Help us name Ninja Group Jive!

Ninja Sworms
I don't know but it just seems to sound cool and different.

Crazy88s Groups
If you're a Kill Bill fan and you like Ninjas, you might remember the Crazy88s from Kill Bill Volume One. They're a group and they're Ninjas.

That's all I've got so far.

Some great ideas here.

Keep them coming folks; when we have a few more we will put it to the vote!

Lets spice this up a little...

The person who comes up with the name that eventually gets chosen gets an extra month added on to their subscription + a better prize to be announced upon release of groupjive :P

Hi all together.

Our GroupJive thread is now open, what a pleasure. Thanks Daniel that you got started with that. You definitely found the better words than me. :blush:

As the designated developer of our GroupJive fork, I also got my mind rotating about a cool name for the new component and here are my nominations. B)

[ol]
[li]Ninja Groups[/li]
[li]Ninja Cliques[/li]
[li]Ninja Clusters[/li]
[li]Ninja Crowded[/li]
[li]Ninja Crews[/li]
[/ol]

As a Linux professional, my favorite definitely is Ninja Clusters, because Linux Clusters have displaced the very big and far too expensive Mainframes.

Hope you give us some more suggestions. :kiss:

Best Regards
Uwe

Finally a groups component from Ninja! :woohoo:
Thank you!

My suggestions for the name:

Ninja Tribes

Ninja Places

Can't wait for the component :) Any approximate time on when we could see the first betas? :)
For some time i was frustrated with a component, because i've installed it believing in its development. Soon i realized that nothing is going on. And it was hard to motivate yourself for supporting this component and knowing that in the end you'll not be using it as it is.
Now that Ninjas are taking over this component development, i'm absolutely confident that they will create a quality thing :)

As for name, I suggest to use Ninja Groups (as someone suggested before me), because its intuitive for both - who were using groupjive and who were not.

Best wishes,
Tomas

Hi Thomas,

thank you very much for your input. Appreciate that very much. I'm proud to say, that we are well known for qualitative high-grade and particularly secure components. Until now I did not find any of our extensions on security advisories. B)

Indeed, that makes me feel very proud.

A little roadmap for our new baby:
I will start development in the middle of September or the beginning of October. My current projects challenge me to 100% at the time. I hope that I can finish them latest at September 20th.

My current projects:
[ol]
[li]Exclusive modification of SOBI2 component, search module and catchment area module for a German customer. It's finished to 95% now.[/li]
[li]NinjACL Patch Component for VirtueMart 1.1.2. One of our members has the need to control access to particular categories, but VirtueMart can't handle this. Finished to 80% now.[/li]
[li]ContRay Update and Integration of TinyMCE. ContRay is a commercial CGI/Perl based CMS. This is the next project now I will start with this week.[/li]
[li]Cloning of my former customer project (catch24.ch) for a classifieds portal (estate and jobs) from Switzerland. Delivery latest at September 20th.[/li]
[/ol]

I think, if everything goes well, we can start our internal alpha test phase earliest in November.
The official beta test phase then will estimated begin in the middle of November or the beginning of December.

I'll do my best to finally release it as a Christmas present for you all.

Best Regards
Uwe

28 Aug 08

Some good ideas here guys. Keep them coming!

28 Aug 08

Okay guys, I've been doing my homework...

B)

I went to the Wikipedia page that outlines all the Japanese counting words to see if there was anything really Ninja-minded regarding groups. Here's what I came up with:

[ul][li]GroupKo: Group plus General measure, used when there is no specific counter word, also used for military units aka Ninjas.[/li][li]GroupKumi: Group of Groups such as twins, a husband and a wife, dancers, etc.[/li][li]GroupKai: Group plus Occurrences, number of times[/li][li]GroupKen: Group plus numbers of houses[/li][li]GroupMei: Group plus People (polite form) mei literally means "name"[/li][/ul]
By and large, nin is the word for people, but counting them is not the same as in the Western world. For example, yo-nin = four people. Perhaps Kumi-nin would be a group of people? If so, then a good name might be KumiNinja.

Another nice twist would be considering each group's area as a Washitsu, or traditional Japanese styled room. The script could be considered shoji, or delicate walls which, when combined, create spaces for each of the groups.

Anyway, those are some ideas to play with.

28 Aug 08

...looks to me like schelly is cookin' on gas! B)

30 Aug 08

Thanks Schelly for some good ideas.

As someone who speaks a little Japanese I like your ideas. (and can understand them)

ko/kumi/ken etc are similar to how we use 'slice' or 'piece' but for different objects.

The shoji suggestion gives me an idea.

Ninja Bento Box - A Bento Box is a partitioned box for putting your lunch in.

The only down side to a japanese name is that it won't show up in searches. So people searching for 'Joomla Group Manager' won't get Bento show up as high in their lists as 'group jive' does. So Keeping Group in is definitely a benefit.

Ninja Group Bento?
Ninja Group Manager (lame name but good SEO)
Ninja Groups
Ninja Community Groups
...

30 Aug 08

I didn't mention this, but I meant to... During my research I ran into the question "What does one call a group of Ninja" and was largely amused at the responses. Among the best:

"Sir!"
"Whatever they want to be called"
"Nothing -- you'll never know they're there..."

:laugh:

I love the imagery of the shoji... I even found a great creative commons pic of it on Wikipedia.

But it's a good point about finding the component by doing a search, actually. When I was looking for Freecycle groups, I know searched for the word group. In addition to being easy to find in a search for the component, my thought process also turns to "friendly urls" in keeping with the personality of my site. For instance, I love the functionality of the existing Group Jive, but I hate the url that includes com_groupjive.

It certainly isn't that I'm ashamed of the component, but my site might be about a serious topic, such as elder abuse, and my groups might be intended for caregivers to keep concerned family members apprised of how their elderly relative is doing. In a situation like that, com_support would be better.

So maybe the development could be done with an eye toward using the group's "shortname" as the SEF url name? I don't know how you uber-clever coders do stuff like that, but color me impressed that you do.

JoomGroup?

:) :side: :silly: ;)

02 Sep 08

a few more ideas...

Ninja GroupSmart, or GroupWise

Ninja Clans (what groups of ninjas's were originally called in 1970's martial arts flicks. Also a popular name for groups of gamers.)

04 Sep 08

hmm Ninja GroupWise caught my interest

20 Sep 08

If there are any more ideas, just throw them into the pile.
I'll set up a poll on the first of October. :)

20 Sep 08

Not to throw a wet blanket on the party but I'd be very careful about trademark infringement... isn't GroupWise a Novell registered product?

20 Sep 08

Yeah it does ring a bell now that you mention it. Thanks!

23 Sep 08

confirmed... GroupWise is a Novell collaboration tool.

I just heard that BEAT over at Joomlapolis just took on the GroupJive porting project for J1.5x. and it's already in BETA. Were you aware of this? I think they plan it to be a straight port over to the new CB Framework which means a GroupJive plugin architecture as well, but still functionally much the same as the old GroupJive.

Any ideas how the Ninjas will differentiate their version?

Cheers!

23 Sep 08

The life is getting even more interesting :)
One thing why i would be interessting in CB groupjive is that they propose the same plugin architecture also for groupjive. So - i don't need to hack groupjive anymore to provide own tools.
On the other hand i would encourage Ninjas to provide their own solution anyway. I'm sure Ninjas would provide more accessible and visually nicer solution. Maybe more attention to innovations?
Ninja developer opinions would be very interesting...

Thanks,
Tomas

I am also interested in knowing what would be the differences between the two.

Well if Beat it taking it on there will be some good competition then.

Theirs will definitely be tightly integrated with CB I am sure

Hi all together.

Currently I've absolutely no time to research that. I only want to give an announce, that I read these posts, and I will figure out what there's goin' on.

Best regards
Uwe

Thanks for the quick reply, but as a business, is it worth the cost to allocate resources to a project that is already being built by founding company? If you take time to walk through the extension section of Joomla, you will see that there are duplicate extension, some that are great and some that are not. Yes, this is where Ninja quality comes in handy. However, what would make this site great, is the unique extensions that you can not find any where else. I know this concern of mind is already too late, because we are seeking a name for the new componet, but we should focus on new and unique extensions.

I actually thought the same thing, especially since they have already have a head start, and now someone has taken up the banner for GJ itself.

And a new one is coming from Dicouri (of Juga Fame) so yes competition will be fierce.

Is it worth going ahead with it? We will decide shortly. I don't like to make promises then pull out though.

Please continue!! I'm thoroughly impressed with the Ninja work you do and am certain our version will be a great tool/application. --As long as it can be differentiated in some good ways, that fill in some of the gaps from the old GJ.

It needs to be:

1. easy to restyle/template
2. tighter integration with security use-cases (eliminating need for JACL etc.)
3. easier to extend to add new functionality - plugin framework, etc
4. much more.

Keep up the great work! :)

Cheers.

you have just given me an idea actually...

We may just keep it up after all.

I am just caution, about the whole process. It is like trying to make a New Window version OS ( well that was a example), but competing with Apple to make a better Mac. There are other great programmers out there, yes Ninjaforge is one of the best, but the way that this community will grow and get bigger is by creating new and exciting extensions that can not be found any where else. Trust me, I am a lifer here and want this site to grow, but from learning from my business, it is not about recreating the wheel, yes enhancing on it is great, but there are so much more we (ninja forge) can do with Joomla.

It's nice to have purely unique offerings, but why should that stifle innovation and new functionality. The only reason GroupJive was the defacto-standard is that it was the ONLY decent front-end groups component available for Joomla, for years, that I'm aware of. Now there are at least 4 other projects that I'm aware of to create Joomla 1.5x Group/Social network components. This is great news for all of us. Gives us choices, let's us differentiate the sites for our clients, encourages innovation and more. Let's face it, GroupJive just wasn't that great. The ninjas can make a better one! So can the Joomlapolis guys. Let them have at it!

Just think, using that logic, without someone deciding to build Joomla, we'd still be wasting our time with lame CMS's like Drupal or PHP-Nuke sites. ;-) Not all Ninja extensions are completely unique, they just happen to be better in most cases than the others.

Cheers!

In some ways I feel really bad about this because I was one of those people trying to find a developer for the old GJ project. There were simply no takers. So I began trying to find a team of established component coders interested in taking on the project.

I'm not 100% certain that the CB team would have known about GJ needing to be picked up if I hadn't gone off trying to find somebody to take it on. Of course, I can't look at it like that because you never know what somebody would do if you hadn't said something, but...

I'll tell you this, though. I like Remository because of certain features it brings to a download directory, and I like JDownloads because of the ability to select more than 1 file at a time. I use each of them depending on the needs of the person I'm developing for. It was wisely said that the Ninjas should go ahead if we can find a way of differentiating.

Niche markets work.

:-)

Good Karma coming your way :)

Thank you, Shinkendo -- back atcha.

Besides, what if I have a client who doesn't want or need Community Builder functionality but still wants one level of user to be able to create groups? It shouldn't require CB in order to have a group functionality!

:-)

Hi @all.

Very interesting points you guys. Thanks for your input.

We will let them slip in our discussions/decisions. ;)

Best Regards
Uwe

Didn't mean to play devil advocate with this thread. I understand that FORD created the first assembly machine and "car", but it was Toyota and Honda who has taken the average car to new high and quality. As long as we all commit to the cause of creating a high quality, exclusive extension then it will be great. The only thing I can do is give my opinions from what I like and don't like from the other extensions and input it here. We are designers ( in some part) and the ninja forge are the engineers.

Now back on the subject of what to call it. I think it need to include the old name, because people are still familiar with it, but we also need to include the quality name of ninja, such as "NINJIVE"

25 Sep 08

Hi Barton,

I don't think you played devils advocate, because you got the stone rolling. This created a very good discussion where statements came up, we otherwise would not have been thinking about.

Another important point is, my stressed out situation. I did not know, that other developers already took GJ for their own projects. So I have to thank you guys. :)

And NinJIVE sounds really great. :)

Best Regards
Uwe

25 Sep 08

Don't apologise Barton, I felt the same way as you initially but I have a few ideas now.

I will talk more with Uwe about it, but we might not bother trying to rebuild something that is already broken but build something new instead.

Something that doesn't depend on CB of course, but can work with it.

I have also been tossing an idea around about making a pseudo ACL program similar to JUGA, but using AEC as the base for it instead of having supscriptions AND groups separate, why not just use one?

So how about a Group component that:
* Could operate as a simple ACL component
* Integrated and -could- (but doesn't need to) use AEC to control it's group access, and by proxy ACL
* Can work with CB, but again doesn't need it (might even put some simple CB like stuff in it)

Off to a good start yet?

25 Sep 08

Sounds like a great start! Considering the new projects to build competitive components to Community Builder, it's probably a good idea not to be married to CB, but instead provide a framework for integration with a variety of Social and group solutions, starting with CB of course because of the install base out there. I agree with Schelly that we need a good (non-core-hack) way to create groups/ACLs that are easily leveraged by a variety of J.x extensions.

P.S. NinJive is a cool name! (nice one Barton) --But I'm not certain it will still be necessary to maintain the brand equity of GroupJive if the Ninja app will be completely different, or serve a different purpose or audience.

Interessting times are cooming. It seems like we have the third player in JomSocio from Azrul team.

Best wishes,
Tomas

Thanks shinkendo, after reading what Daniel wrote, I would agree with you. If we were just making a better version of Group Jive, then NinJive, is a good name. But, it seems that this discussion is leading the programmers down another path that none of us would of thought. And now, with Azrul getting into the mix, yes interesting is a good word.

Can you tell us more about what you found out blaztoma ?

Here:
http://www.jomsocial.com/

And overview here:
http://www.jomsocial.com/overview.html

As i understood, basicly it's profile (aka cb) with extendible fields + groups + plugin API. Now that they are developing this from the beginning as united system, it could be better than CB+GJ merged project.
BTW, the product is also in testing phase now.

Best wishes,
Tomas

Thanks blaztoma , I think the idea of going away from CB is great, it is so archaic and look like a web1.0 site. What JomSocial is doing is more 2.0 and will bring Joomla into the web2.0 interms of community extensions. Also, www.joomunity.org is working on something too. Very exciting time.. No longer do we have to stick with the T-model.

I've been a beta tester for both joomunity and jomsocial (front-end only unfortunately) so I can't see if either are truly improvements over CB+GJ from architecture/integration/extention/administration/performance perspectives. However, both have clear advantages in their end-user experience, front-end features, etc.) They both appear to present a more modern interface with more-seamless integration of plugged in app personal settings/preferences for things like comments, media galleries, feeds, blog posts etc. I personally like the JomSocial direction best of the two, thus far, since it has a 'groups' function that joomunity appears to still lack. We agreed as testers to not disclose any real-details yet, but if you want to try either of them, anyone can beta joomunity (just register), but to test JomSocial you have to be a registered OWNER of JomComment or MyBlog and support large communities.

I would agree with you 100% shinkendo . Jomsocial has some clear benefit over Joomunity, such as the clean interface and everything already preloaded. But, after reading through both, Joomunity is more open and have the ability to create apps without the need of the developers. They want and encourage this matter of fact, which I like. In addition, the apps can be customized by CSS.

With this, NinJive (ahaha), can be integrated within Joomunity much easier than JomSocial. But, no matter what, this thread has open up my eyes to the great possibility of Joomla,