Azri Strings (Samepage) vs Google Waves
Talk about ushering the new web of today. Googles unveiling of the new platform of collaboration called wave sent a ripple across our team. The intended roadmap of strings ( Rechristened as samepage ) was to string together the web to cut down on brain cycles and usher in a new paradigm of realtime interaction based productivity. The way google has done is as google does 
…create a solid open platform.
The story so far ….
The overall concept of the application as envisaged in January 2007 was to explore the possibility of real time interaction changing the way we work.
With a 3 member team working out of small office and having an ambitious agenda to reinvent the web, “the google wave” has reinforced our beliefs regarding the web’s future. The surprise is the similarity of the two platforms. This is reflected not just in the high level concept but to the interaction model of both samepage and google wave.. I will try to give an overview of how close we are to what google presented in this posting.
The realization that conversations were how groups or organizations “think” together was central to how we visualised the platform … atleast that is what we felt observing the our own organization and others around us. Conversations in an organization are represented predominantly in the form of IM , email and interaction on applications . So we decided to use IM and and make all other applications work with it. We soon realized that it changes the way we work and making the state of the applications reflect across clients in real time along with the chat conversation brings all the user’s on the “samepage”. Thus the product name “samepage” was chosen and it was previewed in techrunch50.If you want to know how it works please feel free to register and login or you could use the try out page.
The choice of technology
Our mandate was to make conversations more productive and output driven. So we created a framework that enables users to use different applications as part of their conversations and which can be manipulated near realtime using our home grown light weight concurrency model. This model compared to the open transformation model that wave uses, is an exploratory locking mechanism to do conflict resolution( More on this later). The current architecture enables fine grained real time concurrency on any application that has an xml based resource model.
The technology choice was driven by the following problem statements:
Problem statement 1: Simplicity and maximum reach. ( html and javascript)
1. We wanted the application to be available to productivise a group in slow dialup connection environments like in Africa etc as well as not force upon users to install a new application. Looking at the existing pervasiveness of browsers we decided that we will had to pull this off in a browser.
There are myriads of browsers that are used out there and some of them as ancient as IE 5. So a lightweight javascript approach was a must. We decided on use html+javascript as the base to create our clients.
Problem statement 2: Realtime nature of the application ( Comet )
Ajax polling is not an efficient solution for a near real time nature of the application. Using comet streaming approach was the best option but a ready made platform was not available in the open source world to provide a reliable streaming mechanism for transport of messages at the browser side unless we used a plugin. So we decided to use all the good work done in the cometd community at dojofoundation and started innovating on the bayeux protocol. Our current implementation is a variation on the bayeaux protocol as we needed support for concurrency for the applications.
The engine we chose for the backend was twisted which provides a robust and scalable core to support the real time nature of the application. Twisted is a proven framework for real time applications and one of the companies that google bought a long time ago was Jotspot which built its applications like spreadsheet and wiki using twisted and dojo.
Problem statement 3: Easy extendability of the platform ( adding new applications)
Any html/JS application that has a resource model based on XML can be enabled to work with our current architecture. Our current framework provides a way to relay information between clients , similar to the way google wave does today. This was done to enable the existing appications used by users to be available for real time ready collaboration.
I can continue to talk further regarding the similarities that I find in both the platforms. You can find further information here. More on this later.
Harish
Version 0.7 Alpha - Autoscroll and few other bugs
A few updates and fixes.
- Fixed Bug, Unable to move tasks from top to bottom or bottom to top in the session.
- When ever the assignee is changed the status will change to pending.
Regards,
Samepage team
Version 0.6 - alpha - Loss of content
Change log:
- Fixed Bug, When a db error happened at server informing user about the error updated django from 0.96 to 1.0.
- Fixed bug. When a comment is added to task the log message is not displaying.
- Fixed bug. In the Personal task manager sort by session name not sorting properly
Regards,
Samepage Team
Updates and Fixes
We are back :). The application has been in production at Azri ( our first client :)) and we are getting lots of feedback. Its great to see people giving us feedback that really shapes the application’s usability and future. We will be updating the site in short release cycles aimed at improving the experience and the efficiency of the teams using samepage.
Here you go with the one of the first public releases.
Version 0.5.1047-alpha (05/12/2008)
1.Fixed loss of content bug.
2.Fixed Task manager expanded view display bug.
3.Added the filters assignee, status in the session page.
The application is under major flux as we have been identifying and removing features .. :)… Yes you heard that right “removing features” to unclutter and improve user experience.
Harish Krishnan
Feedback using SamePage!
We have been using the samepage platform to get on the same page with the feedback as well :). There has been some interesting feedback already. The UI , the purpose of the application , the technology etc all are being examined and commented upon by our new companions in the journey “on” same page boat.
Every new user is already part of the session for feedback. So please do participate in it and provide your valuable suggestions.
Be with us…..Be on the Samepage at the Techcrunch50 conference!!
Another hour to go!! We were asked to be silent and silent we were… The last few weeks have been really good. It’s been crazy infact. We are 7 of us here. And the start-up chaos did get to us. It was fun. It was energetic.
Spend a few minutes at our table. Talk to our guys there. Check out our product & tell us what you think. We are waiting to hear from you.
We were given a one year free subscription from Jeff and his suggestionbox team. Thank you Jeff! We don’t want to mail you for a chargeback though. We know our credit card is in safe hands.BTW we have set an alarm that will go off around the 12th month from now. We would love it, if the suggestionbox service will make us want to swipe later .
Kudos to Chrome!! Another monster arrives from the Google stable. Everyone knew that it was coming; maybe a select few knew what it really was.
The browser battle has become keener. IE needs to watch its back and its sides. The “I hate Microsoft, I love Google ….” has become one of the coolest web fad and is continuing to grow. The cheerleaders of innovation will like what Chrome is doing.
Years of waiting by the sidelines and observing every other browser come and make its appearance has given the chrome stable a lot of insight! No doubt about that. Now let’s couple this insight with the already legendary Google simplicity and innovation. What do you get? A simply good browser. Chrome is cool. Chrome is easy. Try it out. My team guy is laughing at this line. He says “Who are you to recommend them”. Its ok people….Someday the opinion will matter.
So long then….Will get back with more stuff…
The Offline Ajax & the Paper boy
“Information comes to you” ….now that is one of the key trends brought to the user by web 2.0
I don’t think so . It used to be there, before the days of the internet. The paper boys near the traffic lights used to sell these afternoon and evening dailies with the latest news so that the world could consume all the information that arose between the morning read and the afternoon publication.
I keep hearing Ajax all the time. It pushes…It transmits asynchronously…
Ok then … I will call the Paper boy the Offline Ajax, The Offline Browser, The Offline face of todays online.
Information has its own way of making itself felt to the consumer. From the days of the paper boys to web 2.0 compliant news portals, access to information has moved to another level. The same things are happening around us with a lot of cosmetic changes of course. There are the usual scuffles, the never ending wars, the sporting spectacles, nouveau icons, newer statesmen, and great achievements, remarkable innovation that fills our eyes and ears even today. They were no different yesterday too. For every Larry Page and Google of today there was an Edison and GE of yesterday, and for every Michael Phelps who captures our imagination today, there was a Jessie Owens who did the same thing to people back then.
What has changed then….Nothing much…..Yet so much …The change may not be that obvious….but is extremely perceivable.
The change has nothing to do with what is happening around us, but has everything to do with the way we are consuming what is happening around us.
Legacy Web:
I remember the days of the legacy internet where I, the user was completely at the mercy of what the server (my master) wanted me to know and more importantly when. I had no control, no stakes to control what I consumed. It was the typical master-slave relationship. Take what you get. Don’t be Greedy. I don’t want to name the pioneers of this phase, they have all changed to newer trends or are trying to, I am told.
Web 2.0
Then, the whole web 2.0 movement comes along. I don’t want to talk much about what it is. Enough and plenty have been said about it already. I don’t want my post to get lost in the slew of the web 2.0 heap that Google will throw up tomorrow. So let me focus on what it did to me, what did I, the user see?
Social Networking happened, Media Sharing happened, Technology started tapping to and from these fundamental change drivers and Silicon Valley saw and continues to see a whole lot of web 2.0 harping services. How was it different from legacy web? Web 2.0 said “users can be greedy and should manufacture their own food” …Wow…I liked that one.
Wikipedia ushered in the crowd sourcing movement. It realised that the greatest knowledge repository in the world are not in the libraries, but in peoples mind. It wanted knowledge to be freely distributed and part contributed by anyone and everyone having something to share. A classic it is and continues to be. People love it …People use it.
Facebook changed the way product evolution happened. Typically a great product company hired great people who had great ideas and a great mind. Together these ‘great’ clusters spent time thinking about what would be good, useful, necessary, kickass, life changing, revolutionary for the consumer. According to me Facebook changed product evolution on its head. The Mark Z of Facebook, I hope he conceived it that way, decided that the evolution of the Facebook service would not be handled by a ‘few good enterprising people’ but ‘many great industrious people’ thus ushering in a product team that were not hundreds in number but a few millions. “Facebook sourced the Imagination from the Crowd”. Wow….That’s incredible for me.
Meebo started as a cute online integrator of chat protocols to becoming a platform that will change the way media and lifestyle will be consumed tomorrow. I am purposely not saying much about them. There is a reason. We will soon find out. I love those guys anyway.
Samepage Web
Anyway let me conclude by saying that , If legacy web was about “Consumer needing Provider” and web2.0 is about “Provider needing consumer” then the next generation of web services will be about “Consumer needing Consumer” or ‘samepage web’ , as we at the Samepage idea factory like to call it because ,”Social consumption will lead to Collaborative consumption”. From managing work to shopping to reading to buying to almost all the possible activites on the internet, it will require for people to “be on the samepage” literally. Like seeing the same screen from different places and doing the same thing together……
Technology and Thought leaders will make this possible just like samepage has done now. Watch out for more.
“Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.”
We are almost there and all of you can get on the samepage soon. The count down to private beta has already begun and we are all trying to get on the samepage with the launch time ;). The application is currently available to friends and family only and we are getting some interesting feedback already.
It has been a roller coaster ride for us in terms of technology to the realization of the product. But we are almost done with the first alpha rollout of the samepage collaborative paradigm. The first phase will be invite only as this will give us an oppurtunity to provide the right user experience. The server is running out of a single box and we are planning to address scalability once we enter into the private mode. Please leave your email address with us so that we can get back to you at our signup page. Hope to see you in the all on the samepage with us.