Entries Tagged 'Productivity' ↓

The folks at 37Signals rolled out some major upgrades to it’s trusty Backpack service today, repositioning it as a small business intranet with a host of enhanced features and multi-user capabilities.

Added are shared calendars, the newsroom dashboard, messaging capabilities and multi-user reminders. While always quite handy as a personal information repository, the new multi-user capabilities turn Backpack into a real small business information powerhouse or even a lightweight project manager.

Read about the new features or take a tour.

I’ve recenly been evaluating Teamwork Project Manager as a means to keep my projects and teams on task and on schedule. Featuring a nice clean interface, efficient time and task tracking (including due dates on individual tasks), and really nice collaboration options, I’m really impressed by all of the available features.

Support has been prompt and excellent, updates are frequent, and communication from the developers via their blog is outstanding.

The online project management arena is crowded for sure, but I recommend giving this one a shot if you are in the market for such a solution. Try a demo or sign up for a free account.

We all know how important it is to document your business processes, your projects, and your code - but how often do we really do it. No more excuses for us here since I found DokuWiki, a remarkably simple but very powerful Wiki solution.

I have toyed with a ton of information managers for my business, from Backpack to OneNote and I have never really been happy with one, until now. We know how great the Wiki format is for collecting and storing information - and DokuWiki is performing admirably so far. It’s easy to install with no database required, and the syntax is simple once you get used to it. I’ve just begun to scratch the surface with what is possible and I’m already sold. I’ve already got pages for projects, clients, products, and more. It’s also themeable and there are a large number of plug-ins available.

There is no shortage of Wiki solutions out there, but DokuWiki is full featured, has an active development community, and there is even a version that runs off a USB stick. Check out the Feature List, go to the Playground to give it a test run and then give it a Download.

SB

Desktop RSS reader FeedDemon (Win) and NetNewsWire (Mac), along with a full suite of other nifty products are now available as free downloads fron newsgator.

I’ve been using Google Reader for a long while but the feature set and functionality FeedDemon promises has earned it at least a trial run, and so far so good. I like the idea of offline access without the bother of installing Google Gears, yet I can also view and synchronize with a newsgator account.

If you need an intro course on RSS - get up to speed at the learning center.

SB

Running a small business requires you to wear many hats, but at the end of the day it is your customers that are most important. BatchBook by BatchBlue Software combines 3 critical components - contact, communications and task management into one easily customizable web-based package.

Launched at the recent DEMOfall07, they are entering into an already crowded market but customized fields and excellent contact linking and affiliation management put this package ahead of the rest.

Not a full featured CRM, just the tools you need to manage your customers, suppliers, contacts and your interactions with them.