Lotus had adopted the SIMPLE protocol early in its branching off from SIP, and it still a work in progress.  Now, like many others, Lotus has adopted XMPP, the protocol behind Jabber as well.  This means that there is yet another mainstream product that is interoperable with other XMPP-based services, including APU IM and Google Talk.

Source:  http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2068781,00.asp

There are architectural properties that are unrelated to specific application requirements but are nevertheless important.  A technical architecture should show how it addresses these properties:

• Coherence - any one thing is "about" one thing and does one thing
• Consistency - each part of the application follows the same principles
• Loose coupling - each part of the application is attached loosely to other parts, being as ignorant as possible of other parts of the application
• Maintainability - the application is structured so that it is relatively easy to find any given piece that must be modified and the change can be made in an atomistic way

Its been five years since Sun Open Sourced the StarOffice suite they purchased from German company Star Division.  Today OpenOffice has released version 2.0 which represents a very significant re-engineering of the 1.0 codebase.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 is the productivity suite that individuals, governments, and corporations around the world have been expecting for the last two years. Easy to use and fluidly interoperable with every major office suite, OpenOffice.org 2.0 realises the potential of open source.

With new features, advanced XML capabilities and native support for the OASIS Standard OpenDocument format, OpenOffice.org 2.0 gives users around the globe the tools to be engaged and productive members of their society.

ZDNet Coverage: 

Version 2.0 brings some significant new features, and Google has pledged to help distribute OpenOffice through a high-profile pact with Sun. But perhaps more significant, OpenOffice.org uses the standardized OpenDocument format that stands in stark contrast to Microsoft's proprietary formats.

Massachusetts has required support of OpenDocument, and Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source, has urged computer users to pressure software companies, governments and corporations to support OpenDocument.

A while back, I reviewed several desktop content search engines, as faculty on campus had desired something better to search all the research they had collected on their PC's. We recommended X1 for most users, and ISYS for advanced users. Since then, google of course released google desktop search as well.

One of the things that a faculty member suggested at the time of our investigation was perhaps a better way to search the internet from their desktops as well. So I included Grokker, which was sort of a new face on search. A fancy way to view results by visual categories. Categories are built in, or you can define your own. The only bummer was the technology was limited to Windows.

Now they have released a web based grokker which appears to be a Java applet with most of the same functionality as the desktop version (except of course indexing your desktop content). It uses the Yahoo! search engine.

Anyway if your looking for an interesting way to view search results, check it out.

There has been more press lately about backpackit.com, the latest service from http://www.37signals.com/

Nate first showed me tadalist a long time ago. . Basically just a simple todo list but I have enjoyed using it for those todo items I only need to see when I am online. Its fast and very intuitive.

One of the reasons why Nate was so interested in 37signals is because of their open source web development framework called "ruby on rails". Basically a really easy to use inline scripting language (similar to php but more advanced). Nate and Mark both proved that you could produce a database driven application in short order.

More recently, 37signals have been implementing Ajax, the xml via javascript that gmail has made famous, in their ruby applications.

Backpackit is a interesting application. Its very easy to use, and has a good feel. However, I feel that it is a little more restrictive than most wiki applications. And their pricing model is a little off the mark, basically paying per page.

Really 37signals primary bread and butter is basecamp, their easy to use web based project management app. I have not yet played with it, but it appears to get that the project management problem is one about gathering all communication around a project space, more than just gant management. I think I may be suggesting it for my brother, an architect and general contractor who is faced with managing projects with dispersed office and field employees.

As far as ASP hosted wiki's, I think the one with the most potential is jotspot.com. They take wiki to the level of small "lotus notes" like application development, and there are some big names behind it.

Some similar functionality to backpackit, in that when you sign up you get a subdomain, and then each page has a randomly generated email address that you can use as an alternate method to update the page.

The list of available applications is impressive. I would suggest checking out the advanced tour.

I think the overriding principle driving success with these applications is that people really are drawn to the simple. Mobile users, and those who are fed up with reinstalling operating systems after viruses or other system failures, are growing soft to the concept of completely web based applications. Now that developers are pushing beyond the standards with things like ajax (standards being discussed at w3c even now), there is proof that web application feel can be improved without significant overhead.

Its a race for the best collaboration tool which can marry the "ease of publishing and sharing" found in blogs, wiki's, and social networking sites. Thus the emergence of new big name offerings like MSN MySpace, Yahoo! 360, etc. Should be interesting.

Well I just had a really nice write-up regarding Google's Summer of Code Program, but I lost it do to buggy htmlarea javascript crashing my browser.

My main point was that it was a very smart move by google. On the surface its a benevolent outlay of 1 million dollars in stipends for students to help out Open Source projects. Underneath is an very smart campaign building up google's relationship with the Open Source community and future employees. A chance to find talent at high schools and Universities... a sort of real-time interview (note all code needs to be publicly available). A chance for Open Source projects to get new talent and some nagging tasks/feature requests done. A chance for students to have something meaningful to work on, and even be mentored by open source project representatives. Real work, real deadlines, real rewards in a non-threatening way.

But its a win-win for all parties really, the open source community, the students, and google. Smart. Marketing and PR can be used innovatively with some real value.

A university can learn from such a campaign.... IT departments should establish such a relationship with their Computer Science departments, for many of the same reasons.

As OpenOffice 2.0 gets closer to being finalized, they have started to release preview release snapshots. Of greater interest to me at this point is a nice list of new features.

So why the jump from 1.x to 2.0? Here are the things that stood out to me:

1. Switch to OpenDoc XML format from the Oasis Open Standards Group
2. Native widgets on Windows XP, Gnome, and KDE
3. Improved MS Office import/export
4. Export XHTML 1.0 Strict from all modules

If you have ever seen the export of html from Microsoft Word, then you will be especially excited about #4. Sure running things through htmltidy works, but think about the joy of having someone post web pages or content snippets using strict xhtml 1.0 from a word processor.

Today IBM made three major announcements relevant to IBM Workplace:

• The release of IBM WebSphere Portal 5.1, one of the primary technologies underlying the IBM Workplace platform
• The availability of new IBM Workplace Solutions aimed at specific horizontal and vertical business problems
• The introduction of IBM Workplace Services Express, an affordable and easy-to-implement offering for deploying IBM Workplace to small-to-medium-sized businesses and departments within larger organizations.

IBM Workplace Announcement Page

Early Analysis

We have all been watching as IBM integrates its previously disperse applications and middleware. It was obvious to many that they would need to break up the monolithic approach to the Lotus Domino product into more of a web services model. Although, I was hard pressed to find detailed technical information or even screen shots, it sounds like with this upcoming release they have succeeded in integrating their products for complete web delivery. However, the success of the workplace still seems dependent on an integrated suite approach...