Krawler[x] | p2p 2.0 anyone ?

Boy, it is tough. And with all the well-deserved flock-off sentiments around, I’d better not do it. Use Buzz Words, that is.

Rather, I’ll make it simple.

I’ll try and write a good hyped-up post on Krawler[x] without using more than 3 buzzwords — the 3 being erstwhile buzzwords namely p2p, LMS and Social Networks. Tough task, you’ll agree.

Krawler[x] is p2p + LMS + Social Networks. If you know what a LMS is — or rather what it used to be, that is.

Krawler[x], termed as “Social Collaboration Network” (change that to Learn, Share, Done), is a tool that lets one setup personal networks, create, find and publish content, and find new people to network with – all this with the ease of a desktop client.

So you might ask, why Desktop — when the whole flocking world is flocking towards Web. I’ll leave that for my next posting. Let’s rather talk about what Krawler[x] is about.

Krawler[x] is p2p social networking platform that lets you view not just your friends’ profiles, but their shared content and more as well. No Browser. No more silly bad bad server with nuts. No sucky logging in to read your messages. No sucky orkut. And Krawler can perform p2p search as well.

P2P Search.  Krawler[x] search reaches the innards of Office Files (doc/ppt/xls), Acrobat Files (.pdf) and the regular stuff like HTML and Text Files; which means that one can efficiently full-text search within files shared on a network(shared through Krawler[x]). The search being distributed, queries propagates rapidly through the P2P network and provide amazing speed.

Does that sound like a mini-Google for a small scale lan, which uses no server ?

Yes, you heard that right.

Then, as a Yet Another Social Networking Platform, Krawler[x] impresses. Being on the desktop has its advantages — unless ofcourse you’re a Web 2.0 Ajax freak. Krawler[x] comes equipped with an Instant Messenger, a p2p email, p2p forums, communities etc. It also has a tool (oddly termed as friend-mapper) that lets one visualize one’s network of friends in the form of a connected graph. Krawler[x] users are displayed in a graph represented by nodes connected to each other with edges related as friends. The friendship graph visualization uses a spring-layout and focus-context techniques. That means it wiggles smoothly if you drag a node representing your friend, and that you can drag an edge to connect to any other node/user you see in the graphical network.

And then comes the notorious feature – file sharing. The file download is extremely fast – as fast as Bram (of Cohen fame) would want it – Yes, Krawler[x] has its own torrent based sharing architecture. And that’s not all, sharing permissions can be set for each file, from allowing access to a specific user, to allowing everyone on the Network.

Krawler[x]’s Content Creation tool makes it unique. Krawler[x] has a set of WYSIWYG tools where you can create rich text content with all the nice features that you get on any word processor. The tools allow one to create interactive quizzes and monitor results of other subscribers. The Content Designer is definitely the cream on top, it’s a tool to set the workflow for the interactive content created on Krawler[x]. So you can set rules deciding what the viewer will see depending on how he/she performs in the quizzes. And for that you need not write complicated instructions, but simply draw arrows in a flow-chart like application.

Wait, did someone just mention Quizzes?

Yes, Krawler[x] has all the tools to create any type of content — plain old text, office content and assessment based content. So quizzes are an integral part of Krawler[x]. Sweet.
Krawler[x]’s tabbed interface makes it possible to drag and arrange windows/tabs and have customized layouts. There’s tabbed browsing for all content, files and profiles. Bookmarks provide easy management, along with the Drag-drop support for all files and images alike.

Can Krawler[x] leverage Dan Bricklin’s “Cornucopia of the commons” — technology that gives control “from the desktop” ? Anyone’s guess.

As for the hype-meisters, enough with Web 2.0 hype. P2P 2.0 anyone?