Open source collaborative working solutions

My girl friend is working in a perfume company (an inter-continent company). The CEO of this company wanted to find a solution to help his workers work in a collaborative environment with highest efficiency. They also need a Customer relationship management system to keep track of their customers information and their business goal. He asked the IT staff to do it.
As the result, they choose 2 software: Highrise for CRM and TeamworkLive for collaborative working system.

I do not have any idea about their choosing. However, I asked myself: what are alternative open source solutions for these needs. Actually, I am interested in collaborative working model. For a long time ago, I've had an idea about creating a software solution for collaborative working, but I do not have enough time to research carefully about this idea at that time.
In this topic, I only show you some open source solutions for collaborative working model that are available on Internet. I haven't had a detail look on these solutions. I hope you can. If you have more helpful information about these solutions or other solutions, please share to me also.

MindQuarry :
Mindquarry is an Open Source collaborative software platform for file sharing (documents, images, media files, etc.), task and project management, team collaboration and Wiki editing that meshes simplicity and functionality. As a result, knowledge workers are able to connect with team members and share information from wherever they are, effectively improving team-work and increasing productivity within the company.

Teamwork

Teamwork is a proven, reliable and friendly web based software solution for managing work and communication in any field. Groupware and project management features are used in an integrated environment, from which you can coordinate and manage hundreds of projects at once. It offers us some cool features for: Project management, Issues tracking, Document managing, Work logging, Smart features (shared calendar, prioritize assignment, ...)
Teamwork has an open source version (written on Java, Database independent). I downloaded it but not deployed yet. I will update you if I have any more information.

Dimdim:
Dimdim is the leading provider of open source web meeting software.
Dimdim is a free web conferencing service where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees. It also offers us an open source version. We can customize it as our real needs.

kablink

A single Integrated Collaboration Environment that establishes a collaborative group workspace of people, teams, functions, tasks and content all working together to drive effective teamwork to the next level.

Kaplink is built from Java with Hibernate, Liferay portal and use Lucene as the Full text search solution behind.

If you have any other open source solutions for this, please share to me!
My slogan: Share to get more. I like this.

livemocha - a success story of social network + e-learning

Recently, social network is emerging as a new trend. You can see a lot of social networks over the world: MySpace, Facebook, ... They appear like stars after Big Bang. Each social network has its mission in the real world (not only on Internet). The strength of social network is its community. When you have a big community, that means you have a big chance to get more money!

Actually, social network is only a type of model (a social model on Internet). If you can find a good idea to apply into a social network, that means you created a new model. For a long time, I tried my best to do that (invent new thing with social network). When researching, I found some of my "new" ideas exists in the real world. One of them is: combine social network with e-learning.

This type of social network appear recently. I strongly believe that this is a good model for e-learning. One of success web site applied this model is:

http://www.livemocha.com

The idea behind is very simple: "learning new language by friends over the world".
It creates a big community who wants to learn language by communication directly.

I found a very interesting analyzing in the CEO's blog of livemocha

Based on various research reports that I have seen, this is a market that is well over $20 billion in size with over 350 million people all over the globe learning a variety of different languages. In many countries, people can double their income by learning English because they can get more attractive jobs in industry. And the need has become even stronger given increasing trends towards globalization, immigration and travel.

Currently, Livemocha secures $6 million in funding led by Maveron.
Do you think this idea is interesting?

Google Analytic example - How business view can help you ?

Yesterday, I received a request from a customer: create a tool to track statistic data on email campaigns. We must find the solution with cheapest price and lowest development cost.

Actually, I've used a lot of statistic tracking tools like: Google Analytics, SiteMetter, ... However, I thought that these are tools for web sites (not for email) because the real mechanism behind these tools is: the client (browser) must run a piece of Javascript to send statistic data into their server.
With email client, we can not run script because of some limitations regarding security.


I get in stuck.
How to solve this issue?
The CTO told me: I see that some companies use Google Analytic to track statistic data related to their marketing email campaigns.
Oh, really? I can not believe in that.
Search on Google, and this is the result:

http://www.epikone.com/blog/2008/11/04/email-tracking-with-google-analytics/

This is just a very simple idea: adding parametters into the link we want to track in email content. When user reads the email and open the link, Google Analytics will track this.
To view statistic data, user will use the filtering parameters to select data they want to view.

Oh! my god. Great
Actually, this is not a quite 100% good solution. However, it can make use of Google Analytic in a new way.



I think this is invented by a business man, NOT from any developers or technicians.
WHY I said that?
NO developer can find this - because they always think about complete and quite 100% good solutions.
In the mind of a business man, he wants to make use of everything. So, tricks are good ways save his money and make use of everything was available.

Do you want to be a developer with good business mind? I am trying my best to be that.

Web Standards Curriculum - Good course for web developer

Web standard is fundamental knowledge that all web developers need to know. I am going to look for a course about this for training in my company. Fortunately, I found this course in Opera developer community: "Web Standards Curriculum"

Web Standards Curriculum, a course designed to give anyone a solid grounding in web design/development, no matter who they are—it is completely free to use, accessible, and assumes no previous knowledge.

You can find this course here:

http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/1-introduction-to-the-web-standards-cur

About the author of this course

Chris Mills is a developer relations manager for Opera—he edits and publishes articles on dev.opera.com and labs.opera.com, liaises with the community to raise awareness of Opera and collect feedback, and evangelises about Opera software wherever he can. He is also the organiser and editor of the Web Standards Curriculum.

Outside of work, he is an extremely avid music fan, enjoying playing and listening to a wide variety of music, including metal, folk, punk, electronica, prog, and more. His main band at the moment is the mighty Conquest of Steel.

I hope this course is useful to you!

Domain brainstorming and tools

As you known, domain brainstorming is one of first steps when you want to set up a new web site. How to choose a good domain? That's a very good question.
To do this step, you should ask your friends about keywords related to your business that they think first. The rest task is "combine keywords and choose the best name that are still available on Internet".
You can check some guidelines here for this. Actually, that's not simple!

Fortunately, there are some tools to help you check available domains and give you some good suggest names.

BustAName - gives the widest range of available options: it mixes the given keywords, gives synonyms for each one, adds prefixes and suffixes, shows both singular and plural versions, drops last vowel, checks for both hyphen- and non-hyphen versions. The tool dynamically checks for 3 top level domains: .com, .net and .org

Domize - shows information on domain names availability one-character shorter than the one specified (covers 3 TLDs: .com, .net, .org).

PickyDomains.com — PickyDomains employs actual people who suggest names for your domain. The process begins by registering with the service, providing a description of your site, keywords and your preferences. Once your account is setup, they start suggesting names and you either flag them as “Like” or “Dislike”. As soon as you find a name you want, you “pick” the name and register it. The service costs $50.00 per domain name and you are charged only if you register a domain. My experience has been spotty. They certainly can come up with great names, but there is no consistency in the quality of names. But since you are not charged if you don’t register the name, it does not hurt to try. The good thing about using this service is that it makes you think hard about what your site should be about.

Web 2.0 Name Generator: This is a fun and easy website to use, especially if you just want a cool sounding name for your soon to be media empire. Simply go to the site and click on “Generate Name” and the site generates cool names.

PsychicWhois - covers a wide variety of TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .info, .us) and provides a lot of alternative domain name suggestions based on your previous searches and related terms.

Thesaurus.com: This is probably one of the more useful ways to pick a name. I usually start by jotting down a few key words, and start entering them into the thesaurus. The thesaurus kind of helps you to think about your name from different angles because of the various synonyms it suggests. Unlike Microsoft Word, thesaurus.com suggest synonyms that are similar in meaning but are divergent enough to make you think - its a great brainstorming tool.

Ajaxwhois.com: This site allows you to search for domain name availabilty. It is fast and very easy to use.

I like bustaname.com most. However, you can try all above tools to select your best choice.
Good luck