Opencola (company)
Encyclopedia
OpenCola was a Toronto-based software company founded in 1999 by Grad Conn, Cory Doctorow
and John Henson to create "collaboration object lookup architecture" software, and sold in 2003. The software and specifications produced were all released as open source. The earliest archived page of the company website described "OpenCOLA" as an application, a protocol, suite of tools, and the company itself.
The Opencola desktop client/server (or "clerver" in Opencola's parlance) application enabled users to collaboratively search, acquire, manage and share information from multiple data sources, including the Internet
, peers on the Opencola network, and existing proprietary databases, from a single interface. Opencola extended search engine capabilities with the ability to perform contextual searching – a process that searches the entire contextual subject matter of a document for relevance and tries to replenish previous searches with more relevant results. Searches would propagate throughout the network as needed to locate the specified content.
The company funded further development of and released Justin Chapweske's Swarmcast
, then released it as GPL software May 18, 2001. The software used peer-to-peer swarming techniques similar to Bittorrent to accelerate distribution of large high-volume (frequently accessed) content, as a way to reduce load on source servers, with emphasis on content streaming. The company's Folders project used Swarmcast technology to accelerate content distribution within organizations.
In summer 2003, the company was sold to Open Text Corporation
of Waterloo, Ontario
.
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
and John Henson to create "collaboration object lookup architecture" software, and sold in 2003. The software and specifications produced were all released as open source. The earliest archived page of the company website described "OpenCOLA" as an application, a protocol, suite of tools, and the company itself.
The Opencola desktop client/server (or "clerver" in Opencola's parlance) application enabled users to collaboratively search, acquire, manage and share information from multiple data sources, including the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
, peers on the Opencola network, and existing proprietary databases, from a single interface. Opencola extended search engine capabilities with the ability to perform contextual searching – a process that searches the entire contextual subject matter of a document for relevance and tries to replenish previous searches with more relevant results. Searches would propagate throughout the network as needed to locate the specified content.
The company funded further development of and released Justin Chapweske's Swarmcast
Swarmcast
Swarmcast is a provider of Internet television service. It is headquartered in Minneapolis and Tokyo with branch offices in Zurich, San Francisco and New York City. It employs approximately 50 people.- History :...
, then released it as GPL software May 18, 2001. The software used peer-to-peer swarming techniques similar to Bittorrent to accelerate distribution of large high-volume (frequently accessed) content, as a way to reduce load on source servers, with emphasis on content streaming. The company's Folders project used Swarmcast technology to accelerate content distribution within organizations.
In summer 2003, the company was sold to Open Text Corporation
Open Text Corporation
OpenText Corporation Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. As Canada's largest software company, it produces and distributes computer software applications designed to enable Enterprise content management solutions for large corporations across all industries....
of Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo, Ontario
Waterloo is a city in Southern Ontario, Canada. It is the smallest of the three cities in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo, and is adjacent to the city of Kitchener....
.