google has acquired JotSpot. We believe this is great news for our users. More importantly, we want to reassure you that you’ll continue to have uninterrupted access to your account.

It’s starting to become obvious that Google is trying to assemble a complete ‘online office’ solution. They now have offer email, spreadsheets, a wordproccessor, agenda and with jotspot, another great online collaboration tool.

I had been trying Jotspot for a new software project for work and it seem to work wonderfully. You can put documentation, spreadsheets, an agenda etc. all in one place (a wiki), and give rights to people on the project that need it (read only, write access etc). It wasnt free though, and it looks like that will be changed now, which is even more an incentive to start using it for this particular project. Though it might have some google adsense ads added to it.

Will paying customers still be charged?

We will no longer be billing customers for the use of the service. Although you will still have use of the product at your current pricing plan, we won’t charge you anymore when your current billing cycle expires.

Scoble made a post about it too, you can find two nice videos on jotspot at the scoble show.
There is also a nice article on techcrunch.

Quotes are from Jotspot’s email to existing customers.

Podcast Priest

Everybody’s favorite priest, Father Roderick of the Daily Breakfast appeared monday night at the dutch late talk show Pauw en Witteman. For anyone who speaks dutch (it would make much sense if you dont know the language), the program can be viewed online at www.uitzendinggemist.nl.

Very nice appearance by the Podcasting Priest as he was called at this program, telling about how it all started and how he tries to appeal to the common podcast listeners, who dont have to be catholics to enjoy the program.

Site Update (sidebar blues no more)

Update this site using the new version of K2 0.9.1. The developers have done an excellent job, especially on the backend. No more sidebar blues, because you can now totally customize the sidebar with modules, that you can drag and drop, insert custom php code (like the tagcloud on the right) and html (like the technorati link and feedburner rss icon).

Also added a new K2 style named Sawchuck. Named after a fearless hockey goalie.

AppRocket

A few days back I posted about colibri being a quicksilver ‘replacement’ for Windows Xp. After listening to one of the podcast episodes of Scott Hanselman (at Hanselminutes.com) I checked out AppRocket and decided to register it today. It’s only $18,- !

It’s well worth it. You can add directories that you want to be indexed, like your podcast directory (it will show extended info on mp3s if you want), tools directory etc. It sits happily on the top of your screen, and you activate it by hitting your hotkey, like alt+space. You can also perform fast web searches on wikipedia, google or amazon. Their website has some nice screencasts where you can check out how things work.

AppRocket Homepage: http://www.candylabs.com/approcket/

Get it from CNET Download.com!