Zero bandwidth scenarios

Most of us enjoy an internet connection from our home offering us the bandwidth equivalent of what was sufficient to serve an office of 100s of people ten years ago. The capacity to move data on mobile phone networks and via satellite means that more places around the world are getting 'wired' (you can email and blog on the motorway). Being always-on is an assumption underlying many of the new and innovative applications that run in the browser.
    But technology in general is moving ahead faster than the spread of the internet 'cloud'. We are pushing technology into places where analog tools used to govern the way of working. In some locations the problem is one of not being able to establish a connection economically (e.g. aid work in remote villages, drilling sites in the desert or at sea, expeditions) in others the problem is about physically being able to connect at all (e.g. underground and underwater). The two probably overlap slightly (if everything is possible it becomes an economic problem in the end) so I am not sure which category elevators in high-rise buildings fit into but it is usually futile getting any sort of connection in those metal cages.
    Most collaborative tools are guilty of requiring constant or frequent connection with a central server or peers. But collaboration is moving out of big offices and into the geography. Tools that  dispense with the always-on assumption will do well as the demand for collaboration services spreads. Groove's application workspace did a good job with synchronisation but here is the challenge for the future: It has to work in the browser.
    Maybe the challenge cannot be addressed by application developers alone. Maybe browsers have to build support for zero bandwidth situations. For inspiration, check out what Jeremy Ruston and others are doing with TiddlyWiki (read the sections about WikiOnAStick and SelfContained).
    Collaboration is coming soon to a place far away.

Comments

[Ben Poole]

Don't forget Ozzie's other kid, Notes ;o)

With regards zero-bandwidth options in the browser, Lotus did of course introduce DOLS, Domino Off-line Services. It was a (very) thin implementation of the Notes replication model for the browser. Then we have other offline caching systems like iOra -- work is being done in this area, but I've no feeling as to how big a deal it is.

[Visitor]

Zimbra now has an excellent local client called Zimbra Desktop for offline use. If you are traveling in an airplane without internet access, you can still read/send emails, view calendars, etc. (Emails written are sent once you connect to the internet again).

http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop.html