Microsoft Wallop Hacks - How to customize Wallop

What is Microsoft Wallop

The mission in Microsoft's Wallop Social Computing Group is to research and develop software that contributes to compelling and effective social interactions, with a focus on user-centered design processes and rapid prototyping.

The work includes the Sapphire project, sharing, mobile applications, trust and reputation, collaboration, and story telling. To facilitate the rapid prototyping, they also have an online lab for running studies to evaluate the social user interfaces.

In Wallop, you can share photos, blog, and interact with your friends. Wallop is a research project that explores how people share media and build conversations in the context of social networks. Wallop is currently running a small, real world test with small friendship groups.

Wallop is modeled after the way people (vs computers) think, feel, organize and remember. This simple but fundamental change in perspective has caused Wallop to rethink the way the system is experienced and designed, from the user experience to the lowest levels of the system.
The current desktop assumes you organize files by manually sorting into folders. As the amount of information increases, finding items becomes more frustrating. Wallop's goal is to have automatic, dynamic grouping by association replace folders as the primary means of organizing. The prototypes that has been developed automatically determines the importance (what you care about), similarity (relationships between objects), and the current context of the user. All objects (people, communication, documents, web pages, etc.) and metadata are stored in a database and queries determining associations can be calculated in real-time.
The Sapphire project includes the backend, data & queries, and user interface prototypes, and is a cross group effort.

Wallop is currently in testing and not open to the general public. For more information go to www.wallop.com