OpenWetWare:Feature list/Lab notebook/2007 Oct Brainstorming/email

The idea is to add the ability to add to or create a wiki page by sending an email to some address. SocialText is an example of wiki platform that allows this (Koch has used it and liked it).

Tom Knight mentioned this as a potentially implementable feature to solve the paper->wiki problem. The idea is:

Paper ----->  PDF   ----->  Wiki page w/ PDF link
      scanner       email

Koch also wants this feature as a means of adding information to the wiki from any location via cell phone. For example, if remember a detail after leaving lab, or have an idea on the airplane.

• Austin Che 12:35, 6 October 2007 (EDT): I've thought about this before and the main thing keeping it from implemented then and now still is authentication. Email is inherently unauthenticated and especially for things like scanners, you can't tell it to do something different with the email. If you could describe how socialtext solves this problem, then the implementation itself should be simple. Basically, somewhere in each email needs to have at least 3 pieces of information in addition to the data: the username, the password (or other authentication token), and the page name to be edited.