Alicehub is a an experiment, a Conversation Core experiment. We think that the most important key to project success is effective communication. Alicehub facilitates this using fast, project focused, conversations.
Features included so far:
- Participate in fast, real time, multi-user conversations.
- Create projects at will.
- Communicate within projects and your network.
- Attach links messages, (more than one link per message/comment).
- Read messages in your language of choice.
- Get an aggregated feed of all your conversations.
- Stay updated on which conversations in your feed that are receiving attention from others.
So, if you’re looking for lightweight collaboration through fast communication and are not afraid of using pre beta tools, give Alicehub a try. Please read the getting started blog post first.
Cloud Tech
Alicehub is also an experiment with using technology in the cloud to build services for the cloud. We’re using Google App Engine (GAE) at the server end, providing an Alicehub API. GAE provides lots and lots of APIs for all sorts of tasks, too many to list here, but one is worth extra attention since it’s key to the Alicehub experience; The real time conversation features are built on top of the coming GAE Channels API of which we are “Trusted Testers”.
The Alicehub API is then used by the web interface, which is built using Google Web Toolkit. Authentication is outsourced into the cloud using the the providers Projectplace, Twitter and LinkedIn using OAuth. Real time language translations is carried out through the Google Language API. Avatars for Projectplace authenticated users are grabbed from Gravatar.
The visual user interface is almost exclusively implemented using CSS3. This is why Internet Explorer is left behind.
There’s also a client for Google Android, that we might or might not release. (We’ll post on this site if we release it). We also started with a desktop client built on Adobe AIR, but we haven’t taken it to a level where there would be a point of releasing it.
Get involved
Alicehub development will pause a while now as the Labs team is needed for other things. Hopefully we’ll be able to pick this project up again. The chances for that of course increases with the interest from the Alicehub audience. Here are a few ways you can get involved:
- Comment on articles on this blog.
- Use Alicehub heavily. This is the Staff Favorite. =)
- Befriend us on Alicehub by searching for users named Peter Strömberg, Samuel Cyprian, Jayesh V, Martin Rosell and Jon Nylander.
- “Like” the Alicehub Facebook page (which I created as I wrote this, be the first to Like!).
- Follow @ProjectLab on Twitter.
Looking forward to seeing you often!
