"Meh."  That was my reaction to Live Mesh, and that's probably just because I've been using Groove for the past 5 years and have enjoyed the wonderful benefits of file synchronization over multiple PCs through seamless integration with Windows Explorer.  If you haven't used Groove for project collaboration, you need to spend a few minutes checking into this product.  As I watched the video (see image on the right for directions), I had to ask myself, how large of a feature set does Live Mesh have that is not already covered by Groove and Remote Desktop?  It's going to have to be fairly significant for users to invest the time and resources into changing their behavior.  I'm sure with time Live Mesh will grow into an incredibly useful platform, but for now I'll keep using RD and Groove.

OK, Twine.  If you haven't been tracking Radar Networks (hehe, you know they get tired of this), this is a company that was founded by Nova Spivack (who, incidentally, manages to post regularly to a fascinating blog here).  You may have heard of Nova as a result of his trip into space with the Russian air force.  Or, you may know him as the grandson of Peter F. Drucker, the father of modern corporate management theory.  Or, you may know him as one of the co-founders of EarthWeb which spawned Dice.com.  The list goes on and on, and yet, I hadn't heard of Nova until last year at about this time when I was deep into my quest to understand the amazing new World of Web 2.0.  At the far end of this world, I discovered a door into yet another world, with even more fascinating discoveries.  Mind you, the ideas surrounding what has been touted as Web 3.0 are not new.  Some, if not most, of Web 3.0 has been ruminating for a long time.  Tim Berners Lee (I know, that link wasn't needed) has been trying to convince the world for years that the next paradigm shift in web related technology will revolve around the need for assigning meaning, or context, to the overwhelming amount of information that's made its way out onto the world wide web. 

OK, back to the point.  Twine is a fascinating idea.  Actually, much more fascinating than the current feature set of Twine is the patent application filed back in 2002 for what has now morphed into Twine.  I'm sure some of the features in the patent application will be abandoned, but it's fascinating to read Nova's vision for the product some 6 years ago.  I found the patent application during my own patent search for Member Crossing and I was encouraged as I researched Radar Networks to see that the company is well funded (more here).

Even more excited was I to find that I had entered my name early enough in the waiting list to get the username don.  How often does that happen? 

So, what is Twine?  Good question.  As it stands right now, Twine is basically a cross between a social networking site and a semantic powered knowledge management solution with a healthy dose of some amazing artificial intelligence.  Users can create Twines to track anything.  SIGs in an organization might create a twine to manage a shared repository of knowledge collected related to a particular project, while an executive committee might create a twine to manage data related to a new initiative within their organization.  Both public and private Twines can be created and a Twine allows you to manage a variety of types of shared data.  Bookmarks, videos, documents, blog posts, threaded discussions related to almost anything, are all ways you can add data to your Twine.  Because the product is built on top of a semantic framework, you'll be able to track information about almost anything, and over time that information will become more and more connected.

Let me know if you're interested in Twine.  I have a few free invitations to the beta. Another interesting site to check out is Freebase, which is more of a semantic database and less of a social networking/collaboration tool than Twine.