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January 03, 2003
\@Task
I had a meeting with a company called \@Task today. Nate Bowler, who was one of our many stars at iMALL, is their CTO. \@Task provides thin-client project management and workflow software to customers like Novell and other large companies that you've heard of (since they don't mention them on their website, I won't mention them here).
\@Task combines workflow, collaboration, and project management to actually drive the project or process from the tool rather than using it as simply a static document that records progress. Because it assigns tasks to group members based on the workflow and tracks completion, a manager can see at a glance where the project is, who's got unfinished deliverables, and so can everyone else. Consequently, the tool functions as a dashboard and uses tranparency to enforce good behavior. They're using SOAP to interface with traditional CRM and ERP systems like PeopleSoft so that hours, for example, can be entered into the accounting system from the project tracking tool automatically.
All in all, I think it sounds like a great improvement over other project tools I've seen. One of the things I was thinking is that it would be a great tool to build a lot of software development processes. Most of these are enforced by culture and training with little tool support to help foster the correct process.
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Wi-Fi in the Classroom
The New York Times has an article today about the increasing use of Wi-Fi in the classroom. BYU has deployed Wi-Fi in many areas, but it wasn't available in the classroom I was in last semester. The article quotes a few professors who are miffed that students are off surfing the web instead of paying attention. I'm not very concerned about that. My philosophy about class has always been that students can come get something out of it if they want or not---their choice. It would be interesting to run EtherPEG in class though and capture some of the traffic to display at the end of class. Do that a few times and people would probably be more careful in their surfing.