Mozilla Labs, the group that brought us Open Badges, Popcorn and more, has unveiled its latest project – TowTruck. In essence, TowTruck is an open source HTML5-based tool that lets multiple people work on the same Web page together. The tool uses WebRTC to enable video/audio communications between parties while they edit and browse the Web together.

Here’s an early proof of concept video that shows what Tow Truck looked like two months ago. The version that’s available now has WebRTC:

Tow Truck – Proof of Concept in Progress from Simon on Vimeo.

TowTruck is obviously built with developers in mind. Many Web designers no longer work in the same office, let alone the same state or country. A tool like TowTruck would be incredibly useful for these designers as they can now show others examples of their work, including the code, in real time. The others can then help refine that code in real time.

If you want to try out for TowTruck for yourself, you can do so here. Mozilla also provides the JavaScript necessary to integrate TowTruck into your own site at the above link. That being said, Mozilla warns that TowTruck is currently in alpha and doesn’t recommend that you use it in production at this time.

[h/t: The Next Web]

We put wikis in the top left, email in the bottom left and IM in the bottom right. He described that at the top right is a collaboration sweet spot, but a place that is very hard to start off with. You create something to the left or below it and try to evolve it. You could easily put Twitter and Socialtext Signals in the top right. Twitter in effect evolved out of eariler learnings from blogging. Signals was an evolution of a social software platform. Good theory, and the point is doing new things in real time is hard.

Today SlideShare launched Zipcast, a web conferencing product that is fast, simple and social. Its a natural evolution of what SlideShare has been, a new way to asynchronously share slides. Its new not just in how it is integrated into the fabric of the real time social web. Building a collaboration solution on top of a thriving professional sharing community with millions of presentations viewed by over 45 million people per month is decidedly new.

If you are in marketing, you can host social webinars with promotion being a byproduct of using it. If you are in sales, you can launch a pitch immeadiately without the complexity of setup and asking someone to install a download. If you simply have an idea to share, there is no stopping you because it is free for public and viral meetings.

And what I really like about is it is web conferencing actually on the web.

Originally published on Ross.Typepad.com

"Fusion Tables is not a traditional database system focusing on complicated SQL queries and transaction processing," Google’s Alon Halevy and Rebecca Shapley explain. "Instead, the focus is on fusing data management and collaboration: merging multiple data sources, discussion of the data, querying, visualization, and Web publishing. We plan to iteratively add new features to the systems as we get feedback from users."

With Fusion Tables, users can upload tabular data sets and share them with collaborators or with the general public. You can choose which data to share, and keep certain parts hidden if you wish. You also have control over which collaborators see certain parts of data.

Filters and aggregation can be applied to data, and it can be visualized on maps and other charts. Data can be merged from multiple tables, and it can be exported to the web or csv files. Discussions can also be conducted at the row, table, and individual cell levels.

 

As with Google Labs in general, you have to take into consideration that Fusion Tables is in the experimental stage. This means that there are probably some bugs and some things missing. Google is encouraging feedback, and perhaps eventually, it will work its way out of Labs and into the full-blown product stage.

News of Google’s JotSpot purchase haunted the Internet on Halloween in 2006. Then, like the best candies in the trick-or-treat bag, it vanished from public view aside from JotSpot’s existing userbase.

Today, a trip to Google Apps reveals the return of JotSpot. The clever name had to be erased, a sacrifice to the gods of uniform corporate branding. JotSpot goes forward as Google Sites.

The functionality of Google Sites fits in with the other Apps services. Sites has a minimal learning curve, without having to muck about with icky HTML code to create a page. Several templates will get the Sites user up and running.

Through permission controls, access to viewing and editing Sites may be given to a few people or an organization. Any Sites pages may be opened to the world, in true wiki fashion.

With any change to Apps comes the perquisite Microsoft-killer commentary. The NYT Bits Blog called it “a rival to Microsoft’s SharePoint.” http://www.webpronews.com/?p=43982 ]]> Google opened a new version of its Apps service, with a catch that limits it to a workplace or a school by design.

Shades of Facebook! Google emulated the social network’s old signup policy with the debut of Google Apps Team Edition.

“After confirming that you belong to that organization, it’s easy to invite others people from your company or school and start collaborating,” said the official Google blog.

This change appears to be a little rebranding of Google Apps. We looked at the features for Team Edition, compared them to the Standard Edition, and can’t see any real difference other than a lack of integrated Gmail and what appears to be a workgroup-level sharing function for Google Docs and Calendar.

Though useful enough, adding workgroup-based permissions isn’t that big of a deal. Docs already had a sharing feature in place. The difference in Team Edition versus the existing Google Apps products is the time needed to start using it.

Instead of verifying a domain, Team Edition verifies a business or school email address. Once one has been verified, the person who signed up can start inviting other people to participate in Team Edition.

“If Google can get people relying on Google Apps for their collaboration needs, those same users could put pressure on decision makers to upgrade to the standard or premium version,” Garett Rogers at Googling Google said.

“This bottom-up approach might just be what Google needed to get organizations adopting Google Apps.”

So it’s not the Facebook model, but the Trojan Horse gambit. Sneaky.

Jess Lee in the official Google Lat Long blog explains the first feature, multi-user My Maps:

[M]ultiple people can edit the same My Map. Just click the “Collaborate” link and enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite. They’ll receive an email invitation with a link to the map. Once they open the map, they should be able to edit it

Google’s Brian Cornell details how to import KML (Keyhole Markup Language) files, which are often used in the context of Google Earth:

[C]reate a new map and click the Import link. You’ll be able to upload a file from your desktop, or enter the URL of a file on the web. We’ll import all of the data from that file into your map for online access and editing.

Brian notes that not all features working in Google Earth (like 3D models) are supported in Google Maps yet. Previously, you were already able to enter a KML address in the Google Maps search box to have it be displayed instantly – but only if it’s not too large.

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The company was promoting its new Oracle WebCenter product (or platform if you prefer). WebCenter is supposed to be a way for developers to combine and integrate enterprise applications and Web-aware services "including business applications, enterprise content, business intelligence, enterprise search, communication and collaboration services, and Web 2.0-centric applications." (Emphasis is mine)

When a company the size and nature of Oracle starts emphasizing the word "collaboration" in their public and press announcements, there is likely to be an announcement forthcoming that is of interest to this blog. With IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft all making major public business statements in this arena (accompanied by product announcements and/or web conferencing acquisitions), it is only natural to expect Oracle to fill out the field with a competitive position.

I’m not an Oracle user, so I don’t have experience with their product offerings in the conferencing and collaboration space. I decided to do a little searching on the Web and their corporate site and found that Oracle has had communications products on offer for its customers for some time now. The website currently labels the products "Oracle Real-Time Collaboration 10g" and there are a few documents available for review or download. All the documents are dated August 2005 and I found outdated hyperlinks in them that no longer go anywhere.

I looked up some tutorials and user guides for Oracle’s web conferencing product on enterprise and educational sites (companies often post educational materials for their employees on how to use the software they have bought). I don’t know how old the materials are that I found, but they included some rather severe restrictions on use of the conferencing software.

Of course the hosting company must have the Oracle application server and database installed as a prerequisite. But it looks like the web conferencing software is very Microsoft dependent. Functions such as text chat are not available on Netscape browsers… Only Internet Explorer is supported. A host can share Microsoft documents by converting them to HTML pages — only supported on a Windows machine with Microsoft Office installed. (Again, these requirements may well be obsolete… I can’t tell from the current information on the Oracle website).

I thought it was a little strange that there wasn’t any more recent information or announcements about web conferencing or collaboration on the Oracle site. I took a look at an Oracle collaboration user forum to see if it was getting any customer activity and saw that the most recent message seemed to reflect my own curiosity, with a fascinating answer:

September 5, 2007: "Anybody concerned over the lack of information on the Oracle Website regarding Collaboration Suite. It seems to be disappearing?"

October 3, 2007: "No it is not. However Oracle is just integration [sic] some new products (eg Stellent) into the new Collaboration Suite called Beehive (internal codename). They are using this internally now for a couple of weeks. I guess that there will be more news soon."

Hmmm… A rumored new internal release (with a cute codename, no less!) and presentations playing up Oracle’s stand on enterprise collaboration. The crystal ball says to stand by for more announcements from the company to keep them in the ring with the other major players in the enterprise platform world.

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Iran’s Google Block An ‘Error’

Several sites around the world picked up on Iran’s blocking of Google. That blocking began on Sunday, as Iranian web surfers quickly found their requests for Google stopped at the ISP level.

Other Iranians discovered Gmail had been likewise restricted from their views. People began to get the word out, and news agencies were able to confirm with the Iranian government that the censorship was taking place.

Hamid Shahriari, the secretary of Iran’s National Council of Information, would not provide any other details in reports. However, it is now being disclosed on sites like News.com.au’s Adelaide Now that the filtering of Google has ceased:

"Due to an error, the Google site was filtered on Sunday evening but the error was corrected and now Google and its different sites like Gmail can be used," said an official from the state-run communications company.

Iran’s government is no stranger to censorship, or the oppression of journalists. Reporters Without Borders said only through self-censorship do media outlets avoid angering the Middle Eastern state’s leadership. The country’s supreme leader accused Iran’s media of malice and collaboration with enemy media earlier in September.

Like others, the primary activity is messaging to your social network.  You message to all your friends or public like others, or directly like typing "D Username" in Twitter at the beginning of a message, but also lets you select a subset of friends.  Beyond messages, you can share links, files and events.  Beyond doing this on the web, there is a Windows or Mac rich client.

The digerati and diggerati will probably rant away about how it doesn’t have SMS or IM integration like Twitter, how the content is mundane (same thing with blogging five years ago), how it needs APIs and microformats (which it does, and hooks into Twitter, del.icio.us, Flickr, Upcoming and Facebook are inevitable), or just complain about adding friends again (Adding friends is the new zen).  The design is slick on both the web and client and they will polish up key details like last names, comment threading like Jaiku, permalinks and need a more public space to explore. 

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it? — Henry Miller

But here’s the three trends:

YASMS Gets and Ad Format — I admire startups that launch with an actual business model.  They have introduced a new Ad Format, a message broadcast into the stream with the Pownce icon (the green P in the above screenshot is an ad from PBwiki, I love wikis) that doesn’t seem to persist.  I didn’t mind the ad from LaughingSquid (first I saw) in my peripheral attention.  And if I did, I could pay to make it go away, but subscribing to the Pro version for $20/year and also be able to send files over 100MB.

AIR Gets a Viral App — The client is built on the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), formerly Apollo and still in Beta.  Pownce’s virality will give AIR the airtime it needs for base of users to install it, making it easier for the next AIR client to come along.  This should be AIR’s showcase.  That said, Pownce’s model is what I call contained virality, where limits are part of the draw and when you are in you feel in (at least to share music, a hidden driver).

Consumer Collaboration Get Hip — Anyone who follows the enterprise collaboration space will immediately see parallels with P2P collaboration apps like Groove or Shinkuro.  Or IM, Skype and more directly enterprise IM like MindAlign.  The key difference is group forming by social network and default modes of sharing more publicly.  Pownce will appeal to a very different demographic, that’s already collaborating on blogs, wikis and IM, and potentially full a space in between.

There are several vectors in which Pownce could go, or others could go towards including presence, location, public IM, security, indexing and integration.  Pownce will have to open up invites soon (I’m out, please don’t ask) to build its network effect before others encroach.  It isn’t unique enough to gain the continuous or at least partial attention of users for yet another client.  Infrastructure costs will be greater than P2P.  At the risk of breaking the design and making it too complex, Pownce should give serious thought to the role of standards and how they could be a client for Facebook.

Please, I don’t have any invites.

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This functionality is not often exploited in webinars or formal one-to-many broadcast events, but I like to use it for one particular purpose whenever the feature is offered by a vendor. At the end of my presentation I’ll bring my audience to a web page with an interactive feedback form that also contains direct hyperlinks to sites I’d like them to visit. This has advantages over a typical polling question embedded in a web conferencing presentation. People can be more loquacious in their responses, youcan design any kind of interaction and graphics that you want on the page, and you get to continue your marketing and guidance of the audience to additional resources.

Robin does a great roundup of software packages that concentrate purely on the co-browsing technology. Definitely recommended reading.

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