Well, if ChangeEverything.ca was going to lose in the Webby race, it couldn't have been to a more worthy contender than Flock.

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We're pleased to announce a brand new Drupal module...

...but first, the reason we created it:

No matter how appealing an online service is, users and developers alike always feel frustrated when their noses bump up against walls.

Facebook users feel it when they receive email messages notifying them that they've received Facebook messages... without saying what those messages contain. LinkedIn users have felt it when they try hunting for a news feed for their own LinkedIn Answers.

And Second Life users feel it when they want to find some way to connect their in-world activity in some way with the rest of the online world; with a few limited exceptions (and to their credit, Linden Lab is working hard to expand them), that can be an exercise in frustration.

Maybe we can help change that.

Introducing the Second Life framework, a free Drupal module that allows scripts within Second Life to interact over the web with applications running on a Drupal web site.

This is an enabling module, built for developers. It allows you to create new Drupal modules with cool Second Life-integration functionality, but doesn't add new functionality in and of itself. It's built to interact with scripts written in LSL, the Second Life scripting language. (We built it as part of a larger project within SL; more on that as it develops.)

The download package includes a sample module and a handy Second Life client emulator. (It lets you test your work even if you aren't running Second Life. That reduces development time and lets you write modules for SL even if your LSL scripts aren't ready yet.)

The module was created by Khalid Baheyeldin of 2bits, our Drupal programmer of choice for brilliant coding. (Khalid is starting to take on mythic qualities. The other day, we mentioned to a friend who moves frequently in Drupal circles that we were working with Khalid. "Ah," the friend said, his eyes widening slightly. "'The Hammer.'" Apparently we aren't the only ones who think there isn't a Drupal problem out there that Khalid can't crack.)

He worked closely with LSL whiz Catherine Winters as they braved the idiosyncracies of LSL and mapped out the protocols needed for Drupal and Second Life to talk to each other.

We have our own cunning plans for employing this module, but we're eager to see how the community puts it to work. Exposing SL activity to the rest of the web? Bringing blog content interactively into SL? Using Drupal as a database for an SL script?

We hope this module will work alongside efforts like SLFeed to help break down the barriers that separate avatars from the wider world of the world-wide web. There's some amazing stuff going on in the walled gardens of the online world; it's time some of those walls came down so we can all have a look.

And if you're working with Drupal and Second Life, drop us a line. We'd love to know what you're up to.

Links: 

• The Drupal project page for the Second Life framework
• Khalid's announcement of the release 

Funny thing – I was just thinking yesterday how unnecessarily complex it is to illustrate one of these posts with a screenshot, especially a cropped and annotated one. Grab the shot (either to the clipboard or my hard drive), fire up Photoshop, make my changes, save the screenshot in a web-friendly format, upload it to the Social Signal site... blecch.

I mean, I love you people, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for our readers... but that's a lot of effort. And I'm an innately lazy person.

Apparently the folks at Plasq know some innately lazy people, too, who have served as the inspiration for their latest project (Mac only, as far as I can tell): Skitch.

If you've recently bought a Mac, you probably know Plasq from the brilliant Comic Life application that came bundled with your new computer. It's an elegant, intuitive and fabulously addictive way to turn your photos (or other digital graphics) into comic book pages.

Take the same simple but powerful approach to interface design, apply it to the challenge of screenshots for bloggers, add a little file hosting (more on that in a moment) and you've got Skitch, which is now in beta.

Skitch lets you take quick and easy screenshots – full screen, an individual window, a marquee selection – that you then annotate, mark up, resize and otherwise alter, before clicking a button that uploads it to the Skitch server and opens a corresponding page in your browser.

Click one of the buttons on that page, and the code to embed the image is copied to your clipboard, ready to be dropped into your blog post.

And that's it. You've never even had to glance at a dialog box or browse your hard drive.

If you don't like the thought of your image being hosted on Skitch's server, don't worry: you can enter FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, .mac or Flickr info in Skitch's preferences. And if you insist on going old-school and saving it to your hard drive (who does that any more?) Skitch will let you do that too.

A few quibbles: Skitch is no Photoshop, and your tools are very, very limited – but they do a lot within those limits. The inability to transform annotations (other than text) once they're on the image is annoying at first... except that it's so easy to create new ones, a do-over isn't as irritating as you'd think. Conspicuous by its absence from the list of supported file formats is the venerable GIF, but I'll get over it.

Especially since it was literally less than 24 hours between my reflecting on how much of a pain screenshots can be, and Plasq inviting me to the Skitch beta. Even if they never get around to integrating that level of telepathic responsiveness into Skitch, it's going to be a great little tool.

We currently track prospects and clients with a delicately balanced combination of such tools as Google spreadsheets, Remember the Milk, an internal wiki, smart Mail.app mailboxes and an aging but still spry fox terrier. (She benchmarks surprisingly well on her good days.)

But like any growing enterprise, commercial or social, we've passed the point where that kind of chewing-gum-and-coat-hanger contraption can hold together reliably. Now we're looking for a capital-S Solution... one that's capital-R Robust and capital-C cost capital-E effective.

Our search has zeroed in on three tools: 800-kilo-gorilla Salesforce, Google-based upstart Etelos, and open-source heartthrob CiviCRM. Each has their advantages and drawbacks, costs and benefits, dimples and warts... and we're getting a pretty good handle on those.

But there's only so much a spec sheet (or even a demo account) can tell you. What we don't have yet – and here's where you come in – is the inside scoop. So we're turning to our community and asking you to dish. Are you already using one of these tools -- or another CRM solution we should consider? Do you love it or hate it, and why?

We're particularly interested in hearing from other small businesses, dev/tech types, and Mac users.

Please tell your story in the comment area below, and you'll earn our eternal gratitude. (We'd offer an iPod Nano for the best one, but we know that you can't be bought for such paltry trinkets.)