On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 12:08 AM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote: > On 3/1/2011 1:08 PM, John R Pierce wrote: >> On 03/01/11 10:59 AM, Brunner, Brian T. wrote: >>> Not today. My kids are all "modern, computer-savvy teens" (understand >>> "teens" starts at about age 11 and lasts until about age 35). They can >>> Facebook *all* *day* but cannot compose an email to save their lives. >>> >>> I'll have to look into jabber. >> >> jabber is a IM client >> >> seems like what you want is more like a webpage with 'news items' on it, >> perhaps a blog like S9Y or Wordpress, and a web browser window >> displaying the current page on the desktop, maybe that auto refreshes >> hourly or something. > > A jabber (xmpp) group conference would probably work with basically > instant notification and a display of the last screen at startup. I've > used the Openfire server (java, uses postgresql for logins and to log > data)and the spark client in a somewhat similar scenario with OpenNMS > sending alarm notifications to the group because it is less annoying > than email. Not sure if you can make a client start automatically in a > group conference, though. It might work to just use google talk since > you used that as your example of what you wanted but I don't think they > have a way to make permanent groups. > > -- > Les Mikesell > lesmikesell at gmail.com > _______________________________________________ Thanx everyone. I wasn't looking for RSS or jabber, or microblogging, I just the Twitter / facebook desktop as an example since those are the only examples I got. Our church need(ed) to send info to clients "over the wire" in a guarenteed fashion. They already have a website, which is under-utilized / not visited as often by every one. RSS didn't work out as it should / could since many non-IT-savy-folk don't know what it it, how it works, or how to use it. Jabber is a no-go for this same reason. The church needs to send weekly news (events, updates, announcements, etc) to their clients. Email doesn't work well since a lot of it gets send to spam folder or simply never reach the end users since places like Yahoo block anything and everything that doesn't originate from their own network. SMS isn't very effective either. So I was basically looking for something, which works in the same way as Google Notify (let's use a different example) which logs onto a server, queries the DB for info and displays it to the user. But, I'm not a C++ / C# / JS programmer, so I can't write this myself. I hoped maybe someone knew of something that I could use, maybe a framework or something to build something like this? Someone suggested Adobe Air, but I don't know, or code Adobe Air. These guys do something in the lines of what I want: http://www.zanews.co.za/category/daily-news/ - if you download the desktop player on the right-side you'll see. http://www.nuron.co.za/Nuron/index.aspx also has something similar, but you need to use their proprietory backend to communicate with the end users and they force banners adds onto each client desktop. I need something that isn't bound to, or limit within a certain company. Maybe I'm asking too much? -- Kind Regards Rudi Ahlers SoftDux Website: http://www.SoftDux.com Technical Blog: http://Blog.SoftDux.com Office: 087 805 9573 Cell: 082 554 7532