Thesis update & Campfire

It has been a while since I last posted, mainly because for the last month and a bit I've been busy preparing and implementing Reasonate within BBSc303. Consequently its been a pretty interesting time. It seems to be working out really well, I've got to grips with Rails (to the point that I cringe at the thought of having to do Java stuff) and almost all of the functionality has been implemented in an easy to use manner. Tagging and RSS have been implemented and introduced to the students whilst the project blogging aspect will come into play once the students form their project teams. Overall the students have picked up the ideas very quickly and some are really getting into the swing of things.

From a meeting perspective at the beginning of February I had a PhD progress meeting with Mike, Henry Skates and Robert Amor. It was very productive and really made me question exactly what I was doing and how I planned on achieving these things. SInce then Mike and I have meet weekly and since the students have started work I've also been giving a short demonstrations within lectures. Meetings with Mike have mainly covered Reasonate specific functionality and concepts. Like any design project once a physical model exists that can be interrogated the level and quality of discussion lifts distinctly.

An interesting software release that came up during the time I was hacking on Reasonate was Campfire from 37 Signals. The software begins to blend together instant messaging and project management and collaboration. It looks really nice and provides a very simple mechanism for the sharing of ideas and files. When tied into Basecamp 37 Signals provide a fairly nice project based collaboration suite.