Introduction

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Munjari provides tools that will allow almost anyone to put their ideas online.

A person's relationship with the Internet is defined by, and limited by, the tools they have at their disposal. We aim to remove those limitations by building simple tools which almost anyone can use to build themselves an online presence.

The Internet is Hard

Though the Internet should be a "great equalizer" because it allows anyone to publish, the reality is quite different. A person must be technically savvy in order to express their ideas. The distance between concept and realization is huge and requires a tremendous amount of time, effort and know-how. Very few people have the design or technical skills to build something that both looks good and functions correctly.

All of these problems impede communication and prevent people from getting the most out of the Internet. They remain silent not for lack of ideas or knowledge, but for lack of tools with which they can make themselves heard.

Who's Publishing Today?

What kind of information do people publish today? They write blogs and comments in user forums, post pictures or share recipes and other information online. Some have their own sites, while others post on community sites. There is no shortage of people who want to express themselves despite the primitive state of the tools today.

Why call today's Internet primitive? Because it currently limits forms of expression to a single block of text. Regardless of the information that the user wants to convey, it must be expressed in the most primitive possible way. Information is more complex than that and most people, while capable of describing what they want, cannot express it with a single block of text.

You Have Data. You Just Don't Know it.

You probably track your information offline, on plain old paper or in various pieces of software on various computers. There is no central organization for all of this data and you just kind of have to remember where to find what. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to get at that box of recipes when you're at someone else's house? Or how about those vacation pictures you took that are stored at home? Your friend wants to know whether you have a particular book or not ... too bad you never made a list.

You've actually wondered why, through the magic of computers and the Internet, you couldn't just put it all online, where you can get anything you need, when you need it. Google is nice, but it doesn't keep track of the stuff most important to you.

That's where Munjari comes in.

An Example: Sharing Information about Songs

Suppose you want to make or share a list of your favorite songs. You want your online list to work like the play list in your music player. Your music player can search and sort by artist, genre, album and more. Each song has more than a single description - it has a whole list of properties.

How can you, the average Internet user, build something like that? A web site dedicated to hosting lists of songs would be a natural fit, but what if it doesn't exist? You're used to waiting until ''someone else'' does it, but it would take even a software developer some time to build what you want. Your idea is easy to describe - you want to add "songs", with "artists" and "albums" and search and sort them - why can't you just make it yourself?

With Munjari, you can.

You just enter all of the information you'd like to track and Munjari will automatically build a great-looking, easy-to-use web application for you. At this point, you can already start adding songs. If you realize you forgot some bit of information, don't worry. You can add the missing fields and generate the application again. You've built an application, just like your local music player, so you can add, remove or edit songs any time you want. The songs you already added remain untouched as you tweak and upgrade the application. It's addictive.

Now, imagine you have your song library online and you want to do the same thing with your DVD library. The concepts are the same, so you just copy the song application, change some names, regenerate and voila! you have your very own DVD application. You may only have a few DVDs, but since it's so easy - and fun! - to use Munjari, you can stay organized in almost no time at all.

Presenting ... You.

Our tools will help you build a site that you can truly call home. Once you get used to this treatment, that's exactly how you'll come to think of your Munjari site - it's the place where all of your stuff is. No longer will your information be stored in dozens of places, with an address list here, a couple of recipes there and some pictures posted somewhere else. It's just as easy to build your own applications and stay in control of your online presence.

Since it's your home, we believe that you should have control over who gets to come in and who doesn't. You can keep some things private, share some things with family and make other things public. You can have subscribers and publish news feeds or generate newsletter emails. You can even share your inventions with other members of the Encodo community or host them on other servers.

Naturally, you won't have to build everything yourself. Encodo will offer many building blocks that you can just use. Better yet, you can take an application (like a song tracker), make a copy, and customize it so that it does exactly what you need - no more, no less. At Encodo, we know we can't make exactly the software you want - only you can do that. That's why we make tools that you can use -- so you can stop waiting and start building.

Further Reading

History
A critical look at how people contribute to and interact with the Internet today.