Readiness for the Unexpected

Online vs. Offline

Am I the only one who can’t get a good online connection all the time?  Specifically, are any of you, especially those who travel a lot like I do, having problems using some of the online or  Web-based applications that are popping up faster than flowers in spring?

Don’t get me wrong, I love this trend, and I predict that it will continue to accelerate until it becomes the predominant model. However, let’s remind ourselves of the purpose and the goal—having what you need, when and where you need it. Having to think about offline vs. online, desktop versus Web, and Web 1.0 versus Web 2.0 is NOT the point. These aspects are just distractions. We simply want to get things done wherever and whenever we have the time or need!

Most online applications present two versions of the problem:

1. You can’t run the application unless you are connected to the Web.
2. If the connection drops while you are working, all your data is lost.

Murphy

To this discussion, let’s add  “Murphy’s Law” (as it is called in many Western societies), which simply states, “if anything can go wrong it will, and at the most inopportune time.”  In the case of online connections, I’d suggest that there is an inverse correlation between the importance of your need and the quality of your connection. The more you need it, the less likely you will have it! Or (as you discover when you have Wi-Fi enabled on your laptop or PDA and are moving around), when you least want a connection, you will have them the most (popping up as annoying “new connection found” messages while you are trying to work or read).

And with Web-based applications, the issue isn’t just that you can get an online connection, it is that you can KEEP it for the full session!

Never Never Land

I’m also concerned about how those of us who have ready access to the Web are making unconscious assumptions that “everyone is online”.  BTW, if you are reading this you are one of the privileged few. Let’s remember that about 90% of the world’s population still has NO online access!

According to Internet World Statistics, as of March 10, 2007 the total worldwide online population is 6.574 million. According to the world population clock the world’s population is 6.593 million. So by my math, this means that LESS THAN 10% of the planet’s people have ANY online access! Privileged and few we are indeed.

Now, I’m about as wired and unwired as you can get with my full complement of cable modems, wireless, cell phone, data cards, etc., but my point is that there are still many times and locations where online access is simply not available or at least not working—inside secure or “non-conductive” buildings, onboard airlines, in locations that are out of range of cellular and Wi-Fi zones, and in situations where the network connection is “supposed to work” but it doesn’t, such as at many conferences and meetings!

So, since even those of us who have access cannot always get online, it means that right now, NO ONE has true anytime, anywhere access.

Please note that there are lots of times when we don’t WANT to have access or be accessed, but that requires us to have the choice, and right now none of us have this choice all the time. Don’t even get me started on the opposite end of this argument, where people who were apparently raised by wolves access their connections at some of the most inappropriate times and places!

Persistent Persistence

So what’s my point? Collectively, these problems will be around for a long time. But let’s make sure we are addressing the right problems the right way. The overall solution is to make online/offline a “non-problem” by making it irrelevant or transparent to us. How?

• Develop a default setting of “do the best you can” in our hardware and software that will let us get back to what we were doing— working, playing, and learning.
• If I’m doing something with one of my digital devices and there is no connection, then just keep track of what I’m doing, save my work, and synchronize it all as soon as there is a connection.
• Make “switching” between online and offline automatic, and have it take place in the background and make it work inside any browser.

One small example is the recent addition to most IM (instant messaging) clients that makes your messages persist, even when one of the people involved is offline or loses the connection. The IM client simply remembers what you entered and it shows up the next time the person connects. Smart, simple, automatic!

Pre AND Post

Along with work being done post-connection, we need systems that anticipate our needs by taking more predictive actions on our behalf. Why can’t we have a system that tracks our usage patterns, and then takes some good guesses about what we will likely need tomorrow, and then automatically downloads this data in advance when there is a good connection and the devices are not being used, such as late evening and early morning hours?

Storage capacity is becoming almost limitless and using the increasingly effective pattern recognition capabilities and “recommender systems”, the capability for predictive data saving is increasing dramatically. Predictive data saving is already happening with television content on devices like TiVo and Windows Media Center PCs that take your “attention metadata” in the form of your thumbs up/down feedback and use it to download programs that match the preference patterns for shows you’ve previously watched.

It does all this in the background. When you are not otherwise using the devices, it creates a listing of content you didn’t explicitly ask for, but most likely will enjoy. Furthermore, as you rate these new programs, the system gets continuously better at predicting what programs you like and records them to your local hard drive.

What we need is the same ability for predictive downloading of data and applications on our computing devices, so they are ready for us before we ask for them, whether we have a web connection at the time or not.

There IS hope!

I’m also raising this issue today because of some recent news about significant solutions to the online/offline problem.

Solution #1 – Zimbra

You can read a good overview of Zimbra in David Berlind’s recent article “Solving the  Web app’s ‘offline problem’: How Zimbra did it (and others will follow)”. In short, Zimbra eliminates this online/offline problem by doing just as I’ve outlined above. It enables you to work whether you have a connection or not. Zimbra uses Apache Derby, a Java database that enables developers of Web apps to design their applications “in a way that those apps can save their information (records, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) to the local Derby-based database when no connection to the Internet is available” and then looks after synchronizing this data when the connection is re-established.

In a related Zimbra news article "Comcast goes with Zimbra for new collaboration suite", several of the largest US cable service providers (TV, telephone, ISP), such as Comcast, have recently announced that they are going to use Zimbra desktop applications to offer a very comprehensive collaboration suite that includes e-mail, instant messaging, voice mail access, etc. Of course, they are doing this to compete with the growing offerings from the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo for the increasingly competitive space of Web-based communications or “Office” suites.

Solution #2 – Mind the gap

During this transition, many of us need to use both “traditional” desktop applications (such as MS Office, AutoCAD, Photoshop, etc.) and Web-based applications (such as Salesforce.com, Google docs, BaseCamp, etc.). So what we’ll need during this time is a BRIDGE between these two worlds and there is news on this front as well. Check out "Google Apps To-Do Item #72: Make OpenOffice.org into a Google Apps’ offline client" to get a more detailed explanation of how such a bridge can be formed between Google Apps and Microsoft Office applications. Similarly, read "Using Google to replace SharePoint, LimitNone’s gShare bridges MS-Office/Google Apps divide" to see how LimitNone gSHARE technology creates just such a bridge.

Solution #3:  WiFi – cellular switching too, please!

Currently, the “wireless” world makes an unnecessary distinction between connecting via cellular and WiFi.  As if online vs offline isn’t bad enough, this distinction adds the issue of online via Wi-Fi versus online via cellular. Somebody stop the madness….PLEASE! This distinction gets very annoying, especially as we see increased convergence of voice, data and music on mobile phones, PDAs, MP3 players, etc. that have both Wi-Fi and cellular capability.

But there is hope!  Last week (May 3, 2007), Crave pointed out the potential for an upcoming announcement: “T-Mobile to allow Wi-Fi calls”. Let’s just hope that this is true and that:

“According to reports, when a caller approaches a hot spot while on the phone, his or her call will transfer automatically to Wi-Fi from the carrier's regular network. The change is supposed to be instantaneous, with no noticeable difference to the caller.”

However, what is immediate for me is solving the issue of online/offline. If the likes of Zimbra and LimitNone can do this, then they will be BIG winners in my book, and likely targets for acquisition by some of the big guns such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. What I expect and hope will happen is that these latest offerings to solve the online/offline problem and bridge the gap between the two will initiate some strong competition by others. Then perhaps we can stop worrying about whether we are on or off line and focus on doing what we need to do when and where we need and want to.

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Comments

[Sky (Jim Schuyler)]

If you travel to even-farther-removed places, the connectivity issue becomes really critical. When I'm in Northern India - there's one particular place I frequent - we all use Internet Cafes. Up to about 12 months ago you had to use their computers - you couldn't plug your computer into their router. Then they got wise and now we plug in directly. Back then they had 10 to 15 computers sharing one DSL line (128k bi-directional is pretty typical for 10 people to be sharing). I work alongside another org that has satellite and community mesh wi-fi available in the same town, and I can use that if I let them know in advance, but I have to walk down a steep hill in the dark to another hotel where they have a wi-fi in the lobby, and then I sit in the lobby and get decent connectivity - generally about 512k bidirectional all to myself.

Now, get this, the hotel that I stay in (up the hill from the wi-fi) locks its doors at 10pm, so I have to get back before I'm locked out. One night I stood in the cold for 15 minutes jimmying the lock and I would have gotten in soon, but then the night watchman spotted me and let me in - otherwise I would have been sleeping on the street with the dogs and cows. And the cabs stop running at 9pm, so you gotta walk after that. Ah the dangers of using wi-fi!

Oh, sorry your question was "web-based applications?" No way could we depend on them for our working groups that span the globe.

That's why I took to offline blogging -> http://blog.dlfound.org/sky/wp/?p=173 . I settled on Ecto for that, after looking at several different packages. I write my blog posts, compose and format them, even insert photos, all offline and then when I have a connection I -click- the button once and upload everything. This is an absolute necessity, given the locations I've been frequenting.

And although we do use Google Docs a lot now for working groups in the US and EU, we don't try to use it when anyone's in Africa or South Asia because their connectivity just isn't broad enough for it to work. We even use "Postmanet" (drop it in the mail or send with a friend who's going there) to send our multi-hundred-MB video files back and forth rather than try to transfer them electronically. Last time I was in Delhi, I had a 250GB USB drive onto which I transfused the contents of three video cameras (HDD cameras) and one person's laptop drive...and brought everything home for processing. And I burned a bunch of data onto DVDs as well.

Universal connectivity is still a ways off.

[Bill Webb]

I agree, in principle, with your online/offline thesis, although I use Google D&S a lot both with broadband and dialup with good results. Takes it a while to load on dialup, but nothing horrible (and I'm used to a T-1 connection). I also find that the automatic backup works well. Haven't lost anything yet.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be a problem with some of the slooooow dialups overseas. I'd like to see Google come out with a desktop version of GD&S that could be used off- or online, with data stored on the HDD until a connection was available.

(And, while I'm wishing, I'd also like to see margin control.)

bw

[Arun Kumar]

You say that "Most online applications present two versions of the problem:

1. You can’t run the application unless you are connected to the Web.
2. If the connection drops while you are working, all your data is lost."

There is one solution (actually, a representative of a class of solutions) that you should take a look at: Kerika (www.kerika.com) which operates as a hybrid P2P network. All your data are always stored locally on your computer, and the computers of your team mates, so you can work offline when you need to and synch up later with your buddies when you get a chance to go online.

Because Kerika uses a storage server that kicks in automatically when it detects that your team mates are offline, you don't have to worry about being online at the same time as them. And if you yourself are offline, Kerika simply buffers up the updates you made locally until you get a chance to go online again.

More importantly, you can communicate your ideas in a visual form, by literally sketching out your project, process or strategy and then adding your content to these digital pages. This is particularly important when you need to make sure everyone is always "on the same page" with respect to strategy and process, and this is something that is really hard to do well with email, whether you are talking about traditional email clients like Outlook or Web 2.0 ones like Zimbra.

Two other points I would make:

- When people are frequently offline, you need a distributed document management system, not a centralized checkout/checkin system like you get with hosted services. Kerika provides that in a seamless way.

- A system like Kerika gives you far greater privacy than you can ever hope to get from any hosted provider, Google or anyone else. You can set up your private network, at no extra cost and in just a couple of minutes, so that your project materials stay within a ring of trust consisting of your computer, your team mates' computers, and your private server.

Take a look at this demo: http://www.kerika.com/demo_intro.html. It's just a couple of minutes long, but I think you will be amazed by what's possible!

Regards,
Arun