Practical Internet Groupware

In 1995 Jon Udell became executive editor for new media at BYTE magazine,
taking on the challenge of building an online presence for a traditional
print publication. In meeting this challenge, he discovered that he was
managing an online community, not just an online publication. He
discovered that he was building not just a set of documents, but a suite
of Internet-based groupware applications in which editors, writers, and
readers all participated.

Practical Internet Groupware details the lessons learned from that
experience. Drawn from the author's real world experience, Practical
Internet Groupware describes the tools and technologies for building and
rapidly deploying groupware applications, and also discusses the design
philosophy and usability issues that determine the success or failure
of any groupware endeavor.

The key to success lies in using simple tools, often Open Source, that
effectively blend in established Internet technologies that have always
had a collaborative aspect (SMTP, NNTP) with new technologies that
enhance our ability to manage collaborative documents (HTTP, XML).
The result is an approach that codifies the idea that many Web content
providers have long suspected: yesterday's online content is fast
becoming tomorrow's network-based applications.

In this book you'll learn how to:

• Base groupware on standard Internet technologies (mail servers,
  news servers, and Web servers)
  
• Use simple server- and client-side scripts to automate creation,
  presentation, transmission, and search of electronic documents
  
• Create a base of documents that contain semi-structured data
  representing much of the intellectual capital of an enterprise
  
• Deploy these solutions in a way that scales from groups of a
  few collaborators to communities of thousands of users

If you've ever been disappointed watching a commercial groupware system
used as little more than an expensive email client, or if you've ever
wondered how to transform simple email, news, or Web clients from
document viewers into collaboration tools, then Practical Internet
Groupware is for you.