We live in a mobile/apps/feeds/streams/shares/docs/social media circus, which, like any wild animal of the circus, needs to be tamed. Otherwise, lions and tigers and bears will overrun our tech world. Oh my.
Luckily for us (and even luckier for enterprises), Martin Böhringer has created Hojoki, a Web app that unifies content from services such as Dropbox, Google Docs, and even Twitter, into a single, integrated newsfeed.
Sound familiar? FriendFeed is a similar app that focuses on social media integration. Hojoki, on the other hand, is concerned with unifying cloud-based enterprise apps.
Let’s find out how a German PhD student turned his thesis into a successful app for enterprises.
Thing That Thinks
This is the name of Martin’s blog, based on a quote from Rene Discartes (in case you were interested in 15th Century French philosophers). Though, it looks like Martin has been a bit busy to post; his last entry was over two years ago.
A short perusal of Martin’s blog and you’ll find the thoughts of a student, an Enterprise App Consultant and Microblogger. Don’t worry I’ve done the perusing for you.
The Student
As any PhD student will tell you, the more conferences you attend, lectures you conduct and industry leaders you meet, the likelier your research and your name will get noticed. For Martin, he was hustling several projects during his studies as a Management Information Systems student at Chemnitz University of Technology and had a few titles:
- Independent web developer
- Consultant for enterprise apps (i.e. SAP) for the likes of IBM and Siemens
- Research Fellow at Norwich Business School (University of East Anglia/UK)
The Projects
Aside from Martin’s PhD research hustle, he was involved in the creation and launch of two business tools:
- Communote– A microblogging service for inhouse enterprise use to share short messages within teams and projects
- Palooca– The first complete Open Source MOLAP-Stack for fast, flexible and intuitive Office-based Business Intelligence (whatever that means!).
Alright, so clearly the guy is into this Enterprise Social Software stuff. Great news for those of us working in a corporate context (which, I suspect, is not many of the entrepreneurs reading this).
So what’s the deal with his new startup venture?
In on the Hojoki
That was a bad joke, sorry. But seriously, this is a pretty awesome app. Essentially it takes all your cloud apps and unifies them within one single newsfeed, allowing you to keep track of different projects and documents within your company. It also allows you the option to keep things private. Current integrated apps include (among others):
So, Hojoki is the FriendFeed for the corporate world. I could have made serious use of this when I was in that grind (a long time ago now).
When he’s not making our enterprise-doc-sharing life easier, Martin plays the piano, sports and enjoys visiting Sweden. You know, just your average startup guy, enjoying average things. I know when I summer in Sweden… oh, wait.
