Yes, shindig is just the reference implementation. Oh yes, and http://code.google.com/p/partuza/ is a sample PHP social site based on OpenSocial using shindig.
When I was a manager of a small team, I use to say: "I'll be the last to leave and I want to leave early". That's was usually enough to magically make programmers to leave earlier and still get thinks done, because working late has to do a lot more with bad habits than with technical problems. And no, they didn't work from home, they couldn't (it was a very restrictive environment).
Sure, sometimes they had some tough problems, and I usually stayed in my own office only appearing to ask them if they wanted something to eat, for example. I also use to have a brief meeting after two hours or so just to evaluate if it still made any sense to stay or it was better to leave and come back early when other involved people were around (for example, a DB expert).
A think that this discussion is a little biased. For one hand, the form of a thesis depends a lot on the field. The more theoretical, the more it can be concise, but in some fields you need a lot of experimental data.
Another issue is that most dissertations are not made from a single, ground breaking contribution, but from several incremental contributions and you need to integrate them into a coherent text.
I've not finished my dissertation, but it fall in the latter case and I think it will be some 100 pages long.
By the way, it will be interesting to see the length of the PhD thesis of the people that claims that "the length of a thesis is inversely correlated to its brilliance" (only cperciva declared it)
