An online notebook
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An online notebook
Mike Butcher is the editor of TechCrunch UK, and keeps his eye on the new tech startups in this country and across Europe. Here he is interviewed by Robert Scoble.
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What does the ideal online collaboration model look like? Much of the work I am involved with at the moment concerns helping people work better with one another using online tools, both in local government and (once we have the technology in place) in further education. This means sharing information, which could be in a number of formats, discussing it and then editing it as a group.
A discussion that Steve Dale and I had at the Online Information Conference concerned what the environment would look like. The method used in the Communities of Practice platform for local government is by making blogs, forums and wikis available as separate entities. This means that the user can choose the medium that best suits their material, or which allows for the type of collaboration required. The problems with this approach are that:
So, maybe what’s needed is a system that has all of the best bits of blogs, forums and wikis in one, without making the user choose at any point. They don’t really care what the precise definition of the tool that they are using, they just want to get on with things. Does such a tool exist? Well, almost.
WriteWith does most of what we want, I think. It’s based around document collaboration, in a very wiki-type way (notably in the excellent handling of versions and edit history), and it lets you start by uploading an existing documents, which makes things easy to get going. There is a comments feature right next to the editing area for discussion, and then you can publish at the end in a number of formats, including a blog.
The collaboration side of things is excellent too. You can invite people to read, comment on and edit your document, and even set them tasks with deadlines. There are email alerts so you can keep up to date with what is going on with your document, as well as RSS feeds.
There are downsides though to this as the complete platform I described earlier. WriteWith is document-centric, so if a user just wants to start a conversational thread, they can’t. You need the document to begin with. It would be nice to be able to start a discussion and then begin work on the document all within the same platform. Also, you invite people to documents individually. It would be nice to be able to create groups with whom conversations and documents could be automatically shared.
And of course, the perfect solution would be for a white label version to be developed!
Are, according to Download Squad:
Some pretty easy targets there. I use only iTunes out of this list on a regular basis, which I have to because I have an iPod, as far as I am aware. Otherwise I occasionally use IE for sites which don’t like Firefox, but that’s more or less it.
Instead of Acrobat Reader, which I agree is a total nightmare, I use Foxit Reader; and for Real Player I use GOM Player. My email is handled by Google’s Gmail interface.
I’ve been playing around with Ning a little this morning, and am really impressed with it, not least because now users can create subgroups within a community. Add that to blogs, forums, photo and video uploading and plenty of RSS goodness, and you’ve got a pretty comprehensive community platform.
The community I created whilst testing this stuff out is called Online Innovation UK. I had the idea that it might be nice to have a place for everyone to get together, whether public or private sector; and regardless of geographical location within the UK. All you need is to be interested in the application of web technology to make life easier for folk
I think this could be really useful, and I hope it isn’t a case of reinventing the wheel. There are probably several groups out there that cover one aspect of this area, but nothing that drags everyone together.
Ning does allow me to send out invites to people to join, but that makes me feel nervous – too close to spam for my liking. So I thought I would try to promote it in a more circumspect way: through my blog, twitter, facebook etc. If nobody joins, then I guess I haven’t lost anything, as amazingly, Ning is free.
If you’d like to connect with other people who are engaged in making use of Web 2.0, Social Media and other web technologies, please visit OIUK and join in.
Heh. Social media can be used to fight crime. I didn’t realise, but the photo of John and Anne Darwin taken in Panama, was actually found via Google’s image search, on the website for the company they used to relocate.
Just shows, that the web can always find you!
Via ValleyWag
…that’s occurred to me since being at Online Information last week.
People still seem to be under the impression that having a forum on a website, whether internal or external, means you have a community. You don’t. A community needs so much more than just that.
But it seems for a lot of people, the forum is the be-all and end-all of a conversational approach to the web. For those of us trying to be a little more ambitious, there is plenty of opportunity out there, I think.
Another super video explaining blogs – soon the Common Craft guys will have covered the whole of Web 2.0!
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN2I1pWXjXI]
I wonder just how much paid work has come their way since they started doing these free tutorials? Quite a bit, I should imagine. A good example of giving a little away to reap considerably more in return.
Funny song – there is so going to be another crash soon.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o]
Light blogging ahead as I am going to be at the Online Information conference this week. I won’t be taking my laptop with me, but will be twittering my thoughts via my Palm, so do check that out.
Wow. The post I wrote this morning on my ITunes problem has already been republished by a splogger.
They work fast, these guys. And at least they linked back to here 😉
Inspired by the recent screenwriters’ strike in Hollywood – what if bloggers refused to blog?
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLR4OJb5suo]
Via Matt Mullenweg.
I’m not having a lot of luck, technology-wise, at the moment. After all my problems with FireFox, it’s now ITunes’ turn to start playing up. I thought it had been behaving itself for a while…
Anyway, last night I bought a songthrough the ITunes store, only my broadband connection dropped for some reason halfway through downloading. I made the mistake of quitting ITunes and turning the PC off in strop. Now, whenever I go into it, a dialogue box asks me for my Apple ID and password, presumably to allow me to finish downloading the song.
Trouble is, the damn thing won’t let me type my password in, nor do anything else at all. It just sits there.
What am I meant to do? 🙁
