Huddle.net – Collaborate Online

I’ve been experimenting with huddle.net. The site promotes themselves as “Online Project Management” – The world’s workspace.

I’m using it as:

1) a central document repository for a program that our team is running. Our team is a virtual team, nobody’s from the same company (well, two colleagues are actually). If we were in an office, I would have just setup a shared drive… But virtual team does not have that luxury. I stored everything there: documents, proposals draft – for everyone’s review, minutes of meetings, presentation files…

Actually, prior to huddle, I am using a combination of Gmail, Google Groups, and Google Docs. We’re still using it as a backup. But huddle has extra functionality such as (especially) everything in one place, organized files into drawers, version control and easier access control (who can access what – although we don’t have that much secret frankly…).

They are also able to edit docs and spreadsheet in place, so pretty neat.

2) a task manager, to track tasks that we assigned at meetings.

3) plan to use the whiteboarding… (I learned that it is not exactly a real-time whiteboarding like e.g. Netmeeting, but more like bulletin board where you post ideas there.)

4) and hey, it’s also a facebook apps! so I can add friends from facebook as the team member.

My only complaint is the speed/response time of the site…. it’s so slow… (but again, it’s probably my Internet connection).

Oh, ya… it’s free, of course, “Freemium” to be exact – paid users get more features (more number of active workspace, more upload capacity, etc). There’s the “Small & Medium Business” plan and “Enterprise & Government” plan. Here’s the link to the price plan: http://www.huddle.net/huddle-price-plans/

Using Nokia Ovi: Share – Intro

Ovi Share was originally a service developed by Twango, before the company was acquired by Nokia.

Twango / Ovi Share is yet another media sharing service. We can compare it to YouTube, Flickr, Picassa, PhotoBucket, PhotoBase, and the list goes on. Nokia even has a Betalabs application: Mosh, which does a similar thing. Media sharing is also inherent function in SocNet sites – MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Multiply, Orkut, whatever. Each service looks similar, but if we notice it there’s a bit difference here and there. And definitely each is trying to get your attention, be the website of choice – trying to differentiate itself from the competitor.

Ovi Share has an obvious advantage of being bundled in every Nokia phone. Well, technically newer N-Series phone in 2008 – older N-Series phones might need to 1) upgrade of the Share Online application/firmware, 2) do some tweaks / manual configuration. The first alternative is recommended, because Share Online 3.0 brings quite a number of new nice features. Though it still have a lot of features to add... (my own version of needed improvements below).

Note: I still haven’t managed to install the Share Online in non N-Series Symbian (e.g. 6120c or E61i), but there Shozu comes to rescue, but again Shozu didn’t support Ovi yet or I haven’t found a geeky workaround to do it. Hey, I am a geek, but not the geeky (and don’t have all the time of the world).

This is my third day of using Share. I’ve learned a few things though. (Not necessarily in any order or organization)

0. Make Share Online available for non N-series phone (thus I can post this review few months earlier…)

1. The setup is OK. Just enter the username & password. (Got to register on the web browser first, though)

2. The integration is quite nice, open the Gallery, choose Send, choose Post to Web. There is an option of auto prompt after each photo shot.

3. Share Online currently only supports 3 services: Flickr, Ovi, and Vox. Uploading media to the website comes as a standard. For Flickr and Ovi, SO can offer additional features – thumbnails of all your recent posts, your contact’s photos, view comments, add comments, send link, etc. Flickr and Ovi do not have the same feature set yet, but comparable. Here’s some Screenshot (courtesy of Antony Pranata):

Standby Screen: note the Ovi/Flickr icon at the bottom part. Asterisk = new items, Balloon = new comments. (I guess)

Ovi Menu on the Share Online Application: recent post, contact’s post, everyone’s, visit website. To upload, must press Option / Post Item.

Thumbnails of my recent posts

Zoom in into a particular post: view description, comments, send link

Send Link: email or sms

4. Things to improve about SO application: I seemed to lost the caption and tags I entered during posting (to Ovi). Flickr also lost my tags. They only get the title right. Annoying. Is it a bug?

5. Things to improve about SO application: multitasking in Gallery, I can not queue another media while upload is in progress. Update: SO application (Menu / Applications / Media / SO) can multitask, but Gallery can’t.

6. Things to improve about SO application: how about Geo-tagging integration? Shozu leads in this area. Nokia is catching up with Location Tagger application (will try later today, when I’m outside). BTW, Ovi Share itself do not yet support geo-tagging, unlike Flickr.

7. Things to improve about SO application: more services? What about YouTube? Shozu rocks here (although there are limitations on the size of the video)!

That’s it for now… more to follow (hopefully).

Ovi… overload

I read way too many blog posts and articles about the infamous Nokia’s Ovi. I’ve been following them since their launch. It is my job to understand and anticipate it. So many things going inside my head, too many that I can not process Need to stop and think. And think. And think.

What does it mean to me, my company, and the industry? What are the implications for infrastructure products, solutions, and services. How about to mobile phones and other multimedia devices? And PC? Internet? (Convergence era!)

How to benefit from that?

Stop and think…