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OK, this only applies to web developer nerds like me. But Backbase has a couple of demos of their web UI toolkit. It is like using an application, but it's inside your browser. Cross platform. Wow.

The Onion horoscopes has a line I particularly like:

Taurus: (April. 20—May 20)
You'll be
violated hundreds of times by out-of-control alcoholics, but it's to be
expected, considering that you're the local ordinance against drunk and
disorderly conduct.

In the frassle publisher, it is easy to feature a short funny thing somewhere on a page. To set up, you

1. create a category for it, say "short funny things";
2. add a block to your page that shows one note from "short funny things";
3. browse to "short funny things" and drag the post in this category bookmarklet to your toolbar.

Then when you see something funny, you just highlight the text in your browser and click your post to "short funny things" bookmarklet. You can edit the note text or select other categories, but all you really have to do is click Post. The note is posted to the category, and your frassle publisher pages automatically get that latest piece of content.

Usage summary: browse, select text, click bookmarklet, click Post button. It will be sweet! I'll have to build this scenario into the guided tour.

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Here's a mop-up-the-drool review of BlinkX, a search sidebar product. This is an example of contextual, implicit search, not unlike dashboard. It certainly seems useful to have relevant information automatically made available to you. But there are two (non-technical) challenges with bringing this kind of software to market. First, data off the public internet is usually not useful—and most people know to use Google when it can be. Secondly, there is a trust barrier that prevents users from opening their own data to such a product.

In the first case, an automatic sidebar might save you some typing, but if you want to do a Google search it's often just a text-selection and right-click away. However, when you're looking to get something done—rather than just be distracted by random stuff to read—you don't need constant google results. If you sell Widgets, you probably already know that the company you work for makes Widgets and that effective selling requires courtesy. You need to know much more specific stuff, especially from your past successes and mistakes. The stuff you need isn't on the public internet.

On the other hand, an individual or company would be profoundly naieve to open confidential data to an internet startup offering to index it for your convenience. That smells like spyware. After years of web-based email, even Google found that privacy norms weren't universally understood. And I wouldn't trust even Google with the contents of my hard drive. Dashboard, which is an open source application, overcomes these problems because it doesn't depend on any central entity, but I don't think it's anywhere near production-ready yet.

So, what about selling to companies? I think there is some potential here, but even a great contextual search application isn't going to sell on its own. Enterprise buyers will, however, see it as a major benefit if integrated into a broader knowledge management framework. Crucially, the search must acquire context from specific business applications and data, and provide results in useful, structured formats. For example, it should notice if you're entering a sales prospect form for General Motors and show you all previous sales attempts with GM, organized into sucesses and failures. It should show you current data on GM's profit in the location you are targeting. It should show you the latest intelligence on which executives to pitch to, along with their personal tastes. Then you know that your best bet is to offer John Doe in Dearborn a ride to golf in your CTS-V, but best wait until Q2 financials are done.

If I were developing a product like BlinkX, I'd start by partnering with enterprise KM (knowledge management) and CMS (content management) vendors and consultants. These markets have some special advantages. First, you can sell to end users and not just advertisers. Second, the business context can trump individual privacy concerns, at least at the corporate purchasing level. Finally, the ubiquitous search sidebar is a great motivator to get people into the habit of using and contributing to knowledge repositories. It's a natural symbiosis.

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The one is a small, growing company with a culture that appreciates challenges and risks. The other is an aged, terminally ill industry with a culture that expects gravy and cynically manipulates the opinions and tastes of a large portion of American society. I hope we get more of the former and put the latter out of their misery.

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Josh, I rather enjoy this editor. It's called HTMLArea. It's Free, works in recent versions of both IE and Mozilla, is ridiculously easy to deploy, and offers a great interface.

1. If you want to type the markup, hit the <> button. It's fourth from the right in the lower row.
2. Could you be more specific about its interface problems? I think the interface works really well. If your browser users tabs for popup windows, it's a little clunky but that's what you get for living on the cutting edge.
3. It runs fine on my linux firefox installation. Any idea why yours would work differently?
4. Did the editor freeze or did your browser crash? I've used this editor extensively under MyIE and Firefox with 1 browser crash and 0 editor lockups.
5. This is a frassle bug, not an HTMLArea bug, and is fixed in the next version. Also you may be able to work around it by hitting the back button.

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Lisa has a hilarious battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

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I demand more! As promised!!!

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Features buried much deeper
Average menu depth has been increased to 7.4/item across the entire Office 2003 line making sure you don't accidentally select something you didn't want to.