11–20 of 123 posts
I wonder if Ozzie considers Groove to be one of the products he expended energy on and failed. From my perspective it seemed to actually be succeeding as a deeply network-aware thick client for collaborative knowledge work when Microsoft acquired it and killed it off. Or if not outright killed it, then managed it to death by strapping it to the SharePoint boat anchor. I wouldn't count that as a failure per-se. It did…
I'm actually missing working OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). I used to like it in MS Works in the 90ies: I could insert an area from a Works spreadsheet into a Works document and have it auto-update (you could choose if it should link the data or copy it.)
Quick hypothesis on PIMs/editors/etc, from someone who worked on a PIM in the late 1980s and who misses outliners and others- the biggest "unimagined" change is from personal information management to hive-mind information management (via search engines). It used to be that everyone had to maintain their own personal "library"- now this activity is relegated to cranks and luddites. The second order effect is a change…
[1] Back when businesses were mainly concerned with internal document sharing it wasn't as much of an issue. But as that expanded to marking up documents with outside lawyers, accountants etc that changed quickly. When the Internet happened for the masses in the late 90's it was game over for most of the competition.
I wonder if Ozzie considers Groove to be one of the products he expended energy on and failed. From my perspective it seemed to actually be succeeding as a deeply network-aware thick client for collaborative knowledge work when Microsoft acquired it and killed it off. Or if not outright killed it, then managed it to death by strapping it to the SharePoint boat anchor. I wouldn't count that as a failure per-se. It did…
That said, I absolutely loved Groove the product and Groove the team. It was a dapp with a wonderfully-usable interface, built on a pure P2P blockchain-like infrastructure that achieved distributed consensus for generalized transactions.
It had an extremely loyal following in the NGO and GOV space. They "got it" as to the unique benefits of a secure end-to-end encrypted system for small team collaboration.
But the enterprise and consumers chose centralization as the winning architecture, and the rest is history.
has anyone cloned Lotus Improv, either literally or ideologically? The closest thing I've used recently that was close was probably Airtable, but that's more an iterative improvement on FileMaker/Access, with a web focus, than really a competitor to Improv. There also used to be a Java desktop app, but it wasn't targeted for casual desktop use, and I've long since forgotten its name.
I'm actually missing working OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). I used to like it in MS Works in the 90ies: I could insert an area from a Works spreadsheet into a Works document and have it auto-update (you could choose if it should link the data or copy it.)
The desktop app scene is so different today with more and more apps moving to SaaS. In the 90s, they were so many interesting and well-made desktop apps that were full of interesting ideas. Lotus Improv was certainly one of them. ( A 1990 video demonstration can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsYsZmhnXR4 ) Lotus Word Pro also took a refreshingly different UI approach to MS Word. Long before Microsoft i…
Somewhere, in my office, is still a CD with Lotus 96 on it, but I've had no real desire to reinstall it in a VM.
Whenever this comes up, I always ask, even though I can anticipate the answer: has anyone cloned Lotus Improv, either literally or ideologically? The closest thing I've used recently that was close was probably Airtable, but that's more an iterative improvement on FileMaker/Access, with a web focus, than really a competitor to Improv. There also used to be a Java desktop app, but it wasn't targeted for casual desktop…
as far as I know Quantrix Modeler https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/ started as a clone and has continued on with the same idea, though by now I assume it's accreted enough bells and whistles to be just barely recognizable.
ETA: also it's 2.5 grand a seat so...
Only for the submission. You can write externally. There used to be "It's All Text" before Firefox's extensions got gutted, which automated that copying. I wonder where that lies on their list of "apps" to edit with.
Whenever this comes up, I always ask, even though I can anticipate the answer: has anyone cloned Lotus Improv, either literally or ideologically? The closest thing I've used recently that was close was probably Airtable, but that's more an iterative improvement on FileMaker/Access, with a web focus, than really a competitor to Improv. There also used to be a Java desktop app, but it wasn't targeted for casual desktop…
How "cloned" do you want? as far as I know Quantrix Modeler https://quantrix.com/products/quantrix-modeler/ started as a clone and has continued on with the same idea, though by now I assume it's accreted enough bells and whistles to be just barely recognizable. ETA: also it's 2.5 grand a seat so...
(I'm not saying it's Not Worth That, but I definitely would not get back my investment for what I use spreadsheets for.)