The Discourse Module, or should we say Chat ?

While the official, boring bits of the collaboration go into the main document window for posterity, the real action should happen in the more informal, ephemeral realm of Chat. There are several excellent chat programs on the platform such as Adium and Apple's own iChat. So why bother? We recommend those dedicated programs for your daily need to "connect".
The chat window in iStorm functions occasionally as an information dispenser, but its main function is to fully integrate those "thinking out loud" moments into the iStorm process. Also, note that there are some rare occasions where thousand words are indeed better than a picture. You can also "gesture" your comments by selecting a symbolic icon (along with some funky sound effect if you choose to in the Preferences). The range of emotion available here may disappoint some of you well-informed on human psyche. But allow us make some sacrifice there for the sake of efficiency. An advice: do not overuse the emotion. Once your collaborators find about your tendency to make every comment with angry gesture, they will stop being intimidated by you.

Sometimes, you may need to talk to a member of the group individually. We will not speculate on why you would want to do that. You do that by selecting the name of the individual you want to address privately. The remarks thus made will be delivered only to you and the target individual and displayed in small gray font.

When the text and emoticon fall short of expressing your feeling faithfully: [version 2.5 or later]

The small round button in the chat message compose area is for recording and sending a short voicegram. Click on the gray button (or Escape key if your cursor is in the message compose area already) to start recording. The button will turn red. (The maximum duration is 10 seconds. Make it brief and to the point.) At the end of your message, just press the button again to stop recording and immediately send the message. You can not un-say what you sent. Unless you stop it yourself, it will automatically truncate at 10 seconds and send it away. Remember that this is not intended as a substitute phone.

Collaborate now, Dispute later.

iStorm will record and display in and outs of the participating members. When you save the document, the whole history of the chatting is also saved. (Not in the case of Save As RTFD) Granted, not everybody needs this. Indeed, if you read back your daily chat transcript, you will be quite ashamed at the paucity of any meaningful and durable content.

Often, it requires a singular genius to move the earth. The lone genius may accomplish the work mainly through inner dialogues and has no need for iStorm. However, there is also an endless list of great collaborations in history. Just to name famous duos will fill up pages: Rogers & Hart, Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Watson & Crick, Billy Wilder & I. A. L. Diamond. Truffaut & Jean-Pierre Leaud. (Jobs & Woz). Lennon & McCartney. Erdös and the company of the week, Nichols & May? C. N. Yang & T. D. Lee. The silly and the serious Woody Allen. Julia Childs & PBS?

How about the Bloomsbury circle? The Lunar Society of Birmingham. King Sejong's Jip-Hyun-Jeon. The early cast of Saturday Night Live. Nicolas Bourbaki. Architects of Quantum Mechanics?

Is is preposterous to assume that any of these teams could have made good use of iStorm and its chat module? In the recently published biography of the celebrated movie director Billy Wilder, there is an anecdote about him and his collaborator Diamond, crediting each other with the famous line "Nobody's perfect" at the end of the movie "Some like it hot". It is an example of a perfect and beautiful collaboration. But collaborations sometimes end up in a bitter dispute over who said what when. More so when a big prestige or reward is at stake. Once you have this experience, it begins to undermine your confidence in working in a group. Even if the group manages to keep, the constant strain will drain creative energy. What a pity. With iStorm, you will have a tangible record of everything that went on. Not that it will be legally effective. But at least you will have something to show your sympathetic colleagues when the other guy who snatched your idea just won an award and is heading for Sweden.

Let us look on the brighter side. Often, it is worthwhile to revisit what went on at a distance, and try to grasp a deep undercurrent which you missed during the heat of debates. That's what this is really for.