All Blog Posts in OnlineGroups.Net
A recent article in Network World made me very glad that GroupServer (and OnlineGroups.Net, by extension) only displays plain-text email messages.1 The problem is this: Fancy formatting in email uses system called HTML. HTML can contain a programming language called JavaScript. JavaScript can do evil. It is very difficult to remove the JavaScript from the [...]
GroupServer is a web-based open source web-based mailing list manager developed by OnlineGroups.Net. If you know OnlineGroups.Net, you’ll know that GroupServer is its engine. For that reason, we’re pretty excited to be able to call GroupServer “1.0?”, and to make it available for free download. We have released GroupServer before, but we try not to [...]
Due to the off-shoring of some of our team (Alice and Michael, but more on that later), some space has been freed up in the OnlineGroups.Net Christchurch office. Even though Marek and William from encode and Tracklr are using the adjoining office, and Julian Carver hot-desks here some of the time, things have become a [...]
Here at OnlineGroups.Net, we don’t just provide sites where people can collaborate in online groups. We also build and release GroupServer, the software that underpins OnlineGroups.Net, and we help organisations to implement GroupServer to create successful online groups and communities. Sometimes, that involves technical work such as hosting, configuring, customising and maintaining software. At other [...]
Today’s Computerworld lists the finalists for the second NZ Open Source Awards, and I’m happy to say that we are there in the “Open Source Software Project” category with GroupServer. Almost as cool is to see the health of open source software in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is the second year for the NZ Open [...]
The other night, I was at dinner with some friends, and some friends of friends. The conversation turned to OnlineGroups.Net. One of the guests I didn’t know so well said “Oh yeah, I use that. I really like it. I just delete the emails.” I was happy of course to hear that she liked our [...]
OnlineGroups.Net has released the source code of GroupServer, the software that powers our web and email collaboration service. This means that, if you are technically savvy and have access to a server, you can download, install and run GroupServer sites for free. You can inspect the inner workings of GroupServer and even make changes to [...]
If I had to sum up software development in one word, it would be “don’t”. When you know a bit about what’s possible, it is easy to be seduced by the notion that custom software could solve all your problems. Your business is unique of course, and so your requirements are unique. It seemed so [...]
Finally this week (well, last week, this post and the release announcement have only just caught up) OnlineGroups.Net produced a new alpha release of GroupServer 1.0 entitled “Cream Freeze at the Beach”. Why did we do it? Or rather, why are we continuing to do it? Was it our love for Open Source Software (OSS), [...]
In Why Fight Email?, I explained how OnlineGroups.Net makes email useful for group collaboration. Unfortunately, however, even though OnlineGroups.Net inherently adds useful metadata to email, it does not provide immunity from the GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) effect. If people send bad email, people receive bad email. Receiving bad email causes email overload. Inbox-management tools [...]
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