AppWiki in Reality

Google Map API and Yahoo Map API have been released. These are good examples of applications that can be quickly integrated/composed together. Now let our brains storm a little bit to see what kind of killer hybrid applications we can come up with.

Web 2.0 Style of Application Integration

Jon Udell has a piece on this topic. Del.icio.us Direc.tor is the prime example of that. We are already seeing the beginning of the realization of our Web 3 vision (here and here), although others call it Web 2.0.

Turning Email Up-side Down

Just read this post by a Google employee about how Gmail helps managing workflows. I have been thinking about this a lot recently because my emails have become pretty much unmanageable. There are so many threads (some interdependent) in various stages, it's just impossible to track them all. The problem is email is a generic means of communication. 90% of all interactions that need even a little human intervention have to go through email. We need to turn this up-side down. Instead of having to use email as the central place where almost all communication happens, make it a secondary place (it's actually what I would call a bottom-up view of our communications). The primary place should be various different applications (the top-down view). Certainly we need a place to view all threads sorted into different tabs based on their type (e.g., emails, service requests, meeting proposals, discussions, etc.).

Email, having been the killer app of the Internet for the longest time, still has a lot of room for innovations.

The Triumph of Unorganization

There is always tension between organization and the lack of it. We techies tend to force our users into the neat organization we devise for them. And yet, the most successful systems are fairly unorganized. Just look at the web.

Today Jon Udell's interview intrigues me that this is why XML fails as a human readable means to data. The first time I looked at XML Schema 1.0 definition (and how thick the pile of paper it is printed on is), I said: "Oh, boy! I don't want to get near that thing." Why the quick success of wiki? Because it support a very loose organization. This is what I found in my daily use of Confluence. I use it as a workflow tool. If I have a process that I want to repeat later, I just create page with all the steps in it, put check boxes in front of every step and save it as a template. No need to build, buy, learn or use any fancy workflow tool.

We need to bear this in mind and provide the greatest flexibility in Concourse to allow people to get their work done easily.

Adam Bosworth on Ajax

Adam Bosworth, who is regarded as the pioneer of DHTML, commented on Ajax recently. He talked about the reasons why it didn't fly in 1997 or even in 1999. More interesting is what he quotes from his son's post on pitfalls of Ajax and what he builds on top of it. We have actually thought about some of these issues and already have or plan to have the solutions:

1. Bookmarks broken. Although not yet in Cornerstone, if you look at this site (still in testing) I did, you will notice the URL in the address bar is updated every time the page is partially updated. If you bookmark it, next time you can return to exactly here.
2. Back button broken. Well you just need to build on top of above and save the URLs into history and then back button will work again.
3. Offline operation broken. We have ideas at length for this.

There are many other issues we are not addressing yet. However this is what's so exciting about this (old) new model: it is unchartered water and open play field!