langreiter.com plain, simple: 2005-03-06

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2005-03-06

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 7231 days AGO

Yesterday saw my first conscious visit to [create Zurich], the city (as opposed to Zurich, the airport). Snowfall sure makes for pretty old towns - unfortunately one can't claim the same for drives home through Arlberg terrain, but then, I've been warned.

The reason for the visit in Switzerland was a meeting between smi and Raphaël Szwarc to which I was fortunate enough to have been invited as well. Raphaël is the prime mover behind ZOË, the smash hit Email search, slice and dice engine. (Aside: When Raphaël pointed out that we were just walking by Google's Zurich offices, I remembered how when Gmail was first announced, I imagined it would work exactly like ZOË - like a Wiki for your Email, a "surfable inbox", the ultimate hypertextifier. Off by a long shot.)

Raphaël is currently working on a seriously non-intrusive groupware system called ZAPPATA (how it works); indeed, non-intrusiveness was one of the major themes of the afternoon/evening - quietly sitting in the middle, watching behaviour and then applying some heuristics to infer structures of collaboration and weights of importance sounds like a great approach.

I won't even try to write down all the ideas & impressions still hovering through my mind a day later, just a few quick notes ffr/.