Wanted: new paradigms
Friday, November 3rd, 2006I was chatting with some KDE people recently and the discussion turned to collaborative documents. We were talking about how it would be neat to be able to transparently share data with each other.
Our thoughts were about doing much more than sending a file to someone. We were interested in how you could use the existing desktop and existing programs, but add a layer to the windowing interface to regulate networked collaboration.
You know, it would be cool to right click my ODT document, select ‘Work Together’ and select a name from my instant messenger. Then we could both edit the document in real time.
Calenders are another thing worth thinking about. Yes, there are collaborative calenders. Yes, you can share appointments. But somehow it all feels a little clunky. It still feels like we have not got this mix right yet.
It all boiled down to one thing; the current desktop paradigm is pretty good but we’re hitting some walls when it comes to our day-to-day workflows. We need to think of ways to fix that.