Inspired? No » Web 2.0 http://blog.inspired.no Espen Antonsen writes about the web Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:31:54 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 I don’t get it http://blog.inspired.no/i-dont-get-it-240 http://blog.inspired.no/i-dont-get-it-240#comments Thu, 24 May 2007 20:36:00 +0000 Espen Antonsen http://inspired.goodcheapsleep.com/i-dont-get-it-240 How is this useful?

]]> http://blog.inspired.no/i-dont-get-it-240/feed 3 UI / Listviews http://blog.inspired.no/ui-listviews-230 http://blog.inspired.no/ui-listviews-230#comments Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:02:00 +0000 Espen Antonsen http://inspired.goodcheapsleep.com/ui-listviews-230 We are currently rethinking our GUI components and one thing that some of us do not agree on is listviews. The 24SevenOffice UI is very desktop-like, unlike most web 2.0 apps which has a very different UI compared to traditional desktop applications. One difference is how to present lists. Basecamp and others presents lists with text and a checkbox to select each item. In 24SevenOffice we have a listview and to select an item you must click the item (row) like you do in Microsoft Outlook. To select more than one item the user must use the control or shift keys. For novice users I think this is not very intuitive compared to a visible checkbox. In our UI-discussion I argued the case for having checkboxes in listviews. Other web-applications use a traditional listview as well, such as Zimbra or the new Yahoo! Mail so I would like to go for such a solution as well. But I am unsure whether all users understands it. I must say I am a bit surprised to see Yahoo! opting for such a interface. The new interface is radically difference from the old. The average Yahoo! user is far from a ‘enterprise-user’ which is somewhat true in 24SevenOffice’ case. It will be interesting to see how novice users reacts to the new Yahoo! mail interface.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Should we expect users to know how to select more than one item in a listview and also use a right-click menu instead of using a checkbox with a action button at the bottom?

Is using a combined solution a good idea? A listview with a checkbox on the right side. That way novice users can click the checkbox to select one or multiple items while it is also possible to click the entire item (row) and use click/shift to select a range of items.

Example in 24SevenOffice (contactlist):

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]]> http://blog.inspired.no/ui-listviews-230/feed 3 An Anatomy of Emerging Networked Software Models at the Beginning of the 21st Century: Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 http://blog.inspired.no/an-anatomy-of-emerging-networked-software-models-at-the-beginning-of-the-21st-century-web-20-and-enterprise-20-216 http://blog.inspired.no/an-anatomy-of-emerging-networked-software-models-at-the-beginning-of-the-21st-century-web-20-and-enterprise-20-216#comments Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:38:00 +0000 Espen Antonsen http://inspired.goodcheapsleep.com/an-anatomy-of-emerging-networked-software-models-at-the-beginning-of-the-21st-century-web-20-and-enterprise-20-216 It was with fear and amazement I saw the following illustration:

The illustration provides no value whatsoever to anyone.

- Perpetual beta (beta = buggy software. Continual feature adding is much better)

- Data as the next “intel inside”. (Information is what users always have sought.)

- Global micromarkets of Internet and enterprise IT users (1-2 billion people) (Wow! 1-2 billion people – that is indeed a huge market. Go after it now. Web 2.0 is amazing!)

Jump on the web upgrade in the 21st century before it’s too late.

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]]> http://blog.inspired.no/an-anatomy-of-emerging-networked-software-models-at-the-beginning-of-the-21st-century-web-20-and-enterprise-20-216/feed 1 2.0 http://blog.inspired.no/20-182 http://blog.inspired.no/20-182#comments Fri, 12 May 2006 07:24:00 +0000 Espen Antonsen http://inspired.goodcheapsleep.com/20-182 Please stop.

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]]> http://blog.inspired.no/20-182/feed 3 Defining Web 2.0 for the enterprise http://blog.inspired.no/defining-web-20-for-the-enterprise-177 http://blog.inspired.no/defining-web-20-for-the-enterprise-177#comments Tue, 11 Apr 2006 09:37:00 +0000 Espen Antonsen http://inspired.goodcheapsleep.com/defining-web-20-for-the-enterprise-177 I am not very into the “web 2.0″ hype but there are some features of “web 2.0″ which I am very found of and really believe in. “Web 2.0″ has mostly been about simple consumer services. Simple ideas, quick to develop and easy to duplicate. There hasn’t really been much focus on what “web 2.0″ features can mean for enterprise software. Scott over at Zimbra has a good post about exactly that and he lists the three key main drivers:

(1) Rich Internet UI via Ajax – Yes, Ajax is really a technique for leveraging Web 1.0 technologies (JavaScript, CSS, HTML, DOM, …) to build more richly interactive user interfaces that run in the browser (albeit often with Flash/Flex for graphics and animation). Yes, it remains too hard, but the large web properties and software companies are already voting with their feet.

(2) Inter-application communications via XML, SOAP, REST, etc. – Of course, Ajax leverages XML for the browser application to server app communications, but this is just a special case of XML for SOA in general. Service-Oriented Architecture for applications has actually been around for decades, but back then we talked about Enterprise JavaBeans, Stored Procedures, CORBA, DCOM, MQSeries, and CICS/IMS transactions. The difference is that with the success of the Internet and Software as a Service, we have hopefully finally achieved critical mass.

(3) New technologies for intermixing Ajax and XML like the mash-up and now Ajax Linking and Embedding (ALE). (ALE in particular may prove to be a tipping point in terms of WYSIWYG authoring within the browser, which will allow users to far more easily create rich content for their emails, blogs, Wikis, and so on.) I don’t think this category is complete yet, and it may ultimately just devolve into cool tricks for leveraging Web 1.0, Ajax, and XML, but for now I think this is where the Web 2.0 technical action is.

We at 24SevenOffice have been thinking much of the same as well. We are just starting to launch an API which developers can use to access data in the system and create exciting add-ons for our customers. We have a report generator which is REST based and allows users/developers to use external XSLT stylesheets to export data in custom formats and use data into other applications on-demand. We have several mash-ups; integration with “yellow pages” (Proff.no) in Norway for instantly adding a new company to the CRM-system, show maps (we use Google Maps in the US and GuleSider here in Norway), pull financial and organizational data from various sources to check the financial stability of your customers. We are also currently in the (very early) planning stages with a very interesting integration in our telesales function in the CRM-module. It will give small and medium-sized businesses an opportunity to use and manage calling-lists to new or existing customers in a way that hasn’t been done before.

I am really looking forward to see what can be done with mash-ups and XML/SOAP/REST based API’s between web-applications. This is just the beginning.

Oh, and about the Google Maps integration I developed. I will probably be releasing an open-source version of the script soon. Google Maps is great but it doesn’t offer geocoding. So you have to get the coordinates from another source. After digging through some free but not very user-friendly services I found the excellent Yahoo! developer page which offer a fantastic REST/XML based geocoding service. So what my script does is: 1. Take input parameters about the address. 2. Get geocoding from yahoo!. 3. Display a Google map.
All you need is a yahoo! application ID and Google Maps API key.

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]]> http://blog.inspired.no/defining-web-20-for-the-enterprise-177/feed 1 Five Reasons Web 2.0 and Enterprises Don’t Mix http://blog.inspired.no/five-reasons-web-20-and-enterprises-dont-mix-175 http://blog.inspired.no/five-reasons-web-20-and-enterprises-dont-mix-175#comments Wed, 22 Feb 2006 14:41:00 +0000 Espen Antonsen http://inspired.goodcheapsleep.com/five-reasons-web-20-and-enterprises-dont-mix-175 From ‘Five Reasons Web 2.0 and Enterprises Don’t Mix ‘ by publish.com:

Opinion: Enterprise-level Web 2.0 apps are coming. But first large companies need to understand the value proposition (not the feel good propostion) of Web 2.0.

Are there currently any enterprise-level Web 2.0 apps out there?

1. Zimbra
2. Adobe Flex
3. Microsoft Office Live
4. 24SevenOffice
5. Salesforce, Netsuite

Web 2.0 is hard to define but for me it is about collaboration and organising information more easily. Tags, RSS and mash-up’s are good examples. For consumer software (del.icio.us, Flickr etc.) this is easier to implement and getting people to use. Enterprise usage requires more ‘what-if’ scenerarios and user training (everyone is not as tech-savvy as bloggers who use web 2.0 tools).

24SevenOffice uses Ajax, mash-up’s, lets users tag information and in general makes collaboration between users easier.

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