Social Glass

We’ve been doing some work within my group to build an E2.0 (or at least a partial E2.0) collaboration system. Initially we’ve concentrated on using open source technologies for budgetary and other reasons. The solution is currently very wiki based although we’re starting to make use of Enterprise Search and Social Bookmarking.

But in doing my research on open source options, it strikes me as odd that no one has created an open source E2.0 application that integrates Mediawiki (wiki), Wordpress (blogging), bbPress (discussion), elgg (social networking) and scuttle (social bookmarking). All of these are PHP-based and open source, so integrating them would seem like an obvious thing to do.

I know that Avenue-A-Razorfish has tweaked Mediawiki to integrate more E2.0 features, but it doesn’t seem that they’ve released the fruits of their effort to the public.

The technical challenge to overcome with integration of disparate applications would be:

• Single Sign-on: Users login once and are then logged in to each application
• Integrated Tags: Each application has its own concept of tag. Tags need to be shared.
• Look and Feel: Styles and themes need to be the same across the suite to give the appearance of cohesiveness.
• I’m sure there are more…

Spikesource did something similar with Suite Two which is worth checking out if you haven’t already.
Maybe I’ll rise to the challenge, brush up on my PHP programming skills, and give it a shot.

Update: Paula and Jevon make a good point that Search on its own is not Enterprise 2.0.

I find it interesting reading about IT being clueless when it comes to Enterprise 2.0 (like Paula Thornton’s recent post over at the FASTForward blog). I do a lot of work in the Enterprise Search space (Search being the first “S” in SLATES), and more often than not we are approached by IT departments looking for a Search solution. They understand the difficulty knowledge workers face in finding enterprise content. I’ve worked closely with several IT departments to integrate Search on their intranets - a task that is very security intensive as Search musn’t expose knowledge workers to content they don’t have access to, and this means close involvement with IT.

I’ve written about this before as have others, but Enterprise Search needs to be the focal point of any Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem. Companies should invest in Search first - they must enable discovery - before collaboration can happen. I applaud the IT departments I’ve dealt with in taking this first step.

So no, I don’t think IT is really clueless.

I don’t generally write technical posts, but the geek inside me wanted to share some insights into how to “mashup” Google Enterprise Search and Social Bookmarking. Here’s what you’ll need:

• A Google Mini or Google Search Appliance
• Scuttle - an open source, delicious-like social bookmarking application
• Xalan - a Java-based, open source XSLT engine

The Value Proposition
The idea behind this is this: when a user performs a search, each of the results on the page display social bookmarking information (tags and “saved by” count) if that URL has been bookmarked by somebody within the enterprise. This helps the searcher make an more informed choice when deciding which content to look at. If somebody else inside the enterprise has found a relevant content item to be helpful then perhaps the searcher should look at it first. It also exposes the searcher to others within the enterprise who have a mutual interest in the content being looked for.

Technical Mumbo Jumbo
Out of the box the Google Search Appliance provides a great amount of flexibility in modifying how search page behaves and feels. This is done through modifying the default XSLT (which produces a UI nearly identical to google.com). So, ideally all I’d have to do to include scuttle into the search results is use the document() XSLT function invoke a scuttle API that returns XML data about the URL (including the tag list and saved by count). I could then aggregate this XML with Google results XML displaying a seamless result to the user. Unfortunately the Google Search Appliance XSLT engine does not support the document() function, so I’m left to run an external XSLT engine - hence Xalan.

So, here’s what I did:

1. Downloaded Xalan and made some minor tweaks to the “SimpleServlet” demo application (class and package name change, modified the configuration to use my XSLT and invoke the Google Search Appliance to retrieve the results in XML format).
2. Packaged the modified version of the “SimpleServlet” and deployed it on my Tomcat instance.
3. Copied the Default XSLT style sheet from the Google Search Appliance, and modified it starting at line 2398 (the XSLT template for a snippet) adding code to invoke the Scuttle API and incorporate tags and saved by count at the bottom of the snippet. Saved the XSLT and bundled it with my “SimpleServlet” war file.
4. Copied the scuttle “posts_get.php” API and made a new API that returns bookmark information for a given URL.

That’s it. Users now access my custom web application to perform enterprise searches (instead if using the default GSA frontend), but so far so good. Hopefully one day Google will support the document() function so we can do integration like this using the XSLT engine on the appliance. That would certainly make life a lot easier.

Philosophical Thought of the Year:
Can anybody explain to me how omniscience and free will can co-exist?  For example, if I have to choose A, B or C, and it is already known that I will choose B, how can I do anything but choose B?

I recently pondered over the myriad applications and services Google has acquired and produced over recent months and realized that they are well positioned to dominate the Enterprise 2.0 market. The best way to illustrate is to give a simple rundown of how Google addresses the Enterprise 2.0 SLATES approach (I’m not going to argue the value of SLATES as I and others have done that before):

• Search: Google Enterprise Search
• Links: Page Rank
• Authoring: Google Apps for the Enterprise, JotSpot, Blogger, YouTube
• Tags (Social Bookmarking): Google Base
• Extensions: Adsense
• Signals: Google Reader, Feedburner

We musn’t forget Orkut, Google’s Social Networking application (Social Networking is one key element that is missing from SLATES), as this could easily be bundled into the commercial offering as well.

All of these applications are, or can be, converted for commercial use using either the cheaper SaaS model for economies of scale as Google has done with Google Apps, or packaged as a more expensive Appliance. In my experience larger companies feel better when they control their data, so the appliance option for them might be more compelling.

As a consumer, we already get single sign on to most of these applications. For example, when I sign in to GMail I can access Google Reader or Google Base without signing in again, and this cohesiveness is fundamental for user acceptance of any Enterprise 2.0 solution.

I also see a lot of potential for Adsense in the Extensions camp, where instead of promoting ads as one would do in the consumer world, companies will promote presentations, deadlines, important documents and highlight employee contributions using Adsense technology.

Enterprise YouTube could also significantly change the way people blog inside the firewall. Imagine your engineering team recording and uploading their status updates on a biweekly basis, or your boss sending you an email with a video message about his meeting in Shanghai yesterday, and having all of these video blogs stored in a searcheable repository.

As of now all Google really offers in the Enterprise 2.0 space is Enterprise Search (and I think Search is the first and most important element), and Docs and Spreadsheets (online, collaborative versions of Excel and Word). I’d bet money that Google will come to the market with a more compelling offering in the near term.