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

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.

This news is a few weeks old, but I didn't run across it till today.

The Apache Foundation is sponsoring the development of a compatible implementation of J2SE 5. The project is called Harmony, and is sitting in the incubator. The FAQ posted to the mailing list, answered the first few questions that popped into my head....

Implementing a Pattern Library in the Real World: A Yahoo! Case Study

The Problem

Yahoo’s multiple business units, each containing decentralized user experience teams, have a natural tendency to design different solutions to similar problems. Left unchecked, these differences would weaken the Yahoo! brand and produce a less usable network of products. Designers and managers have discussed “standards” as a way to solve this problem but this standards content (often contained only in the memories of designers) has never existed in a commonly accessible format.

I originally found this story because of the Drupal folks being excited about Yahoo choosing Drupal as the best CMS to meet their specific needs for this project. But there is much to learn from this collaborative standards formation, and knowledge management effort in the "interface design" space.