Wednesday 15 September 2010

Paper chase "PoP" - in the digital world

I have seen thousands of people in offices walking around carrying a piece of paper that they take to someone else and waste time having a chat...

In the world of WiFi networks, cloud storage and iPads there is a better solution. I propose this "app" and solution:

- Documents are created on the iPad or scanned, word processed and loaded by WiFi, probably the best is to have them all in PDF format with embedded metadata (Author, Subject, Key Words etc) and an urgent/normal, read/unread tag.
- A database of users is kept on a server, and this is synched to all iPads in the network automatically
- Any user can take a document they have created, chose another user and "PoP" it across to them. Or they can chose a group of users and "PoP" it to all of them
- Any user will see their received documents, tagged as urgent/normal and read/unread
- Document filing will happen in the cloud. This is the tricky bit as few people have solved the problem of decently classifying documents and providing access by other than searching. So search will be important. Only one copy of any document need be kept with metadata about who "PoP"ed it and who received it (and maybe who read it!)

Add-on. Classification

Any classification system needs a central control or defined "menu" so avoid random tagging. Such a menu structure could be defined by a system administrator and imposed on the cloud document database.







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