ekkoTV

ekkoTV

This is very cool and simple to use. It enables you to do a video chat with 2 other people. No muss no fuss. No sign ups or other hassles. Flash interface with your mic and webcam.

I don't see many options at this point. There is a link that you can share with friends (anyone you want to speak with) at the bottom of the screen. I'm not sure how long this is good for. Maybe you could add it to your blog or other page and use it as a regular meeting place.

They also have a text chat box, which is wonderful for sharing that text information that audio is terrible for. Things like URLs are easier to cut and paste that having to listen while someone spells it out for you.

Very cool application. I can't wait to see it grow up.

Dan

BricaBox

BricaBox

I was very excited with the concept of BricaBox. Kind of like a Ning for content communities. I love Ning and was hoping to do some quick development work, but it was not to be. I'm not impressed with this site. The set up is straight forward, but I'm not sure what to do with the resulting site. It's bare bones. If you want to dedicate time to do design on the site, it's probably a great platform, however, it's not going to take off until the built-in templates give users a nice looking site to start with. Then they can toy with it later.

Also, the administrative design is difficult to use. I couldn't figure out how to do some of the things that I wanted to do. The most important was to delete the site that I started. If I couldn't delete it, at least give me the option to start over again with the design. Neither seem to be options. Very frustrating.

This is a recent beta and I hope that they can get some money pumped in to work on design elements, both for their site and the user sites.

Dan