collaborationcast.com

I ran into a company who had a great idea of how to enhance instant message (http://www.thoughtslinger.com/).  They took the concept of contacts, presence, and chat and incorporated into a word processor.  This way users can write a document using a common word processor interface, but can get the benefit of an instant messenger.  The value proposition they propose is that now a team of people can write a document in real time and keep track of each other’s changes.   

 The program still appears to be in its beta stages.  Some additional features it should include before I could really use this:

1.  Program Stability - The program froze on me.  I was using a MacBook Pro
2. Email Invite - I would like to invite people that are not in your database.  Allow me to enter an email address and you send out the email.
3. Open Social Integration - Think about integrating with open social and leveraging my existing network.  
4. Instant Message Tool Integration - It would be great for you to integrate with an existing instant messaging tool so I can use my existing contacts.
5. Drag and Drop Page Content - I would like to drag and drop content on the page to organize my document.  This should be very easy to do and intuit.  

I look forward to seeing how this tool evolves.  Best of luck Thought Slinger 

I have been a fan of open source and think the Alfresco’s team has a great vision, but most recently I read an article posted by George Dearing on Information Week claiming several web content management successes by Alfresco. He listed the following:

• Online Gaming: www.eabigsports.com; www.activision.com
• Online Sports: http://www.eafootball.com
• Online Publishing: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu
• Online Telephony Services: http://labs.swisscom-mobile.ch
• Online Community Collaboration: http://eden.endeca.com/web/guest

As I tried to visit all these sites I found many issues with the deployment.

• I could not get the EA Football page to load.
• EA Big Sports redirected me to a generic place holder site.
• Activision killed my browser several times and I was never able to make it past the first load up screen.
• The Eden.edeca.com page would not let me go to the forums and would only let me spend a few seconds on the blog page before redirecting me to the home page.

For sure, Alfresco needs to spend some more time testing their success stories before releasing them to the media. Going to a site and having it kill your browser or not load are not good signs of success. Best of luck next time.

Collanos built a peer-to-peer team workspace product called Collanos Workplace.  Peer-to-peer allows Collanos to replicate team workspace data (Documents, Links, and Tasks) from one desktop client to another without requiring synchronization with a server.  Customers can go to www.collanos.com and download Collanos Workplace for free.  Once your team has downloaded Collanos, all you need to do is create a workspace, invite each other, and start sharing.  No monthly costs or storage limitations.  The only limitation you run into is your local desktop storage, memory, and bandwidth.  Sending gigs of data will consume a lot of bandwidth and may cause your web browsing to slow down.  Also, your CPU will run at a higher rate and cause your system performance to degrade.

Collanos has some work to do with stabilizing their core replication layer.  So today you may encounter some loss of files and replication inconsistencies.  According to Collanos this should soon be fixed.

Another limitation of the current system is that it only allows customers to replicate with the original creator of an object (ex. document).  So if the original creator is not online, then no other team member can get the latest version of the object, even if an online team member already has it.  This is something Collanos is already working on and told me they will have ready in a month.  The fix for this issue will be to allow team members to replicate from anyone who is online that already has the latest object.

If Collanos can make their desktop foot print smaller, reduce their CPU usage, stabilize their replication engine, and allow users to replicate from any online team member, then they will have a good product that will receive some good adoption.  In the end of the day, no one wants to pay for an application they do not have to pay for.  Also, offline access is important for many people.

My advice to customers who are trying to save money and want an offline client.  Look at Collanos and wait till they have fixed all the above issues before full deployment.  Also, Collanos is a good solution for consumers and small-to-medium businesses.

From a business model perspective,  Collanos should look at adding advertisement to their client, just like Pando and allowing for online access to data.  I think these would be two additional ways for them to make some additional revenue.  Also, Collanos should stay focused on stabilizing their replication layer before adding any more object capabilities.