collaborationcast.com

I ran into a company who had a great idea of how to enhance instant message (http://www.thoughtslinger.com/).  They took the concept of contacts, presence, and chat and incorporated into a word processor.  This way users can write a document using a common word processor interface, but can get the benefit of an instant messenger.  The value proposition they propose is that now a team of people can write a document in real time and keep track of each other’s changes.   

 The program still appears to be in its beta stages.  Some additional features it should include before I could really use this:

1.  Program Stability - The program froze on me.  I was using a MacBook Pro
2. Email Invite - I would like to invite people that are not in your database.  Allow me to enter an email address and you send out the email.
3. Open Social Integration - Think about integrating with open social and leveraging my existing network.  
4. Instant Message Tool Integration - It would be great for you to integrate with an existing instant messaging tool so I can use my existing contacts.
5. Drag and Drop Page Content - I would like to drag and drop content on the page to organize my document.  This should be very easy to do and intuit.  

I look forward to seeing how this tool evolves.  Best of luck Thought Slinger 

I have been a fan of open source and think the Alfresco’s team has a great vision, but most recently I read an article posted by George Dearing on Information Week claiming several web content management successes by Alfresco. He listed the following:

• Online Gaming: www.eabigsports.com; www.activision.com
• Online Sports: http://www.eafootball.com
• Online Publishing: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu
• Online Telephony Services: http://labs.swisscom-mobile.ch
• Online Community Collaboration: http://eden.endeca.com/web/guest

As I tried to visit all these sites I found many issues with the deployment.

• I could not get the EA Football page to load.
• EA Big Sports redirected me to a generic place holder site.
• Activision killed my browser several times and I was never able to make it past the first load up screen.
• The Eden.edeca.com page would not let me go to the forums and would only let me spend a few seconds on the blog page before redirecting me to the home page.

For sure, Alfresco needs to spend some more time testing their success stories before releasing them to the media. Going to a site and having it kill your browser or not load are not good signs of success. Best of luck next time.