Real Time Collaboration and Web 2.0 tools, tips, and reviews

I'm hardly impartial in bringing up Smart Clients since we just released one to the world. But what I can do is go through why we decided to build a Smart Client as opposed to a Server Web Part for project collaboration.

There are at least two reasons for smart clients: 1) They can work offline and 2) They provide a richer UI experience. There is at least one drawback for smart clients: You have to distribute them.

This used to be alot harder than it is today (ie. going to the store and buying physical media). But it's still easier to go to a website and always use the latest version.

While smart clients (and by the way, peer to peer clients) may not have the uptime servers do, they probably also don't have the IT costs supporting them and, if one does go down, it does NOT stop the group from continuing on.

This is why there is ALOT of peer to peer software (Groove is one example) used in Iraq right now.

For our application, its both group oriented and complex: Project Management. There are more moving parts in project teams than ever. And because these parts are also on the move, the ability to work offline is more imporant than ever. The Smart Client model helps us provide mobility and distribution of information, and helps us handle the complexity of the domain with rich UI tools (ie. drag-n-drop scheduling).

Up to now, we have lived in a document-centric world which, as Diane astutely points out, does not lend itself to the Smart Client philosophy.

However, we like to think we're on the vanguard for what a document can be: the result of a group effort instead of copies of individual efforts. For instance, TeamDirection Project stores its data as a document, but its really a collection of more granular tasks, links and resources that individuals provide that we stitch together. This enables people to work on the same 'document', but make their individual contributions.

The rub is people don't want to be involved in stitching-- and that's where the 'Smart' in Smart Client comes in. It's hard to do, but powerful and effective when done well.