What is incredible about Google is that they can initiate a project and make it public, before I can even make a blog post about a vague idea I have. The following blog post has been in my unpublished blogs bin for weeks now. Today, Google opened Google Base. It’s been talked about for a week or two now, but it is actually closer to what I’ve been dreaming about than the rumors led me to believe. It still has a long way to go. Most importantly the need for a public API… which I’m sure will be available soon. I most excited that Google Base will spur other similar projects. On with the dusty old blog post:
For many months now, maybe I even have a blog post about it, I’ve been wanting a web application that would basically be Filemaker for the web, combined with Wiki like collaboration and versioning. Everyone I’ve tried to explain this to looks at me funny. Either because it is just a stupid idea, or because people don’t see the brilliance of the concept. I think I’ve finally convinced Seth it is a good idea, but he has his own brilliant ideas to spend his non-existent free time on.
Somewhat encouraging is that there seem to be a couple projects circling the idea, but don’t quite get what I’m after.
What am I after? How about an example. Imagine you want to build a collaborative dictionary where anyone could add new entries, or edit existing entries. You could take the Wiktionary approach by using pure wiki software. This has the benefit of ease of collaboration and every edit is saved so you can revert vandalism etc. However, what if you wanted to have a clean xml version of the data so that you could use the dictionary from other outside applications? Each entry is just a big blog. Pulling out the distinct elements (word, definition, pronunciation, etc.) is not clean.
The alternative implementation is an Urban Dictionary route. Building a custom application from scratch. The downside to this approach is that there is a bunch of coding infrastructure that must be done. In addition, making the app have flexible access control and extensive versioning make the coding much more complicated.
My proposed solution is a web app that allows a user, through a web browser, to create a new database, define columns, types etc. (basically PHPmyAdmin). Then define access control roles (ex. anyone can add a new entry, or edit old entries) with all revisions saved. Finally they can define views/layouts. So they can provide a HTML template and a stripped down XML view.
Other possible uses?:
- Television and Radio schedules
- An open collaborative Internet Movie Database or CD database.
- Database of geo-locations
- Events calendar
- A plain old Wiki
- To-do lists
No programming required. Obviously it is a very complicated application, but all the pieces exist on their own. Just need to put the following projects in a blender:
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