[SAGE] incoming file transfers, and collaborative environments in general

[Betsy Schwartz <betsys@gsd.harvard.edu>]

A specific problem: I've been asked to think about ways to allow "friends 
of friends" to upload files to our servers. Obviously we don't want to 
enable anonymous incoming FTP or anything like that  - nor do we want to be 
creating accounts for these users. I think ideally we'd use our existing 
authentication system to give a user a "ticket" they could give to the 
sender. Are there any existing systems that allow something like this?

In general"  what are interesting sites or books to learn about 
collaborative environments? I know about  WebDav and wikis, but beyond that 
I'm finding a bewildering variety of information (and much hype). I need to 
become a Subject Matter Expert in this and I'm not quite sure where to 
start. Our users are architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and 
other sorts of designers, with a few random Pure Design and Industrial 
Design and other such folks in the mix.  In general they are interested in 
collaborating on web sites and exchanging Very Large image files, not so 
much in fancy interactive whiteboards etc (although it would be good to 
learn more about all that too...)

thanks for any pointers
Betsy

PS for the file transfer, this looks good, but I suspect it's proprietary. 
I'm waiting to hear back:
http://www-db.embl.de/jss/servlet/de.embl.bk.wwwTools.TicketFileStore

Betsy Schwartz                                                    email: 
betsys@gsd.harvard.edu
Unix Systems Administrator,CRG                           voice: 617-495-5947
Harvard Graduate School of Design                         fax:    617-496-5866