Filed under: blogging, bookmarks, commenting, messaging, sphere
It’s ironic in a way to be using SS to write about it. However, it kind of serves as a practical application of SS’s uses.
Like any typical article that gets written, there is a planning stage. So, usually that begins with a startup of SupraSphere. I have a sphere set up called “Supra Blog Team” which is where I usually post ideas for the next couple of posts. David will usually refine the ideas via terse. After I have a set topic to write about, I *usually* will write a message outline, which I’ve not really gotten into yet with the posts here, but that’s going to be the next one. Commenting on it, it will receive some tweaks, and then I will start the writing process.
From right within SS, I’ll hit <crtl-t> which just like Firefox, opens a new tab, and I log into the blog and start writing. I should mention here that Wordpress is fully functional while in SS as well. Extra tabs also mean it’s easy to search for more information so I can flesh out ideas.
After I get a rough draft, I save the preliminary version, and preview it in another tab. Using the bookmark feature, I then post the bookmark in the Blog Team sphere. David will read it from there, and then using the comment feature to tweak it some more, editing it for grammar and the like. Then, finally, I’ll get the green light to click on “Publish” and another post goes live.
Filed under: bookmarks, commenting, messaging
Most mornings, I get up and go through my routine, which usually ends with me drinking Mountain Dew, and sitting down at the dining-room table. Substituting the normal coffee intake and newspaper reading, I opt for soda and news via the web. My generation is the one that wants and usually gets everything that they want instantly. That being said, usually after about a half-hour of reading various CNN, Routers, Lifehacker and Wired posts, I begin to get a positively torrential amount of mail in my inbox with people cyber-shouting at me: “Quit sending me the same link over and over again! You sent it eleventy-seven times already!” To which I usually reply with: “But did you read the different comments I left for you?” *puppy dog eyes* Call it the caffeinated rush, but I have a lot to say, and to make matters worse, I expect comments back.
…Well, scratch that. That was before I started using SupraSphere. I’ve told you about spheres, terse messaging, and the supra search features. With the terse/bookmarking feature I alluded to, you can visit sites just like any other browser (tabbed no less) or insert bookmarks in terse messages an d in your different spheres. When you bookmark in a shared sphere, things get very cool very fast: everyone can comment on the bookmark.
One cool thing is that you are able to tell when someone reads the message. Their name off on the left hand “people” bar will go from blue to green. That way you won’t have to beg them to read it. ;) Of course you could prod them with a terse message to the bookmark, but once their name goes green you’ll know that they are reading it. You can simply reply to a bookmark via the terse messaging system, although there is another really cool feature to utilize.
What if there is a specific thing on the website that you want someone to see? In shared spheres, there is this big space where most of the time it shows terse messages in-line. However, when you click on a bookmark, a preview will show up in that large space.* At this point, you can still reply in terse, but the feature here is that while looking at that page, you can highlight just about anything and contextually select text to comment on. Simply highlight, right-click, and comment on the content you want them to read. A window pops up, allowing you do do that. If someone comments back, you can read their comment and reply to it. Contextual commenting really makes for some interesting conversation!
In SS, this comment feature is not just limited to bookmarks; email and messages can be commented on too! This along with the many other features of SS make it a truly innovative environment to work in!
*double-clicking on a bookmark will open it up in a new tab.
Filed under: messaging
Well, since I am a complete geek, I love being able to IM my friends. The problem though is that I can’t ever seem to find the important stuff they say while instant messaging. Often my conversations get garbled up because we’ll be talking about something and go so fast that we are actually discussing more than one thing, and we reply, but not fast enough. It’s the trouble with living in constant fast forward. :D
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying SupraSphere is an Instant Messenger, *but* SS incorporates and improves on IM. How is this even possible?
Well, first, let’s travel back in time to 1996, the birth of the modern message board. Back in the day absolutely everyone used message boards, because they had and still have some really great features. Threads were started and then replied to. Even though everything was organized, conversations were not held in real time. The problem was that we’d reply, but never fast enough keep up with the constant stream of communication. The meaning of what we replied was then lost to a swarm of other comments.
Ah, remember the days of chat rooms? Chats took the form of IRC and web based rooms where it was *almost* instant messaging. Good luck trying to reply in a room of 10+ people, as inevitably an entire page-worth of nonsensical multi-colored words were thrown down in literally a few seconds.
Now we have GTalk, Yahoo, AIM, Windows Live, ICQ, and other instant messaging services. Mostly I use mine for a more social aspect, considering I really don’t think it’d be appropriate for a co-worker to see my awesome new icon of the day :P or to see what my status says. Certainly these clients have 
more useful aspects of them, including SMS messaging, file transfer, image sharing, and direct to email capabilities in some, but these are lost in the over-all “web toy” feel they give off.
SS improves on all three of these forms of communication, with something we like to call “terse messaging”, which is easy and intuitive to use, but somewhat difficult for me to explain. :) It’s reminiscent of a web forum given that it’s threaded. Terse also reminds me of instant messaging and IRC seeing as how it’s real time and can be addressed to more than one recipient, so the meaning of messages is not lost. It provides a much-needed way to communicate the same message to different people, while still allowing you to expound on other trains of thought with other recipients; it could be said that it is “chaordic“. Essentially, I’m saying that SS becomes like an extension of our brains! ;)
Posted on February 26th, 2008 by Andria LeBaron
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