No. 32

April 12, 2001

 

Technology:

QuickBase

Did you know that the Web has its Oscars? They are called Webby Awards and the 2001 nominees will be announced in two weeks. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Intuit's QuickBase is nominated and ultimately wins in the Services category. I don't know of any other Web-based tool or service that would be more deserving. It's not that the service is so novel and unique. In fact, it is quite similar to Flashbase Forms, reviewed in this Spotlight a while ago, which, by the way, no longer accepts new users, but when it comes to ease of use, elegant design, power, flexibility, and usefulness, QuickBase can run with the very best, in its own category an beyond. I'd wager that QuickBase is the best tool for collaborative gathering of structured data, period.

Imagine that you and your geographically distributed team want to collect some data and store it in a database connected to the Web, so that you all can view, add, edit, and delete the data as needed, from any location, via a Web browser. There are, of course, many ways of doing this, most involving substantial coding and costly development tools. QuickBase makes this nearly effortless: you sign up for the service (free 90-day trail period) and, literally within minutes, create your database, either from "scratch", from a template, by importing existing data from a text file (comma- or tab-delimited), or even by simple "copy-and-paste" of data from an MS Excel or MS Word table. In the last two cases, QuickBase will parse the submitted data and automatically create a database for it. Working from scratch or from a template will require more time, but it is still so easy and intuitive that the time is likely to be negligible. Oh, and it will make you feel like a pro, deciding whether a particular field should hold a file attachment, date, URL, link to another database, text, Yes or No value, etc. ! :-)

Creating "Views" to display the data takes a bit more skill - at least a basic understanding of database queries and appropriate usage of such functions as "starts with", "is less than or equal to", "is after", "is not", etc. But even here there are no cryptic symbols and rigid formulas - most of the choices are pretty straightforward and common sense. Besides, a couple of basic views are created automatically with each new database. After the database and its views have been created, it's just a matter of giving other people access to it, so that they can populate it with data. Here is an area where QuickBase shows a little bit of weakness: its access control lacks the granularity that comes very handy in many situations, e.g. where one would want to offer different views of the data to different people.

Another weakness, at least in the eyes of some people, is the clearly stated preference for MSIE as the browser client. Not that Netscape users are totally out of luck: QuickBase does work OK in Netscape 4.x, but its use of technologies such as XSL, CSS, and Java, where Netscape is a step or two behind MSIE, deprives Netscape users of some functionalities and flexibility, e.g. the "drag-and-drop" option for database creation. These are but minor flaws in a very useful service that offers tremendous value: up to 3 databases can be created at no cost, with reasonable monthly fees kicking in at 4. E.g. for $14.95/month one can create up to 15 databases holding up to 2 MB each (excluding file attachments, which have their own 15 MB of space). Unfortunately, my experience tells me that at these prices one of the following is likely to happen: 1) QuickBase will go out of business within months or, 2) prices will go up multiplefold, once a lot of people are "hooked" on the service. However, the service's designers (bless their hearts!) created an escape hatch: a very simple process of dumping all the data into a CSV file, so that we can take it with us at any time and import it back into one of many compliant tools, including MS Excel, MS Access, MySQL, etc. I recommend QuickBase with no hesitation.

QuickBase (click on thumbnail):
Creating new database 
Viewing data

For more information please visit QuickBase site or search the ACT database.

Online event:

Mini Courses in Spring-Summer 2001

Alliance for Community Technology is pleased to offer the following experimental mini courses in Spring and Summer 2001:

  • in May:  Overview of Tools for Online Collaboration ("Groupware")
  • in June:   Evaluating "Groupware"
  • in July:   Introduction to Developing Web Applications with Dreamweaver UltraDev 4
  • in July/August:   Introduction to Developing Collaborative Environments in Zope 2.3
Each of these courses will consist of three 90-minute sessions (one session per week) conducted entirely online via a Web conferencing application, probably WebEx or Placeware. Substantial individual work between sessions will be expected. The number of participants is limited to 10 per course, so please register early. Cost: $50 per participant. The courses will not provide grades or academic credit, but a written confirmation of completion may be issued upon request.

For detailed descriptions of the courses and to register please visit http://www.communitytechnology.org/courses/mini/2001.html .

Conference:

CAIS 2001
  • "Beyond the Web: Technologies, Knowledge and People"
  • 29th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science
  • Held May 27-29, 2001 in Québec, Canada
  • The conference will have three distinct but related themes:
    1. Technologies: How new theories and applications of information technology are shaping and reshaping our information preferences and expectations, within traditional libraries, archives, and other burgeoning information systems and services.
    2. Knowledge: How discourse communities, fields of knowledge and information ecologies are defining and redefining themselves in changing technological, social and political contexts.
    3. People: How individuals, and their many diverse communities, interact with their information environments, both technological and intellectual, at a cognitive, cultural or intellectual level.

She said, he said:

"You have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place" -- Red Queen in "Alice in Wonderland" (speaking, perhaps, about Information Technology?)


© 2001 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology