Q&A with some of our users

Some users (in Bangkok) had questions about Kerika's peer-to-peer model that we thought may be of general interest:

1. When a document is attached to an Idea Page, how it is transferred to the Kerika server: is the file transferred immediately or after some time? And is any data compression is used?
   
   When a document is added to an Idea Page, all Kerika does it hold a pointer to the document – the document itself never moves. Thereafter, a "file watcher" process inside Kerika periodically checks to see if the file has been updated, and if it has, it sends the new version to the rest of the team.
   
   Kerika is a hybrid peer-to-peer system, not a client-server system, so we don't automatically store anything at all on our servers. Here's how it works:
   
   
   • There is a rendezvous server which helps each peer connect to every other online peer. Every time a Kerika user comes online, it checks in automatically with the rendezvous server, which keeps track of who is online and who isn't. If you update a document or Idea Page, and everyone on your project team is currently online, your computer sends the updates directly to everyone elses computer, where they are stored locally. In this scenario, Kerika has no involvement in the transfer, which takes place peer-to-peer.
   
   
   • If, however, you update a document (or Idea Page), and some of your team members are not online, then your computer automatically sends a copy of the update to Kerika's storage server. When a Kerika user comes online, his computer automatically checks with the storage server to see whether there were any updates that he missed while he was online. Once he gets the updates that he had missed, the storage server automatically gets rid of the copy it had been storing. All of this happens automatically, so you don't have to worry about whether your team members are online or not.
   
   
   • For greater privacy, you can run your own storage server, on any Mac or Windows computer you have with spare capacity and a fixed Internet connection, at no extra cost. Some users do this for greater privacy, since this means their files never go through our data center.
   
   
   • In a peer-to-peer model, everyone on the project team has a complete set of project materials for every project that they are working on, which means that (a) you don't rely upon the Kerika storage server, and (b) there is no single point of failure. If someones PC gets trashed, they can recover all of their project materials by asking one of their team mates to add them back to the project.
   
   
2. Is there any limitation on size of the document?
   
   No. This is one of the big advantages of the peer-to-peer model: if both users are online at the same time, you can share really big files.


3. Is it possible to give some project team members read-only access?
   
   No. We used to have this feature in early beta versions, at the beginning of 2006, but we found that our users had a very hard time remembering who had read-only access and who had full access. We decided to create a true collaboration of peers model since this was easier for most users to handle.
   
   One point to note: no one can really trash a project, or get ever get rid of anything that's on your computer. The worst that can happen is that someone rearranges items on an Idea Page in a way that the Project Manager dislikes. In this scenario, it is easy for the Project Manager, or any other member of the team, to move items around again. In practice we have found that the ratio of active people vs passive people on a project is highly skewed: within a group of 10 people there might be just 2 people who are active enough to arrange items on Idea Pages; the rest are happy to go along with whatever is presented to them. So there is less conflict in practice than you might expect.
   
   Another point to note: if someone modifies a document, all this does is create a separate draft of the document which is automatically circulated to the rest of the team – it doesn't overwrite the original version, or anyone else's version. This is different from a client-server model with check-out/check-in, where you have to worry about people modifying the master copy.
   
   In Kerika every person can make as many changes to as many documents as they like, without overwriting anyone else's copy, and Kerika automatically takes care of all the filing so that every member of the team has a complete set of documents. This lets the document owner see all the different edits that may have taken place, each in its own file, and then decide how to evolve the document going forward.
   
   Finally: if someone deletes an item from an Idea Page, any other member of the team can restore it by using the Page Trash on his local computer. This is another unique feature of Kerika: it works like a distributed graphical Wiki.
   
   So, on the whole there isn't a real need to create read-only access since Kerika's P2P model takes care of most scenarios where you would otherwise have problems.


4. Is it possible to send email (to all members) automatically with just the update info, not all documents, when ever project is updated?
   
   No. However, please note that only documents that were recently updated get sent in the email updates. If only the page layout was changed, or only the team members list was changed, then no documents get sent.


5. Is it possible to add Web URLs to Idea Pages?
   
   Yes, just drag-and-drop any Web URL from any browser (IE, Firefox, Safari) onto any Idea Page. After you are done, right-click the URL on the page and rename it so it has a more user-friendly name (e.g. "Kerika's site" instead of "http://www.kerika.com/")
   

Version 1.2 in beta test now

We have been beta testing version 1.2 with a few selected customers, and hope to release it in the coming days once we get the final OK from the beta users.

This version will have some significant new functionality:

1. Mac users will be able to add "packages" to Idea Pages: some Mac applications, e.g. Keynote, OmniPlan, Pages, etc. save user documents as "packages", which look like files but are actually folders. Previously, Kerika would handle only ordinary files, which meant that Mac users couldn't use our great document management features when sharing documents produced by these applications – but all that will change with version 1.2!
2. As a happy consequence of adding this new feature, version 1.2 will also let you drag-and-drop entire folders (directories) onto your Idea Pages! So if you already have a bunch of files and folders organized for a particular project, you can now import the whole bunch with a single action by dragging-and-dropping the top-level folder. (This benefits everyone, not just Mac users.)
3. Finally, in order to effectively allow users to share packages, we had to change the way Kerika sends files from one user to another: with version 1.2, these files will get zipped up and then chunked (i.e. broken into smaller pieces) before being sent, which should mean better network performance and improved privacy.

Zipping the files before sending them is a big change in the software, and it means that once we release version 1.2, all users will need to upgrade to the new version because it will not be possible for a version 1.1 user to correctly process files sent by a version 1.2 user.

We realize this is a disruptive change, and it isn't something we like to do on a regular basis, but adding these new features was important to a large segment of our user community. We would stress, however, that the need to upgrade doesn't mean you will lose any old Idea Pages or other data: all your old information will get imported automatically.

If you would like to get an early peek at this new version, please contact us.

TheFunded

Just joined this web site, which restricts memberships to entrepreneurs. Apparently it's been around a while, but I just learned about it (and that's because we haven't really tried raising any money in the past ;-)).



Lots of inside dope on VCs, from the entrepreneurs point of view. Most VCs have a queasy relationship, at best, with this site: they hate the idea of getting ranked! Which kind of reminds me of another startup in town, called Avvo, which is pioneering the ranking of lawyers, and lawyers hate the idea of being rated just as much, or perhaps more, than VCs.

Avvo's database of licensed attorneys includes this distinguished gentleman, who is urged to log in and update his profile. I hope TheFunded is nearer the mark!

Clueless in Kansas

The alligators at McKinsey

A number of people I knew in high school and college joined McKinsey: smart, ambitious, and – I had always assumed – upright and moral people. Reading this story at Bloomberg makes me wonder just how they turned out...