February 6, 2008
A post over at the Google Docs blog describes a new form creation feature, Stop sharing spreadsheets, start collecting information:
…in some cases, you want to collect just a tiny bit of information from dozens, scores, or even hundreds of users or more. Some of them are Google Docs users. Some of them are not. Either way, you don’t always want them all mucking around with the whole spreadsheet and you’re tired of telling those new to Google Docs that they don’t need to switch to Gmail just to use Docs (huh? you didn’t know that either?).
We’re really excited to bring you forms! Create a form in a Google Docs spreadsheet and send it out to anyone with an email address. They won’t need to sign in, and they can respond directly from the email message or from an automatically generated web page. Creating the form is easy: start with a spreadsheet to get the form, or start by creating the form and you’ll get the spreadsheet automatically.
Reading the entire post left me thinking of blist, DabbleDB, EditGrid, Smartsheet, Wufoo, and Zoho Creator. It must be at least a little disappointing for the smaller outfits in that list to see Google Docs generating similar technology in-house. Then again maybe this fact is just “validation of the model” as some like to say. Since Zoho Creator is really a project inside the much larger AdventNet I’m not sure its team would care much and in any case the unique thing that Zoho Creator brings to the table is that it has a GUI form builder but also an accompanying scripting language. Sites like EditGrid and Wufoo have great user interfaces, AppJet is doing great things with scripting on the web, but the hybrid approach might be entirely unique to Zoho Creator.
November 5, 2007
Today LongJump Blog published two posts that together do a nice job of indirectly highlighting the subtle connection we have today between open source and situated web application platforms (SWAPs):
Is Open Source An Option for Small Business?
Because most open source applications are built by unpaid volunteers, bug fixes or complex features are sometimes not a priority. Most small business are better off using a reliable, world-class business application suite they can depend on
Webification and LongJump
…only recently have small businesses began to focus on leveraging web applications to take their business to the next level.
When I first read the post about open source my immediate reaction was to think blatant FUD but on close reading decided it’s a fairly accurate post, at least from the high level and brief attention with which it approaches the subject. Open source does often require relatively complex setup and will frequently exhibit bugs you can’t reliably expect to be fixed in the time you require. The resource limitations typical of small businesses can make these drawbacks particularly unattractive, even more unattractive today as we find more and more business software alternatives appearing in our web browsers.
The cool thing about this trend is that open source undergirds so many facets of the SWAP landscape we survey today. I can’t speak too much about the internal software choices of these companies of course but if you take a look at the web server identifiers of the software delivering your LongJump, Coghead, DabbleDB, and Zoho Creator content to your screen, you’ll see the word Apache staring back at you. And ZC in particular incorporates JFreeChart and javacc into its offering. Doubtless most companies offering a SWAP-like product are incorporating lots of open source software to deliver their functionality.
So while the direct employment of open source has definite drawbacks for small businesses trying to succeed with technology, as more of them gravitate to the applications implemented on a SWAP, they are unknowingly reliant on open source technology perhaps more than ever.
