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Practical Internet Groupware
book

Practical Internet Groupware

by Jon Udell
October 1999
Beginner content levelBeginner
521 pages
15h 28m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Practical Internet Groupware

The Conferencing Dimension

Is there a middle ground between the flood of email and the drought of structured groupware systems? Yes. That middle ground is conferencing, a term that is unfortunately so overloaded that it’s crucial to explain, for the purposes of this book, what conferencing is and is not. Here are some examples of what I mean by conferencing:

  • A Usenet or private newsgroup, accessed by way of an Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) newsreader

  • A Lotus Notes discussion database, accessed directly using the Notes client or indirectly through a Domino server by way of a web browser

  • A Microsoft Exchange public folder, accessed using the Exchange client

  • An Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) public folder, accessed using an IMAP email client

  • A web-based discussion system, accessed using a web browser

These modes of conferencing share the following characteristics:

  • Documents accumulate in a central data store visible to all participants.

  • The primary medium of discussion is written text.

  • Discussion is typically threaded, exhibiting a treelike structure of statements and responses.

  • Text messages may be augmented with binary attachments—spreadsheets, programs, images.

  • Participation is asynchronous. I might post a message at noon today; you might read it at midnight; you might then reply at noon tomorrow.

  • The stored documents can be scanned along key dimensions: date, author, subject.

  • The entire transcript can, ideally, be searched.

Now here are some examples of what I ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 1565925378Catalog PageErrata