It has been awhile since I blogged and one of the big reasons is we have been busy building a new project called Incite Toolbox. As a company we build project collaboration applications; the most well known is Incite Keystone.
I was intrigued by the idea of a fast, real-time, collaboration product that small teams could start collaborating with in minutes – no setup, no training. Incite Toolbox embodies the basics of our initial idea. Creating a project takes seconds and you are collaborating with your team instantly.
For messaging we figured you would want to talk or post to the Project and also talk privately with individuals. It has a feel not dissimilar to Twitter with the additional capability to send files as well.
A multiple upload functionality allows for files to be easily added to the Project. Add an image and it is thumbnailed and all files are scanned for viruses. If you don’t want to log into the web interface then just send your files via email by placing the project email address in the TO: or CC: field.
The wisdom of crowds can be harnessed through the use of tags for messages and files. We will extend this further in the future but for now tags give you the ability to rapidly sort information. You can tag, your team members can tag and everyone enjoys from the group classification of data.
One of the features I enjoy using is the instant search. It is extremely fast allowing you to sort 100’s of messages instantly. It uses a scoring system so that the more accurate your term the more accurate the results. It’s something you need to try so you can see how cool it is. Also because of the technology we use there is no round-trip to and from the server so it fast – very fast.
Incite Toolbox supports multiple languages out of the box. This is a little sketchy at the moment but worthwhile to play around with. Change your language from English to Chinese and you will see some (not all) of the menus change. Then change to French and then to German. So even in this very early preview you can see the dedication to internationalization.
Lastly you can subscribe to SMS or Email updates. Be careful with this it is very *spammy* at the moment. However in the future you can watch tags or project members and receive updates when they contribute to the project.
I would also like to see what you guys think of Toolbox – so feel free to follow/tweet you’re experience with it. Just be kind, remember it is very early days.
Follow or Tweet – @incite_toolbox and also a Video! and don’t forget to try it out and let is now what you think!
