Thought Stream

There is some buzz around the announcement of Prologue, Automattic’s - the makers of Wordpress - new ‘group twitter’ application. It seems to be more of a presence tool than anything else:

We’re fans of Twitter around here, in fact many Automatticians have accounts, but while the format appealed to us it really just whetted our appetite for something more, like a way for each of us to share short messages about what we’re doing or working on internally, or private messages between groups of folks.

As you can see on my blog below, I do use twitter from time to time, but I haven’t really found it to be too useful for a business setting. Prologue, however, may open up the possibilities to improve group interaction when dealing with people in disparate settings. There are more than a few people who have already compared Prologue to 37Signals’ Basecamp. I think Basecamp is a more rigid, traditional project management application, but I can see some similarities here.

Read more here.

There are few web 2.0 companies that get as much positive buzz as 37Signals does. For the uninitiated, 37Signals is the company behind some of the more practical web applications and productivity tools available today. One of their most popular applications, Backpack, was recently updated. Essentially, backpack is a light wiki-type application that allows you to create task lists, manage notes, and store files all within a simple/elegant web interface. When first launched a couple of years ago, Backpack received enormous amount of buzz, and helped catapult 37Signals into the web 2.0 mainstream. In recent times, however, Backpack had fallen behind in updates, and quite a few users openly wondered if 37Signals had abandoned the project. While the company might have put Backpack on the back burner, it has re-assumed center stage with some nice tweaks and enhancements to the interface. A complete list of updates can be seen here.

Search, finally

I’ve used Backpack, on and off, since it’s inception. The application is deceptively simple, but can also be very frustrating. One of the major frustrations that drove me away from daily Backpack use was the lack of a search capability. Well, as you can see on the right, that has been corrected. Can you imagine having a central repository of notes, ideas, or tasks that didn’t have any ability to search? Just by adding a search capability, 37Signals has substantially enhanced the usability of Backpack. Search is not perfect, as it only presents back the page on which a searched term resides.

Move stuff around

Another major complaint about Backpack was the inability to move sections (lists, notes, attachments, etc.) from page to page. 37Signals had already incorporated a slick drag-drop capability to move stuff around within a page, but not to other pages. This has now been fixed. Sections can be dragged onto other pages, and sections can be moved about anywhere on a given page. This is really, really nice. One big miss here is that individual list items can’t be moved from page to page. I’d certainly like to see that sometime soon.

There are a bunch of other tweaks worth checking out. Overall, this is a worthy upgrade to Backpack, not a huge improvement, but they’ve addressed many shortcomings in this iteration.

By the way, Satchel users will be happy to hear that the upgrade only caused minor hiccups in the ability to synchronize Backpack with the PalmOS based Satchel.

Last week, I wrote about a great new online mind mapping tool called MindMeister. Well, as it turns out I have 20 beta invitations to hand out. If you are interested, leave a message on this post (remember to put your correct email address in the email address section), and I’ll send out an invitation.

Just a couple of days ago I wrote about a new online brainstorming tool called bubbl.us. That application seemed a little too simple and off the standard mind mapping approach to be of much use to many. A commenter left a note about an online mind mapping application that was closer to traditional tools, known as MindMeister. I signed up for access to the private beta, and was approved within a few minutes. The online tool is still in that private beta stage, but I can tell you that it looks spot on when compared to traditional mind mapping tools.

Mind maps generated inside MindMeister are easy to setup and manage. Maneuvering inside MindMeister is similar to FreeMind and MindManager, although keyboard shortcuts aren’t as intuitive (or similar) to either offline application. Dragging nodes around is identical to offline applications. In fact, it’s easy to forget that MindMeister is an online application. There is version control, allowing you to revert back in a fairly granular fashion.

Like nearly all online applications today, one of the core features of MindMeister is to enable collaboration on maps. A map can be shared in a true collaborative environment or as view only. Another powerful feature of MindMeister is the ability to import FreeMind or MindManager files. This feature alone makes MindMeister incredibly useful. In the private beta, text formating, icons, and fancy layouts of maps are lost during the import process, but all text nodes are retained. Exporting, at the moment, is not as evolved as the application only lets you export as a graphic file or as a bulleted text file in RTF format.

MindMeister is in early stage beta, so I’m sure there will be many improvements along the way. The developers are looking to offer a standard and premium version of the tool at some point, as the ‘my account’ page indicates. Most of the premium features of MindMesiter are available in this beta phase. Overall I’ve been very impressed with the way it handles and feels, and can’t wait to see this application evolve into a full blown mind mapping tool.

As you know, I’ve been steadily moving my work habits toward an Office 2.0, work anywhere, approach. One of the more difficult habits to wean myself off of has been using the free-form note-taking capabilities of Microsoft’s OneNote. Zoho’s Notebook, announced today, may make this transition a no-brainer. Jump over to the link to take a look at a great sneak peek video on the site. From the site, here are some highlighted points:

Zoho expects the Notebook to be available to the public by March.

UPDATE:

Marc Orchant and Ismael Ghalimi have had private beta access to Zoho Notebook for a few days.  Both concur with my first thoughts that Zoho is quickly becoming a game changer in the Office 2.0 space.

Yesterday, I received several emails from JotSpot stating that they were going to introduce a major upgrade to their service next week. I’ve had an early beta account of JotSpot and have seen it progress nicely into an effective wiki-based collaboration environment. Google acquired JotSpot in October and they have been quiet since then. Michael Arrington’s TechCrunch is speculating that this email may signal the relaunch of JotSpot under a Google moniker:

Will JotSpot Relaunch Next Week?

Google sent an email to JotSpot customers notifying them of an upgrade being rolled out over the next week. JotSpot has been closed to new customers since they were acquired by Google in late October 2006, and there has been no word of when JotSpot might be relaunched.

The speculation is that JotSpot’s email may be an indication that their service is now operating within a Google environment and may reopen for new users. I doubt that they totally integrated JotSpot into the myriad other offerings that Google now has under it’s belt. If the speculation is correct, it will be nice to see JotSpot reopened for general use, but I really hope that Google is working to tightly integrate it with Gmail, Docs & Spreadsheets, Calendar, etc. If integrated correctly, this could become a killer online application suite.

So, hopefully the JotSpot upgrade will provide a glimpse into the Googleplex’s long term online application vision….but I won’t be holding my breath.