Mindtouch 2009: Collaborative Mashup Switchboard

Mindtouch announce today a new message bus that enables bi-directional notifications when changes are made both within MindTouch 2009 or to the many applications that users plug into or connect to with MindTouch 2009. Examples of these could be Web services, enterprise systems, databases, office productivity applications and more.

This bi-directional messaging and publishing capability pushes out notification of updates to content and can be calibrated by users. Information about content updates can be delivered by email, mobile devices, or even Twitter and WordPress blogs. Users can now choose to receive an email that notifies them when a specific page changes, or when certain files are revised, or when new users are added to the system. For example, with a WordPress plug-in, users can create a Wordpress blog page, which then automatically posts the same content to MindTouch 2009.

This interoperability, shown in the above video walk through,  allows users to connect different applications and systems, allowing them to remix data while keeping it all updated in real-time.

Other updates in this release include

• Office document editing and write-back capability without having to save a local copy on one's desktop.
• More efficient administration of MindTouch deployments through several enhancements to the control panel.
• Better editorial control over pages through an advanced permissioning system, which allows more granular restrictions of users to each pages and trees.
• Updated revision comparison between versions of page content for more comprehensible comparisons.

The underlying development paradigm of creating composite applications that enable teams, applications, and systems to be elegantly connected allows significant cost savings by eradicating existing engineering inefficiencies in connecting things together.

MindTouch is now positioning itself as a development platform for 'Rich Internet Applications' with this release: developers are able to more efficiently develop and deploy collaborative applications for business automation, which are highly needed in today's distributed, heterogeneous environment.

This is achieved by taking advantage of the new integration between DekiScript (MindTouch's scripting language) and Javascript, enabled by utilizing the JEM (JavaScript with Events and Messages) technology. (JEM is an augmented JavaScript with event coordination and message passing that creates a rich user experience similar to desktop applications).

This release also sees the ability to create custom extensions through MindTouch's front-end plugin architecture.

Developers can write programs or functions in PHP to add features or services to the MindTouch front-end such as file listings, image galleries, user login and logout processing, RSS feed creation, etc.

This release solidifies Mindtouch's strength as the leading open source collaboration platform while enabling new levels of connectivity between apps. Adding the sophisticated new notification services of team and user content updates and it's not hard to see Mindtouch's hundreds of thousands of installations being upgraded to full platform status, and attracting others to use this flexible software as their collaborative foundation.