Re: [libreplanet-discuss] [fossil-users] [OT] Who's interested in project management & collaboration tools? And...

[Miles Fidelman]

Mary-Anne Wolf wrote:
> > For a lot of people, a Google Spreadsheet, or one of the new web-based
> > checklist sharing packages is just fine.  This is for those of us who:
> > - like our own copies of things, and/or,
> > - need to work disconnected a lot of the time (on airplanes, responding
> > to disasters, and so forth)
> Lotus notes will do that, but it is not free or open source
> and it requires servers.
> Groove at one point tried to do the same as notes using peer-to-peer
> without servers, but I don't know what became of it, and it is also,
> I think, closed source.
>
> You're almost talking about using a Bit Torrent like technology
> underneath a project management front end....
> or something like database mirroring or
> mirroring of FTP sites.

Yup!  Notes is certainly an influence.  Groove, and the SSE extension to 
RSS are influences as well.  For that matter, so is NNTP (for a while, 
Netscape sold a really nice collaboration server built around private 
newgroups).

> This gets you part of the way there,
> but does not include disconnected operation.
> http://theprojectwall.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/peer-to-project-communication-what-if-the-project-itself-was-a-member-of-the-project/

That's really along the same lines.
> This might almost fund it, or part of it
> http://www.mass.gov/hed/community/funding/peer-to-peer.html
Thanks for the pointer! (Though, if you've ever dealt with the MA state 
government..., which I have, .....)
> But I have never seen anything exactly like what you describe.

Hence the project :-)

Seriously, this started with some work on distribution of military 
operations orders - currently distributed largely as text and 
attachments, by email - and asking if we could simplify handling of 
follow-up messages by sending HTML+JavaScript messages that could update 
themselves by pulling follow-up messages out of the mail stream and 
applying changes.

It looks like HTML5, the latest generation of browsers, and a few 
work-arounds (use a proxy to work through cross-origin restrictions), 
make it all feasible.  Seems like its now time to make a run at it.

> So, are you thinking of this on laptops or on mobile devices
> or both?
Both.  Goal is to make everything run in a browser, with distribution 
via email, and updates/synchronization via either XMPP or Atom.  Biggest 
stumbling blocks are saving files locally, particularly on iOS where 
there's no direct access to the file system.  Seeing how much we can do 
with browser storage. Alternative is to use a local server, access files 
via both DAV and the file system (again, an issue on iOS).

Miles



--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra