4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

My op-ed on the real-time web is up at Mashable. HatTip to Adrian Chan, Dave S. and John S. for providing their insights on this piece. Check it out, comment and retweet if you can :)

4 Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

There is a lot of hype surrounding the real-time web, and much of the feeding frenzy reminds me of the RSS space four years ago — though there is a lot of potential, there is also a lot of noise. How do you navigate through it all and which developments should you be paying attention to? What are the emerging trends for companies and entrepreneurs to watch for? Here are four real-time web trends that I’m tracking.

Real-Time Collaboration is Ripening
Real-time will play a major role in the future of online collaboration. We’ve seen all the hype around the new Google Wave platform, as well as the growth of Twitter and Twitter-like communications (such as Facebook status). On the business side, SAP’s Gravity, a prototype of real-time collaborative business process modeling within Google Wave, is a good example. But I see this as the tip of the iceberg.

Companies that are more efficient have an advantage whether within their walls or with their customers. Imagine being able to make real-time changes with your colleague in another city and graphic designer at your local Kinko’s to finalize a presentation and print it hours before your meeting. Or working with your manufacturer in Nanjing, China on changes to your new BBQ grill design and seeing if it’s possible in real-time. Or game developers in Korea and Dallas story boarding a new video game concept in a new real-time game development application. There is massive potential for real-time collaboration across almost every discipline, and I believe there are an incredible amount of exciting possibilities here... (full post)

DocVerse Launches Collaboration Plug-in for MS Office

DocVerse is a pretty cool product I came across a couple weeks ago. It was written up in GigaOm here, so obviously I don't read everything out there :)

It allows to you collaborate online with MS Office software. The initial focus is on PowerPoint which is an obvious starting point and something that was needed. Especially as travel budgets get cut, online collaboration will become more commonplace and PowerPoint is a good market to target. It's in private beta, but you can download their plug-in here.