Software for the enterprise
We move to the enterprise software segment of the morning.
System One, is an online collaborative notebook built in wiki. The service is an aggregation point, with RSS feeds for various contributors or sources that can be dragged into the environment, which as a "semantic-based information framework," that includes security and collaboration features. What's the big picture? It's a network approach--the "knowledge economy... needs a new platform."
ThinkFree AJAX Edition, a wiki-based office suite. Nicely executed. "In order for the online office to transition to the real world, the compatibility issue must be addressed," says TJ Kang, the CEO.
Announces that the Los Angeles Public Library is deploying to 3,000 customers.
Up next, Genius Interactive Edition, a system that lets inside sales people see the clickpaths of customers as they visit a corporate site, then make direct connections throuhg chat to the visitor through email with a chat link. Sets up a window that shows the salesperson their visitors, kind of creepy in terms of privacy, suggesting that you will be watched carefully, like when you shop in a boutique with a hovering salesperson who may not leave you alone. The Genius system adds tracking code to any URL and enables chat in any page, including personalized contacts embedded on the page--so you can invite someone to chat by name while they are on your site. Remember when American Express started answering customer calls with the cardmembers' name? It freaked people out and, because of privacy concerns, they had to stop. This is a tool that will have to be used gracefully and sparingly.
They show an email that opens a chat between a salesperson and a lead. This is done by generating a link to the company site with the chat invite embedded on the page. They chat, and the salesguy has a record of what the visitor has looked at, including a "Tivo for a Web visit" to review the customer's interests.
We're couple demoes away from BuzzLogic and I am nervous as hell, but strangely relaxed.
Next up, Koral, a wiki-based content management system. This is a business app, the question is "What about the frustration of looking on a drive to find a file that you know exists somewhere, if you could find it. Koral is a smarter and easier-to-use content management system for business users." "Totally free" for basic usage, the company hopes to hook users on the system, hosting the content they create, so that the company adopts the paid premium system. This will be a barrier to sampling, because corporate files aren't going to be comfortable on a "free" third-party server. Sales challenge--they need to get inside the enterprise to get trials rather than starting with a free public trial.
Nice interface, customizable by dragging, tagging and organization with previews online. The system supports RSS creation for individual files and projects. They say the system is adaptive, learning your preferences. Includes a rating system that can be used to share comments across offices. Shows when you have an outdated document on your desktop, even if you have not subscribed to the file -- there is a pop-up on the desktop to alert that an updated version of text is available.
They seem to be generating tags out of text in documents. Say they solve ease of use, fast to use, and collaborate without requiring login. Security is a big question.
Who's next, another wiki! (Disclosure: I am on the board of advisors of Socialtext). Now, MindTouch Business Solutions, which offers an appliance that stores data from local volumes in a new Dekibox, a wiki smart appliance, which saves and "mashes up" data with external data, like Google Maps data, so, you can extract addresses and call an external XML service to format and deliver data to different users on different devices. They also show a way to "free files from Outlook," which involves extracting conversation threads from Outlook with attachments for saving in a single workspace. Interesting.
The Dekibox appliance is for the enterprise environmment, lives behind the firewall. Offsite back up (security?) and self-maintaining. At wiki.com they have 27,000 wikis running on this hardware.
Now, Serebrum, an Ajaxified wiki environment but the main difference seems to me to be the Ajaxification of long-standing features such as drag-and-drop. The system uses tags to mark files for reuse, and can generate a metadocument by simply querying on several tags and outputting to PDF. They show this from a Blackberry, by sending a command to assemble a document, which is then created and stored on the server. The company has an National Science Foundation grant to study collaborative work for military applications.
UPDATE: Success. Except for a glitch I don't think anyone would notice if they hadn't poured over the application, all went quite well. For a glance at where our social mapping technology has gone, see the photo to the right.