JotSpot

Bambi Francisco profiles Jotspot, a wiki technology company:

Bambi Francisco

[from Excite founders re-emerge on tech scene with JotSpot]

JotSpot's Kraus said his technology is more enhanced than prior wiki versions because JotSpot wiki documents are integrated with e-mail, real-time news feeds from the Web and wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editing and publishing tools.

The software, which will be sold as a hosted software application, is designed to enable small groups collaborating on a project to work together by using one shared space. For instance, correspondence between a human resources staffer and a division head about a potential job candidate can be captured in a wiki document by copying the wiki document e-mail address in the e-mails. The wiki document would then store the correspondence in a section of the document. That wiki document could also include the candidate's resume and real-time news related to the candidate or the specific job.

It's been 15 months since Kraus and Graham went to work on JotSpot. Eventually, Kraus and Graham used their connections with Geoff Yang, a partner at Redpoint Ventures, who a decade ago had met the two founders when he led his firm's investment in Excite. At the time, Yang was at IVP.

Two months ago, JotSpot raised $5.2 million from Redpoint Ventures and Mayfield, said Kraus, now in his early 30s.

Kraus said he plans to make money by selling a subscription and charging on a per-seat basis, much like Salesforce.com (CRM: news, chart, profile). He didn't comment on how much he thought he could charge. Indeed, there are other free wiki technologies, like OpenWiki, that are available.

Interesting. Integration strategy is really good start, since Wikis can be an out of body experience, up on the portal or web, and away from the desktop. I don't even want to talk about Wiki style editing (which is at best a headache), so going wysiwyg is smart.

More to follow when my beta app is processed.

[Marc Cantor and others have made similar noises]

Leverage Software Enters "Relationship Capital Management"

I was contacted last week by representatives of a new entrant to what is generally called enterprise social networking, Leverage Software, Today, the company is announcing its new product suite, Relationship Intelligence, and its positioning of the company and product around the concept of "Relationship Capital Management."

[from press release] Leverage Software Enters into Relationship Capital Management

As a New Market Segment, Relationship Capital Management Enables Sales Organizations to Gain Insight, Access and Influence of Trusted Relationships to Accelerate Sales Cycles

October 4, 2004 – San Francisco, California – Leverage Software, a leading provider of Relationship Capital Management™, today announced its entry into the business applications market of social networking. Relationship Capital Management (RCM) is recognized by many of today’s leading industry analysts and industry pundits as technology that will profoundly impact the sales processes across both emerging and Global 2000 companies. Leverage Software’s RCM solutions are quickly becoming a strategic ally for leading sales organizations; empowering them to discover, analyze and leverage their collective enterprise relationships to gain access and influence to decision makers through a trusted introduction.

I got the demo, and here's my first take:

• Leverage is a partner of SalesForce.com (like Visible Path, Spoke, and perhaps other competitors).

  Integration with SFA and CRM apps is the clear trajectory in this niche, and in a real sense, the final analysis for utility will be the degree to which these solutions meld with the business processes that SFA and CRM apps automate. To the best meld will go the spoils.
  

• Leverage is going head-to-head with the more well-established Visible Path. Their target market and their pitch is very similar. In particular, Visible Path has been pushing the "Relationship Capital" message very effectively, supported by their very assiduous attention to privacy and security.
  
• I sense a coming price war in the wind, where Leverage seems open to aggressive pricing with the intent of gaining market traction. Depending on your viewpoint of possible endgames for this sector, gaining heads and growth may translate into an attractive acquisition proposition for SFA/CRM vendors who may (in the not too distant future) may be casting about for acquisition candidates. This consolidation is to me inevitable, once the value proposition for these technologies is clearly proven by uptake and ROI.

The appearance of Leverage makes me wonder how many more of these competitors are going to pop out of the woodwork, and are there any serious first mover advantages? The barriers to entry are low, but the cost of implementing the underlying analyses that Visible Path and more well-established players have invested years of effort and millions into may be problematic, but it is clear at the same time that these are early days, and it is not always the first, or even best engineered products, that win in the long run.

Its a horse race, and its way too early to call.

Relevanta Launches

Greg Narain has been laboring with a group of collaborators at Pokkari for the past months on a new project, and yesterday unveiled at least part of what has been brewing:

[from SocialTwister.com: Announcing Relevanta: Reputation for the Blogosphere

Pokkari, Inc. announces the release of its next-generation blog aggregator, Relevanta. Unlike other aggregation and search services that strive to index the Internet at large, Relevanta focuses on specific conversations. Relevanta collects and correlates these conversations in a clear, concise fashion which promotes better evaluation and collaboration among users.

Blogs and other forms of emergent media are quickly rising in popularity and influence. As more and more individuals elect to create and participate in this new, exciting form of journalism, issues arise when attempting to evaluate new sources of information. Lacking a context to gauge the material and perspective on of the author, interested parties are forced to either accept material as presented or perform exhaustive research to validate the facts.

Relevanta introduces a democratic, community model into the news consumption and distribution process. All members of the Relevanta community have the ability to contribute information, commentary, and valuations of both the authors and their written works. In addition, Relevanta’s underlying database provides automatic linking of keywords and provides members with extended data and background information.

With this new set of data, no longer are articles and other forms of content isolated entities Building and mapping relationships between news sources and the articles themselves are natural features afforded even the casual visitor. "Since the Internet first appeared on the mainstream's radar consumers have been plagued by one burning question: 'Is what I'm reading good and accurate?'. Relevanta helps answer this question using community intelligence." notes Jared Klett, CEO and Co-Founder of Pokkari, Inc.

Greg and the guys at Pokkari have built what I was thinking about when I wrote about Kinja(which turned out to be very disappointing), and even earlier when I was conceiving of a Relevanta-esque solution called "Blogisphere":

[from Rumors of Kinja]

The premise behind Blogisphere is that the missing insight for creating a working business model around blogs is to focus on what the readers need, and build a system to support readers: to make reading blogs easier and more rewarding.

This model would be based on the now well-established principles of collaborative filtering and slashdot style reader-based evaluation of content quality. And like Slashdot, the goal is to foster communities of readers, united through shared technology. Today, we find that this is emerging in an unconsolidated and haphazard way. Providing a better reader experience – one that will integrate with existing authoring systems, but provide a uniform and consistent reader participation model – will provide a strong incentive for readers to use the system. And later on, the authors will follow.

I think these guys are on to something here. I am glad to say that we are planning to create a Relevanta-ized Get Real sometime next month. I can't wait.

Overstock.com and Trust Networks

Interesting themes in a press release from the president of Overstock.com, who has built a social networking reputation system into the company's online service:

Patrick Byrne

[from 'It's Up' - Overstock.com Launches Auctions Powered by Social Networking press release]

The liquidation industry is one not normally known for its high-minded ethics: from our start in late 1999 we set out to distinguish ourselves by a fanatic devotion to fair dealing. I believe our liquidation business survived the dot-com crash largely due to our reputation among people selling to and buying from us. Even when we had no money to advertise, word-of-mouth convinced people to try our site, and the way we treated them kept them coming back.

Coincidentally, this has been the missing piece in e-commerce: in the deafening cacophony of e-commerce, whom can people trust? Most people would say, above all others, they trust the opinions of friends, family, and perhaps even a few co-workers. They rely upon social networks to help make connections and guide decisions. We do this in business as well, making deals based on relationships forged through our own experience and the experience of those we already trust.

We sought a way to integrate the trust inherent in these networks into e-commerce. To achieve this, we have integrated into our auction tab a system that allows for social and business networking unlike any that has ever connected businesses and consumers on-line. It may evolve into a massive, intelligent marketing organism, or into a system of personal introductions, or in some direction we have not foreseen. One thing we do anticipate, however, is that these "reputation networks" will work particularly well for on-line auctions, where buyers, sellers, enthusiasts and experts are traditionally anonymous -- and opinions are often biased (as evident in the declining value of ratings and the increasing tendency for retaliatory and spiteful ratings).

Leaving aside the question of competing with eBay (whose digital reputation system is at the heart of the system's value), I think Byrne is dead-on, and his notion about the interplay between personal networks and reputation is equally dead-on.

The emergence of purposeful network-based solutions like Overstock.com's follows a prediction I made earlier this year, when I said that standalone social networking solutions feel like an empty office building with people wandering around in them, and they will fail unless they turn to doing something tangible and vertically focused, like MySpace is doing with the music business (note the recent announcement that R.E.M. would be releasing their new album there, before more conventional distribution). There's a lot of bumping into people but very little work being done.

We should anticipate that all successful online emporia of the not-too-distant future -- wheather travel sites, shoes stores, or music services -- will be instrumented with full-up social networking underpinnings. Out entire online experience will be "socialized" in this way, and the race is on to see who will provide the social networking network that will underlie this new world order.

Parlano MindAlign Version 6.0 Announced

New version of Parlano's MindAlign product announced. MindAlign was originally developed on contract with UBS, and relies on the venerable IRC model. But with this release Parlano has adopted a new openness, with a Microsoft Live Communications Server integration, and a suite of APIs for integration with third-party IM management tools.

[from Parlano Introduces MindAlign Version 6.0 press release]

MindAlign version 6.0 includes:

-- Increased Infrastructure Integration: MindAlign version 6.0 extends the integration capabilities of previous releases by introducing support for presence and one-to-one instant messaging capabilities from third-party solutions including Microsoft Office Live Communications Server.

-- MindAlign Web Client: The MindAlign Web Client, a Java applet running either in a web browser, as a stand-alone application or as a portlet within a third-party portal, allows for the complete integration of real-time group discussion forums and private, one-to-one instant messaging sessions within other thin-client applications and/or portals, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server. The MindAlign Web Client provides the advanced intelligent message management, real-time notification and alerts capabilities of the existing Microsoft Windows 32-bit client for thin-client environments, enabling easy connectivity to key external customers and business partners.

-- Increased Administration Integration: Version 6.0 introduces complete end-user provisioning and administration through Microsoft Active Directory. This simplifies the process of configuring and administering the application. For users of Active Director, enterprise-wide login, authorization and authentication occur 'out of the box,' minimizing administration costs and significantly reducing implementation and system configuration times for large, global enterprises.

-- Enhanced Management & Control: Version 6.0 provides enhanced system management, administration and control by delivering secure, tiered administration rights and permissions enabling discussion forum management control at the most appropriate and efficient level in the organization. Distributed management of day-to-day system configuration requests minimizes help desk support resources and lowers total cost of ownership and increasing system flexibility.

-- Third Party Support for Chinese Walls: Utilizing new server-side APIs, MindAlign can be integrated with third-party systems responsible for enforcing communications controls across Chinese Walls. A key requirement for meeting compliance regulations within the Financial Services industry, MindAlign version 6.0 integrates with permission, enforcement and control applications rather than duplicating existing processes, procedures and applications.

I hope to get a demo in upcoming weeks, and take a long look at the new release.

I Go For Ogo

AT&T Wireless announces a new IM/email capable gadget: the Ogo. Apparently, it is (no kidding) targetted at teen age boys who are phone averse because their voices are prone to cracking:

Tricia Duryee

[from Communications gadget forgoes voice]

Finally, a technological solution for adolescent boys whose voices are changing.
Starting today, they can silently send e-mail and text messages with a gadget aimed at younger audiences: the AT&T Wireless Ogo.

In developing the communications device, AT&T Wireless followed teens to understand their habits.

"The boys joked that they'd never call a girl because their voice might crack," said Stacia Pache, senior director of product marketing, who headed the project. "They are much more comfortable with instant messaging."
That helped lead to Ogo, which will be used for e-mail and instant messaging only -- a rare combination of features in a day when wireless companies typically bundle data services with voice.

Wild.

I might get one for my 13 year old son, Conrad, who doesn't seem to want a cell phone much, but is forever telling me about how he is chatting with girls via AOL. But there is hope that the device might grow with him -- AT&T Wireless is talking about add-ons -- like camera and phone -- for the Ogo in the next year.

AOL to Launch In-Store.com

AOL is launching a new service to compete with Yahoo Shopping and Google's Froogle, next Monday.

In general, the site is a searchable, comparison shopping model: bascially a big catalog experience, which I think is dumb. The only redeeming characteristic is the inclusion of instant messaging:

Bob Tedeschi

[from AOL Expands Shopping Features]
In-Store.com will also automatically show repeat visitors a list of their most frequently visited stores, and users of AOL's instant messenger will be able to view products together and chat about them.

Ultimately, people want shopping online socialized: do it with friends, and through friends' recommendations. And friends-of-friends recommendations. The intersection of social networks and shopping just hasn't surfaced yet, but hold on.

VeriChat: Buddy Pounce!

A buddy of mine just got Treo 600, and I am suffering from tremendous gadget lust. I was sniffing around for an IM client for the thing, trying to convince myself that I *didn't* want one because it wouldn't let me stay connected, but, alas, it seems that there are a number of solutions available.

In particular, I stumbled uponVerichat, which is a multi-headed, always on client for the Treo and other Palms and smartphones. While riffling through the feature description, I saw this depiction of what they call "pouncing": tagging a buddies identity, so that when they come online you are notified even if the Treo is in standby mode. This is the product feature of the week.

And of course, now my lust is even worse.

Groove and Windows XP Service Pack 2

Got an email message today (just after I had upgraded to XP Service Pack 2, by the way), stating that Groove users might have issues with the SP 2 affecting Groove behavior:

[from Groove Networks - Support - Documentation]

Microsoft has shipped Windows XP Service Pack 2 that provides users greater protection against hackers, viruses and worms. In attempting to address these issues, however, Microsoft changed Windows behavior in a way that impacts a number of communications software products, including Groove Virtual Office. The issue: XP Service Pack 2 intentionally degrades overall Windows network performance when it senses attempts to establish large numbers of simultaneous outbound network connections. Because of this new operating system behavior, some Groove users who upgraded to XP Service Pack 2 have experienced performance degradation while browsing the Web or using other network-based applications.

A workaround for this Windows SP2 issue is now available.

The law of unintended consequences, again. Trying to counter what looks like viral behavior leads to screwing up plain vanilla application logic. Will likely impact other peer-to-peer architected products.

Five Across releases InterComm

Today, Five Across announced the release of InterComm (see CEO blog: Giving Birth), a new instant messaging and collaboration solution, and I really like the thinking behind InterComm, but the product just doesn't go far enough to displace other solutions I use or favor.

Where It Is Headed

But Intercomm is headed in the right direction in many ways.

Here you see the client in the background, with a window opened to propose a meeting time (click to see fullsize image). I like the notion of instrumenting an instant messaging client with coordinatation features -- shared calendaring, for example. But I want it to be a real shared calendar experience, not just 'proposed meetings' -- all my calendar stuff should be in there to be shared. (And I have a peeve about the clunkiness of the interface here: you have to click on the cell to represent a time to meet - there is no way to simply type in "12:15pm" or a date. And apparently, there is no way to have a meeting at 7am, at all.)

In the client, you can see that there are groups, and associated with any group (such as "Us'n") are shared notes, files, and dates. The file sharing is along the lines of that found in other solutions, like Groove, Shinkuro, Clever Cactus. Ditto shared notes, which are broadcast and then accessible through the tab.

What I would really like to see is more of a push toward "microblogging" within the context of the IM client, like the visionaries at 2entwine are doing, or what WiredReach is pushing at. Instead of a static transition from instant messaging style real-time communication to posting files and notes for slow-time communication, I would like to see more support for tempo shifting. For example, Intercomm supports archiving of chat, but chat archives can't be used as context for a shared file, or turned into a note (unless you cut and paste manually).

Maybe Someday, But Not Today

Other interesting elements (like a polling capability) hint at future directions, but without a rich, full coordinative and collaborative feature set -- shared calendaring, tasks and project timelines, and the like, the things that other shared folder style products do fairly badly and that IM solutions don't generally attempt to do at all -- its hard to see why anyone would adopt this solution today. And that's before you consider voice and video capabilities -- totally absent here -- that people are now taking more or less for granted.

The folks at Five Across have a long way to go, although they seem to have made a good start, and they are certainly pointed in the right direction. It's not enough, yet, to get me to start inviting my colleagues to start working with the tool, but I will definitely keep looking at their progress over the next few months.

Gush Roadmap

Dudley and Wes at 2Entwine have posted a roadmap for future Gush enhancements. I am salivating.

Gush Blog: Roadmap

Lots of people have been asking what we have slated for the next release, or when will their favorite IM/Newsreader feature will be included. Typically, our answers range from "you mean we need another release?" to "that feature will be included over my dead body."

We've put together a list of things we think are necessary to take Gush to the next level. Our goal is to get 1.2 out in about 6 to 8 weeks.

Here are the "big ticket" items we have planned for 1.2:

[excerpted just the headings]

• File Transfer
• Multi-user chat
• Nested Buddy List Groups
• Internationalization
• Conversation Gems
• Presence messages
• Revamp Login screen
• News feed synchronization: Synchronize news feeds between multi-machines
• Embed Mozilla instead of Safari on OS X
• Post 1.2 features:

  * Searching / Indexing conversations and news entries.
  * End-to-End Encryption
  * File Sharing
  * Announcement improvements
  * 3rd party APIs
  * Video chat
  

Quite an agenda. Nested buddy lists is my contribution to the mess, by the way.

Joe Hildebrand on Jabber News

I spoke with Joe Hildebrand, Jabber's CTO, about the recent press releases from the company: today's news regarding an integration of Jabber technology with Webex, and last week's announcement around an XMPP/SIMPLE gateway.

The biggest take aways:

• Jabber's integration with Webex technology represents another turn of the wheel on the inevitable integration between traditional text based (and soon video and audio based) IM and full-up web conferencing. There will be no hard distinction in thvery near future between these two modalities.
• Jabber's push into integration with enterprise applications -- like the Foreign Exchange traders example mentioned in the linked case study (see here) -- is an enormously important area of infrastructure, and the Jabber Forms protocol is a big step forward.
• The XMPP/SIMPLE gateway represents the awareness by Jabber that it is a multi-protocol world, and stonewalling by saying that XMPP is "better" doesn't help customers. Instead, simply providing the gateway sidesteps the issue, and lets customers make headway until technical standards converge on something, some time.

Another Go With Gush

The folks at 2Entwine have released v1.1 of Gush, with a long list of new features, in particular support for gateways to connect with AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, presence notifications, and improved RSS support in the included blog reader. I reviewed an earlier version a few months back (see Gushing for Gush).

I have shifted over to testing Gush v1.1 extensively, and I have imported AIM, and MSN contacts into the client -- aside from a few small confusions, it seems to work (although the AIM nicknames got scrambled somehow, and I had to rekey them). Like Trillian, Gush now can serve as a single client, linking to all the networks, plus Jabber, which is the native protocol.

I really like the notifications panel (look right), which is a window that hovers within the app's desktop, and indicates your buddies comings and goings.

The RSS reader has been drastically extended, and supports thumbnails and full size photos from RSS feeds. Really awesome.

Like I said in the earlier article, I would like everyone to download this client. The ability to create 'announcements' for the various groups on your buddy list is a real breakthrough. With the integration with AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, as well as external Jabber accounts, Gush supports broadcasting of those announcements -- a feature that I like, but which I learned about the hard way last week. I thought I was sending an announcement to Gush users, but my entire AIM contact list learned about my plnas for a West Coast trip. No sweat, and I like the ability to broadcast to a group -- no matter what service they are on! However, to be able to browse the announcements as if they were blog entires, you need a Gush client, and I guess, a Gush login id.

Get one, and send your contact info along to me. I am trying to develop a buddy list for Get Real readers, and user that as a means of keeping in the loop with you'all... better than email, for sure. And Gush -- while habit forming -- is still free.

First Take: Midentity

A new competitor to Plaxo (and the other "contact unmanagement" vendors) has come on the scene: Midentity.

I was prepared to like Midentity. Screen shots (like the one to the right) showed a rich client experience, and the walk through demo at the website painted a Plaxo-ish picture of not having to update your contact information manually anymore. Esther Dyson is promoting it, so I swallowed and took the plunge.

[from The Web Belongs To Us by Abaigail Townsend]

During the original dot-com boom, Esther Dyson was the first lady of the internet. Unlike many of her contemporaries, the technology sage, who has made her name over the past decade as a trend-spotter, never went away. Her latest idea is that the web is no longer the domain of corporations: it's set to become all about you and me.

"We're all narcissists," she asserts. "If you go to anybody's house, there are pictures all around the place. It's the human element. The web's going to become a place for individuals."

Ms Dyson is talking at the launch of Midentity, a "personal digital identity" specialist that wants to cash in on this new dawn. The internet is no longer new or hi-tech. It's just there - in people's offices, in their homes and in their lives - as unimpressive as the phone.

But the actual experience of Midentity is not so much narcissistic as it is user-centric.

Midentity is in fact very easy to download and get running. Importing my contacts from Outlook also proved to be a snap, and as advertised, Midentity runs as a client on your desktop. It is easy to search for contacts, and to organized them into groups (as I did with Hylton and Britton (see the screenshot)). [Note to Microsoft folks: Please add groups to Outlook contact management.]

I presume that the updating features work as described.

Given the fact that I have an implicit network of Midentity users, I don't know why they decided not to provide presence and instant messaging as a core feature. I thought in fact that the "txt" icon represented text messaging, but it seems that it is intended only for sending text messages to cell phones. Very odd. And for this service you have to purchase credits (like phone tokens). Is this some UK-oriented service that I don't get? Are these credits cheaper than doing this some other way, there? The dialog box wants to charge my credit card in pounds, so there may be an explanation of a sort in there somewhare, but I don't get it.

Why would I use this? I have instant messaging services galore to IM people, which include passing messages to cell phones, and all which serve up presence information. While I might like to have contact management capabilities linked with my already installed buddy lists from AOL, Yahoo, and MSN, why would I go down this path?

This may be more of a feature request to the IM services rather than a first take on Midentity, per se. This functionality should be offered by MSN, Yahoo, and AOL as part of the unending war between the services.

I have a hard time understanding why I would use Midentity, aside from exploiting the features that directly overlap with Plaxo et al for contact management. And Plaxo operates within Outlook, relatively unobtrusively.

So Midentity's rich client seems like an awfully heavy footprint for features that could be integrated into Outlook. Without instant messaging and presence, the Midentity client is just a tease of this that might have been.

[Update 1:14pm -- An additional feature just presented itself. The client announces email as it arrives by popping up a small alert near the Windows toolbar, including name and subject. Cool.]

Antepo Releases Open Presence Networks (OPN) System 4.0

Antepo has announced the release of Open Presence Networks (OPN) System 4.0, the company's new platform for enterprise and carrier instant messaging.

Antepo has long been an advocate of interoperability, and OPN is XMPP-based but also has a SIP/SIMPLE gateway to support interconnection with SIP networks, such as IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Live Communication Server platforms.

OPN 4.0 Server operates in UNIX, Windows and LINUX environments on wide variety of hardware platforms, and the company has developed clients for a wide variety of devices, including Windows, Microsoft Pocket PC(TM), Java(TM)-based phones, and other mobile devices.

Antepo OPN 4.0 integrates with a wide variety of authentication and directory models, including corporate authentication and directory systems based on Microsoft Active Directory, Sun, Identity Server, Computer Associates, eTrust Directory and other implementations of LDAP. OPN 4.0 goes beyond that to provide IM management and control services, to enforce policy and regulatory restrictions on IM use.

First Take:

Looks to me that Antepo has serious ambitions for the enterprise IM market, and has developed an offering that meets the enterprise need for interoperable and federated instant messaging, squarely competing with Jabber, Sametime, and Live Communications Server. Antepo's OPN 4.0 looks like it can even be a competitor in the IM management space, with competitors like IMlogic, Facetime, and Akonix.

LiveOffice Announces IMConferencing

LiveOffice has announced the release of IMConferencing, which the company is positioning as "first fully integrated application to merge the immediacy of instant messaging (IM) with the powerful features of traditional web and telephone conferencing."

I recently took a demo of the product, and it compares favorably with the solutions of market leaders Microsoft and IBM. Even more than those companies offerings, LiveOffice has built the web conferencing experience around the instant messaging paradigm. The solution provides support for web co-browsing, application and file sharing, powerpoint presentation, and integrated teleconferencing capabilities through the company's own conference calling service. IMConferencing supports both scheduled and ad hoc web conferences, and automates invitations, reminders, and RSVPs.

The IM platform is the company's own, and at this time, LiveOffice has not sought to integrate with any public IM networks, although that is under consideration.

All in all, an extremely well-integrated solution, targeting the small and medium business marketplace for web conferencing.

China Telecom to Launch IM Network

IN a bid to stem losses from its core telephony business, China Telecom has announced that it will launch its own IM network, with software to support text messaging, voice-over-IP, and web conferencing. The current market leader in China's IM market is QQ, developed by Tensent. The number of IM users is supposed to be close the the total number of telephone users, according to China.org.cn.

First Take: Microsoft Live Communications Server

I recently completed a Brief on Microsoft Live Communications Server. LCS is a great example of in-context collaboration, where the entire Office suite of applications is wired with presence information, and every Word doc, Powerpoint presentation, and Outlook appointment carries an implied buddy list. Since LCS enables workers to spend more time in their business productivity applications, it should drive productivity gains and time savings.

Imagine how much more quickly everyday business processes will be accomplished when every person working in an Office application can see the presence status of other employees or team members.

Live Communications Server offers benefits that may prove difficult, if not impossible, for current market-leader IBM Lotus and other competitors to match.

As a part of IBM’s move away from the venerable Notes/Domino technology, Lotus Sametime – as well as other collaborative technologies pioneered by Lotus – is being repositioned as a component of WebSphere, IBM’s enterprise application platform.

will be other product releases, and of course competitors like IBM won’t leave Microsoft unchallenged in the rapidly expanding real-time collaboration marketplace. However, Microsoft’s release of Live Communications Server has clearly positioned the company to establish itself as a market leader, and Microsoft’s vision for real-time collaboration will force a reappraisal of how we can and should work together.

Download the PDF

First Take: Microsoft Live Communications Server

I recently completed a Brief on Microsoft Live Communications Server. Here's a few quotes:

"Live Communications Server offers benefits that may prove difficult, if not impossible, for current market-leader IBM Lotus and other competitors to match."

"There will be other product releases, and of course competitors like IBM won’t leave Microsoft unchallenged in the rapidly expanding real-time collaboration marketplace. However, Microsoft’s release of Live Communications Server has clearly positioned the company to establish itself as a market leader, and Microsoft’s vision for real-time collaboration will force a reappraisal of how we can and should work together."

Download the PDF

Macromedia Central: Information Convenience

I was recently walked through the Macromedia Central product. Central is part of the company's push for "information convenience" which translates in part to an application framework for Macromedia Flash apps to run outside the browser.

Central runs as a free Windows client which appears as a vertical "portal" for Central applications. In the version I am running (see graphic to the right) there are two apps shown: Movie Finder, and BlogReader.

At the top is a region for alerts that can be posted by any of the applications -- in this case, I have an alert from a third app, not shown, AccuWeather. This shared alert region can reduce screen clutter, since all manner of alerts could be consolidated there. The "pods" in the panel can be expanded into more complex interfaces -- for example, the BlogReader app expands into a relatively full-featured blog reader, using RSS feeds, and the Movie Finder does what you would expect, providing a means to search for movie times based on zip code, etc.

Macromedia and AOL recently announced that an upcoming version of the Central SDK will include hooks that will allow Central app developers to take advantage of the AIM network to real-time enable their apps. This means that presence and IM capabilities will quickly be incorporated into future applications. For example, an initial prototype of a presence-enabled blog reader has been developed (although I have not seen it) which posts the AIM presence and availability of blog authors. I would personally like to have all my IM alerts managed in an alert region, like that provided by Central, so I hope that the AIM integration leads to services of that sort.

I have only recently become aware of the sophistication of the Macromedia Flash Communication server (see UserPlane A/V Instant Communicator), but with advances like Central, Macromedia Breeze (the company's web conferencing offering) and now the integration with AIM, it looks like Macromedia is quietly positioning itself to compete with IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle in the battle for the next generation enterprise application platform of choice. Stay tuned.

Communicator Inc. announces Hub Connex

Communicator Inc. has announced the newest evolution of its real-time messaging technology: Hub Connex. This product incorporates the company's Hub IM, a secure enterprise IM solution that has been marketed since 2001, but Hub Connex is a significant advance over the baseline enterprise instant messaging platform, providing a variety of capabilities to support real-time secure communities.

Continue reading "Communicator Inc. announces Hub Connex"

Multiple Listing Service to be IM enabled

InternetMLS has announced the inclusion of instant messaging to the company's multiple listing service. The announcement includes a few very interesting scenarios regarding brokers using the service to negotiate and close deals:

"InternetMLS' new Instant Messaging capabilities empower associations to provide member brokerages with the ability to initiate powerful, instant communications to speed the closing of deals in multiple situations:

• InternetMLS' new Instant Messaging capabilities enable brokers researching MLS information to determine the online presence of listing agents in real time -- and, if so, initiate instant communications.
  For instance, a broker can send an IM to instantly initiate a dialog with a listing agent, introduce him or herself, inquire about details of the listing or sellers, or schedule a showing on behalf of a client.
  
• The new IM capabilities also extend benefits to public websites created by brokerages utilizing InternetMLS' Enhanced Website Wizard. Visitors browsing information on such websites can, while viewing available properties, contact the appropriate listing agent -- instantly -- to express interest in a listing, make an inquiry about a property, or request to schedule an appointment for a viewing."

Another example of the accelerative impact of instant messaging, although I wonder about the technology being used. Doesn't appear to interoperate with any of the major public networks, which will limit its usefulness to interact with consumers. I will track down company reps, and try to learn some more.

Lotus Notes 6.5 Release With IM Planned This Month

Courtesy of Ed Brill (and CRN), I see that IBM is planning to release the long-awaited 6.5 version of Notes this month. 6.0 was released at Lotusphere, and the 6.5 beta was released in the spring, but IBM is pushing to release this month (surprise) to beat Microsoft's Office 2003 Live Communication Server offering to market.

This release is particularly interesting relative to the Industry Insider because IBM (Lotus is just a brand nowadays) is integrating instant messaging into 6.5, and creating a new 'rich client' for Notes that incorporates the functionality of the Lotus Instant Messaging (formerly Sametime) client. From one perspective, this is simply a way to reduce the number of client apps running on the desktop. However, from another perspective, it can also be viewed as a move to block other IM vendors from moving into the Notes userbase.

Note that IBM has also announced (although they have no press releases at either IBM or Lotus websites on these announcements) that Notes is viewed as an element of the IBM Lotus Workplace initiative, which includes Workplace Messaging and Lotus Instant Messaging. And, in time, the two technologies -- Workplace Messaging and Notes -- will be consolidated as a single technology.

IBM seems to be trying to hold on to what they've got, and who can blame them? The real juncture for Notes and Sametime users is downstream, when the somewhat murky future plans for Workplace become more clear and they can begin to plan what transition to make: from Lotus to IBM, or from Lotus to other vendors? A very dangerous period of time for IBM, and likely to trouble not a few of their current clients, given all the architectural changes, brand shifts, and organizational shuffling going on.

Presence in Context: Live Communication Server

I had the chance to catch up with Ed Simnett (Lead Product Manager for the-technology-formerly-known-as-RTC, now Microsoft Office Live Communication Server), yesterday. I have sniped Microsoft a few times about the name change, since RTC had become engrained in the general market buzz about instant messaging, but the thrust of the first release is strongly linked to a close and deep integration into Office, so the name really makes sense.

The vision that Microsoft is pursuing regarding what I call "Presence in Context" is compelling.

I receive an email from someone, and the presence status of that person is shown to me within Outlook, and rather than replying, I simply click on the presence indicator and start an IM session with the email's author. Or I am in the context of a Sharepoint project workspace, and the presence indicator of a report's author shows that she is on-line: one click later, we are conversing, and editing the document together in real-time. Or I am editing a shared Powerpoint file, I have a question about a comment that someone left on a key slide: I see he is on-line, and click through to talk.

In this sort of presence-threaded environment, every object, every document, every folder, every comment, every appointment is associated with an implicit buddy list. Every context offers immediate access to the community of those people who are somehow associated with it.

This is a departure from the 'buddy list' or chat room concept of presence, which is associated with first generation instant messaging applications. In the second generation, in solutions like Office Live Communication Server, presence information will form a fundamental part of the environment, like air. You will still use your statically defined buddy list for some purposes, but it will become a secondary mechanism. Every document represents a potential chat room with its reviewers and authors only a click away.

Presence is the killer app: it is the driving wheel for real-time messaging. Bringing presence into every context is going to rework how we work, and how businesses operate. I can't wait.