[ann] Group Complete Technology Preview (ODK & CouchDB)

[Matt Adams <ma...@radicaldynamic.com>]

Hi all,

Group Complete, a collaborative & real-time mobile data collection
solution and the Group Inform app for Android, are now in open beta.
We're inviting the Couch community to experiment with us during this
time.  Our work is based on Open Data Kit and CouchDB.

For those not familiar with mobile data collection, Group Complete
allows for the capture of structured information using interactive
XForms, which are not entirely unlike their paper form counterparts.
XML is used to define and store responses to the questions that are
asked, their logical order and other parameters  Captured data
includes everything from free-form text input and select lists to
barcodes, GPS, audio, pictures and video.

The Group Inform app expands upon the great data collection features
found in ODK Collect.  It is backwards compatible with ODK Aggregate.
Features include:

* Management of mobile devices involved in data collection (account
owners only)

* Build and edit XForms on the fly using the built-in form editor (we're
working to make Group Inform truly mobile, from form creation to data
entry, export and visualization)

* Share forms and data with other team members using shared folders (we
call this Simple Sharing) -- this means that mobile workers are no
longer islands to themselves and can benefit from collaborative data
collection

* Work with forms and data offline; changes to forms & data in
"synchronized folders" are automatically replicated back to master
copies (this is the beauty of CouchDB at work)

We are currently supporting Android 2.2 with added support for 2.1 and
2.3 coming in the next few weeks.

Like any early preview, Group Complete has some rough edges.  We'll be
hard at work over the next couple of months to make Group Complete a
fantastic mobile data collection solution and your participation in our
beta will be a huge piece of that.

More about Group Complete at http://groupcomplete.com and
http://groupcomplete.com/help/start


Cheers,

Matt
-- 
Matt Adams
Radical Dynamic
www.radicaldynamic.com