OpenTeams offers an interesting service that wants to reinvent the wiki. It’s designed to strengthen team collaboration and innovation while working on group projects, or as OpenTeams puts it, “initiatives”. Its interface is organized much like an email client so non-technical users immediately become familiar with the system and collaborate. But OpenTeams isn’t just limited to your usual wiki-style content. You can create outlines, attach files, discuss projects in message boards, and more.

When you sign up, OpenTeams assigns you to what they call a “space”, which is simply a group of other OpenTeams users. At default you may be assigned to two spaces: one being a “domain space” and another being an “invitation-only space”. When I signed up, OpenTeams created a space for every user that has solutionwatch.com in their email address. This allows me to collaborate with only users associated with Solution Watch. OpenTeams also assigned me to the space, “OpenTeams User Community,” which is an invitation-only space where every OpenTeams user can collaborate and share (or in its current state, test). I can also go ahead and create my own spaces and provide access to only the people I choose to invite.

Once you are in a space, OpenTeams allows you to collaborate with four main types of content: initiatives, cPages, briefings, and profiles. Strange naming, I know. I even ended up using the help section just to learn what each content type is for. As it turns out, they are just as they sound: initiatives are like folders used to keep groups of content related to a specific project together; a cPage is a basic collaborative page, or wiki page; briefings are groups of content similar to initiatives but organized in an outline form; and profiles are just user profiles that can be included in an initiative or outline.

To better understand how these content types come into play, let’s look over the interface. The interface is split into three panes. The first pane on the left is the OpenTeams navigator. The navigator provides a list of all initiatives and associated briefings, colleagues, and content tags. Each area of the navigator also allows you to associate documents to an initiative, colleague, or tag by simply dropping content on the respective area. The “List Viewer”, or middle pane, lists each relative content item and allows you to filter through all content on the site. The last pane, which is the content viewer, is where users can view a document, participate in threaded discussions, manage attachments, set tags, and even view the history of a document. It’s like a wiki, discussion board, and file manager in one.

OpenTeams allows you to add any of the four content types at any time and so getting started really depends on what you are wanting to accomplish. It’s flexible enough where you can just add content and later group the content into initiatives and outlines or the reverse for just about anything you want to share with your team. OpenTeams suggests you can even create internal blogs using initiatives with cPages, then using the List Viewer to sort the cPages by date. To get started, simply select a content type in the “fish-eye” menu at the top and create a new page. The content viewer will then minimize and a new window will appear that lets you fill in your page content and other metadata. You’ll notice OpenTeams also uses a rich text editor instead of the usual wiki markup making it easier for non-technical users to get in and collaborate.

One of my favorite features of OpenTeams is the briefing outline editor. If you have a group of cPages that you want to organize for your team, you can organize them in outline form with a briefing page making the content easier for everyone to grasp and view. OpenTeams explains that briefing pages can also be good for structuring content like slides in a presentations or listing sections in a table of contents. To use the briefing outline editor, just create a briefing and drag and drop pages into the content view. You can then indent each item you drop into the outline as needed. The editor also allows you to insert a “placeholder” item if you just want to add a simple one-liner. When the page is done, you can also drag it in an initiative folder and it will appear in the “Quick Nav Favorites” on the navigator pane.

Another great thing about OpenTeams is that every page you create gets its own discussion area, file manager, history overview, and tag cloud. What’s nice about this is that it lets you continue collaborating with users in a specific page without having to edit the original content of a page like you would a normal wiki. It also saves you from having to send emails to your team by instead using the discussion area. You can even add images and other files in a pages file manager keeping all information related to a page together.

The last thing I want to talk about is OpenTeams unique billing model. First off, OpenTeams is not free, but they do give you $42 dollars in credit to start out with. The way it works is simple, and at first it may sound pricey, but it really isn’t. OpenTeams charges 99 cents per user-login a day. So, if you were to login ten times in a given month, it would cost less than $10 dollars for that month. This way, you only get charged when you actually use the service. OpenTeams also caps the cost to $16/person a month. Additionally, if you were to stop paying for the service, you are still allowed to access your spaces, but you cannot add or edit the content.

OpenTeams is an impressive service, but is it better than a normal wiki? Yes and no. It really depends on what you need. OpenTeams’ high point is adding structure to a wiki. If you need to organize pages into folders, create outlines, track files, and work with a group of users, OpenTeams is definitely worth checking out. Otherwise, if you all you are looking for is a simple way to work collaboratively on documents, I’d say stick with a free service like Wikispaces or Google Docs.

Looking for a writeboard on steroids? Coventi is that candidate. Coventi is a writing application for the web that offers a wide variety of the features people have come to know and love. Coventi’s main focus is on group collaboration for writing documents, and it executes this quite well. To begin, you’re able to upload documents from your computer or start with a clean slate. Their main writing area is a WYSIWYG, making it incredibly easy to format and compose your thoughts exactly how you’d like them to be. They have an address book that you’re able to add contacts, and then categorize into groups. Options such as downloading drafts, sharing your pages for collaboration, convenient review options, and target-based commenting through the form of highlighting phrases, makes Coventi a great choice for writers of all sorts.

Coventi also offers Page Roles, which consists of three ranks. First, there is the owner of a page, who obviously has all privileges and rights within the page. Next there are the authors, who are capable of commenting and revising the actual page document. Last are the reviewers, who can only comment on the document and not change any of the contents of the page. Once you have invited people to collaborate and share on a page you’ll see the “People” tab appears in the interface. The People tab tells you who has and who hasn’t read your page(s). Additionally, you also can view and change the rank of your users in this section. You’ll also notice that when you start sharing your pages, a count of revisions done to that pertaining document will appear. You’re able to compare revisions via drop down menus, making it easy to look back and/or find lost information.

Authors and Reviewers are able to comments on certain sections of a page by simply highlighting the desired word, phrase, even paragraph and selecting “Create Comment” from the pop-up menu that will appear once something has been highlighted. The user can then type out their comment in the panel to the right of the interface along with a subject. Each comment that is submitted to the page is logged as a separate “conversation” and becomes its own discussion area where other users can reply to comment that was created. When there are multiple users viewing the same document, this feature can prove very handy for narrowing down areas of the page where you might have had difficulty in, and receiving direct, valuable input from your invited group members. You are also able to filter through conversations to quickly find comments that might be currently in discussion. They also separate the conversation by “open” and “closed” to help organize comments that have be discussed already. Even though it is a group oriented applications, I thought it would’ve been nice to have the ability to highlight and comment on your own page, without inviting people.

You are able to download each of your writing pages as a Word document as well as, adversely, upload Word documents to be used in Coventi. They offer Review Options such as setting a review deadline, or asking for approval on a page. Setting a deadline is as simple as choosing the exact time you’d like your collaborators to have their reviews in by, attached with any necessary comments. Asking for approval of a page works similarly. Once you feel that you’ve finalized your draft, you can send out an approval notification to receive confirmation on your work by fellow collaborators. After getting the notification email, each user will then be able to view the page and then check off whether or not they believe it is ready or if it still needs further revisions. After each user submits their approval, all authors and the owner will be sent an email reporting their confirmation. Owners of a page are able to withdraw an approval request, if necessary. Owners, authors, and reviewers also are given the option to have any page updates email to them to keep them up-to-date with the progress of the page.

I enjoy Coventi and I plan on trying and use it for some of my future writing en devours. It functions very nicely and has some of the features that we all wished our Writeboards would have. The only picky thing I can say about Coventi, being that I’m a designer, is the design of the interface. While there is nothing exceedingly wrong with how it was laid out, I think they could have made the top navigation, main tabs, and button areas less busy. I like how the interface options and selections work, but spacing out some things couldn’t hurt to help clarify things. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t hinder anyone from trying out Coventi and what it has to offer. I’m always looking for new innovating ideas from writing applications and Coventi helped fulfilled some of mine.

Everyone at some point in their life has an opportunity to have a space they can call their own; whether it’s a bedroom, home office, or a closet. Curbly is a web community that lets you show off, learn, and explore those spaces. Upon entering the home page of Curbly, you are first introduced to a very inviting color scheme and design. A featured content block gives a glimpse into what the site is about: sharing, discussing, and learning about making any environment better. Whether you are a first-time home buyer, or an architect with a lifetime of experience, Curbly may have something for you.

Before I continue, keep in mind that Curbly is not a word, but if I were to define it to put the site into context, it would be used as an adjective describing the curb appeal an environment has. For example; “Your home is looking very curbly!” or, “This room would be much curblier if it had a new sofa,” or even, “Solution Watch looks so curbly on your web browser!”

Signing up takes just a minute and you can join as a standard Curbly user or a Curbly Pro. With both account options being free, a standard Curbly user is typically a person who has interest in making their home curbly, where Curbly Pros are those who know what it takes to make your home curblier.

Every Curbly user has their own profiles where they can post photos, blog, and create clippings, which I will discuss in just a moment. Creating a profile is easy and it’s just a matter of filling in the blanks to make it personal. You can also customize the design of your profile to better reflect who you are. If you don’t have much experience with code, you can simply choose one of the three styles they provide. I went ahead and created my own style sheet seen in use on my Curbly profile. You will also find the standard, but necessary social networking features like friend lists, profile commenting, discussions, and ways of finding people.

One thing that makes Curbly a great place is that when you make a post on your blog, not only does it show up on your profile, but also on the main page of Curbly and in a topic page that relates to your post. Outside eyes immediately see your post and you can expect your moment of fame with a comment or two soon after posting.

There are three types of content you can publish. These include writing a blog post, posting photos for others to see, and posting clippings of things around the web that interest you. There are also five different sections users can view or contribute that make up Curbly:

How To: If you are looking for a DIY (Do It Yourself) project, you can find plenty of things to do here. From building a Spaceship Table to finding the recipe for a great tasting home office.

Inspiration: Whether it’s cardboard furniture or the most awesome home theatre in the world, you will find something that inspires you to make your home look curblier.

News: If you have been waiting desperately for a sale at your favorite stores or are waiting to hear what others think about Brovo’s Top Design show, you will find the latest news in this section.

Questions: For people like me who don’t have a clue how to do something to make your environment more curbly, ask the Cubly users. You can expect some great answers and advice from Curbly Pros and standard Curbly users. You can get help with things like decorating your living room or advice on how to bend plywood so you can create that skateboard half pipe in your room that you’ve been dreaming of since 10 years old.

Talk: Feel free to say anything on your mind in the Talk section. Want to discuss the Valentines Day Google logo or brag about finding a new home? This is the place to do it.

Writing a post is simple. It even has a WYSIWYG editor allowing you to style and format your content. At first, the lack of drafts and post previewing didn’t seem so crucial. However, after adding numerous photos, headlines, and video in one of my posts, I quickly realized the growing stress leading up to the save button. After clicking “Save”, I found that my post wasn’t formated the way I anticipated. Being that I am a graphic designer, I immediately panicked after seeing it on the main page, in my blog, and in the “How to” section. Thankfully there is a “Edit” link that I used multiple times after posting until it was at it’s intended perfection. Once posted, you begin to feel like Martha Stewart’s upcoming competition. Don’t be surprised if I turn into a interior design consultant after a year of posting on Curbly instead of reviewing start-ups here at Solution Watch… hypothetically speaking of course.

You will also find a feature on Curbly called “Clippings”. Clippings let you save images and links from around the web that you can display on your profile or website for others to see. Using the Curbly bookmarklet, you can go to any site that has an image you like, click the bookmarklet, and post about it within seconds. There is even a widget for your clippings that you can place on your own website for others to see. This is one feature I immediately got addicted to. I thoroughly enjoy posting my Clippings.

Overall, Curbly is a great community. I have met many neat Curbly users, although, it was difficult to find them without knowing where to look first (cough, cough), and once I found them, I wasn’t able to send them a private message (cough, cough). Otherwise, I found that Curbly has become the answer to many of my living space dreams and aspirations, not to mention the frequent Curbly contests that can better your chances of living that dream (this one being the latest).

Watch out Martha Stewart! I am Tim Benzinger and I have a profile on Curbly!

Looking for an easy way to boost your productivity? Then turn on your instant messenger and head on over to IMified, a new service that enables users to access services like Basecamp, Google Calendar, and Remember the Milk from an instant messaging client. Now, I know that instant messaging can be a huge productivity killer, but you’re going to want to turn that client back on for this. With IMified, users can manage todo lists, save notes, create reminders, and even add milestones to a Basecamp project. Just send an instant message to IMified and you’re good to go. You don’t even have to create an account. What’s most appealing about IMified for me is that I can manage tasks and add messages to Basecamp without opening a browser window. I’m also loving the note taking application built into IMified which works similar to Sabifoo, another instant messaging buddy built specifically for note taking.

Simply send a message to IMified to get started (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Gtalk, and Jabber are all supported). An account will instantly be created for you preset with three IMified applications: Notes, Reminders, and Todos. These applications are not only helpful, but make for a great starting point as you learn how to navigate around IMified. Navigating to a service is as simple as sending the numbers associated with each menu item and sending the letter “m” brings you back to the start message. IMified also has a web-based interface where you can update your settings and add additional services (send “7″ and click the link to get there). There are currently nine services outside of IMified that you can add to your account: Google Calendar, Backpack, Basecamp, 30 Boxes, Remember the Milk, WordPress, Blogger, Movable Type and TypePad.

The beauty of IMified is that all of the applications that you use are combined into one small service accessible through an instant messenger on your computer or mobile phone. However, because of the limited functionality with instant messengers, features are minimal. With Google Calendar, you can add and remove events as well as view upcoming and past events, but you cannot assign meta data or reminders to the events like you can on the web-based solution. The WordPress service allows you to simply add a title and body for a post and publish the post to your blog. Also, the Basecamp integration allows you to add messages, manage todo lists, and add milestones to a project. It may not sound like much, but having the ability to do all of that instantly without opening a browser is very helpful.

IMified also has a very helpful feature that lets you create shortcuts for specific tasks in a service. For example, you can create a one word command that lets you add a task to your todo list, which is much simpler than going through multiple menus and then adding a task. You can also add some text after a shortcut to automatically use it with the task at hand. So I have a shortcut for adding notes where I can type: “note [text i want to add as a note]” and a shortcut for adding tasks with “todo [the task description]”. So far, adding information with shortcuts has worked out great, but I can’t say the same with shortcuts for viewing information. When I write “viewnotes” to view all of my saved notes, IMified returns nothing and seems to only work when used in the service itself. Shortcuts also don’t seem to work when a service requires multiple responses to multiple menus. For example, I can’t add an event description and the date for the event at the same time with a shortcut Google Calendar. These are only minor problems though and I’m more than satisfied with the shortcuts that add information quickly.

Granted that the services IMified connects you with can all be used regularly in a web browser, it’s nice having the ability to quickly send a message to perform a task. If I want to add an update for a projects status in Basecamp, I can simply use IMified rather than opening a browser, logging in to Basecamp, navigating to the project, and submitting the message. There’s still room for improvement though, of course. For one, it doesn’t seem to send error messages if you send something in the wrong format, like a date for an event. Also, I really enjoy Sabifoo and how it creates a public page and RSS feed for all of your notes, which is something I would love to see with IMified. Maybe a way to view your tasks from the Todo service and notes from the Notes service online. In all, I love the simplicity of IMified and how I can easily access services that I use everyday from my instant messenger.

(via GenBeta)

Glue is a new service by Squad that lets users publish and share content on the web using a mobile device or web browser. It allows you to upload photos, publish news and share your Glue on any website, blog, or community profile (ie: MySpace). You can look at it as a miniature news publishing tool. The way it works is simple: Create an account, add news, and do what you want with the content. Now, rather than Glue providing you with a website showing your content, it offers publishing options which you can use to get the content on your own website or profile. Available publishing options include: Flash, JavaScript, RSS, PHP, ASP, and XML. The Flash and JavaScript options are ideal for users that do not know how to program requiring you to only place a small snippet into your website. But for those of you who do know how to program, Glue is nice enough to offer complete code in PHP and ASP - great for developers wanting to integrate the content in applications. More on this in a bit. First, let’s take a look at what Glue has to offer.

Using a web browser or mobile device, head to your Glue address (you.gluenow.com) and login. The first thing you will notice is the minimal interface containing a drop down menu at the top and content right below. It is formatted in this manner so whether you are viewing Glue in a web browser or on a mobile phone, it will work just the same (note: I have tested with Windows Mobile 5.0). Once successfully logged in, you will find yourself in the overview section displaying your most recent news items and images.

Let’s get straight to adding content. Glue provides you with two options. You can use the Glue website or simply send a email to one of your Glue email addresses found in the settings. The website requires you to enter a headline and body for your news item and allows you to optionally insert an image, set the date, and choose an author. The email solution offers the same functionality where the "From:" header sets the author (connects email address to author), "Subject:" sets the news headline, and the "Body:" is the news content. You can also include images in your news item when emailing by simply placing a GIF, JPG, or PNG image where you want. However, Inserting an image in a news item through the website requires you to first go to the Image Library, upload the image, and then select the image when publishing the news item (Update: Jordan from Glue has pointed out that you can upload photos while writing a post. There is an upload option in the drop down menu where you select an image). Glue also provides you with some basic formatting and allows you to use HTML.

Once you have published some content to your Glue, it’s time to share it with the world. As described earlier, Glue does not provide you with a website address where you can view your content, though it would be nice if it did. Instead, it provides you with publishing options that let you grab your content from your Glue and use it on any website or community profile. To get started, head to the Publish section and click "Show Feeds." You will then see six publishing options including: RSS, Flash, JavaScript, PHP, ASP, and XML.

The three simplest options are RSS, Flash, and JavaScript because they are just tiny snippets that you can paste right into your site. Selecting "RSS" lets you add a link to your site so viewers can subscribe to your content; "Flash" will give you code to embed news in a scrollable area on your site; and "JavaScript", being more flexible, will load news on your site in HTML and provide CSS for customization. If you are handy with PHP or ASP, Glue lets you download full code for parsing and displaying your Glue content however you wish. This is great if you want more control with the appearance of your content or if you want to integrate your Glue content into an existing application.

Above is an example site that I have created using the JavaScript publishing option. You will notice that it will first load the sites content and then load the Glue content. Also, you will see that I was able to format the content to my liking. Because the JavaScript option dynamically writes the content to the page, I can use CSS to style the outputted HTML. It took around 10-15 minutes to get the site up and looking how I wanted. Not bad at all. You can also see that the post, "Testing Glue on Wordpress.com," contains the Flash publishing option where a scrollable flash-based container displays my content.You can also see Glue in use on The Four Colour Process website (JavaScript option) and MySpace profile (Flash option). There are also some examples over at the Squad Blog.

In all, Glue offers a nice solution for publishing and sharing content on the web, but it’s no super-glue. For one, publishing to a site using the JavaScript or Flash option does not provide permanent links to posts which is important to me because it allows others to refer to specific posts. Secondly, you cannot set the amount of posts visible per page. Commenting functionality would also be a nice addition. Maybe Squad can add this functionality and more for a paid plan called "Super Glue" ;-). With all that aside, Glue makes for a nice product and I can see it being big with bands and MySpace users.