Raju vegesna’s Blog

Personal Information Management vs groupware/collaboration softwares

I see lot of softwares calling themselves as ‘Collaboration Suites’ or ‘Groupware Suite’ while they are actually not. Most of these softwares provide features like Email, calendar, contacts etc and they call them selves as groupware software.

Well, these are just Personal Information Management softwares. Even softwares like MS Outlook come under personal information management category. When Outlook is mated with Exchange, it does have a bit of groupware functionalities, but still lacks some core groupware functionalities like presence.

For software to be called as a collaboration suite, it has to provide a workspace where a group of people can collaborate/share on a project/task etc. When a software just provides features like Email, Tasks, Calendering, favorites etc it is just personal information management software. But when the same features are shared with a group of people - like group calendaring, sharing favorites, group tagging of favorites, sharing contacts etc, it becomes a groupware/collaboration software.

I hope to see some right terminology being used.

Raju

Zoho Team

www.zohovo.com

‘Web 2.0′ is definitely a hot word on the web. Googling ‘Web 2.0′ has 247 Million results. But is it as popular as it sounds? Probably not. I spend some time this weekend calling few of my frieds in different areas of work (in IT itself) asking about ‘Web 2.0′. Most of them respond by saying ‘What the heck is Web 2.0?’.

Well, unless these folks are looking at blogs regularly, I am not surprised they didnt hear about it. Before even going there, we probably should ask ‘What percentage of users know/read blogs’.

While this is the case with ‘Web 2.0′, people started takling about ‘Web 2.1′ already. If someone comes with 2.1 concept and bloggers start writing about it, it’ll be a big numbering mess on the web.

Raju

I was looking forward for a Google RSS reader and finally it is out, but uncooked. Starting with the browser issue (it doesnt work on IE - I am surprised they call themselves web company without supporting the most popular browser) followed by the OPML file import issues (it takes forever to import from OPML).

I also dont see a closer integration with Gmail too. My Gmail is couple of clicks away. Coming to the features, reading a feed itself is very slow - even the ones that already has been read (damn this is painful). When the reader is from Google, I did expect a search inside the feeds. I can go on with many other issues, but let me give them a chance….it is still in Beta.

It does have its share of positive points. I like the way the feed list is shown. Searching for new content and adding them to the feed is easy and very helpful without visiting every site.

I do hope they would provide my Gmail conversations as feeds (and vice versa).

Will I use Google Reader? - Not yet.

Raju

I was looking for a keyboard where I can program actions to some of the keys. There are many keys I dont use and there are frequent stuff that I do using mouse. I would prefer if these actions are just a keystroke away. For example, a task of opening a browser and visiting a common website (like google) is certainly painful when this is done multiple times a day. If I can program this complete action into a key on my customizable keyboard, that’ll be ideal.

This is the closest I found matching my requirement. http://www.artlebedev.com/portfolio/optimus/

However, I really doubt if I can specify custom actions using this keyboard. It probably goes to the extent of opening an application on a keystroke. Well, thats a good start.

Raju

Web is becoming a messy place day by day with lots of personal information being exposed to everyone. We have seen enough evidence lately with such information being exposed and causing trouble. Search Engines are the ones which capture/store most of this information and once captured, it is literally available forever. When it comes to filtering content from captured information, the problem is, only search engine providers determine which information can be filtered not making these filters freely available for everyone to set their own filters to block their personal information from displaying in other user’s search results.

I hope to see some standard in place that’ll allow users to make sure that certain personal information is not available/stored in search engines. This can be a ‘Do not Crawl list’ (similar to ‘Do not call list’ where the information owner has control).

As a end user I should be able to make sure that my phone number, email address etc is never displayed in any search results even if it is available in some web pages (we dont get calls - or atleast not supposed to - if we list our phone numbers in do not call list even when the phone number is listed in telephone directory right? This is similar to that).

Instead of the user visiting each search engine to submit which info should be blocked, all search engines should take the information from a central ‘Do not crawl list’ DB.

Search engines dont own any information. They just use information that belongs to us. So it has to be us who should decide which information should be filtered/displayed in search engines.

Raju

We are glad to introduce a new product entering the collaboration space - Zoho Virtual Office

Imagine an experience where you can work anytime from any location, any machine, any operating system and any browser and all your work is just an URL away (without requiring you to carry ‘your’ laptop with ‘your’ collaboration software installed etc). That is the aim of Zoho Virtual Office and this first release is our first step towards that goal.

Demo of the product is available @ http://demo.zohovo.com

Download the product @ http://www.zoho.com/virtual-office/download.html

Raju

Zoho Team

www.zoho.com

I have seen that some IBM laptops come with a seperate Finger Print recognition hardware. This is an add-on and additional inconvenience to the user before he starts working.

An alternative - how about using the tap pad itself as a finger print recognition hardware? The user anyway uses this (in most cases) piece of hardware. So instead of providing a seperate hardware, the same mouse pad can be used of authentication purposes.

More intelligence can further be built (in conjunction with OS) so that when the user taps, he can be automatically login into OS.

Raju

As soon as Google introduced Web Accelerator (http://webaccelerator.google.com), I immediately liked the idea and jumped on it with my expectations high.

I installed the product and started browsing and after 30 minutes I saw how much time did it help me save. It said 0.4 seconds. I was disappointed.

Considering 16MB of my memory usage and its startup time it’ll will probably take more time to start my machine than it is saving.

I also have another worry. It is privacy. I feel that someone is looking over my shoulder while I browse. Because I am always logged on to Gmail, Google already knows what I am searching for using Google Search History. With Orkut, Google already knows the community. With Web Accelerator they know what sites I visit. With all of these, privacy is something that I am starting to worry about.

May be I got my expectations high on each service Google releases because they always raise the bar.

Raju

We have seen Google Suggest suggesting us words based on popularity etc. Now how about applying the same concept for an address bar on the browser?

Here is my requirement. When I go to my address bar, as I start typing the domain name, it should start prompting the domains based on populatiry and other parameters. This should not be based on history that is available today in most of the browsers. It should be based on the overall popularity of the sites on the internet.

I guess to implement this custom address bar, the vendor has to have a complete DB of domains on the internet and then has to crawl all domains and know its populatiry and I guess only search engine vendors can do this. I hope to see someone implement this someday.

Is this one of the reasons for Google becoming an ICANN-accredited registrar? We never know.

Dont u think the Address bar that we use n number of times each day needs more improvements?

Raju

I finally got a change to watch the documentary ‘The Corporation’ and should agree that it is an obsolutely amazing film.

It talks about many large corporations who charge rediculous amounts of $$$ for their products and get into the mind set of making money and just making money and ignoring the customer and even basic ethics. It has lots of content…

I highly recommended this documentary if you havent watched it yet.

Raju