Sharing and real-time updates make Listhings ideal for virtual SCRUM board
First, a little note on how Listhings is doing. Listhings has been steadily growing and I’m glad to share with you that Listhings has around 4,000 registered users now, and around 40% of them are active users. At peak hours, there are around 130 people simultaneously logged in to Listhings. You can check this number at any time from the About screen at Listhings.
But what also makes me really happy are the numbers I see on the server usage statistics. Ever since I changed the main web server software at Listhings from the well-known Apache to a little less known Lighttpd back in January, the server memory usage has stayed on the same level no matter how many users are logged in simultaneously. This change also lowered the web server’s energy consumption.
Now, let me introduce sharing. Ever since I created the first version of Listhings back in April 2009, I’ve wanted to do this. Today I’m thrilled to introduce you a totally new version of Listhings which lets you share notes with unlimited amount of people, and interact with each other’s notes in real-time. This new version is already up and running so you can go check it out.
Here are just a few examples how sharing notes is good for you:
- Generate ideas with a team - share the canvas and have all your team members write down their ideas and notes about a new project. Then organize the notes visually, group them together and start working.
- Do teamwork – create a canvas with notes for each of your team members, then share the canvas with them all and write down tasks for each person so you can all see who’s doing what. It’s a really easy way to get organized really fast.
- Use it as SCRUM-board – you can share a canvas with your dev team members and use it as a SCRUM-board. Real-time updates across people help you stay organized and you’ll be saving some paper.
Let me share some of the technical nitty-gritty behind it. You might not even notice the difference between the “old” and the new version of Listhings because almost the only diffference you see is one button - it’s the “Share” button. You’ll find it in the upper right corner of your canvases after you log in.
But even though the changes you see visually are not big, I’ve done tremendous amount of work in the back-end. Because what sharing really means is not just the ability to send off email invites to people but the ability to interact with each-other’s notes in real-time. Yes, real-time. As you change something on your shared canvas, all other people will see it in real-time. As anyone else changes anything on the same canvas, you’ll see it. Instantly.
The real-time updates are possible thanks to a server software called APE (yeah, the monkey!). APE is a new piece of technology that was rolled out in just December 2009. I was a fan of APE since the first week and knew exactly that’s going to enable me to do what I’ve long wanted to with Listhings.
So, a little bit about APE. APE stands for AJAX Push Engine. It’s a super lightweight server with Javascript extensions, and a Javascript client. For Listhings, I had to customize the server and figure out authorization because APE is originally designed somewhat similar to an IRC chat server, except without any basic authorization built in.
So this is how it works – every canvas on Listhings has its own APE channel. Once you interact with notes on a shared canvas, the updates you made are broadcasted to the corresponding APE channel, and pushed instantly to all other people viewing that canvas. That’s pretty similar to what Google Docs does.
If you want to take it for a real spin, invite a few friends over to any of your (less private) canvases, and wait for them to join you. Once you then start playing with the notes - changing colour, resizing and re-positioning them, your friends will also see it. Once they do something, you’ll see it.
Of course, I will be adding some nifties like the list of people who are currently logged in to the canvas you are also viewing, etc.
Aha! And I’ve also managed to make links clickable in notes. So once you type in a website link, it will become clickable.
So that’s it for now. Go enjoy sharing notes on Listhings!
