Google says,

“You can build just about any app you can imagine with App Inventor … To use App Inventor, you do not need to be a developer. App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge. This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”

Well the Surepoint team have signed up to roadtest App Inventor and we’ll be reporting back on what we found very soon.

This 60-second video gives you a flavour of how quick and easy it is to build an app for your phone.

This radical shake up of the NHS will impact on many Surepoint clients. To help us make sense of this we have tried to capture the new landscape in the mindmap below. There’s an expadable / collapsible version in the Mindjet Player window and a fully expanded version in the Scribd window.

• Download White Paper: Equity and excellence liberating the NHS (PDF, 720K)
• Download analytical strategy for the White Paper and associated documents (PDF, 117K)
• Download initial equality impact assessment (PDF, 150K)
• Secretary of State’s statement to the House of Commons, 12 July 2010
• Press release, 12 July 2010

So what is it?

Google Wave is a real-time communication platform that ties together the best features of existing communication and collaboration tools within a browser interface. These include email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management all in one place.

It offers users access to almost any iGoogle or OpenSocial gadget.

Google Wave also provides powerful extension capabilities through the use of  Robots which modify information, interact with users and pull information from outside sources. Existing robots provide spell checking, link writing and in-line search functions.

As with many existing Google apps Google Wave offers embedding tools that enable users to integrate their waves into a third party website or blog.

Want a preview?

Watch the demo video below from Google’s IO conference, May 27 – 28 2009, San Francisco.

Many organisations that I work with today have flexible and mixed working environments. Some staff are office based whilst others are remote workers, working from home or out ‘in the field’ with only occassional visits to the office. The Zimbra collaboration suite provides an open source web-based communications solution tailored for the small business.

The communications challenges facing many small businesses

Effective and efficient communication is crucial to the success of most organisations. However many organisations face infrastructural constraints which prevent communication in a mixed working environment. In practical terms this means that we are unable to store files, share contacts, schedule appointments or administer our email using a single system across the entire organisation. It is often the remote workers who face the biggest barriers as many of the communications tools they use are part of closed systems. This is where web-based communications tools come into their own.

Tools we use to communicate

Most people that I work with use a range of tools to communicate, for example:

• Face to face communications, from one to one’s to small group meetings, events, conferences
• Phone
• Simple Messaging Systems (Text)
• Email
• Letters
• Newsletters, bulletins and briefings
• Television and video
• CD ROMs
• Instant messaging (via laptop)
• Video conference (e.g. iChat)
• Voice over internet (e.g. Skype, iChat)
• Websites
• Shared calendars
• Social networking sites
• Newsreaders
• WIKI

What is Zimbra?

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite http://www.zimbra.com/ is an open source technology for messaging and collaboration. It provides support for email, contacts and group calendaring, and consists of a server and client.

What is different about Zimbra?

Zimbra will enable small organisations to make the best use of what they have already got without having to invest huge amounts of money in a typical large scale enterprise solution. This flexibility will provide them with a great number of benefits. In addition Zimbra makes use of the latest web-based innovations which most large scale enterprise solutions are incapable of. For administrators this means easier management, better security and improved performance. For end-users this means its easier to find and share what you want. People will be able to store files, share contacts, schedule appointments or manage our email using a single system across an entire

organisation.

What benefits would Zimbra give small organisations?

• Most geographically dispersed organisations with a mixed working environment use a range of email clients, mobile wireless devices, web browsers and operating systems. Zimbra works with all of them.
• Zimbra makes it easy to organise, find and share content using powerful search, tagging and collaborative features.
• The Zimbra browser client provides seamless integration of email, contacts and calendaring
• Zimbra also makes use other popular web services and applications such as Google/Yahoo Maps and Skype.

More information:

If you are interested in finding out more about Zimbra:

• read the overview of the technical details and support resources below or more detail in the Zimbra Data Sheet (PDF)
• visit http://www.zimbra.com/
• try the Flash demo or Hosted demo
• ask your email administrator to check out Zimbra
• look for third parties that are providing Zimbra as a hosted web service

Overview of the technical details

• The Zimbra Server supports existing desktop and wireless personal information management (PIM) clients via standard protocols like POP, IMAP, and iCalendar
• Zimbra will work with a range of email clients (Outlook, Mac Mail, Eudora etc), mobile wireless devices (Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, Motorola, PocketPC etc), browsers (InternetExplorer, Firefox, Safari etc) and operating systems (Windows, Mac etc): for example, Outlook, Thunderbird/Sunbird, Apple Mail/iCal, Evolution, Eudora, and Wireless IMAP.
• The Zimbra Client is AJAX-based—Asynchronous Javascript on the client with XML/SOAP-based communications to the Zimbra Server, and runs on Windows, Linux, and Apple desktops in Firefox and IE browsers.

Support resources

• Developer Zone- share and read ideas and tools to get you started
• Forums – ask questions and participate in the Zimbra community
• Blog – read and coment on the latest thoughts from the Zimbra team
• Contribute- to the improvement of Zimbra
• Third-party open source projects- learn more about the open source technologies which Zimbra uses such as Linux, MySQL, Postfix, and Apache
• White papers- expert views on a wide range of related subjects
• Open source licensing- find out about the terms of the licensing for Zimbra.