Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Almost Notes

Author:Russell Lipton
Posted:9/24/2000; 5:44:22 PM
Topic:Almost Notes
Msg #:21682 (In response to 21681)
Prev/Next:21681 / 21683

Ack!

I dare not say anything about Groove for honorable NDA reasons (not that Dave in any way was implying I should). Wish I could!

Software needn't be a zero-sum game - it really can be about abundance. As I understand it, this has been one of the points Dave has made repeatedly about Microsoft and Bill Gates' opportunity to show true leadership.

Dave put it very well in today's Davenet. Software engineer/artists bring themselves to their work.

In this case, while Notes certainly exploits outlining, that was not the core metaphor - rather, the "shared document" was. This arose from a web, forgive the expression, of historical, design and implementation constraints (as well as opportunities) that were there 'at the creation'.

While the Notes architecture has shown amazing stretch-ability, I don't think many folks at Lotus would disagree that it has reached maturity. Extensions are taking place by surrounding the core servers with additional functionality, but the platform itself (or the "metaphor", if you will) is complete. That doesn't mean Notes is dead - cf COBOL or FORTRAN ... and that isn't a knock on my part viz. guilt by association ;-).

Asking (considering) whether Radio Userland is almost as powerful as Notes is a bit like being asked whether I've stopped beating my wife. I'd rather not answer!

Radio Userland is powerful in an extraordinarily new fashion that *could never have been* Notes' destiny. So, the question is unanswerable - not least because I honestly don't yet understand Radio Userland well enough to factor an answer. It just has that peculiar, almost indefinable but unmistakable savor of a cool new, unexplored creative territory that is shared by all truly great software.

(I hope the folks at Groove won't mind my saying that the same thing is going on there in its unique way too ....)

I'm not falsely humble but I gladly accept my own limitations. I'm just a writer-user fundamentally. I consider myself fortunate to be involved with people like Ray Ozzie and Dave Winer - to the very minor degree that I am. How cool is it for someone like me that Dave cares so much about writing-the-Web, weaving that into every last little product feature?

Since music is on our minds, my personal situation is not unlike being involved with watching a Bach and a Beethoven at work (not bad analogies ;-).

Now, back to the more mundane business of figuring out how to take advantage of live outlines ...

There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:56:50 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.