Ross Mayfield links to a fascinating article on
Boxes and Arrows by Alex Wright about Paul Otlet: The forgotten forefather of information architecture.

“In 1934, years before Vannevar Bush dreamed of the memex, decades before Ted Nelson coined the term “hypertext,” Paul Otlet envisioned a new kind of scholar’s workstation: a moving desk shaped like a wheel, powered by a network of hinged spokes beneath a series of moving surfaces. The machine would let users search, read and write their way through a vast mechanical database stored on millions of 3×5 index cards.”

“This new research environment would do more than just let users retrieve documents; it would also let them annotate the relationships between one another, “the connections each [document] has with all other [documents], forming from them what might be called the Universal Book.”

There’s much-much more… The article is lengthy (compared to most blog posts), but well worth the time.

CNET News.com has an article on a new Wharton Team that appears to be using k-log-like techniques to rediscover serendipitous data connections.

“Although an unprecedented amount of information about technology is now available online, Ranieri notes that “everything is set up to look for exactly what you are looking for,” rather than to assist in the process of finding crossover, innovative applications. In addition, information is “stored in silos” that are hard for non-specialists to penetrate. Until now, there has been no way to search for attributes like “lighter, faster or quicker” with technology categories, he says.
…
The Wharton team’s new process aims to meet this challenge by using a methodology that “combines computer research techniques with human research techniques,” MacMillan says. Kimbrough likens the new process to the methodology Google uses. Although Google’s search engine is automated, it exploits information that thousands of individuals (at no cost to Google) painstakingly collected and loaded onto their Web sites. Kimbrough explains that Google’s page-ranking algorithm “exploits tons of work (done by) people who put Java links on their Web sites; it exploits their manual labor.”
…
the Wharton team’s new process searches through documents and makes connections between highly technical descriptions of properties–often familiar only to narrow “silos” of technologies–and broader terms that could suggest market applications to those who work in other areas. As Ranieri describes it, “We found a clever way to make a link between attributes and markets.”
…
Although it’s too early for developers to discuss technical details, Kimbrough acknowledges that this new process requires a significant amount of human input. “In part, we use human beings to create databases of attributes that can be matched up.”

Scopeware is a personal desktop search tool similar to X1, but with a different take on the user experience.

I haven’t tested it yet, but it seems to be worth a look.

Scopeware also offers a server-based solution.

Via Due Diligence

“Enterprise collaboration and groupware company Intraspect Software has been sold to public company Vignette for $20m in cash and stock.”

Tim Oren has a nice quote about the space Introspect served too…

“This one’s a cautionary tale not only on the late-90’s investing boom/bust (Intraspect’s history covers nearly the whole saga), but on the long selling cycles and difficulty of extracting revenue from businesses for software of this type. Social Software advocates and investors take note.”

Indeed.

Joe Wilcox of Jupiter’s Microsoft Monitor Research Service talks about MSFT’s collaboration culture within business groups and relates it to what former Apple executive Michael Mace wrote in his rant about Who Killed Apple Computer?:

From Collaboration: The Microsoft Way:
“Microsoft’s collaborative culture makes the company very responsive to competitive threats. The character also means Microsoft can quickly focus resources from multiple product divisions when executives see there is a need. These could be seen during the so-called browser wars with Netscape, when Microsoft rapidly churned out new Internet Explorer features and caught up with Netscape in about 18 months and three product versions…”

“Too often, success in any market has more to do with how well a business is run rather than how good the products are. Apple’s products often are more highly-regarded than Microsoft’s. High regard is fine, but in business sales count more; sales success is on Microsoft’s side. I believe the company’s collaboration culture is one of the major reasons.”

In general I would have to agree that this applies to any company or group. In addition, establishing a collaboration culture is not a technology problem, because as I said a few weeks ago, “…a healthy community doesn’t need a formalize process or a highly specialized set of tools to successfully collaborate.”

The collaboration culture needs to be fostered by good leadership. The solution will soon follow.

The Internet Archive has release a new tool that allows you to search for relevant pages from 1996 until today.

“You can search and find things the way they used to be.”

I guess the web almost never forgets…

Don Park paints a picture of blog and wiki convergence in the following quote:

“Imagine posts and comments flowing from blogs to wikis like the way streams feed into lakes. Got the picture yet? Now think of a blog category as a wiki page. The picture changes so that the blog becomes a mountain and categories become the streams running down the side of the mountain in all directions toward wikis into which streams from other mountains also feed into.”

I certainly would enjoy seeing the reality of Don’s picture. However, I would also like to expand on his canvas (and borrow his metaphor too ;-)

In my picture I would like to see the integration of blog and wiki-style features in enterprise software such as Document Management Systems, Content Management Systems, and of course Collaboration and Knowledge Management Systems.

For example, take the new Microsoft Office 2003 System…

Imagine if the Office System supported trackbacks, pingbacks, blogrolls and wiki style page creation that was orchestrated by SharePoint Services or even a scaled-down version of BizTalk Server.

Combine this with a version of Outlook that comes with a built-in aggregator like NewsGator and supports an auto-discovery social networking feature based on FOAF.

Ok, maybe I’m turning Don’s picture into a Jackson Pollock, but I do feel there is great potential in providing a distributed collaboration and social networking aware framework that seamlessly fits into the enterprise and does not take users out of the applications they use on a daily basis.

Clay Shirky writes the following in his piece about, “Wikis, Grafitti, and Process:”

“A wiki in the hands of a healthy community works. A wiki in the hands of an indifferent community fails. The software makes no attempt to add ‘process’ in order to keep people from doing stupid things. Instead, it provides more flexibility, a crazy amount of flexibility, and intoxicating amount of flexibility, allowing massive amounts of stupidity and intentional damage to be done, at will, by roving and anonymous posters. And it provides rollback.”

Indeed, a healthy community doesn’t need a formalize process or a highly specialized set of tools to successfully collaborate. Like water or electricity, they will find a way through the muck; it may not be the most efficient or elegant, but it will certainly get from point-to-point.

Beau Lebens’ Dented Reality has some interesting projects, like this one…

“HTFS is a complete, database-driven “file-system” on the concept of hyper-text … The basic idea of this system is …[that]… files, emails, notes and links can be stored as unique items - ONCE, managed by a database.” [more]

Hmm, sounds a bit like Ted Nelson’s Xanadu.

I’d love to see some demos of it, maybe sample code too.

I tested the Coppermine Photo Gallery Script last night and it was very easy to install and best of all (IMO), it comes with a Windows XP Publishing Wizard plug-in that allows you to select a group or folder of images and “Publish” them to your Gallery. It will even create thumbnails and preview images.

Nice!