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Design a Virtual Office with Open Source?
apropos asks: "An interesting question came up recently when discussing (yet again) starting an open-source based consulting company: 'How would you design the ultimate virtual office with open source software?' With things like fax, VoIP, web, email, security and office suites all available as open source products, what kind of useful things could be done? One idea that came to mind was emailing answering machine recordings. What would you put into your ultimate virtual office solution?"
...buy it with Virtual money.
Emacs has all those things, right?
You can use Asterisk for your PBX.
Great simple CRM.
If I'm self-employed, can I take a virtual deduction on my taxes?
What would be useful?
emailing answering machine recordings.. I don't think so. Emailing the entire answering machine recording could backfire. That could easily be used as a DoS against someone's email box ("Let's all leave a message for that ass Professor Doofus tonight!")
Not that I get a lot of faxes these days (read: "the 21st century") but it would be nice to have software that would OCR a fax then email the text to me (this one is simple enough that it probably already exists) == Less paper.
If a company were large enough to have a mail room, then scanning in snail mail and emailing images would be neat. One could always fetch the hard copy if needed. I'm far more efficient with electronic files than I am with paper. (My desk is a pigsty)
Trolling is a art,
That's what I'd put into the picture. People. Remember, technology is nothing but an enabler. From the receptionist who answers your phone (can be in a call center, sure, but they should be breathing) to the monkey on the keyboard getting the job done, people are what will make the difference. Everything else is an end to a means, and besides - there's nothing like dealing with people to cut through some of the crap that we get day in and day out with this stuff.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I think I'd recommend a good secretary. A good secretary who'll take messages for you and deliver them is a lot more practical and easier to implement than a system to email answering machine messenges. Then, you can actually conduct business instead of designing whizz-bang systems that are little more than novelties. Just a thought.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
If I was setting up something I would use Asterisk ( http://www.asteriskpbx.org ) for answering machine /voice mail and VoIP.
1)meet hot chick
2)show them your low Slashdot UID
3)get laid
I'm still working on my plan.
Get a winmodem and software from Linmodems.org
Citing the site:
# Think telephone emulation (put the audio card into full duplex, and talk to the linmodem with it).
# Think telephone with a backspace key (use the linmodem to dial for you).
# Think smart telephone: "That line is busy. Do you want me to retry in five minutes?"
# Think "voice dialling".
# Think "soft pbx". Equip enough machines in an office for all the outside lines. Then do IP telephone inter-office, and go to a linmodem when you need an outside line.
# Think answering machine.
# Think pager interface. Your answering machine takes the call, phones your pager company and pages you).
# Think "contact database with integral dialler, and answering machine recognition".
# Think "call recording with no off-hook click".
# Think message detail recorder (basically a record of all time spent on the phone. Great for billing.
I guess mailing voice recording wouldn't be hard.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Aside from the standard web-based groupware, time and project tracking, file sharing, faxing, customer collaboration/communication, and coding tools.. I would add wireless, low-bandwidth optimized UI's to all of the above as well as to things like Nessus, nmap, ssh, load testing, data validation services, site scraper, etc. etc.
Its nice to be able to sit with a client at lunch and run a security scan and site survey from your PDA and fax the results back to him so they are waiting in his office when he gets back.
I am building those tools for my fledgling company and used some of them today at a client site.
right now, i would say the best office solution is openoffice for general purpose,
but then again just like in windows and MS Office you will always need add-ons for your specific needs, i would say there is no "1 office suite" that can definitely fill your needs (that is if you want to do more than the standard stuff)
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
I haven't done it yet (largely because of the cost involved and my current lack of funds), but an open source VOIP system could kick ass and save you money. Phone systems are historically very expensive. It should be possible to run VOIP on your NAT router with an asterisk compatable phone card that supports say, 4 extensions (assuming a small office here). Phones are probably your biggest expense, but a complete phone system is often an order of magnitude higher than what can currently be implemented with VOIP in a small office, at least that's my take on it.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
This is fine if you run Windows..
The link in the original post had instructions for setting it up in Linux, with free software.
I have been using my Linux server as an answering machine for about three years now. When I get a voice message, it is archived, noted in a log file, converted to MP3, posted on a web UI, and e-mailed to my yahoo mail account. So, I can access the message locally, or via Yahoo Mail if I'm out.
sure - that's for winblows... now do it for a real operating system.... besides $39.95, though not expensive, certainly isn't open source.. so how do you handle dynamic dsl ip addresses of you must check messages by ip? how man lines can your program handle simulteously before your cpu gives up the ghost servicing winmodems?
Offices are bad....mmmmkay
All equipment (phone, fax, computer...) would turn off at the press of one (1) button.
Then if somebody still tried to reach you, an automated voice or fax or email, as the case may be, would tell them: "I'm trying to have some quiet time here DAMMIT!"
The ability to be unreachable anywhere would be a terrific option for cell phone owners.
Just create an MS BOB clone! Not only would you have a virtual office, but you'd have a virtual kitchen, living room, filling cabinet, and more great features at your finger tips!
How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?
The one area in which MS Ofiice is way ahead of any open source software is the functionality of Excel. Making graphs, sorting and binning, analyzing data - these are basic but exceedingly useful functions Excel does much better than any open source spreadsheet software I've ever used. Those who rely heavily on data analysis will use higher-powered programs than Excel, but for intermediate users, having that functionality quickly at hand is very useful. This is one area where, though it's not a fancy "new innovation," that could really improve the usefulness of open source spreadsheet programs.
Unfortunately, my virtual office would have to be a recording studio. And I still haven't found anything like Cubase (with VST effect and instrument support, the ability to interface with just about all my instruments, and a nice notation setup) for Linux. Sure, there are all sorts of programs that do /some/ of what Cubase does, but nothing truly integrated to the level I need.
/still/ haven't gotten my sound card to work right under Fedora, and it's a bog-standard Audigy!
/then/ I'd be looking at Linux.
Besides, I
Now if my virtual office were a musicological research library with full support for searching through massive databases of scores,
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
to email myself incoming vm's
One word: Usability.
Open Source is wonderful for what it is, its principles are beautiful, its spirit is clean, and it is absolutely no good to end users as it stands today.
Applications do not look the same, nor do they work the same. KDE and GNOME? Yeah. But there are two of them. Why? End users do not care about choice. They want something that works, and where every application looks the same and works the same. They also do not care about recompiling their kernel every time they buy some hardware, or recompiling software to alter some setting only available compile-time.
Whatever functionality (which is normally Open Source developers' focus) the office solution gives, it is absolutely worthless if it takes a Ph.D. in Rocket Science (or two hours of trial-and-failure) to understand how to reach the wanted end results.
So usability would be my primer choice for end result.
I dare not count how many Open Source projects actually start out creating a logo, a hompeage, and an implementation of themes, a particularly pointless feature. Somehow that says everything. For most of them, anyways.
How do you pay people you not only can't see daily, but possibly may have never even met in person? How can you check up on the current state of your operation?
Open Standards Portal
VOCP does this. Multiple mailboxes, faxes, faxback,
downloads messages via the web so that they can be played anywhere. Uses perl and python.
Works very well, I have used it for over 3 years.
And of course, it's GPL licensed, and downloadable at vocp.sourceforge.net.
PK
Try to get an encoder with a "faster" option. ....Hi....I'm looking for....um...you know....that gadget you guys were selling...it was um....let me think...um....oh....that's right the LART2004"
Still perfectly easy to understand especially if you often get messages from people that go, "oh.....yeah
Well, I just use winamp with one of those DSP plugins with the little slider that affects the speed and not the pitch.... but an encoder that does it by default would be nice.
A smart encoder with a 20 percent speed increase and pause compression (standard 1 sec pauses instead of variable length) would take a lot of hassle out of wading through voicemail.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Why is parent modded up? The original post was talking about a virtual open source based office.
Silly me, I actually spend about a minute looking for the source code on the author's site! The least that the parent could have done is to mention explicitely that it's not open source, so as to avoid deceiving people.
The obvious browser choice is Firefox. The only downside is that you have to reload Slashdot 5 times until it looks right.
Yeah well... If it ever works that way, chances are you also need to
4) Pay
Darl and SCO are in the 801 area code.
What on earth is this number?
I always wanted an excuse to put together an ltsp project....so damn cool.
My buddy impleted a big setup at his company (hosting co) and even have Win32 clients.
You get to run a bunch of terminals off of a server with some crafted nics.
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
Obvious features are intercepting all outgoing fax and data calls to see if they can be routed over the internet to save on toll charges. Less obvious is setting up a special email account which automatically prints attachments of any email received -- just don't give out this address to spammers!
Personally, I think all received faxes should be saved to hard disk and previewed before being printed to prevent wasting paper. But I'm not sure how easy this is to implement currently with open source.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
An open source secretary.
Diego Rey
diegoT
Har, har, har!!!
You could charge to post your or your clients' ideas on Slashdot and watch their IP disappear as people with more resources than they have scoop up the idea and run with it.
I bet their competitors would pay you a good bit of money for this service.
Drat! I'm falling victim to my own idea by even posting this consulting idea!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
That way it would be even easier to ship _everyone's_ job overseas.
You think people would wise up and stop digging their own graves...
lunchtime whackin booth...
need I say more?
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
One objection that kept my last place decidedly windoze was the accounting software. There are a limited number of accounting s/w packages that an anal CPA will be happy with, even in Bill Gates' Realm. In our case, the Controller said, essentially, "Anything you want, as long as it runs Solomon Accounting Software". (FWIW, Solomon was purchased by Great Plains, who was later acquired by Our Friends In Redmond.) In this case, a significant number of desktops had to have windoze along with at least one server (MS SQL Server).
;-)
But that's just an example. It could have been something else. It could be Illustrator. Or Photoshop (yes, I Love The GIMP, but I'd switch if Photoshop was free). The productivity of users in the long run is far more significant than even, say, a $15,000 accounting package.
My wife is currently taking the Becker/Conviser course in preparation for her CPA exam. Yup, we have to have Windoze for the practice software. Fortunately, OpenOffice runs very nicely on her XP box.
I think that, as long as you're prepared to build and *support* heterogeneous systems with perhaps a blend of "Whatever The End User Needs", you are fine. You can suggest ways to save money, but keep your eye on productivity - it's arguable to me that OpenOffice is in some ways *better* than MS Office, for example. If you walk in *telling* users they should be happy with, say, Abiword, you're already on the wrong foot, IMHO.
Mark
I have been evaluating Group Office http://www.group-office.com/ as a replacement for my company's ACT. Seems to be a step in the right direction.
Tech phone call takes what the user says, types it into google, and redirect whatever browser the user is on to the search results
to have a virtual afair with... she could also pick up my virtual dry cleaning
how about a Virtual Valery Office. you know you would get all the male customers calling. ..........but whrere would the faxs come out at?
-DrMyke
"mmmmmmmmm, doughnuts" - H.J.Simpson; super genius
Well *RATS* - it's back down to 3 already - looks like I wasn't alone in having reservations about it, but WAS alone in being overly bothered what the metamodders might think :-)
judging by your uid... and other things.. you have never been laid
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
No place better!
heh
- X10 controller
- SmartHome.Com
- web-based X10 controller
- Complete listing of X10 software
- Linux-based HomeVision
- GNU Automaton
- an established IPv6 tunnel with your own IPv6 address subnet (it's a whole new world out there)
- SMS server for your cell-phone (good with X10)
- X10 event to your SMS phone (via paging)
- Control X10 from your WAP cellphone
- Mobile IP server for your roving laptop
and as a tribute toward the fabled CMU Trojan Room Coffee webcam lore...Coffee Maker (this one needs an Java-Dispenser SNMP agent badly)
We're almost there...
How about some virtual unemployment?
Advanced Interactive
The have some interesting products...
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Cannot get it to work.
When are Linux geeks going to learn that people (non-geeks) want EASY TO INSTALL AND EASY TO USE software? LEARN FROM M$.
What is it with this 'if it is hard to use then it is better and everybody who disagrees is not intelligent' attititude?....
Linux crashing every 15 minutes is a myth. XP is stabler than Linux -- at least on my hardware. I don't know about crappy 5$ equipment though.
I'm not an expert on STDs (I play one on TV...nevermind) but I don't think you want your secretary to be the source of anything...open or otherwise.
The purpose of the assistant is to interface with the outside world so that you can do the creative engineering that customers want to pay for.
The phone's gonna ring. Are you going to answer it every time, interrupt your train of thought, and devote your attention to juggling it? Or are you going to dump all your incoming calls into voicemail and deal with them one day per week?
If you don't have a lot of cash, try paying your assistant the same thing that you're paying yourself: a chunk of equity along with a low salary.
I'm not a business process engineer but you have to consider these issues if you plan to be in business.
364 paid days off, the rest is bullshit.
It's looks pretty interesting and powerful. It does show; however, that good programmers are not necessarily good UI designers... :)
Jim Harry
Design an Open Source office.... It would look a lot like MS Office.. You know, Open Source geeks like to diss MS Office. But ask your self, why is it so popular? Not because MS has a monopoly, it's because it is very good and very useful. MS Office is a very tight and nice application. Why do you think Open Office trys to mirror it?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
How does Open Source do it? How does telecommuters do it? How does Outsourcing do it? How do travling salesmen do it? How do long-haul truck drivers do it?
that emails you when you get vmail and does openh323, SIP plus their own protocol called IAX that lets you link multiple boxes together via ethernet...
its rad.
This topic has been on my mind for the past year whilst I've been setting up a small (3 location, 5 person) management consulting practice. I'm going to dump as much as I can here.
;)
1a. File-sharing across multiple locations. Haven't done this because bandwidth isn't quite cheap enough yet, but perhaps in the near future, I'll be setting up rsync'd shares between the 3 locations so we can work from the same file base. Hasn't been a problem when working on separate projects but with more joint projects, it is starting to get messy with people keeping their own project directories.
1b. Search interface to files. Heirarchical file structures suck for trying to find things. Good for filing once, but I reckon I could retreive files quicker with a google-like interface. So, I want a prebuilt web front end that can automatically provide a search interface to samba shares. I should be able to treat each share as a collection, so I can chose to search just one collection or many. This would be very useful.
Personally, I want to work towards the following solution.
* samba shares of heirarchical folders that can be mapped and synced to laptops
* a web search interface to the samba shares that understands doc/xls/pdf etc a la htdig
* rsync to maintain similar shares across multiple sites
Alternatively, it would be interesting to investigate peer-to-peer as an alternative - as long as files could still be synced to go on the road. Cool P2P features would be to define how many copies should be stored of each file on the network (to force backup) and to have the primary files migrate to where they are used the most to cut down bandwidth transfers.
2. Groupware - I've been meaning to look at the OSS groupware packages available, because with more shared projects, we need a centralised way of managing projects, tasks, calendars and contacts. These should be able to be accessed from Outlook ideally (Outlook 2003 is pretty good I have to admit). It would be nice to have faxes received via a modem in a linux box arrive in the groupware where appropriate staff can access them from wherever they are at the time. The groupware would naturally be a good home for the web interface to the samba file shares.
3. Office software - OpenOffice.org appears to lack the ability to track changes - essential for multiple people working on a project. Compare document is not enough. You need to be able to identify changes, and add comment bubbles for the development and review process. Additionally OOo needs to have a basic project management tool, drawing tool, and even a note taking tool a la MS Project, Visio and OneNote. That would cover most business needs.
4. Security phpki looks interesting and useful for managing email certs. Naturally most network communication should be encrypted between locations with SSH tunnels or similar.
5. Intelligence. Haven't seen anything like this but it would be very very useful for any business. There needs to be a web interface to an intelligence gathering and searching tool. So I hear that "so-and-so is planning to do this" I can record it in a database. Later, someone could search for so-and-so and be provided with the gossip from the different sources within the organisation. Could be a very useful tool. Perhaps something like an OSS version of the NSA's Intelink software - a means of providing, sharing and searching business intelligence.
6. Timesheet. A good OSS web based timesheeting system would be very useful.
7. NNTP. Thats right, I want to use good ole newsgroups. I tried web forums, but they didn't go down well because you had to be online. With NNTP you can use an offline reader, and reply offline. I reckon I can get my technophobe partners to use that because its so similar to email. Email is a bane for internal communication because of the cc's and everyone archiving mail. It would be easier to move as much as possible to a newsserver and use email only for direct communication between two people. Then a web interface from the intranet would be nice as well!
I'm not asking for too much am I?
When I pick up the telephone, I want my MP3 player to pause. I also want the telephone to do a google search on the incoming caller-id. And log the beginning and end of every call. And automatically bill it to the customer associated with that telephone number.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Rather than buy it with virtual money, why not outsource it to slashdot, the ultimate free consultancy service:
1) Set up consultancy firm
2) Ask slashdot
3) Profit
I think the most important thing is not usability as an earlier poster claimed though that is important but maintainability. Owners of small businesses with a dozen employees can't afford to have a full time network or systems administrator. So the responsibility usually falls on someone who is an engineer or administrative assistant but who is more interested in computer stuff than their average co-worker. If you put together a package that requires them to call you back in at $120 an hour everytime something strange happens, it will put the brakes on adoption. Make your money and your reputation on doing installs and never needing to come back. Make your product and service the AK-47 of the SOHO world. BTW, if any readers don't know, the M-16 has better range and accuracy but jams when not cleaned regularly whereas the AK rifle can be dragged through swamps and get sand and mud in the chamber yet keep on firing happily, at least that is the reputation. (If any godless communists with personal experience with it want to correct me, feel free.)
As for specific cool ideas... Take the voicemail to email one step further: maybe you could get voice recognition software to translate the message to words (or just phonemes when it is unsure of a word), send that to email, and act as a proxy allowing a reply email from, for example a two way pager, to be translated back into speech by voice synthesis software, then redial the original number found by callerID, read off the reply and ask for a certain touchtone or the word 'confirmed' to be said if the correct recipient got the reply. Like this:
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
While certainly not opensource, Oracle's new Collaboration Suite handles that functionality remarkably gracefully. Straight to the inbox as (oog) a .wav file. Time to up the mail quotas.
- an accounting system
- a groupware system with web interface, native client, sync, etc.
- custom web-based applications development services
- bonus: network transparency (move whole shebang onto servers at the client's location without a lot of grief, if they so desire)
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I wonder what the point of this article is?
And why is it a virtual office, of you use physical computers? If it is the work place at home, call it Soho, or call it the workplace of a telecommuter, but I dont see what the virtual here is, besides a disturbing buzz-word.
And by the way, did I miss the content of this article? It is just listening some well known web sites. Where is the news?
Is that "Free" as in "outgoing and carefree" or "Free" as in "don't have to pay for it"?
"An open source secretary."
You intend to compile her?
What if you came across a freeware product that perfectly met your needs (Pegasus does for me) but it's not "open source" - does that condemn it to never being considered?
Are you really looking for open source, or free (as in beer)? If it's free (as in beer) but not open-source, is it considered as evil as someone who asks money for the product?
How dare the OP mention his product "for windoze". I mean, let's punish him by... modding him down.
Nothing to do on a Friday night, eh? I'm surprised.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
we already have this at work. our voice mail system is a computer running some weird DOS program called amanda. we get our voicemail right oin our inbox.
it's not free software, but it's not exactly a new concept...
Around 1997 or so I worked in an office where they were considering an integrated voicemail system that was pretty cool. It had its own modular server/bridge hardware (this was an office of about 300 people) and interfaced in with the email system (which was Netware + Groupwise in this office). When you received a phone message it would automatically show up in your inbox with a phone icon next to it, and you could select to either play it through the PC speakers, or via phone headset, in which case it would instantly ring your line with the message. Pretty snazzy, and worked with the existing phone network.
Instead of concentrating on the open source office, how about concentrating on creating a *product* or *service* based on open source?
Create a product, get a customer, and *then* think about how geeky your office can be.
Nothing to do on a Friday night, eh? I'm surprised.
The irony of these type of posts always makes me chuckle. Not just the quoted part either.
Ah well, now that I got a couple more beers, time to head back out to the beach to watch the launch.
Apply cloroform soaked rag and duct tape?
Slip her a mickey?
Keep a watchful eye out for the daycare staff?
Kick over her wheelchair?
Go download an ISO of the OpenCD (version 1.2, currently). It has open-source, free applications that do just about everything you're asking for.
I use the windows version for any new computer I put together for people. When someone tells me "I don't want to have to spend several hundred dollars for MS Office, $600 for Adobe, an ftp client, and so on... I just break out the CD and tell them to have fun.
It comes with OpenOffice, Bender, GIMP, a POV Tracer, FileZillah, TightVNC and many other free opensource applications. It's beautiful! Even I use it for personal machines when I don't want to search around for all the appls I need over again.
Oh - and it also comes with a compression utility called 7zip.
If you're interested, the slides and notes from the talk are here: Fun with Asterisk and Perl.
The talk was for the Pittsburgh Perl Mongers and shows a four examples:
- text-to-speech
- dial the weather
- web form that sets up a call
- web form that sets up a conference
Asterisk is fun stuff and worth a look.Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
if im going to have a virtual office, can i still have a REAL secretary??? =)
[Scene Initech. Bob Slydell and Bob Porter are interviewing Tom.]
BOB SLYDELL: So what you do is you take the specifications from the customers and you bring them down to the software engineers?
TOM: That, that's right.
BOB PORTER: Well, then I gotta ask, then why can't the customers just take the specifications directly to the software people, huh?
TOM: Well, uh, uh, uh, because, uh, engineers are not good at dealing with
customers.
BOB SLYDELL: You physically take the specs from the customer?
TOM: Well, no, my, my secretary does that, or, or the fax.
BOB SLYDELL: Ah.
BOB PORTER: Then you must physically bring them to the software people.
TOM: Well...no. Yeah, I mean, sometimes.
BOB SLYDELL: Well, what would you say... you do here?
TOM: Well, look, I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to!! I have people skills!! I am good at dealing with people!!! Can't you understand that?!? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!!!!!!!
Only an idiot is gullible enough to disclose his/her Entrepreneurship Ideas to the World before they are ready to do so themselves.
What's up with that whole continuous-Ramen-consumption, anyway? I thought the whole point of this capitalist thing was that I could sell my risk to someone else? Why does every entrepreneurial endeavour have to be all-or-nothing? I don't want to get rich, I just want to get a salary without having to work for someone else. If I'm willing to accept minimal returns, why do I still have to accept so much risk?
-1 Funny but it hurts. Exactly what I would have rated it.
The downside is the masturbatory aftermath. Do you know how hard it is to clean semen off a keyboard?
Oops, I accidently clicked on the "Outsource" icon, and now everything is in Hindu.
Table-ized A.I.
use and environment variable HTTP_PROXY or let mozilla inherit it's proxy settings from Gnome or KDE (which both have proxy applets)
http://www.subverted.net/wakka/wakka.php?wakka=Cas eStudies
hehe... I think I've got the format memorized for the wiki address... www.subverted.net will get you to it if I goofed up.
Please use [ informative / summarizing ] SUBJECT LINES
Flame me here
What Linux needs in general is a powerful scripting-demon. Or let's call it an API demon. Something like ARexx on Amiga (or REXX on OS/2), that sits in the background and connects a scripting environment with message-interfaces of applications. However, my ideal solution would mean, that applications register all their functionality to this demon. Now any language could make use of this API. Especially scripting-anguages, since this is why it would be there.
Then I would like to see all applications coming with freely configurabel toolbars, menus and mous-actions. Any of these would make use of the same functions available at the scripting-demon.
Now, add an Office on top of that and you get really really powerful.
Also I would like to see all the desktop being task based, as I would like to see the Office being task based, rather than applicaiton-based.
The system would sense the context in which you are working and adopt. Maybe by learning your habits.
The Office would be fully modular. Wide support for answering-machines, voice-modems, fax. (Hylafax could be addressed due to modularity and scripting).
Then I would love to see code being reused:
- completly stylesheet based. No own stylesheet, just extensions to CSS1, CSS2, CSS3)
- spreadsheet in "classic" mode and "Lotus Imrpov" mode
- full use of relational databases anywhere
- full use of LDAP anywhere
- no new Fax software. Use Hylafax and/or getty.
- no monolithic applications. Instead function-modules, that can 'dock' into each other
- status monitor lists recent emails along with contacts. Full integration of IM and email without forcing the user upon certain MUA.
- export all to: Web (stylesheets!), PDF. PS, Latex, MS formats etc.
- since all is modular people disliking WPCs could replace it with a special TeX editor
- visual database designer
- visual LDAP schema designer
- and many more...
I want all information accessible anywhere in such a complex application.
Hello?? Fred?! Is this you?
HylaFAX is the fax backend included with Mac OS X, and it indeed kicks all ass.
The first company I did this with was almost entirely virtual and we used primarily telephone and email. This is good and worked OK where the projects were small enough they could be designed and implemented by 1 or 2 persons (basically isolated development). The largest project (multithreading a legacy kernel) was 3 people and I probably spent 3-4 hours a day on the phone in some phases of it.
This pattern served well enough for the next 2 companies as well (one a startup and one a large corp), but in both cases a lot of travel was involved to keep everyone in their loops.
Its not as much the software used as the mindset that everyone has to be involved in what used to be 'hallway' talk. While you have to have some additional process other than hallway talk for a project, it is very valuable and cements a group together (if all you ever experience of your co-workers is spec and design email exchange its hard to develop a feel of how they think/work, and IMO empathy with your co-workers greases the skids significantly).
To finally get to the point: based on something I read on slashdot back in 99 or so when we did the next 'virtual' startup I pushed hard to use a broader range of tools. After 4 years of trying various mechanisms some have stuck and some have not, here's what is working really well for a smallish group of sr developers (5-10) and worked OK for a larger group (25ish) of mixed sr and jr people doing development of a 500kloc scale project involving kernel work (database and OS/networking):
We set up UnrealIRC as the server (with a hack to disable the throttling so people can paste blocks of code or debug output w/o getting limited to 1 line per second) inside a firewall. Everyone uses an SSH tunnel to get to it. For clients everyone uses Xchat or mIRC.
The most important trivial sounding thing about this setup is that everyone set up a trigger that watches for their name or traffic on a
We use TWiki: it keeps everything in RCS under the covers and lets you easily attach binary files to any page (for drawings and such). There are lots of fancy plugins.
Good plan, but your UID is a bit too high to make it work.
One idea that came to mind was emailing answering machine recordings.
That's a standard service with KPN (royal dutch telecom) already. If I don't answer the phone, they take a message and mail it to me automatically, and for free. I have found this to be an extremely useful service.
H.323 is a dieing standard. Why does anyone want to waste time using it in an office suite? With over 120 vendors developing or currently selling SIP infrastructure products it will be a big mistake to ignore SIP when integrating VoIP capabilities into an Open Source Office suite. Besides, Windows Messenger uses SIP and Microsoft is stopping the support for its H.323 client called NetMeeting. Visit http://www.pulver.com/products/sip/ to see a list of vendors selling SIP components. The major Telecom players (wired carriers, wireless 3G carriers, hardware vendors, software vendors) are hedging their infrastructure bets with SIP, RFC 3261. There are at least a half a dozen Open Source frameworks to use and here are few I would recommend.
o rg/
1) http://www.iptel.org/ser/: Scalable lightweight and C-based, will become the Apache of SIP. These Germans really know their stuff. They have bridged SIMPLE (SIP Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions) with Jabber.
2) http://www.resiprocate.org/: A very stable C++ implementation used by HW vendors
3) http://dns.antd.nist.gov/proj/iptel/: Java-based implementation of the JAIN-SIP interface that also has a variant interface that works on a PDA.
4) http://www.vovida.org/: Cisco's C++ implementation
I speak from experience after participating in SIPit (SIP Interoperability Testing) 11 & 13, see http://www.sipit.net/sipit.php.
SIP Carriers:
1) http://www.vonage.com/
2) http://www.iconnecthere.com/
3) http://www.webley.com/
4) http://www.mci.com/
5) http://www.levelthree.com/
Also visit:
http://www.sipcenter.com/
http://www.sipforum.
I hope this makes a strong case with sound ideas.
Linux OS. I probably should have switched a year earlier, but it's definitely ready for most business users now. Wars have been fought over which distro to use, but Xandros can definitely help a small company be productive right now.
OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheets, and even HTML authoring (until Nvu becomes available soon). OpenOffice has a good user interface, ease of use and interoperability. Like most open source products, it just keeps getting better.
Mozilla for email and web browsing. I'll switch to Firefox soon. From what I've read, Outlook refugees (poor bastards) would like Ximian Evolution.
Fax via email. I chose MaxEmail, but there are others. Way cheaper, better and less hassle than a fax machine. I strongly prefer email. MaxEmail allows technoweanies to send a fax and we can still handle it as email (choice of PDF or TIFF). They also provide voice mail systems, but we don't use them.
Cell Phones. This sounds a bit cheesy at first glance, but the world is moving to wireless, almost forcing employees to have a cell phone anyway. Unless you're running a call center, cell phones meet all the phone needs of a typical small business. Voice mail is included. The concept of a receptionist, or worse an automated attendant system, is outdated. Putting customers on hold and transferring them three times is not a "feature" anyone should want in a phone system. VoIP and hacking together open source voice mail systems are neat technologies, but they're overkill for typical small business. If you need a small phone system, Siemens makes the GigaSet line that is well engineered with voicemail and wireless. When I last looked, they were about $350 + $80 per handset, maximum of 8 users. New models include routers and other cool stuff.
QuickBooks. Definitely NOT open source, but hopefully someone will create an open source program that can read QB data, or at least a native Linux version of QB. For now, QB Pro 2000 runs under CrossOver, but it's ugly. QB can actually be used for a lot more than accounting. If you like, it'll manage a customer/contact database, track time for hourly employees, provide rudimentary project management, etc.
In the perfect world, there would be one system that did everything. It'd be well integrated, easy to use and open source. That world will never exist, but we can come close. The goal should still be as few systems as possible, less complexity, lowest cost, and maximum ease of use. It should scale well when new employees are added. A small geek company like mine could easily go broke trying to create the perfect system. There are times when close enough will have to do, so you can get to the paying work and the never ending stream of government forms and accounting.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
... into your ultimate virtual office solution?
Other than a 30 foot BARCO screen?
A coffee mug holder. Or something else that was actually useful. Like a scratchpad. And a pen.
I was testing a knoppix Live CD with OpenGroupWare [1] and that project really surprise me... for projects groupware is a nice and complete web solution.l
Have you try it?
[1] http://www.opengroupware.org/en/knoppix/index.htm
While you're taking advice, consider this idea from an old issue of Inc. magazine. Hire an assistant that complements your way of thinking, rather than a clone. Most entrepreneurs are dreamers, more focused on the next big deal than on reordering toilet paper. If you're like that, hire a neat, orderly, punctual person, even though you'll never fully "mesh" with such a person. The best indicator, according to that article, is the applicant's car. A car that's fairly clean and free of garbage inside indicates an orderly, disciplined mind.
I have been running a virtual office with linux and windows based on a large variety of technologies that are available.
My methods are fairly primitive, but they do work.
IM is a good medium for messages.
TeamSpeak or Ventrilo for voice communication.
and of coarse E-Mail.
What I have been going after is eGroupware. This web based application is very very nice and clean. A pain to install but worth the frustration.
I have quite a few ideas and how to put them together. Not impossible and usefull to say the least. Anyone got a project going that would be interested in some idea's?
Hesperant