Huddle has recently announced that, as part of its commitment in supporting not for profit organizations, it has now extended its Donation Program, to allow these organizations to make effective use of their online application to support their fund raising teams, their volunteers and staff within their distributed offices.

Applying organizations will need to meet some eligibility criteria, for example, organizations that are concerned with the following may be able to receive a free Huddle account:

• Relief to the poor
• Advancement of social and community welfare
• Advancement of culture
• Advancement of the natural environment
• Other purposes beneficial to the community
• Humanitarian assistance and disaster relief organizations
• Health services & related activities
• Some religious organizations, registered as a charity

Those successful in securing a free account under the Huddle Donation Program will benefit from the following:

• Ability to register up to 25 Huddle users
• 10Gb central storage space for uploading documents and files
• An unlimited amount of Huddle workspaces
• Task management functionality
• Use of whiteboards functionality
• Use of discussion forums
• Mobile applications
• Ability to integrate telephone and online conferencing
• Microsoft Office plugins

Those interested in applying for a Huddle package as a part of the not for profit Donation Progam, should see: http://www.huddle.com/foundation/ for full information on the program and application criteria.  Applications are invited from organizations world-wide with the process being slightly different for US-based organizations, UK-based organizations and then organizations in the rest of the world.

For not for profit organizations that have needs greater than those included in the Donation Progam, discounted Huddle packages are also available.  A discount of 25 %  is available to such organizations, subject to them meeting eligibility criteria, on the usual Huddle pricing.  Organizations interested in the discounted packages should contact: foundation@huddle.com for more information.

For more information on the Huddle application, its functionality and general pricing, please see: www.huddle.com.

So, where does Huddle fit into this?

The rise of the internet to its current proportions has seen the proliferation of applications that are offered as on-demand services, where customers, whether organizations or individuals, have access to their information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, across different time zones.  Huddle is one such application and it is proud to introduce its Unlimited Enterprise offering into the market. Its aim is to recognize the enterprise needs of its customers, allowing an additional range of users to be added to their accounts to allow for true collaboration across their entire stakeholder range.  These new ‘lite’ users are then able to access the appropriate Huddle account on a more occasional basis to their full counterparts, letting them see and comment on the information they need, without the need to have the full access that other organizational users need.  As an added bonus, these Lite users are added free of charge to the account holder!

More about Huddle

Huddle offers comprehensive collaborative project management functionality.  With central and secure storage, documents and files  can be shared across interested users from a single online source so users can be sure they are accessing the most up to date information.  Of course, no online project management application is complete without the standard task and resource management features and Huddle does these well, with useful filtering and built in automatic reminders.  Collaboration is facilitated through a range of different means, including discussion threads, online whiteboards for note taking and the ability to attach comments to different Huddle elements, such as, tasks and documents. With versions being supported for both documents and whiteboards, users are clearly able to keep track any changes.  Huddle also offers an online meetings facility, saving users from having to use a service external to their project management application.

In addition, the look and feel of the Huddle interface can be customized to match an organization’s own brand.

For more information on huddle, please visit: www.huddle.com

The guarantee has come on the back of the widely publicised and damaging outages suffered by Google and Microsoft, in 2011, where their customers couldn’t access their information for frustrating and valuable hours.

Huddle has recognized that today’s project teams are working in a widely distributed way, separated by geography, time zones, and language, all working with different technologies, for example, some desktop, some mobile and any down time can be very costly for businesses who rely on immediate access to their information. 

Huddle sees themselves as now setting the reliability and availability standard for the online project management industry and to help increase customer confidence, ongoing into the future.  To back this up, the team at Huddle has a first-class disaster recovery program that ensures failover to a second data center in the event of a service interruption, for example, as a result of a natural disaster or technical failure.  The maximum failover time to the second data center is a mere 15 minutes!  Huddle’s second data center mirrors the primary data center in real time so customers can be confident that, even in the event of the worst type of electronic catastrophe, their information is secure and any losses will be minimized.

This money-back guarantee added to the level of security offered by Huddle, as a product, makes this application an attractive consideration for organizations that need to be sure their information is both available and safe. Backed by corresponding functionality covering centralised document storage and management, task and milestone management, assignment and management of resources, reporting, calendar and event management, to name but the key areas, Huddle offers an enterprise solution to suit most organizations.

Huddle offers a range of pricing options each tailored individually to suit specific organizational requirements, and for information, contact their sales team at sales@huddle.com.  In addition, a free trial is available.

For more information on huddle and its True Uptime guarantee, please visit: www.huddle.com.

The changes they are introducing include a major update to one of the key Javascript libraries that they are using. These libraries give developers access to pre-written pieces of functionality that they can use in developing Apollo further. As with upgrading software applications to bring in new improvements, upgrading development libraries can see the introduction of improved performance by carrying out back end processes in a quicker and more efficient way.  The team at Apollo rightly points out that there is a mountain of code involved in the application so upgrading the library is not simply a case of slotting the new one in place and testing it – a good deal of detailed and manual work within the code is needed to make sure that the new library integrates correctly.

So what will the user see as a result of this Javascript library upgrade?  The change will be the introduction of support for Internet Explorer 9, which is coming in response to a number of user feedback requests.  Also evident to users will be some improved features around the upload of files.  Perhaps more importantly, though, the upgrade to the new library will make the code behind Apollo more durable, ongoing.

About Apollo

Apollo is a project management tool that is available over the cloud.  Its aim is to support its users in working collaboratively with support for projects, tasks, contacts, calendars amongst other things, in a market place that is competitive.

Apollo comes in different price ranges, covering:

• $23 per month, giving 18 projects, 5Gb storage, unlimited project users, 7 CRM users, 5000 contacts, 12 deals and time tracking
• $48 per month, giving 40 projects, 15Gb storage, unlimited project users, 18 CRM users, 20000 contacts, unlimited deals and time tracking
• $98 per month, giving 115 projects, 30Gb storage, unlimited project users, 40 CRM users, 30000 contacts, unlimited deals and time tracking
• $148 per month, giving unlimited projects, 75Gb storage, unlimited project users, unlimited CRM users, 50000 contacts, unlimited deals and time tracking

Apollo is proving itself as a comprehensive application that has much to offer businesses of all sizes and is well worth considering.

For more information on Apollo, please visit: http://www.apollohq.com/.

Writer for Help Documents – With around a hundred different pages on a variety of topics, currently in the form of support articles, WORKetc are looking for experienced writers to translate these articles into help documents.  Each article has a supporting video that explains the essence of the article.  Writers can be based anywhere, working remotely, and the work will be assigned on a casual bases.  This could be an ideal role for those who need extra income with work that will fit around family and other commitments.

Customer support – This role is geographically constrained and the successful applicant must be based either in the East Coast of USA (USA – Eastern Standard Time) or in Australia.  This role will involve remote working, making use of  Skype voice and GoTo Meeting to provide help and support for other WORKetc clients.

Software Developer / Engineer – On a technical front, WORKetc is also recruiting a senior .net/C# developer.  If you have strong experience of  middleware & integration or, alternatively, ERP-like experience, with products, such as, Salesforce,  Netsuite and  SAP, then this might be the role for you.  Although this role will involve remote working, the successful applicant will be based in either USA, Australia/NZ or Europe.

To apply for any of the vacant roles, you must be an existing user of WORKetc.  To register your interest and  request further information  on any of the above roles, email the WORKetc support team at  support@worketc.com.

About WORKetc 

WORKetc, based in Australia, is a project management application, accessed over the cloud, that was founded by Daniel Barnett. Now in its 6^th year, the aim of WORKetc is to support smaller businesses and organizations in the collaborative management of their projects. Functionality includes CRM, billing, centralized documents and many others.

In fact, the company uses its own product to manage its day to day business, using it for all its customer support activities, contact management, billing, marketing by email,  and even ongoing product development.

WORKetc is available through a monthly subscription and a free 14 day trial is available.

For more information on WORKetc, please visit: http://www.worketc.com

Teamlab have recently included a sharing feature to its calendar, allowing users now to share important events and information with their co-team members.

A bit about calendars

Users can have more than one Calendar in Teamlab and these calendars sit in their ‘My Calendars’ area of the application. 

So, what exactly is shareable, now, within Teamlab calendars?

• Events: any event within a Teamlab calendar can be shared with other portal users by clicking the ‘Add users for sharing’ link, when editing the event.  Events can be shared with individual or groups of users, as needed, by choosing either the ‘Add users’ or ‘Add groups’ link.  In sharing events with users, access rights can be set. So, for example, you may want a group of users to only read the event and not update it, in which case, the ‘read only’ option is set.  To allow users to update the event, choose the ‘full access’ option.
• Entire calendars: whole calendars can be shared with other users provided that they reside within the ‘My Calendars’ section of the portal, by simply opening the Edit Calendar screen and clicking the ‘Add users for sharing’ link.  At this point, choose the individual users or groups of users and set the required access rights. Remember that allocating ‘full access’ will let the relevant users perform updates and make changes to your calendar!  Where a calendar has been shared with a user, they can also show it in their ‘Other Calendars’ area, giving them quick and easy access.

These options for sharing are available amongst users who are registered on the same Teamlab portal.  When calendars and events are shared, the involved users are automatically notified by Teamlab of the changes that affect them. This notification will come either via email or by Talk, and this is dependent on the settings in the users ‘Subscriptions’ section.  As with sharing events, affected users will be notified of the appropriate changes.

For more information on Teamlab, please visit: www.teamlab.com.

The new improvements include updates to both the interface and the functionality for the management of files and documents to make related tasks quicker and easier. 

So, what differences will Teamlab users see as a result of these new improvements?

Within their Teamlab portal, users will see that areas of the interface have been improved:

• The display area for the workspace has been increased from its original value to a size of 1000 pixels in width
• Two different display modes are now available and these are ‘standard’ and ‘compact’
• A new filter has been included that will let users search for specific documents to meet set criteria and also to sort documents and files
• A new set of drawing tools has now been included  and offers a full set of paint tools, letting users work with a lines, text, figures and schemes and a pour tool for shape filling, along with the facility to import images

From a documents perspective, a number of new improvements are now available and cover the following:

• Files and documents that have been either created or updated recently now have an associated ‘new’ icon displayed.  This lets users home in on the most recent information and clearly identify new project documentation
• Documents and files can now be shared with other users quickly and simply, with a single click – these will then show in the ‘shared with me’ folder making them difficult to miss!
• Documents and files can now be shared with users who are external to your portal – so they don’t need to be registered to get access.  This means customers and suppliers, for example, can see your documents, as appropriate, without having to give them access to your more private project information.   Access can be given either on a read only or an update basis, giving real flexibility over who can see and modify project-related information.

Teamlab is encouraging its users to try out these changes within the documents section of their portals and are keen, as always, for any feedback.

More on Teamlab

TeamLab is a little different to the vast number of online project management tools that are on the market today in that it originated as an Open Source application and is delivered in 3 different ways: Software as a service (Saas), Open Source,  and Amazon Machine Image (AMI).

It has a comprehensive range of features for project management including, task management, calendars, reporting, blogs and wikis.

For more information on TeamLab, please visit: www.teamlab.com

The new feature will be particularly helpful for those who have more than one 5pm account that refer to the same login email.  The new login feature will simply let the user choose which 5pm site to login to.

About 5pm

5pm is an easy to use online project management application that is available to its user base on a monthly subscription.  Its simple and colorful interface is intuitive to use and gives access to all the key functionality needed to effectively manage a project in a collaborative way.

Functionality covers a whole host of areas, including creation, management and sharing of tasks, central storage and management of project related documentation and notes and the ability to share and collaborate on all aspects of project work, along with a useful summary dashboard style view.  The main screen, organized as dual panes, gives quick access to projects and tasks with the minimum of user clicks needed.  Management of time is a key activity for project managers and the interactive timeline that is offered by 5pm gives a view of a project visually in a graphical format, where it is easy to see progress and any slippages, at a glance.

In addition, the interface can be customized to reflect the user organization’s own look and feel and give a unified corporate face.

5pm has recognized the diverse nature of today’s working environments and project teams and comes with support for 20 languages.  It is an application that is now growing in popularity.  Whilst its colorful interface can give the impression of simplicity, and this is true for navigation and use of the interface, its functionality has all the key components needed to manage a set of projects through to successful completion.

For more information on 5pm or to sign up for a free trial, please visit: http://www.5pmweb.com.

Google offers a great option for a new or small business that doesn’t want to spring for a paid project management suite. You can get as creative as you want with how you put Google+ to use…

The rest of the post illustrates ways to use Google plus to assign tasks, share/spread files, etc. It is definitely a unique take on Google+ and it does accurately, provide a guide on just how to use it in the suggested capacity.

However, in this author’s (and user of basecamp/project manager/business owner) opinion I have to disagree with Nancy Messieh (I love your photography), the posts author.

Even though it’s been months since the inital post and Google has released updates to their plus product, Google+ still does not offer a viable alternative to other paid project management tools – in particular basecamp.

Not only that, but Google apps has had, for sometime, project management type tools that integrate with Google docs, all of which are free. Having used them, as well as a host of other tools, including Google+ I think it’s a safe bet that Basecamp, and a few other notables really have the market cornered, and their free versions of products work great – or their paid versions save enough time to provide a huge ROI for the companies that use those tools.

Where Google COULD Excel

For some time there’s been talk about creating some kind of unified business dashboard for companies of all sizes. I think Google is UNIQUELY qualified to both build, and make successful – this kind of project. Facebook is a great platform for connecting people socially, but it leaves a lot of Internet activity out of the picture.

There’s the rest of the Internet – then there’s Facebook.

Google on the other hand – has a hand – in nearly every process on the net, is the undisputed master of search (in every category) for much of the world, and, with Google+, has a system for connecting people.

I think the time is right for this kind of central business tool.

Something that combines the administration of one’s marketing, with the ongoing day-to-day activities of assigning tasks to employees and personnel – in some kind of true project management application – all with integration in Google+ and Google’s other tools.

Not to mention this stream of internal business information would be perfect for contextual advertising – and I for one would welcome advertising in this capacity.

Say you were working on a project and someone asked a question like “what is the best email newsletter system?” A nicely placed Google ad, could help direct you and provide an ecosystem that helps business and furthers Google’s ever-expanding ad revenue.

One can dream…

For now, I don’t feel Google+ offers a real viable option for small business owners looking for a free way to manage their projects and internal communication. Stick with the free version of basecamp, or other free tools available on the web.

DeskAway also allows its users to link their accounts to a product called Freshbooks, allowing them to import time tracking information directly into DeskAway, but this lacks the detail behind time spend on particular parts of a project.

The improved user time reports, implemented in January, 2012, by DeskAway sees the introduction of charts into the User’s Detailed Work report.  These charts now give the user a comprehensive overview of the amount of time a user has spent on a particular project.  In fact, two charts have been introduced into this report:

• Time spent by Project: shows the user’s time spent across multiple projects. This report has a default set that shows the top seven projects.  The priority here is based on the total time spent on each project by the user.  If the users is involved in more than seven projects, the time for the remaining ones is categorized under the ‘Others’ option.  A filter can also be applied to the projects displayed.
• Time spent by Activity: shows the user’s time spent across multiple projects organized by the type of activity.

More on DeskAway

 DeskAway is a popular software as a service application, available over the internet, to help project managers and team members manage and collaborate on projects.  Needing little or no training for users to quickly become productive with its intuitive interface, companies both small and large can benefit from its wide range of features, including project and task management, calendar and event management, project and time-related reporting, along with the facility to centrally store project-related documentation and files in a central and secure location.

DeskAway is a subscription based product, which means that companies can pay on-demand, with no need for in-house extensive technical expertise or local implementation of software products.  Subscriptions can simply be cancelled if they are no longer needed.  Prices start at $25 per month and range up to $99.  A free trial lets users try out the application in earnest before committing to any payment.

For more information about DeskAway, please visit: www.deskaway.com.