Because I work almost exclusively in remote-based teams, I'm always looking for new tools and services that can help me manage my daily tasks and effectively collaborate with my team members. One of the biggest problems I have with some collaboration systems is that they require everyone to login and collaborate using the web app itself. This is great if you are always in one place or in a more traditional office environment, but it becomes less problematic if you are on the go frequently and already have tools and practices in place to try to manage your life.

This is why I think that WizeHive has real potential. WizeHive was launched in late 2008 after its founders, who were unsatisfied with the current crop of web-based collaboration and task management tools, decided to scratch their own itch and launch their own service. Over the last six months, WizeHive has rolled out additional features and today, WizeHive is releasing a bevy of new features and enhancements with the aim of bring WizeHive to the masses.

I talked to WizeHive's co-founder, Mike Levinson on Monday about the product and its development and what the new release brings to the table. I was most impressed that Mike and his team use WizeHive internally to manage various projects and activities not just including WizeHive's development, but for other business tasks as well.

After playing with WizeHive a bit, I think the best way to describe the service would be that it is Basecamp meets Backpack, with a dash of Yammer on the side. Unlike some collaboration solutions like Box.net, which really do an excellent job of replicating or replacing SharePoint, WizeHive is a more streamlined way to share files and communicate details back and forth, or to keep track of task management.

After creating a WizeHive account, you can create a different workspace for various teams or projects you might be working on. Within that workspace, you can choose who you invite to collaborate in that space. Once you have invited someone to your space, they can share documents with you, make comments, assign or complete tasks, etc.

You can also create pages within a workspace to further drill down your focus. In my DLS (for DownloadSquad) workspace for instance, I can have pages for Posts, Features and Ideas. Each page can contain its own task and its own set of comments.

The thing I like best about WizeHive is how easily it integrates with other services. You can create a new task (or even a new page) using e-mail, but you can also send messages, tasks and reminders using Twitter. By sending a direct message to @wizehive, after your account is verified, you can communicate directly with your workspace and the people in your group will get notifications and can reply by e-mail, Twitter or using the web site.

Here are some of the new features WizeHive has introduced with this release:

• improved UI for tracking and managing a large numbers of shared files
• enhanced file management and version control
• an increase in the number of files that can be uploaded at one time to 50
• bump in the maximum uploaded file size to 100 MB
• embedded image viewer
• streamlined collaborative editing of documents and spreadsheets

Although you can create and edit documents using ZoHo (it is integrated) and you can save revisions, the real focus of WizeHive seems to be on tasks and communication.

WizeHive is still in beta, so you can sign-up for a free account with unlimited users. You're limited to 50MB of storage space (an additional 3GB is $8US a month), but you get every other feature and you can use the service at least until the end of 2009. Personal accounts, limited to 3 users and 50MB of space are also free. Teams or Small Businesses can get an account with support for 10 users and 3GB of storage for $39 a month.

I'm going to give WizeHive a try and see how well I can integrate it into my life.

Over the past few months, storage and collaboration service Box.net has really ramped up its focus on adding tools and services that can help small and large businesses be more productive. With full-text search, enhanced collaboration tools, and a web-based document creation, the service is a really slick way for a business or group of collaborators to work together, regardless of physical location. Today, Box.net is adding a few more features, including tasks, the ability to create global folders and enhanced custom branding.

The new tasks feature lets you create a task for a new or existing file and then assign that task to a member of your group or to yourself. So if you have a document that needs a bunch of iterations done before it is submitted for final approval, you can create tasks for what needs to be accomplished and then assign them to various members of your team. You'll get an e-mail notification when you are assigned a task, and tasks also appear in the info bar on the right side of your Box.net page.

Global folders is a really, really cool new feature that lets you turn any folder into a web page with a static address that anyone can access and view. I created this page for my test in about two seconds. Every additional file I upload to that Box.net folder is added to the page, which is then viewable by anyone. If you have a lot of non-sensitive information that you want to share with a group, this is a really cool way to do it, because the people who access the information don't even need to be logged into Box.net to access or download the files.

For Business edition users, there are now custom branding tools, so that you can change the Box.net UI to include your company logo, colors and other information. This makes it really easy to use Box.net as a white-label type of solution, with the added benefit of being able to interact with other Box.net users from across the globe.

The tasks and global folders features are available to all Box.net users, including the free Lite plan. If you want custom branding, you need to be a Business edition subscriber.

Online storage provider Box.net has launched a new service called Web Documents that's something of a cross between a word processor and a simple HTML editor. Like Google Docs, Zoho Office, and other online word processors, Web Documents lets you quickly and easily create text and image-based documents from any web browser. You can share the docs with others by sending a link, or you can invite other Box.net users to edit the document.

Web Documents has the basic features you'd expect from a word processor including simple formatting tools and a spell checker. You can insert images from your computer or the web, tablets, and you can even embed YouTube videos.

What Web Documents doesn't have is the ability to export documents as Word or OpenOffice files, which makes it intrinsically less useful than other web based Office apps. Fortunately, Box.net also offers Zoho Office integration -- which makes me wonder what the point of Web Documents is in the first place.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

We've covered Box.net before -- the file storage site with collaborative tools and a really great iPhone app -- today the company has launched a redesigned site and even more tools to make online collaboration easier and more effective.

Last year, Box.net added the ability to let users invite other collaborators to view or edit documents. Coupled with Box.net's OpenBox platform, you have a really slick light content management system that allows you to store, share, and group edit documents, spreadsheets, images and more. Today, even more features have been added to aid in project and team management.

Some of the highlights:

• Profile pages for each user that can be customized to show their role in the current project and their contact information and recent project activity
• Discussions that can take place across your shared workspace. You can also comment on individual files
• Bookmarks -- it sounds simple, but it's actually pretty cool because you can share a URL and the rest of the group can then comment on it and its findings.
• Updates - you can see updates across all your various projects to see what the newest discussions, edits and uploads are, all from one page.

Google isn't the only company beefing up its collaboration features. Online file storage service Box.net has added a new "invite collaborators" button that lets you share the contents of any folder with other Box.net users.

So if you've got a folder of images, Word documents, and other items that you want to share with a colleague, just right-click and enter the email addresses of people you want to share the folder with. They'll be able to open and edit the contents of the folder. If you just want to let them see the documents, but not edit them, you can grant "viewer" access.

Unlike Google Docs, Box.net does not offer its own applications for editing documents and spreadsheets. But using the OpenBox framework, you can edit any document stored at Box.net using Zoho's online office applications.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Box.net is transforming from a service that lets you store your files to a service that lets you store, edit, manipulate, and share your files. That doesn't mean Box.net is getting into the online office/image editing/blogging business. Instead, the company is launching OpenBox, a platform that lets web app developers tie their services into Box.net.

From a user perspective, what this means is you can upload images, text documents, spreadsheets, or other files to Box.net. Then you can click on those documents to share, download, or email them. But you can also open an image using Picnik's online image editor, or send a document as a fax using eFax.

Right now there are just a few services available, including Zoho, ThinkFree, Autodesk, Scribd, Snipshot, Zazzle, Twitter, Echosign, Picnik and eFax. But thanks to open platformy-goodness, we suspect Box.net will add a ton of services soon.

A free Box.net account nets you 1GB of online storage space. You can also get 5GB or 15GB for a monthly or annual subscription fee.

[via WebWare]

Box.net, the online storage company, has a Facebook application. After all, you aren't a real Web 2.0 company if you don't have a Facebook application it seems.

Box.net's Facebook application allows users to manage all files stored in your account from directly within Facebook. It doesn't matter if they are private or shared, it's like logging into your regular Box.net account. Some updates have been made recently to the application that make it a worthwhile application add in Facebook.

First there is the File Attachment update. Users are now able to attach files to messages that are sent to friends. Next, when logging into Facebook, there is a new interface for Box.net that is accessible from the "Files" tab. Pick a file that you want to feature on your profile page, and share away. The final update is with a fully featured file browser that is listed in the application page, replicating a thumb drive device so that accessing documents is easier than before.

Don't get us wrong, we still love Box.net. We just wonder if this Facebook application phase will ever end, and the world of Portal 2.0 will blow over.

If you are a regular user of Microsoft Office, and the Box.net storage platform, you are going to love this new feature that makes storing and accessing your docs online an easy alternative to Google's Docs and Spreadsheets.

The Box.net team has just completed work on an Office On Demand feature for Word users that enables an easy way to save Word, Powerpoint, Excel and Access files directly into Box.net storage accounts.

The application is only available for Windows XP and Vista users. It adds a "Save to Box.net" button to the application toolbar, that when clicked, instantly uploads the file. This new feature is great if you are constantly switching between multiple computers, no more flash keys or manual uploading required.

Do you need a place where you can upload and download files quickly? Without the features of an Xdrive or Box.net? DropBoks is a free (they do ask for a $1 donation for users) storage solution where each user account has access to 1GB of storage. However, uploading and downloading must consist of file sizes smaller than 50MB. It's an extremely simple application to use, and signing up to use it takes 10 seconds. Browse to the files you wish to upload, and they get uploaded to a folder, similar to a Windows folder view, where users can click to download. Finished with the file? Drag and drop it onto the trash icon. You can't get much simpler for this for online storage solutions. Is the storage space secure? That's what they say.

Goowy, a personalized home page site whose main distinguishing feature until now has been its Flash-based interface, is planning to add some more compelling features soon, namely instant messaging and online file storage. According to TechCrunch's Michael Arrington the file storage feature will be through Box.net using its new API and include up to 1GB storage (with a crappy 5MB-per-file limit), and the IM component will work with all the major IM networks (a la Meebo). Head over to TechCrunch for a screenshot of the new IM feature.

Speaking of Google Talk and personalized home pages, though, it seems odd to me that Google has yet to integrate its own IM service with its own Personalized Home. Perhaps they're working on it.