what did i found today surfing in the net?
Please post useful links on this topic.

[url=http://clubcash.info]clubcash[/url].

What is useful on this site?

1. Money related links
2. Fresh content every day

Things must be going pretty well over at TechCrunch for them to be able to afford a Jive forum worth thousands of dollars!
The new TechCrunch forum is a place for users to continue discussing hot articles that have dropped off the front page. It&#821…

iListOnline - a new Symbiosis for Students, Alumni and Teachers :

I recently came across this new University centric educational networking/content management site (http://www.ilistonline.com) which is trying to remove the boundaries that other existing University networks such as Facebook have created where users are some how tied to their University network and can not much see what is happening outside their University. I liked this concept of University community networking without these artificial boundaries put in place by Facebook where the free speech and information sharing is unnecessarily being restricted just because Mark Zuckerberg seems to like this idea. iListOnline.com clearly is trying to remove this barrier and is trying to let all of its users communicate/share/collaborate/network with other University communities without any restriction across user roles (Students/Alumni/Teachers) and across more than 700 Universities.

In Facebook all users irrespective of whether they are Students, Alumni or Teachers are clubbed in to one single group. This has created numerous problems for its users especially for Students. I have read articles in the past about how employers screen their applicants based on information they gather from Facebook about their prospective candidates and if some objectionable behavior is found they reject such applicants. Also there have been numerous reports about Parents and Teachers invading the privacy of Students. So on networks such as Facebook, Students can never feel safe about the information they post. iListOnline.com is trying to resolve this issue to some extent by separating users based on their current relationship (Student, Alumni and Teachers) with the University. In iListOnline.com all users have been classified in 3 different user roles (Students, Alumni and Teachers) based on user’s current relationship with the University. Users can register as a Student, Alumni or a Teacher and after registration can add multiple University affiliations in different roles if they gave valid University email addresses. Each role has different registration requirements. Basic idea here is to give Students, Alumni and Teachers there own spaces to collaborate and network and yet give users the power to network across user roles and Universities if they wish. I liked this concept of separation yet giving the users the ability to cross their role and University boundaries.

Classifieds and Groupify :

I found that iListOnline.com has been meticulously designed for the University community in mind. They have created two main parts on this site which are iListOnline Classifieds and iListOnline Groupify with extensive Help topics in their Help section which describes all the features quite thoroughly.

A. iListOnline Classifieds :

They have created a complete separate area for classifieds where anyone can post classifieds related to buy/sell, find internships/jobs, ask questions, personals, parent of university students can network with other parents, alumni can find other alumni in their town, prospective students can ask questions and many other categories suited to the University community needs. Making this classifieds section open to public makes sense as there are many people who are not directly part of the University community but are connected with it in some way, for example local businesses and residents from the same town where the University is located, prospective students applying to this University, parents of students currently studying at this University etc. Hence by making classifieds section ‘open to all’, iListOnline gives an opportunity for such people to communicate with the current University community in a safe and secure way. In classifieds section user emails are completely hidden (even in any anonymous form) to combat spam. Classifieds section is per University basis and hence it gives the much needed granularity to this section. Newslinks category in iListOnline classifieds also shows latest news from the University (if the University supports RSS feeds), or from international, national news sites using RSS feeds. Currently classifieds section is available in Universities from over 17 countries.

Having this classifieds section completely separate makes a lot of sense as then user doesn’t have to post these classifieds inside his/her Groups. In Facebook I have noticed that most of the content posted in any Group is 90% of the time is some classifieds ad about some one wanting to sell their tickets or trying to find a roommate which clearly defeats the purpose of forming Groups. On iListOnline because of having a separate section just devoted to classifieds the content posted to Groups would be lot cleaner and would be more related to the Group theme.

B. iListOnline Groupify :

This section requires creating user accounts using valid University email addresses (for Alumni based on valid University alumni email addresses).

Registration :

The registration process is quite simple. Students and Teachers can register using their university (ending with ‘edu’) email addresses where as registering in Teacher class needs administrator’s approval. For Alumni account any email address with ‘alum’ word after @ qualifies them to register for iListOnline.com. Because of the irregularities in Alumni email addresses it seems like they have created this separate rule for Alumni accounts. It would have been nicer if they could have given links to the University pages where Alumni can request for alumni email forwarding services.

In addition Students can upgrade their accounts to Alumni once they graduate and then can become part of the Alumni Group.

iListOnline.com offers many useful features such as Groups, Blogs, Collaborative Documents (Books), Discussion Forums, Polls, Photos, Bookmarks, Messaging etc thereby creating a safe and secure online space where Students, Alumni and Teachers from over 700 universities can share, collaborate and network with each other even outside their own role and University boundaries.

Group based content access control :

Instead of tying users to the University boundaries, in iListOnline.com access control to user content is fully in users hands. The entire access control mechanism in this site is based on the Groups that the user is subscribed to. This way the user is in full charge of controlling access to his/her posted content and hence can control who can see which posts.

Any user who registers becomes a member of 3 Groups by default -

As an example if the user registers on iListOnline as a Student at MIT then he will become part of

1. Students Group - Here he/she can connect/share/collaborate/network with all Students from all over 700 Universities. So if the user wants to express something for all Students from all Universities then this is the group to give access to the posted content.

2. MIT University Group - Here he/she can connect/share/collaborate/network with all Students and Alumni and Teachers from MIT. If the user wants to express something only within his/her University boundaries then this is the group to give access to the posted content.

3. Students of MIT Group - Here he/she can connect/share/collaborate/network with all Students from MIT. If the user wants to express something only for Students at MIT then this is the group to give access to the posted content.

Registration in Alumni or Teacher roles work in the similar fashion. Users can as well be in multiple roles at different or same Universities and they will become part of more such default groups. Users can also add multiple University affiliations if they have valid University email addresses. For example if the user registers as Student at MIT and then adds university affiliation for Alumni at Stanford then he will become part of following default groups -

Students Group, Alumni Group, MIT University Group, Stanford University Group, Students at MIT Group, Alumni at Stanford Group and so on.

Features :

Some of the features offered by iListOnline.com are as follows -

1. Groups -

Users can create their own public/private/moderated groups. While creating such groups users can set the visibility settings such that it can be visible to Students and/or Alumni and/or Teachers from all Universities or from specific (at most 5) Universities of their choice. This way they can control which users can become members of this group.

For example if the user wants to create a Group called “RedSox Vs Yankees” he/she can set the visibility setting such that it is only visible to Students and Alumni and Teachers from MIT, HARVARD, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY etc. Alternatively the user can create a moderated group for all Students, Alumni and Teachers from all Universities and approve subscription requests only if the user belongs to any of the Universities based in Boston or New York.

Teachers can create their private secure course groups where they can invite students from their classes to join and can post assignments, course schedule, share files etc. Students in these groups can then ask questions, doubts, discuss with other classmates in their courses, create collaborative project reports (books) and lot more.

2. Collaborative Documents (books) -

This is a very nice feature that iListOnline is offering its users. Using this feature Students can create collaborative documents about their course work. Teachers can write collaborative research papers (inside private groups so no one else can see them). Or creative writers can create open groups and let everybody chip in writing a creative story.

3. Blogs -

Users can maintain personal private blog as well as can give access permissions based on his/her Groups to control who can see his/her blog. Currently iListOnline blogs do not support RSS feeds.

4. Polls -

Users can create opinion polls, add comments on polls etc.

5. Forums -

Users can create discussion topics in Forums.

6. Pages -

Users can create static pages etc, Main purpose of pages is anything any user wants to write which is not a blog can be a Page. For example Teachers can create course Assignments etc as Pages.

7. Albums -

The nice thing about the implementation of albums in iListOnline is that you can control access to individual photos based your groups. This is a very useful and handy feature.

As an example: If the user takes pictures of a on campus party, you want all the pictures of this party in one album. You can upload all pictures to this album and then can set audience for each picture independently. This way you can select which pictures to be shown to which groups and still have them organized in a single album.

8. Network -

Here users can create network of other members that they are either friends with or the members whose posts they like to read. It is not exactly meant as creating a friends list instead think of it as a book-marking a user. iListOnline provides a very easy way to access posts made by members in a user’s network so that they can easily keep track of what people in their network are talking about.

9. Bookmarks -

iListOnline also provides a way to bookmark internal content on this site as well as users can enter external links and save them. This way users can access their bookmarks from anywhere. Also they can see bookmarks saved by other users (only if the user allows sharing of bookmarks). If the user likes blog posted by another user he can easily bookmark it and if he allows sharing of bookmarks then will become available on his/her profile to users who also have access to this blog.

10. Profiles -

Profiles on iListOnline.com are short, simple and are very to the point. Profiles here doesn’t have lot of regular things such as my favourite quote, my favourite book and color of my hair and all those regular profile fields. Users also have to some extent which fields they want to be shown on their profiles.
Users can control if they want to show their Groups and Bookmarks to be shown on their profile or not. If they choose to do so depending on the user who is accessing other user’s profile, only Bookmarks (if it is internal site content) and Groups to which this user has access to will be shown to him. This way the profiles would look different to different users based on their group subscriptions.

11. Messaging -

Users can send private messages to other users using this feature. Users can also control if they do not wish to receive private messages from other users.

12. User activity tracking -

Users can easily track what any other user has recently posted using this track functionality. Only the content which is accessible to the user who is tracking will be shown to him. For example some Teacher posts blogs and gives permission to all Teachers from all Universities then if any user who is a Student will not be able to see this blog even if he tries to track this Teacher.

13. Embedded Pictures -

Users can first upload any pictures they want using Albums and then easily embed them in their Blog, Group main page, Forums, Messages, Pages etc using a simple to use syntax such as [picture:1234 style=slide align=left height=180 width=120] etc where 1234 is picture id for the picture that the user wants to embed. Users can align, size or style it using this syntax as well. Slide style makes text go around the pictures that are being embedded.

14. Grouping Users -

In iListOnline users can be easily grouped together for viewing purposes by using Profile fields which satisfy some criteria.

For example all Student users can be grouped together for viewing by clicking ‘Member of’ field on any Student user. All users from a specific Company/Organization can be grouped together by clicking on the ‘Company’ link on a specific user profile and it will present all users from that Company. This way users can group together other users who are from specific University, who are in some specific role (Student, Alumni, Teacher) from all Universities, who work in specific Company, who graduated in specific year, who are of a specific gender, who belong to specific major, who has some specific hobby, from a specific town/country etc. This way users can easily navigate to other users who share some link. Users then can add these users to their network (like book-marking this user) and can easily see the content posted by such users using Network feature explained earlier.

Conclusion :

Overall this new site that has been launched recently has a good potential to capture this University centric market and can very well give a new direction to the way University communities express themselves and interact today. This site very well can bridge the gap because of which all different Universities have their own disconnected online places for it’s community to express them selves (using blogs etc) where no one can easily share/connect/network/collaborate with other like minded users in one secure online place.

Sure he could spend days hacking on it and then a couple hours a week trying to patch it and update … but only if his time was worth $0. Maybe he would get the satisfication out of looking at the PhpBB code, but I didn’t think he was into S&M.”
- - -
Every blogger who opens up comments is a masochist - LOL

This is not a fair statement to make. vBulletin has great support and I’ve never seen problems with performance even on the biggest of forums. Plus, suggesting that it’s not coded well is a very suggestive comment to make about it. Vanilla, code wise, was built for performance. Although the support isn’t there, suggestion their code isn’t done well is literally an insult to the open source developers…

But I do understand why it is so expensive. It is written in Java!!

I suppose the benefit to the forum that is used by about 10 websites is that no one has the code and thus hacking is much less likely. With that said, I have to wonder why you chose it over Simple Machines Forum, Vanilla, or even vBulletin. If support was an issue, vBulletin has paid support (and is packed with features).

But either way, I love the idea!