We last wrote about LongJump back in June when their business application platform launched. Like Coghead, DabbleDB, Zoho Creator, WyaWorks, and SalesForce’s Force.com, LongJump lets programming novices design their own applications. To do so, LongJump provides a visual application creator and directory where users can share the apps they develop. Since launch, they have over 100 enterprise level customers.
Unless you already have a large audience like SalesForece, relying on users to create applications on your platform makes the service is somewhat useless until someone creates one. So, as promised earlier, LongJump has seeded their platform with a suite of applications that can be remixed by their users. The suite consists of 13 business applications that will be free to use through the end of the year. The applications include a collaboration suite and tools for customer management, sales, HR, and Finance.
Applications can be customized by anyone else. Customizations include adding or modifying new data objects such as creating a contact object or triggering new actions when information enters the system. For instance, if a contact is added, email the sales team about it. These modifications fork the application into your own private copy, which you can keep for yourself or share with others.
The collaboration suite, OfficeSpace, is the most complex of the applications and lets users share personal and group calendars, assign tasks, store documents, and collaborate through wikis. Each of the functions is organized under its own tab, with a master dashboard where each user can puts widgets of the pieces they’re interested in.
Nice article, I didnt even know about LongJump until now. Now that I have become a regular reader and obsessed with TC I find myself learning a lot more. Once again thanx for the information, looking for more articles that will be coming out throughout the day!
This is the future of web 2.0 as I see it. Who hasn’t said, “I wish I had an app that does X and works like Y but better.
The only problem here is that the apps are hosted, so if the site goes offline, so does the app and the developers investment.
Richard
This is an interesting idea - but what happens to those free Apps and their data AFTER 2008? If you chose not to go with them, are they downloadable - or do you lose everything?
Putting HR and Company Finance data on Web Apps will require a lot of faith with so many online security breaches being exposed, even inside the top companies.
Perhaps, the future of Web based apps is allowing a company to test or design a prototype inexpensively and get feedback, before building a client side enterprise app.
hey TechCrunch, we can watch the longjump VIDEO AT DEMO, you don’t really need to tell us about it…
Hey, I got an idea, why don’t you spend your time getting the TC40 videos out already
sooner or later, no one asks about the tc40 videos, no one will remember that they promised to put it up.
probably the companies are mad. they dun wanna share anything now.
About the TC40 videos: we are still working to get them up; it’s not as though we’re trying to stiff our readers, we just ran into technical and logistical problems (this was our first conference, mind you).
The videos will be up as soon as we can possibly get them up, which will likely be sometime next week. We apologize for the delay.