Real-time Collaboration Survey

We would like to engage you in a short survey, allowing us to be up-to-date with everyone’s opinion regarding real-time collaborative applications.

If you have exactly 1 min, give this survey a try. When we have reached 100 responses, we will publish the results.

Enjoy the weekend!

XTWIP is going to Mini Seedcamp Zagreb

XTWIP has been selected for Mini Seedcamp in Zagreb, along with 19 other online projects. Five out of twenty projects are founded by Romanian entrepreneurs – and that really makes us proud. We do realize we’re up against some pretty heavy competitors – we respect that and most of all we look forward to that.

It is going to be a challenging experience and a great opportunity for XTWIP to get international exposure. We’ll get a chance to find out how real time collaboration, our core business, is seen by experienced entrepreneurs and investors.

We’ll keep you posted.

See you in Zagreb !

XTWIP demo is here !

We’re inviting you to a new demo of XTWIP collaborative solution . Click on the link below to see the real time capabilities of XTWIP in a simple sample application developed by one of our collaborators.

www.xtwip.com/demo/

This application is cooler if several people use it at the same time. So don’t forget to invite your friends.

Failing that, open the link in two separate browser windows and see how the changes from one reflect on the other.

Don’t forget to give us feedback - just post a comment below or Twitter us.

Follow-up Alpha Release

We presented XTWIP alpha at SeedMoney breakfast today at Cafe Zu.

For those of who missed it, here it is: http://bit.ly/6ccSSw

We want to thank all those present, who gave us feedback regarding the demos, the platform and even regarding our presentation. We promise we will continue to improve our skills as we will continue to upgrade the platform.

Out next step is to prepare the platform for it’s users. Tehnically, we are defining the API for integrating applications into XTWIP. We will sure let you know when that step is ready.

For now, send us requests for invites on XTWIP alpha. Post a comment here, or leave your email in a direct message on twitter @xtwip.

See ya

XTWIP.com Alpha release !

We will release XTWIP Private Alpha, tomorrow for Seedmoney Breakfast at Cafe Zu

This means you’ll get invites to try out xtwip.com and to share with your friends.

You’ll see two Java(FX) apps we developed on the XTWIP collaborative API:

• a rich text editor
• a vector graphics tool

We’d really appreciate your feedback so we’re expecting you tomorrow, 9 AM, at Cafe Zu

The Launch[48] Week

This week we attended Launch48 in Bucharest with Decily, a web app for brainstorming and making online decisions on the fly. We had to envision, plan, develop and market this in 48 hours. Needless to say, this was quite a adrenaline-rushing, roller-coaster-like experience and it has taught us a lot about how to get things done, no questions asked.

As if the 48 hours of Decily.com of start-up on steroids weren’t enough, we also presented a first draft for XTWIP at OpenCoffee Thursday morning. We had a lot of questions from people in the room, got quite a few good ideas out of it – the most significant being we should start active conversations with potential customers even before our service is market ready. Next week on Wednestday, we’re presenting XTWIP at Seedmoney Breakfast, so we hope we’ll see you there

Back to the Launch48 experience, we’d like to thank the advisory board and the mentors for their valuable feedback. Most of all, however, we thank the team we worked with for all the effort they put into Decily during the 2-day event. Particularly, we’d like to thank Val for the hard work, expertise and useful insight he invested into Decily.

SeVinde.ro and OpenMyCV.com were the other two projects being implemented at the event. They also had great, simple-but-inspiring concepts and their teams also did a great job at launch48ing. We are honoured to have been in the same start-up sandbox as them

The projects were presented at NetCamp in 20-minute slots, together with other inspiring speeches and great initiatives

You can also find a short presentation of Decily here on Youtube

Google Wave & TWIP

Recently, we have been asked whether  TWIP is a direct competitor of Wave, the latest and hottest technology since Maps.

How is TWIP different ? Do we believe in the success of Wave? Do we have the same market?

“Are you out of your mind competing with Google?” some of you could ask.  Yes, we are. But we don’t think of it as competition.

First of all, we thank Google for introducing and explaining the concept of real time collaboration to the online community and to the web industry. Wave is a powerful conversational tool, extremely extensible and easy to integrate with other web-applications.  We hope that, along with other tools on the market, developers will become more and more attracted to building collaborative software.

So what are the differences between Wave and TWIP?

From a technical standpoint, the two solutions converge to the same idea : servers that manage the communication and synchronize the content between users. TWIP uses XMPP for message management just like Wave. To some extent, both use  Operational Transforms to merge changes into the data model.

In terms of target, we are not addressing the same users.

Wave is the newest conversational tool.  It has a lot of cool features (have you seen the spell checker?…wow), all perfect for it’s raison d’etre: a conversational tool. Even if extended, it is still a tool for real-time ubercool chat. The External API developed for integrating Wave into other websites is purposed to offer conversations as widgets.

As far as we are concerned…

We are building a platform to host & support applications, each of which individually has it’s own scope. They can exists just fine without TWIP. We are only offering an easy solution for those who want this cool feature named real-time collaboration. They may use it however they want. Even build online games if that’s what they like.

While Wave is more about facilitating the conversation, TWIP is about merging conversation & workflow. Switching between actual work (coding, designing) and feedback (revisions, brainstorming, user reviews) can be time-consuming and exhausting. That’s why we want to rid people of multi-tasking, allowing them to communicate as well as to create at the same time.

Our platform is ready, just a few more finishing touches and it will be online. We’re eager to receive your feedback.

Here are our plans for the near future:

• an alpha version will be ready for you to test, crash and enjoy
• organizing sessions where all participants will receive TWIP accounts
• to interact with some of the coolest web-application developers – so we can better understand their needs and they can better understand the true value of real-time collaboration.
• a new application will hatch: collaborative research (for beta version)

Please let us know if you’re interested in any of these. Your feedback is our driving lesson.

See ya

Java Task pentru stagiul TWIP

Pentru cei interesati de un stagiu in cadrul proiectului nostru: mai jos gasiti task-ul in Java vrem ca voi sa-l rezolvati cat mai repede. Trimite-ti solutia voastra arhivata pe mail la

ninthprime [at] gmail [dot] com

Ar fi OK sa ne trimiteti solutiile pana maine (luni), seara, la bine-cunoscuta ora 23.55.

What?

Ideea Ninth Prime de colaborare fara efort uzeaza de componente Swing sensibile la update-uri atat din partea utilizatorului, cat si din partea colaboratorilor.

Astfel, se doreste crearea unui client miniTWIP.

Client reprezinta o simpla aplicatie SWING, ce afiseaza o forma geometrica (la alegere) si ii modifica pozitia pe ecran in functie de anumite update-uri.

Interfata grafica dispune de un whiteboard (unde se afiseaza desenul) si de un controlboard (o componenta care accepta text, ex: JTextField , JTextArea).

Why

Utilizatorul doreste urmatoarele update-uri:

1. La introducerea in controlBoard a unor noi coordonate pentru forma geometrica, sa se faca update pe whiteboard (respectiv afisarea componentei la noile coordonate introduse)

2. Clientul se conecteaza la serverul miniTWIP (sursa pentru server o gasiti aici) si ii trimite (o singura data) dimensiunea ferestrei (sub forma unui obiect java.awt.Dimension).
Serverul va trimite, timp de 20 secunde, alte noi coordonate (sub forma java.awt.Dimension). Se doreste un update pe whiteBoard, la fiecare noi coordonate primite de la server.

Aceste 2 update-uri se vor face in paralel.

How?

- java network tutorial
- how to Swing
- how to not crash

What for?

Dorim sa va facem o introducere in procesarea componentelor grafice Swing, fiind unul din task-urile primare in cadrul proiectului TWIP.

Other

- fereastra nu isi poate schimba dimensiunile (non-resizable)
- serverul miniTWIP accepta o singura conexiune pe portul 12345. Dupa expirarea celor 20 secunde, serverul inchide conexiunea.
- modalitatea de introducere a coordonatelor in controlBoard este la alegerea fiecaruia

This summer – we're hiring

It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on TWIP – cause there was a lot going on here, behind the scenes. But here’s the thing: this summer, our start-up company is hiring developers. We want enthusiatic people who are keen on developing their own apps in Java, using the TWIP collaborative Framework.

So you’re tired of employers giving you absolutely no space for creativity in software development ? Well then, come over to our side – cause we do appreciate creativity.

You do need solid knowledge of Java SE. And you must be keen to really make a change.

We would really appreciate if you:

- know your way around SWING

- have some knowledge of threads, sockets and/or NIO

- have a good command of English

- know what application you’d like to work on

Here’s how this works: you come up with a cool, viabile idea for an application which could be drafted in 3-4 months. You prove you have the knowledge and the determination to do it.

You get: working with a young team on a new, bold project. You get to learn interesting stuff in the process. Your ideas and feedback will be appreciated. You get paid (let’s not forget that). If you do a good job and you like it, our team gets a new member on the long run.

Sign up here. Interviews will begin soon.

… and one more thing we promise: the interview won’t be any of that boring stuff regarding where do you see yourself in 5 years.

The battle for the Client-side

[ A bit of TWIP's technical side, behind the scene ]

TWIP is going to be more than just a bunch of collaborative apps. It will also be the protocol behind those apps, that we plan to make available to other developers as well. So we started thinking about how we could make this protocol compatible with as many technologies as possible.

Java is what we’re working on right now. Dot Net is not too far. But then we thought: let’s make the TWIP protocol available for JavaScript and GWT. The GWT/JS trend is taking over the client-sided Internet one day at the time, so why not make a TWIP API for it? And it can be done…

… but there is a catch.

JavaScript can’t work with sockets. It can only work with (XML) requests.  JS can’t keep a connection open and wait for the server to send incoming messages from other users. Rather, the client must periodically send requests for updates and wait for the server to provide them. Although this isn’t a major drawback, it is a inconvenience, since any protocol working exclusively with request isn’t exactly real-time. And this is one of the reasons Google Docs and other collaborative platforms out there have trouble with guaranteeing true synchronization.

So here’s the deal… First, the TWIP API will be Java – that’s for sure. Next we’ll consider writing a Dot Net API. And last, but must definitely not least – GWT and JavaScript – with the XMLRequest-oriented protocol. What we aim for is making these APIs interoperable with the TWIP server, so third-party developers can easily develop their collaborative apps in whatever fashion they see fit. We’ll leave it up to them to decide if on the client-side they go for the robust connection-oriented approach (in Java, JavaFX or Dot Net) or for the light-weight, flexible XML request based approach (in JavaScript and GWT).

So what do you think ?