Wednesday, August 25, 2004

rhs blog: OneNote And Collaboration (08/24/2004 12:53:16 PM)

rhs blog: OneNote And Collaboration (08/24/2004 12:53:16 PM) "Almost exactly a year ago, I asked whether IBM should be concerned about Microsoft's OneNote product. I continue to hear interesting things about OneNote. Seems to me that Microsoft is looking at OneNote as a collaboration tool. I.e, look at the second to last heading in this article, and the quote within:
Willoughby has found that OneNote is just the ticket for collaborating on team projects. When all research group members use OneNote, the critical peer review process in which students review and comment on each others' work becomes seamless.
Although I don't have a tablet PC, I think I'm going to try it out to see what it offers. Based on things I've read about how it interacts with MS Office, think it's probably an OLE server, so integration with Lotus Notes should be possible."

OneNote is a very useful app, and it's definitely handy for laptops/desktops as well as Tablet PCs. The SP1 updates add real-time session-based collaborative authoring a la Apple Hydra in some respects. The session sharing works well, but it has some limitations:
1. Once the session ends, each participant has a snapshot of the work-in-progress, and there is no way to replicate/resync later changes
2. It doesn't work across NATs or firewalls unless you have configured your equipment to allow UPnP

Still pretty innovative, in any case, and a nice enhancement to already-useful OneNote.

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