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Minerva has two halves - the universal desktop & integrated communications.
Universal "Desktop"
- Pieces (like UFS) may be natively accessible from client platforms, but all must be browser-accessible for portability
- take the best parts of Athena and make them cross-platform, OS-neutral services
- find a customer
- build alliances with others who may develop the apps, while we do the backend
- See YouOS (http://youOs.com) for an interesting example
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- Possible applications:
- departments using web.mit.edu w/o scripting ability (i.e. Chem E)
Integrated Communications
- portable, accessible thru browser
- email (like Google Mail)
- Jabber-based presence
- IM (integrating w/all major clients, like AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google)
- chat
- zephyr-style passive chat
- VOIP (receive & initiate calls)
- pieces detachable from web window (a la Gmail)
- relevant technologies:
- google mail
- Zimbra
- MIT departments are not big IM/chat users, but students are different
- To do:
- understand the student users
- find a customer
- make it visible