Office 2.0 News

Data center fire takes Authorize.net offline

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:49 GMT

This morning, the Authorize.net payment gateway went offline preventing thousands of vendors from accepting credit card payments including many FreshBooks customers. With their website and phone system unaccessible, Authorize.net has been fielding questions with their Twitter account this morning.

For FreshBooks customers using the Authorize.net gateways to automatically bill their customers, Authorize.net transactions that failed this morning will automatically be retried tomorrow morning. You will know this has happened as the status of your Authorize.net invoices will have changed to ‘retry'.

However, if Authorize.net is not back up by tomorrow morning, your invoices will change to the ‘failed' status and the status will become a red active link. The ‘failed' status link allows you to retry the payment any time in the future giving you to option to retry the transaction when Authorize.net becomes available.

Please note that although Authorize.net remains offline, all of our other payment gateways continue to function normally such as PayPal, Google Checkout, and Linkpoint.

MaximiXING: Import events into MS Outlook

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 08:05 GMT

Dear readers,

I know that a lot of you out there use a program to manage all your events and contacts. PC or web-based software such as MS Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage, Lotus Notes or Thunderbird Lightning can greatly simplify managing all your events. Many of these programs can be synced with several computers and mobile devices, meaning you'll never miss an appointment, wherever you are.

Wouldn't it be great if your XING Events were also integrated into this framework, if you could access them when you're not online or on XING, or print out a daily schedule? That's precisely why we offer an export function for XING Events. I'll show you how to do it using MS Outlook 2007, but the principle is the same for almost all programs.

We'll choose the Outlook export format, though in most cases, appointment software supports both formats.

Your browser will ask you what to do with the file you're downloading - I'd recommend you open it directly. If you have more than one event planning programs on your computer, select the one you use the most. If you use Google Calendar or another web-based program, you should save the file and import it later.

In our case, Outlook will start when needed, and import the event immediately. The description, the location and the time is added automatically. You can make changes and add details if you want, such as assigning a category or a priority. After you click on “Save and close”, the event will be saved in your digital calendar, and synced to your other computers or mobile devices, as the case may be.

Please keep in mind: If you decide not to attend the event and wish to tell the organizer, it's not enough to delete the event in your calendar - Outlook doesn't sync back to XING and share this information. You'll have to do so directly on the XING website. Similarly, if you want to recommend an event to your friends, make sure to use the “Invite other guests” button on XING. Otherwise, the organizer won't know about it.

Kind regards,

Silke Schippmann.

And now, the winner of the Golden Gliffy…..

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:44 GMT

Announcing the Winner of the Golden Gliffy June 2009 Contest!

Thanks to everyone who downloaded the latest versions of the Confluence plugin and the Gliffy JIRA Plugin.
Not only are you now reaping the benefits through our revised Network Symbols, you had a little fun along the way.

Josh Krupka, of Burris Logistics, found the Golden Gliffy, contacted Gliffy and was randomly selected using Random.org to win the $500.

Thanks to everyone for playing and congratulations to Josh for winning!

The contest may be over, but don't hesitate to download the new Gliffy Confluence Plugin and the Gliffy JIRA Plugin – a 45-day free trial will increase your productivity by integrating the drawing tool to accompany your Atlassian products. Contact us for an extension to your free trial.

YubNub down

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:34 GMT

Starting July 2, YubNub has been going down intermittently. I’m seeing the following errors in the lighttpd.error.log:


2009-07-03 04:57:02: (server.c.1242) [note] sockets disabled, out-of-fds
2009-07-03 04:57:04: (server.c.1207) [note] sockets enabled again
2009-07-03 04:57:04: (mod_fastcgi.c.2748) wait for fd at connection: 239
2009-07-03 04:57:04: (connections.c.1270) accept failed: Too many open files 24
2009-07-03 04:57:04: (server.c.1242) [note] sockets disabled, out-of-fds

I’m in touch with Joyent support and we’re trying to figure it out.

Trends, sports & many other cool widgets for summer!

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:12 GMT

News & infos - Wimbledon championships are nearly finished, but there is still the final to come! If you have missed the previous tournaments it's never too late to inform you by reading Wimbledon's latest articles! Where to go ? what to buy ? Follow the trends, read Trends update and you'll know what's cool & sexy today! If you're a Drupal user have a look at Drupal.org widget! You'll find some tips and news + follow some groups & discover new modules. Entertainment - Now a girly girl widget for trendy young woman : Handbag! Regrouping celebrity gossips + beauty & fashion tips all in one widget! What about some music to relax during this beautiful summer that you are spending in front of your computer ? On Comfortcomes it's all and only about music : read Interviews, follow music tours, discover new albums, watch cool videos...Etc. Then you could learn how to make cocktails or find cool recipes on Life 123 Food & drink and you'll be ready to celebrate summer!

ISO 3166 county codes and xs:enumeration

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:13 GMT

I’ve recently been working with the web team here to improve the partners section of the Alfresco site, the last part of which requires me to write a web form to allow content authors to easily add new partners, and modify existing ones. Until now our partner listings have been manually edited using our generic page [...]

Admin Webinar Series - From Admin to Hero with Force.com

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:02 GMT

Calling all admins:

Ever wonder what other admins are doing with Force.com? Find out by joining us for an exciting Webinar series in which we feature CRM admins who built unique apps on Force.com. It’s called “From Admin to Hero with Force.com" and it’s bound to unleash the hero in you.

:: Nimbus - HR/recruiting app and many more
:: Cars.com - Training productivity app and quality assurance app
:: Model Metrics - Convert your spreadsheets into apps

And in July we’ll be kicking off a "Talk to an Expert" series. Each month, one of our experts covers a popular Force.com topic and you get to ask all the questions you want.

Even better, you get to determine what those topics will be! Take just a minute and complete this 3- question survey so we’ll know what you want to hear from our experts.

Themes are GPL, too

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:50 GMT

If WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We've always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress' license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we've always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world's preëminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress' code, community, and provided us with an official legal opinion. One sentence summary: PHP in WordPress themes must be GPL, artwork and CSS may be but are not required.

Matt,

You asked the Software Freedom Law Center to clarify the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, a content management software package written in PHP and licensed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

We examined release candidate 1 of WordPress 2.8, which you provided to us at http://wordpress.org/wordpress-2.8-RC1.tar.gz. The “classic” and “default” themes included in that release candidate comprise various PHP and CSS files along with an optional directory of images. The PHP files contain a mix of HTML markup and PHP calls to
WordPress functions. There is some programmatic logic in the PHP code, including loops and conditionals.

When WordPress is started, it executes various routines that prepare information for use by themes. In normal use, control is then transferred via PHP's include() function to HTML and PHP templates found in theme package files. The PHP code in those template files relies on the earlier-prepared information to fill the templates for serving to the client.

On the basis of that version of WordPress, and considering those themes as if they had been added to WordPress by a third party, it is our opinion that the themes presented, and any that are substantially similar, contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

In the WordPress themes, CSS files and images exist purely as data to be served by a web server. WordPress itself ignores these files[1]. The CSS and image files are simply read by the server as data and delivered verbatim to the user, avoiding the WordPress instance altogether. The CSS and images could easily be used with a range of HTML documents and read and displayed by a variety of software having no relation to WordPress. As such, these files are separate works from the WordPress code itself.

The PHP elements, taken together, are clearly derivative of WordPress code. The template is loaded via the include() function. Its contents are combined with the WordPress code in memory to be processed by PHP along with (and completely indistinguishable from) the rest of WordPress. The PHP code consists largely of calls to WordPress functions and sparse, minimal logic to control which WordPress functions are accessed and how many times they will be called. They are derivative of WordPress because every part of them is determined by the content of the WordPress functions they call. As works of authorship, they are designed only to be combined with WordPress into a larger work.

HTML elements are intermingled with PHP in the two themes presented. These snippets of HTML interspersed with PHP throughout the theme PHP files together form a work whose form is highly dependent on the PHP and thus derivative of it.

In conclusion, the WordPress themes supplied contain elements that are derivative of WordPress's copyrighted code. These themes, being collections of distinct works (images, CSS files, PHP files), need not be GPL-licensed as a whole. Rather, the PHP files are subject to the requirements of the GPL while the images and CSS are not. Third-party developers of such themes may apply restrictive copyrights to these elements if they wish.

Finally, we note that it might be possible to design a valid WordPress theme that avoids the factors that subject it to WordPress's copyright, but such a theme would have to forgo almost all the WordPress functionality that makes the software useful.

Sincerely,
James Vasile
Software Freedom Law Center

[1] There is one exception. WordPress does reads CSS and image files to create previews of templates for the template selection portion of the administrative interface. Even in that case, though, nothing in those files calls any WordPress functions, is treated as a command by PHP, or alters any other WordPress data structure. These files are read as data and used to create an image and display a miniaturized version of a webpage to the user.

Even though graphics and CSS aren't required to be GPL legally, the lack thereof is pretty limiting. Can you imagine WordPress without any CSS or javascript? So as before, we will only promote and host things on WordPress.org that are 100% GPL or compatible. To celebrate a few folks creating 100% GPL themes and providing support and other services around them, we have a new page listing GPL commercially supported themes.

Code Movement vs Content Movement

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:32 GMT

Seth Gottlieb has written a great post entitled “Code moves forward. Content moves backward.” that, by strange coincidence, echoes an Alfresco KB item authored by Alfresco’s very own Ben Hagan last year. What’s interesting to me is that there is an alternative world view that asserts that code and content are two sides of the same [...]

Buy a round of beer for Canada

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:21 GMT

As you may be aware, FreshBooks is a Canadian company. Well, today is Canada Day here in our homeland - an annual celebration of all things Canada. By way of commemoration, I just bought “a round” for our nation over at Beers for Canada.

Beers for Canada is a fund raising effort for a non-profit organization that is looking to drive government transparency by making good use of data. The US government is supporting these kinds of initiatives with Data.gov, and Toronto's Mayor Miller announced something similar at the mesh conference this spring for the City of Toronto.

I'm a huge fan of governments publicly exposing data sets so that software developers can do neat things with the data. I think it's going to lead to all kinds of efficiencies and useful services for businesses and the public alike.

Anyways, I just wanted to direct your attention to Beers for Canada and some of the interesting projects they are trying to advance. FreshBooks has bought a round (made a $100 donation), and I'm sure they'd appreciate your support too if you are that way inclined.

Now live: The XING BlackBerry App

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:39 GMT

Having just launched a new version of our iPhone app very recently, I'm excited that we're unveiling our app for the latest BlackBerry smartphones today. This latest launch of ours is in response to frequent requests from throughout the XING community.

It's free-of-charge and enables smartphone users (many of whom are business professionals) to access their personal with much more ease when on the road. Besides access to all contact data and “News from your network”, the application lets you read and respond to all your XING messages as well.

One highlight that I am particularly proud of is its capability to synchronize individual contact data from your personal network on XING with your own address contacts on your BlackBerry.

Free download for BlackBerry smartphones at www.xing.com

In addition to English, the XING app supports German, Spanish, Turkish and Italian. The app can be downloaded for free directly to the user's BlackBerry smartphone by simply by visiting the XING mobile website. Simply type in www.xing.com. The appropriate version for a specific BlackBerry smartphone model is automatically detected. The XING app requires an Internet-enabled BlackBerry smartphone running OS Version 4.2 or later with at least 64 MB internal memory and 170 KB of available memory.

Release Flash: Events & Company Profiles

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:20 GMT

Besides the new BlackBerry application, several other features are going live on our platform this week - all in response to user requests.

An inviting prospect: Improvements to Events

For starters, the weekday is now also displayed throughout the feature, from invitations to listings, making it much easier to schedule your personal calendar. A “co-organizer” can also be added to group events too now - someone who doesn't necessarily have to be (co-)Moderator of the group. This can be extremely useful, especially for instance if you want to invite a guest speaker for your group conference and wish to give them the opportunity to invite their own contacts.

The town/city (i.e. business address) will be listed alongside the name and company from now on in the list for selecting possible guests. And there's one more convenient new update: Members can now filter by town/city and post code as well - something which up until now has only been possible using keywords.

Furthermore, from this week onwards you can now search specifically using the Advanced Search for companies that currently have vacant positions listed under XING Jobs. And there are now also two brand new categories for job listings: Public Heath and Transport.

Announcing The Social Way To Get Things Done: Zoho Projects 2.0

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:15 GMT

Today we're excited to end the 'mystery' and announce Zoho Projects 2.0. What is so exciting about this launch? It will change how teams get work done.

Remember the days when teams had their documents in a share, their discussions through mail in some ancient mailing-list software, the project plan in Microsoft Project, any relevant content on the company's intranet, and chatted with people on the team using a variety of IM clients? What happened when you needed to find something? What about when someone new just joined the team and needed to 'ramp up'? And sure, 'big' announcements always found their way, but what about the stuff that happens on a daily basis - the gears that move the team - how do you keep track of those?

Well, of course you remember those days, because they are actually these days. That's how most people still collaborate today. But no more. Zoho Projects brings all of that together into a single package of teamwork nirvana.

Zoho Projects 2.0 goes beyond the traditional 'project management' space and helps people work together to achieve a common goal. It's not just about tasks, milestones and priorities (but we do that too of course). It's about how people interact and what they need while working on something - whether it's a local team or a distributed team, an internal team, or a customer-facing one. Many times when we hear 'Project' he instantly think of a PMI-certified guy with a huge Gantt chart taped in his office door. But every team is always working in some sort of project, whether that's formally defined or not. And that is where Zoho Projects helps.

So, why 'social'? Social because we realize that getting work done is less about the work or 'the plan', and more about the people that work to make that plan happen - and how they make it happen. The new Project Stream makes it easier for people to stay on top of what's going on with their team and their project. Teams can keep all their relevant documents and files neatly organized in a centralized place. And it's not just about files, but also about the discussions that are going on around the project, or the content (and in these days that means more likely than not web content). And of course also about those IM chats.

Alright, I could go on about this for days. Instead, let me jump to the juicy stuff. Here's what's to love about Zoho Projects 2.0:

Plan your projects

Keep your projects organized: Milestones, Tasks and Tasks Lists
Set-up dependencies, assign ownership, priorities and more
Import MPP files - Plan in Microsoft Project, collaborate in Zoho

Collaborate with your team

The Project Stream keeps you up-to-date about the latest activities going on around your project
Set your User Status to let your team members know what you're working on (you can think of that like a private Twitter for your Project)
Keep all your meetings, milestones and tasks organized in the shared calendar
Store your files and documents in one place, keep track of the changes with the version history
Integration with the award-winning Zoho Office - so you can create/edit/view documents using just your browser
Discussions - interactive forums make everyone a part of the conversation - and keep important topics and decisions available for everyone to see
Create team and project web pages with the integrated Wiki
My personal favorite - the always-on, embedded chat means you can chat with your entire team - or with only one person using just your browser. And it also keeps a log of what's been said so you can refer back to past conversation. And you can also setup different 'chat rooms' - one for every topic you're discussing.

Track your progress

The Project Dashboard offers a quick at-a-glance view of upcoming tasks and milestones, meetings and whatever has been happening around your projects.
Reports visually represent your team progress against your pre-defined goals
And finally, for those teams with external customers, the Timesheet makes it easy to log and track who has spent how much time doing what. But it doesn't stop there, you can automatically generate and send the invoice using Zoho Invoice (or export the data to use any other invoicing medium that suits you).

If you want to see more of Zoho Projects in action before you sign up, below is a ~3 min video with a good overview. You can also view the screenshot tour we have prepared for you.

We are sure that after trying Zoho Projects for a month you will wonder how your team ever got stuff done without it. We actually used Zoho Projects 2.0 while building Zoho Projects 2.0 and it proved invaluable - we'll have more about that later.

Rodrigo

Get a faster Netvibes with the new Firefox 3.5

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:30 GMT

Mozilla Corp. just released the latest version of their browser: Firefox. This new version brings major speed improvements that will make your Netvibes significantly faster. If you're running an older browser, you might want to give it a try. To download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, go to http://www.mozilla.com/. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux in many languages.

For an even better experience, get the updated Netvibes Extension for Firefox. In one click, you will be able to:

share any link with your contacts
subscribe to RSS feeds
see all activities in a sidebar

To install the Netvibes Extension, go to addons.mozilla.com, and click on "Add to Firefox".

Plotting the Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:12 GMT

Standard & Poor's publishes the Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices on the last Tuesday of every month. The indices are calculated from data on repeat sales of single family homes. The indices are normalized to have a value of 100 in the first quarter of 2000. It is calculated monthly using a three-month moving average and published with a two month lag. We imported the data released today into Zoho Reports and created a few charts to see how the house prices have performed over the years.

There's also a separate chart that plots the Composite 10 and Composite 20 (an aggregate of 10 and 20 cities respectively) index values.

Inferences from the above charts

West
- Los Angeles, followed by San Diego are the cities where the prices peaked much (indices of around 275 and 250 respectively)
- In Seattle and Portland, the prices peaked almost a year late when compared to other cities in the West (around Sep 2007 as against Sep 2006)
- There was a mini bubble in Los Angeles in 1989-1990
Midwest
- Chicago and Minneapolis have seen the maximum rises
- In Detroit, prices have fallen the most (given the state of the auto industry there)
- Prices in Cleveland have almost remained level (just went up by 20 points)
Northeast
- During the bubble years, New York's prices rose at a faster rate than Boston's (from 1999 to 2004, prices rose almost at the same rate in both the cities)
- In the 1987-1996 time period, prices haven't varied much in the two cities
South
- Prices rose the most in Miami, followed by Washington DC and Tampa
- Like with Cleveland in the Northeast, prices in Charlotte, Dallas & Atlanta didn't rise by much
- There was a brief bubble in 1989-90 in Washington, DC
General

The indices for many of the cities are showing a small uptick for April 2009
Almost every region in the US has got uniformly affected by the current housing bubble

Do let us know your own inferences from the above. The data is available here. Play with it and create as many charts as you like. For example, the below is an interactive chart of how the indices in the Midwest cities have been since Jan 2001.

We will be updating the data on the last Tuesday of every month. The charts embedded above being dynamic will change automatically.

Related Links

New: Invitations for invoices and estimates

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:23 GMT

We've added more invitations to FreshBooks

A few weeks ago, we announced that FreshBooks accounts can talk to each other and that you can invite contractors to join your projects. I think the backstory for why we did this is kind of interesting.

Since the release I've been on the phone with a number of business owners who are using FreshBooks to manage their invoicing network and we learned they wanted more - they want to invite their vendors and contractors to invoice them, not just invite their contractors to track time on their projects. “Why?” is this a big deal you ask? I had the same question and I put it to every entrepreneur I spoke with.

What they told me was the benefit of receiving all their invoices in one format on one platform is enormous. Before they used to get 10 invoices a month from 4 contractors in many different formats (Word, Excel, PDF, hand written…). All these formats created frustrating inconsistencies, but all their invoices in FreshBooks takes the pain away, and it helps them clearly understand their cash flow. Most mind blowing of all to me is the contractors were grateful for the recommendation.

Another thing the entrepreneurs explained was that the ability to quickly receive estimates inside their FreshBooks accounts was a big deal. Thanks to FreshBooks they they can now quickly request, organize and evaluate multiple project proposals/bids/estimates/quotes from multiple vendors. FreshBooks takes the hassle out of collecting bids, and it makes it dead simple to accept the winning proposal and get on with the work.

After learning these things we hopped to it and made it easy to request other professionals to send you invoices and estimates. We're pleased to announce that you can now invite people to invoice you or send you estimates. Here are some screen shots that show you where you can start the invitation process from within your FreshBooks account:

Invite via received invoices and estimates

Invite from the “My Account” section

That's all for now folks, enjoy.

This Video Off the Charts!

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:04 GMT

YouTube has a slick tool called Hot Spots that lets you track the ups-and-downs at each moment in your video compared to videos of similar length. The higher the graph, the hotter the video, and for some reason this one is off the chart. Check it out!

Five Misconceptions about Building Apps in the Cloud

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:20 GMT

Over the years since we first started Caspio in 2000, we've grown accustomed to hearing disbelief from new users when they experience how easily they can create their own web apps without coding or software. And even as cloud computing gains momentum and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) becomes more mainstream, it's remarkable to still frequently hear so many common misunderstandings from new users and so-called “experts” alike. I'll try to tackle some of them here, primarily from Caspio's perspective.

Misconception #1: Only simple apps are possible without coding

Depends how you define simple. You can certainly create a massively scalable, multi-faceted, multi-user, highly-interactive app on Caspio and integrate it with several other online apps and internal systems and load it with millions of records. On the other hand, games and other intensely graphical apps are not as well-suited on Caspio's more structured database-centric app platform.

Misconception #2: Cloud apps are a temporary Band-Aid

The idea being that to build a “real” app for the long haul, you should go back to traditional coding. Not so! While it's true that application development platforms (including Caspio's) have their own unique strengths and approach to solving business problems, by no means are Caspio-powered apps a temporary stop-gap. We have countless customers who have built mission-critical enterprise applications since 2001, when our platform first launched, and continue to expand their usage today.

Misconception #3: Hosted applications pose security and reliability risks

Security and reliability are a big deal as they should be. But if you do proper due diligence in selecting your platform, you could be assured that the security and reliability achieved through your cloud partner is typically above and beyond what's available in most companies. Caspio is known in the industry for its leadership in enterprise-grade security and reliability measures. Read about our specific measures and policies here.

Misconception #4: Long-term apps are most cost effective when built in-house

What many don't realize is that once you roll out an app, someone has to continuously host it, monitor its uptime, update its security, back up its data, apply upgrades, and deal with feature requests whenever necessary. When you leverage a hosted platform like Caspio's, you automatically benefit from all the built-in maintenance, upgrades, support and economy of scale … without even having to think about it. Once you put these expenses into your ROI analysis you see that unless you are willing to make sacrifices in post-development operational quality, running your app on your own is not more cost effective than working with a well chosen cloud partner.

Misconception #5: Non-developers can't build powerful apps

After many many years studying computer science at school, the mere thought that a web-based tool could make my skills redundant is disheartening to say the least. But cloud platforms are not meant to be a drag-and-drop replacement to ingenuity … they are accelerators and innovators.

Platform-as-a-service offerings are much like point-and-shoot cameras. They are increasingly smart in that they automatically find your subject, zoom in on them, adjust the shutter speed and so on, so all you have to do is to push the button. The result is a fairly nice photograph. Now is it as good as one taken by a professional photographer? Certainly not. But most pictures don't require professional photography skills to turn out delightfully beautiful. Furthermore, just by spending an hour learning your camera's user manual to get down the basic features of lighting, framing and movement, you can improve your picture quality dramatically.
In the world of application creation, Caspio is that point-and-shoot camera. The truth is that Caspio doesn't make anyone a programmer. However, it does provide an easy way to implement your ideas. The trick is in planning and architecting your app. For that, Caspio offers free project consultations, customer training and technical support. So when you combine an easy-to-use tool with an eager-to-help support team to back you up, you bet that you can build powerful apps without knowing how to write programs.

Point-and-click app building is here and it's only getting better. We have been focused on this for the past nine years and have seen thousands of fantastic app ideas get implemented without a single line of code. There used to be a time that only professional typesetters could create nice looking publications. Nowadays, my elementary school child uses Word to create great looking documents. Similarly, you now can create web forms and apps fast and without programming. If you haven't tried it yet, you should!

Outage Monday between 4-5 pm EDT

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:16 GMT

FreshBooks was unavailable for approximately 40 minutes earlier today due to an outage in our Dallas Fort Worth data center. You can read more about the outage here as it impacted many popular websites.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you. We were able to offer updates on our progress via http://status.freshbooks.com, and should you ever encounter downtime you think might be associated with FreshBooks, we encourage you to check our status.

We're pleased to report all systems have returned to normal. But if you are continuing to experience troubles with your FreshBooks account, please call us at 1.866.303.6061 or email us at support@freshbooks.com and let us know.

Thank you for you patience and understanding and have a great day.

That thing we're launching... (integration, MS import and a screenshot)

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 10:35 GMT

One of the features I love about this thing we're launching soon is how many other Zoho services it incorporates into one cool package of unrestrained productivity. And... no, it's not just a pricing bundle where we give you a number of disparate thing for one set price.

It goes beyond that. Anyway, I was just counting how many other Zoho services it integrates under one roof - no less than 5! It's actually more than that, but I won't go into details.

You might remember last week we announced the ground-breaking Zoho Office for SharePoint - which lets users store their documents in SharePoint while editing and collaborating on them with Zoho. A lot of customers, media and bloggers liked that idea. Well, this thing (that we're releasing before you leave for your 4th of July weekend) also integrates with another popular Microsoft product.

As an added bonus, here's what a screenshot of this new thing looks like:

Yeah, of course it's broken into big, 38-pixel mossaics so as to not give it away so easily. Gotta love that Photoshop.

But, if you squint your eyes and look at it for 5 minutes without blinking, the whole thing will appear in 3-D before your eyes - like those posters that were popular in the 80s (90s?). Oh, who a I kidding? I was never able to see one of those autostereograms - to this day I still think they are a cruel joke.

But I digressed. You might think that screenshot doesn't give out any info. Well, it does! Some of the things that people were guessing are not supported by this screenshot. Also... read carefully!

Rodrigo

A new Netvibes user is born

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 03:23 GMT

We're happy to welcome a new Netvibes user, Emiliano who was born last night. Warmest congrats to Annabelle, our CFO!

And we have a special theme for the occasion: apply the theme ''It's a boy''

We're launching something, sometime next week

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 17:32 GMT

How's that for a launch announcement? You see, we're launching this thing next week. But we're not crazy. Bear with me for the next few lines. There are two philosophies when it comes to launching a product: one is you say well in advance what you are going to launch, and when - the Microsoft model. The other is to say absolutely nothing (nor product not date) until the day you launch it, the Apple model.

So we thought it'd be fun to do something in between those two extremes. We're telling you that next week we're launching something.

But we won't tell you what that is, nor we'll say specifically when. But we promise it will be before you leave for the 4th of July weekend.

We also promise you will really really like this new shiny thing. It will change the way you _________ (can't tell you that just yet, as it'd give it away). In fact, we challenge you to try out Zoho _________ for a month, and then you'll wonder how you worked without it before.

Rodrigo

WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 14:06 GMT

2.8.1 Beta 2 is ready for testing. Download it, check out the changes since beta 1, and review all tickets fixed in 2.8.1. We especially suggest, recommend, and beg that plugin developers test their plugins against beta 2 and let us know of any issues. Notable fixes in beta 2:

Translation of role names fixed
wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
Upload error messages are now correctly reported
Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
Switched back to curl as the default transport
Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload

Thanks again for testing WordPress.

June top widgets

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:56 GMT

News

Business & finance

Sport

TV, movies & music

Tools & technology

Fun & Games

Lifestyle

Shopping

Travel

Happy Birthday Barcode!

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:52 GMT

Has it really been 35 years? The barcode turns 35 today! I can recall my mom showing me my first barcode when I was two years old and I thought, “Wow, that is going to be big.”

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

New Zoho API Partner : Rabbit

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:11 GMT

Rabbit is a web-based operating system that connects people, processes and content, combining the power of social networking into an enterprise environment. A key component of Rabbit is its information sharing capabilities, which let users work on documents they’ve uploaded to Rabbit’s web workspace, and share this with other users. Rabbit has selected Zoho for this because of Zoho's proven ability to provide high levels of functionality and performance, and to provide a smooth transition for enterprise users from working locally on the desktop to working on the web.

All documents, spreadsheets and presentations uploaded and stored in Rabbit can be opened using Zoho. The documents and spreadsheets can be edited and saved back where as the presentations can be viewed. Below is a screenshot of files in Rabbit being opened using Zoho.

New documents and spreadsheets can be created too from inside Rabbit by invoking Zoho Writer and Sheet. This video by the Rabbit team explains the functionality in detail.

Rabbit has a 14-day trial. Try them out.

WCM Top Resources

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 04:25 GMT

There is a wealth of different resources available for Alfresco WCM including the Alfresco Wiki, the Content Community, forums, pre-recorded webinars to name but a few. The following is a moving list of various resources for Alfresco WCM. Please add a comment with your suggestions if you have found a valuable resource. I aim to [...]

Apps for America: the data.gov challenge

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:47 GMT

Sunlight Labs is turning government data into usable information and they want your help! This year, they are hosting the Apps for America contest alongside Google, O'Reilly Media, and TechWeb.

Developers interested in data transparency can win up to $10,000 for creating an app that helps the public access and understand government data released by data.gov.

The deadline for apps 11:59:59pm Pacific Time on August 7th. Winners will be announced at the Gov 2.0 Expo Showcase in Washington, DC on September 8th.

What are you waiting for? Find out more about the contest and how to submit your app.

Not a developer? You can still check out all the apps and everyone will be able to cast their vote on the three finalists between August 24th and September 7th. (How democratic!)

Are the Dutch finally catching the web app wave?

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 07:07 GMT

Good news as this week saw 14Dayz Simple Time Registration or Eenvoudige Tijdregistratie in Dutch being picked up by some Dutch top sites: Startkabel and Internet 100. (New entry at number 51!)

It seems awareness of how web applications can add value to your organization begins to increase in the Netherlands and that is great news for customers and vendors alike.

XING + Twitter + OpenSocial: A winning team for Twitter Buzz

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:19 GMT

The success story behind Twitter is simple enough: sharing information with friends, acquaintances and more in 140 characters or less. The microblogging service grew 1,400% last year (wow!), and is becoming more and more popular in Germany, as this link (in German!) shows: Last month, the number of ‘Twitterers' grew by 25%. Now there are nearly 80,000 users in Germany registered on the site. We at XING are no exception. Nearly 2,500 users follow the XING Twitter account, and other XING members are actively typing away. The XING group ‘I love Twitter‘ has 2,225 members, Microblogging has nearly 1,500 members, and a special Twitter Marketing group has almost topped the 1,000-member mark.

Two months ago we launched a feature allowing XING members to twitter about events they're organizing or attending directly from our platform. Not surprisingly, the feature got a great deal of resonance, with thousands using it every month. This overwhelming response has encouraged us to expand Twitter interfaces on XING. Now….drum roll, please! With the launch of our third OpenSocial application, ‘Twitter Buzz', we're doing exactly that.

You can use the new application to stay on top with what's being said about the topics that are important to you. You can follow what people are twittering about your company, your industry, or about any other topic that interests you. The application also allows you to choose whether you want to receive updates in other languages, or just in certain languages of your choice.

So give it a try, it's free, of course: Go to Twitter Buzz.

Caption: Twitter Buzz is available on your XING home page and in a separate independent window (see picture above).

Salesforce.com wins volunteering award

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:38 GMT

We’re proud to say that we just received one of the country’s top awards for our dedication to social service from Points of Light Institute. It recognizes the impact of our 1/1/1 philanthropy model in enabling our employees to be catalysts for social change. We’re one of only 5 winners including Capital One, Deloitte, Eli Lilly, and Pinnacol Assurance!

Alfresco Tech Talk Live New Episode @ 12pm EST, Friday June 26th, 2009

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:39 GMT

We will have our bi-weekly Alfresco Tech Talk Live @ 12pm EST, Friday June 26th, 2009. Jason Harrop of Plutext will demonstrate and explain the workings of an AMP which adds collaborative editing to Alfresco, so everyone in a team can work on a Word document at the same time, without having to make copies and [...]

New: Design tweaks to the popup timer

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:40 GMT

With this mornings release, a few design tweaks were added to the FreshBooks popup timer — in fact, the popup timer has a totally new look. We felt the old popup timer design was very outdated and we wanted a fresher look — more like our iPhone Time Tracker app. Take a look at some before and after shots below:

As you can see, several key components of the timer have been enlarged. First, the font of the running timer has been increased making it easier to read (now you can keep an eye on your timer while you're standing over by the water cooler ). Second, the Start/Stop button was made bigger and is now front and center making it more obvious and easier to click. The Reset button is now on its own and we hope this will prevent people from accidentally clearing out their hours (I know I've done this before).

Thanks to popular demand, you'll also notice a new button was added allowing you to switch the time format from hours (e.g. 1.5 hrs) to hours:minutes:seconds (e.g. 01:30:00). Both formats increment at the same time, but keep in mind that when you log your hours the timesheet only displays in the hours format (e.g. 1.5 hrs).

I thought I'd wrap up with a little known fact: did you know you can enter time into the Hours field in the format of hours:minutes, and FreshBooks will automatically convert that into hours in decimal format? It's a useful feature that not many people know about so I thought I'd share. This can be done on the timer and on the FreshBooks timesheets.

We hope you enjoy the shiny new timer, as always please send us your feedback by commenting below.

Alfresco CMIS Implementation - Now and Next

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:06 GMT

While we’re closing the last few tasks for our imminent Alfresco Labs 3.2 release, I thought I’d give another status update on our Draft CMIS Implementation. The Now Alfresco Labs 3.2 will include our next official CMIS drop. Those of you following SVN HEAD already know we’ve been busy and thanks must go to you for continuing to [...]

iPhone Now Natively Supports iCal for Calendar

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:42 GMT

iPhone versions 3.0 now allows you to access your Rackspace Email calendar through an iCal feed on your iPhone. This new feature will allow you to stay up-to-date by taking your calendar on the move with you wherever you go.

If you need help setting this feature up on your iPhone you can visit our Support Site for setup instructions.

Release Flash: Improved navigation & window cleaning in June

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:57 GMT

There are many parts of our platform that open up windows of opportunity to our members. The offers posted under XING Jobs are a particularly good example here. That's why we're working on optimizing this feature still further. Having introduced Job Alerts, enabling you to be notified by email of job vacancies that match your profile, we have now optimized the search result page navigation too: Now you can click back and forth directly through the posted job offers, as is already the case on the Jobs start page.

Members who organize events will be particularly pleased to hear that we have optimized the messaging feature for events. It is now much easier to select exactly which people attending you wish to send your messages to. Furthermore, any rescheduling of the event (change of place or time) does not require a second answer from everybody who has already replied. Of course the invitees are notified about the rescheduling.

It is now much easier to select recipients when sending event updates.

And there's more: Today's update also sees some repair work of various link inconsistencies in the Company Profiles. And the invitation algorithm has also been improved, meaning it can now differentiate better between alphabetically identical tags written in capitals and small letters. Most of the window cleaning we've been doing is at the rear view of our platform though, laying down the basic infrastructure for some brand new features over the coming weeks.

API Reference - Examples

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:08 GMT

{embed=“/norada/_apinav”}

Example using XML, JSON, Form Encoded

Every kind of item can be created, updated or destroyed with three supported Content-Type formats: XML, JSON and Form-Encoded. The following example of creating web site activity for a contact demonstrates each format.

XML

="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<request>
  <parent>{parentId}parent>
    <data>
        <caption>website created from apicaption>
        <url>http://test.site.com
    data>
request> 

JSON:

{"parent":"{parentId}","data":{"caption":"website created from api","url":"http:\/\/test.site.com"}} 

Form-encoded (provided by html form):

parent={parentId}&data%5Bcaption%5D=website+created+from+api&data%5Burl%5D=http%3A%2F%2Ftest.site.com 

Example of Batch Processing Activities

This example demonstrates filtering Project Blogs by category tags then adding six new Section activities for each one if they don’t already exist. Most of the example code is for handling communication with the server; the actual API logic is at the end and is fairly small.


    ini_set('display_errors', '1');
    error_reporting(E_ALL);
    define('USER', '{userEmail}');
    define('TOKEN', '{userApiToken}');
    define('HOST', 'https://secure.solve360.com');
    define('TIMEOUT', 30);
    
    define('SECTION_TYPE_ID', 57);
    
    /*
     * Helper functions
     */
    
    /**
     * Helper function to convert our data array into xml format
     *
     * @param array $data
     * @param SimpleXmlElement $xml
     * @return XML
     */
    function arrayToXml($data, $xml = null)
    {
        if ($xml == null) {
            $xml = simplexml_load_string('');
        }
        foreach($data as $key => $value) {
            if (is_array($value)) {
                    $node = $xml->addChild($key);
                arrayToXml($value, $node);
            } else {
                    $xml->addChild($key, $value);
            }
        }
        
        return $xml->asXML();
    }

    /**
     * Function that makes request to the api and return xml response
     *
     * @param string $uri
     * @param string $restVerb
     * @param array $data
     * @return SimpleXmlElement
     */
    function getXmlResponse($uri, $restVerb, $data = array())
    {
        // Connect to the host
        $errno = null;
        $errstr = null;
        $fp = stream_socket_client("tcp://".HOST.":80", $errno, $errstr, TIMEOUT);
        
        if (!$fp) {
            die("cannot connect to host " . HOST);
        } else {
            if (empty($data)) {
                $data = '';
            } else {
                $data = arrayToXml($data);
            }
        }
        
        // Prepare request body
        $request = "$restVerb $uri HTTP/1.1\r\n";
        $request .= "Host: ".HOST."\r\n";
        // Authorization header
        $request .= Preamble
 The Solve360 External API is implemented over HTTP and is RESTful.  Every item has its own URI and is manipulated in isolation.
 You will normally send your Request data in XML format, but we understand JSON and form encoded data just as well.  If you want to use a non-XML request format simply set the HTTP Content-type header to either application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded. conversely, we will normally send response data in XML form unless you set the HTTP Accepts header to application/json.
 Remember, access to features and data is limited to the actual user account being used to access the API.
Reference
 The API methods and parameters are the same for Project Blogs as they are for Contacts.  While this API documentation is in a preliminary state please refer to the Contacts page and simply replace the segment name /contacts/... with /projectblogs/...



API Reference - Companies
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 08:02 GMT
{embed=“/norada/_apinav”}
 Preamble
 The Solve360 External API is implemented over HTTP and is RESTful.  Every item has its own URI and is manipulated in isolation.
 You will normally send your Request data in XML format, but we understand JSON and form encoded data just as well.  If you want to use a non-XML request format simply set the HTTP Content-type header to either application/json or application/x-www-form-urlencoded. conversely, we will normally send response data in XML form unless you set the HTTP Accepts header to application/json.
 Remember, access to features and data is limited to the actual user account being used to access the API.
Reference
 The API methods and parameters are the same for Companies as they are for Contacts.  While this API documentation is in a preliminary state please refer to the Contacts page and simply replace the segment name /contacts/... with /companies/...


API Reference - Contacts
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:59 GMT
{embed="/norada/_apinav"} {embed="/norada/_apisummary"}Interface Summary at https://secure.solve360.com
 URI HTTP Methods  
/contacts/ [GET, POST]  
/contacts/{contactId}/ [GET, PUT, DELETE]  
/contacts/categories/ [GET]  
/contacts/{activitySegmentName}/ [POST]  
/contacts/{activitySegmentName}/{activityId}/ [PUT, DELETE]
 Methods
 Create
POST https://secure.solve360.com/contacts
Creates a new contact.
 Request

curl -u '{userEmail}:{userApiToken}' -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' -d 'AaronBaileys31589083421' https://secure.solve360.com/contacts 


 Parameters
   there are no required fields
 ownership will be the id of the current user if not otherwise provided, to share the item set {groupId}
 to add the item to one or more category tags use {categoryTagId}...
 to link the item to one or more contacts, companies or project blogs use {relatedtoid}...
 
 
 Response

...
<response>
  ...
  <status>successstatus>
response> 

 Update
PUT https://secure.solve360.com/contacts/{contactId}/
Updates an existing contact.
 Request

curl -u '{userEmail}:{userApiToken}' -X PUT -H 'Content-Type: application/xml' -d 'support@workplate.com53966' https://secure.solve360.com/contacts/31507 


 Parameters
   there are no required fields
 ownership will be the id of the current user if not otherwise provided, to share the item set {groupId}
 to add or remove the item to one or more category tags use {categoryTagId} ...{categoryTagId}...
 to link or unlink the item to one or more contacts, companies or project blogs use  {relatedtoid}...{relatedtoid}...
 
 
 Response

...
<response>
  <status>successstatus>
response> 

 Show
GET https://secure.solve360.com/contacts/{contactId}/
Shows all data related to an existing contact including companies, related-to, category tags and all activities (excluding email messages).
 Request

curl -u '{userEmail}:{userApiToken}' -X GET https://secure.solve360.com/contacts/31507 

 Response

...
<response>
  <item>
    <id>31507id>
    <name>Aaron Baileysname>
    <typeid>1typeid>
    <created>2009-06-20T14:49:39+00:00created>
    <viewed>2009-06-20T15:13:07+00:00viewed>
    <updated>2009-06-20T15:12:09+00:00updated>
    <flagged>1flagged>
    <fields>
      <businessphonedirect>(382) 853-8544businessphonedirect>
      <homephone>(333) 934-9392homephone>
      <cellularphone>(333) 828-4633cellularphone>
      <businessfax>(111) 222-3333businessfax>
      <firstname>Aaronfirstname>
      <custom329972>7363273custom329972>
      <assignedto>53936assignedto>
      <businessaddress>1710, 840 7th Ave. SW
      Calgary, Albertabusinessaddress>
      <businessphonemain>(580) 648-9094businessphonemain>
      <lastname>Baileyslastname>
      <custom18432>Farmcustom18432>
      <jobtitle>Maintenance Mechanicjobtitle>
      <background>
      Referred by David, hes built three other homes in the valley.<br>
      background>
      <businessemail>support@workplate.combusinessemail>
      <website>www.clientsite.comwebsite>
    fields>
  item>
  <activities>
    <id603944>
      <level>1level>
      <<


API Introduction
Wed, 24 Jun 2009 07:58 GMT
{embed="/norada/_apinav"} Introduction
  The Solve360 External Application Programming Interface or “API” provides clients who have access to some basic programming experience the ability to add, edit, delete and report on data in their Solve360 accounts without having to go through the Solve360 web interface. With the API, you can integrate Solve360 with your web site and other applications you use and create some pretty spiffy custom reports. This level of customization is provided so you can meet your team’s specific needs and automate as much of your work flow as possible. The API is probably easier to use and way cooler than you might originally think. It's also quite powerful; you’ll be working with some of the same tools that we use here everyday. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.
Authentication

Your code will authenticate to the API as a real Solve360 user account and will have access to everything that particular account has. However, instead of logging in using the user's password your code will use the user's “API Token”. The API Token is enabled on the Workspace, My Account, API Token page and is different for each user account.

Often when authenticating using HTTP Basic Authentication (the method we use) you will be prompted for a username and password. In these cases you would enter the user account’s email address as the username and the API Token as the password.
Just like your user account's password your API Token provides unlimited access to your account so be very diligent in keeping it secret and remember that the API Token can be removed or value reset at any time from the same page you first activated it.
 Giving it a Spin
Point your web browser at https://secure.solve360.com/contacts and when prompted to authenticate enter a valid Solve360 user account's email address and corresponding API Token. After authenticating the server should return a list of all contacts that user account has access to in a machine readable format called XML. Not so hard eh?! Maybe to easy to be convincing so lets move on to a real-world example... Creating a new contact in Solve360 directly from your website’s “Contact Us” form
Lets start by setting up the script that will receive the completed form from the website visitor and update Solve360. The good news is we've already done the hard work for you. You only need to edit two lines with your own account information and save the file on your server. Everything else stays the same. This file contain your API Token so it needs to be secure i.e. not readable by visitors. Note to the inclined: We've chosen the to use only native PHP functions for this example so clients don't need to worry about installing special libraries on their server. You may prefer to use CURL and send data in XML format.

    define('USER', 'xxx@xxxxxxx');                                    // Edit your email address
    define('TOKEN', 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx');      // Edit with your API Token
    define('HOST', 'secure.solve360.com');
    define('TIMEOUT', 30);

    // Connection to the host
    $fp = stream_socket_client("tcp://".HOST.":443", $errno, $errstr, TIMEOUT);

    if (!$fp) {
        die('cannot connect to this host');
    } else {
        // Collect data submited from the form
        $data = $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];
        
        // If you want to add some special tags or set the owner for the contact to a group you can
        // modify the user's input. You can find ids of groups and users in Workspace / My Account / API Reference
        // To enable this option, uncomment the following:
        
        /*
       
        // Grab data from query string
        $dataArray = array();
        parse_str($data, $dataArray); 
       
        // Specify a different ownership i.e. share the item
        $dataArray['ownership'] = {ownership}; 
       
        // Add categories
        $dataArray['categories'] = array({categoryId}, {categoryId});
       
        // Convert our data array back to query string
        $data = http_build_query($dataArray);
       
        */
        
        // Prepare request body
        $request = "POST /contacts/ HTTP/1.1\r\n";
        $request .= "Host: ".HOST."\r\n";
        // Authorization header
        $request .= "Authorization: Basic ".base64_encode(USER.":".TOKEN)."\r\n";
        // We inform the server that we're sending data in form encoded format
        $request .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
        // We inform the server theat we are waiting for xml formatted data in response
        $request .= "Accept: application/xml\r\n";
        $request .= "Content-Length: ".strlen($data)."\r\n";
        $request .= "Connection: close\r\n\r\n";
        $request .= $data;

        // Send request to the host
        fwrite($fp, $request);
        stream_set_timeout($fp, TIMEOUT);
        $info = stream_get_meta_data($fp);

        // Read the response
        $response = '';
        while (!feof($fp) && !$info['timed_out']) {
            $newLine = stream_get_line($fp, 1024, "\n");
            $response .= $newLine;
            if (trim($newLine) === '0') {
              break;
            }
            $info = stream_get_meta_data($fp);
        }
        fclose($fp);
        
        // Get xml from response
        $results    = explode(', $response);
        if (!empty($results[1])) {
            $xml = simplexml_load_string(".$results[

Gliffy Drops JIRA Plugin Price by 50%
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:08 GMT

The world's most popular web-based drawing tool just became twice as good. This morning we dropped the price of our Gliffy JIRA Plugin by half (hence the twice as good).
With the price reduction, we're making it even easier and more affordable for developers to add high-impact, great-looking diagrams and drawings to their JIRA issues. The Gliffy JIRA Plugin takes what we've learned with our wildly-popular Confluence plugin and applies those learnings to the world of JIRA issue tracking, enabling greater understanding and efficiency throughout the development process.
With the suddenly-more-affordable Gliffy JIRA Plugin, you can:

Increase your productivity and eliminate uncertainty by describing new features and issues with Gliffy drawings.
 Create wireframes to quickly mockup new features that need to be implemented
 Describe user process flows using intuitive flow charts instead of paragraphs of text
Design software using UML notation

We're excited about the new pricing and what it means for JIRA users. Take advantage of the new pricing and add the Gliffy JIRA Plugin to your workflow today.


5 tips for brand marketing on Twitter
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:07 GMT
Last Thursday I gave a talk about Twitter to the Toronto chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA). I told them the FreshBooks story and how we like to Execute on Extraordinary Experiences Everyday, then I gave them 5 things a marketing department can do with Twitter and I thought I’d share those things here and give some examples of how we do each one at FreshBooks.
Disclaimer for non-Twitter freaks: read the conversations/photos from the bottom up, that's the way conversations work on Twitter!



Serve customers

We use our @FreshBooks account to answer questions – doing support for our customers is what initially led us to use Twitter.



Establish brand voice

As you can see, we like to be playful, silly and inane here at FreshBooks.



Deepen relationships

Here’s an example of a customer who was having a rough day and we wanted here to know she’s not alone, we also sent her flowers.



Engage brand fans

We like games, and this is us playing “Eye Spy” on Twitter with some friends.



Break news

This one went out about 15 minutes we before our last release…



Parting thought
As you can see there is lots you can do with twitter – we think you’re only limited by your imagination!

   



Discover new widgets with our recommendations
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 12:50 GMT
Since the beginning, we've always made sure that Netvibes.com stays an open platform.
Everyone can create and distribute their widgetswith UWA and the Ecosystem. Today, you can add more than 182,000 widgets from the "Add content" panel. That's more than anyone can use, so we've been working on a recommendation engine that will help you find what's interesting for you.
 How it works: matching and learning
 1. Matching profiles
 The recommendation engine, named "Talk to Me", will first analyze millions of Netvibes personalized pages to categorize widget usage behaviors and widget page combinations into hundreds of "matching types". Then, based on the context of the widgets installed on your page, it will recommend new widget based on similar matching types. You'll notice that it has found new widgets by the small badge on the "Add content" button.
 
 For example, if you're a sports fan and thousands of users with your "matching type" are using the ESPN basketball video widget, it will be recommended to you automatically.
 When you're interested by a recommended widget, simply press the "Add" button to add it your page.
 
 2. Learning from you
 If you think that one recommendation isn't relevant, just click the "X" button to tell the engine that you're not interested, and you'll never see it again.
 
 We fully respect each user's right to privacy by performing all analyses anonymously. The feature is being rolled out progressively. All you have to do is be patient. If you have any question or concern, send us a message with the feedback form, we will do our best to help you.


[Case Study] Uforia Regains 400+ Hours of IT Staff Time Annually by Choosing Rackspace
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:26 GMT
Silicon Valley-based Uforia, founded by online gaming industry veterans, specializes in massively multiplayer online games (MMOG). Uforia creates a unique online gaming experience where gamers play free online games with the ability to enhance their experience. Using micro-transactions to purchase online enhancements, gamers can make characters look different or increase functionality with weapons and accessories.
Due to their corporate structure, Chris Keswani, marketing manager, was relying on hardware and technical support resources based in their Korean offices. When his US-based office needed support with email, they were up against both a 17-hour time difference and communication difficulties between Korean speaking technicians and English speaking users. If Chris needed immediate changes made to his office’s email account at 2pm in the afternoon, the request could take a day or more to be fulfilled. The lack of control over email was becoming a real challenge. Additionally, the email tasks being asked of their highly skilled IT staff were taking their time away from more important projects.
“Our IT staff was spending over 400 hours every year supporting email for our employees,” says Chris “It was costing us time, money, and resources that could have been focused on mission critical projects.”
He’d heard about Rackspace from former colleagues who mentioned that our email solution worked well for them and was easy to use. After he and a few others in his organization evaluated Rackspace, they decided to go with Rackspace Email & Apps because of the affordable cost and the “need for timely support on something as critical as email, made it important to deal with a vendor who had the resources to be responsive.”
Chris now has a new convenience factor with email. He no longer has to wait to make changes or add new mailboxes. When he had questions about using distribution lists, he sent an email to our support department. By the time he got a cup of coffee and returned to his desk, he had an email with the answer he needed. “We work with lots of vendors via email or phone and it typically takes a long time to get answers back,” he says. He’s happy to have email that he doesn’t have to worry about and support that’s always available and responsive to his needs. Email is no longer a challenge and his staff is once again focused on games.





Introducing Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 07:12 GMT

Zoho is primarily about working online. We have a great set of online
productivity apps which businesses find extremely useful for
collaboration. Microsoft SharePoint is ubiquitous in enterprises for
content management, but it lacks several advantages that cloud
applications like Zoho enjoy. 



Today we are pleased to announce Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint that brings the advantages of Zoho online productivity applications to ubiquitous Microsoft SharePoint.



Zoho Office for Microsoft SharePoint extends the value of Microsoft
SharePoint by allowing users to create new documents using Zoho's
office suite and then save them directly to SharePoint in Microsoft
Office supported formats. Users can view or edit existing documents,
spreadsheets and presentations using Zoho Writer, Sheet & Show and
save them back to SharePoint. 


This video gives a good overview of this add-on.



 Installation video is available here. As Zoho applications are served
from the cloud, you don't need any installations on desktops to
create/view/edit documents. Once you install the add-on for SharePoint
server, you can be more productive with just your browser. 





Zoho Collaboration on Microsoft SharePoint



Apart from providing editing capability for existing documents, the
add-on also provides collaborative editing functionality. Based on
sharing permissions already defined in SharePoint, multiple users can
collaboratively work on documents/spreadsheets/presentations in real-time.
This feature basically brings one of the key advantages of an online
office suite to SharePoint. 




While collaboratively editing documents, you can also chat with other members using our integrated Zoho Chat.



Data Behind your Firewall



Along with small and medium businesses, we see a good percentage of
departments in larger organizations using our productivity apps for
collaboration. There are  businesses which prefer keeping their
data behind the enterprise firewall. For such organizations, this new
add-on brings in the best of both worlds - Collaboration capabilities
of an online application while keeping the data behind your firewall.



If you have SharePoint installed in your intranet behind your corporate
firewall, you still will be able to view/edit documents using our
online applications. After changes, your documents are saved back to
your SharePoint server behind your corporate firewall leaving no data
on Zoho Servers.



When you open the document, a copy is transferred temporarily to Zoho
servers securely. When the document is closed, it is permanently
deleted from our servers immediately leaving no data on our side. 



Pricing & Availability



Starting today, this add-on is available for Microsoft SharePoint 2007
and 2003 versions. You can try the 30 day evaluation version for
unlimited users. After the trial period, it costs $2/user/month on an
yearly subscription or $3/user/month for monthly subscription. 



If you have already invested in Microsoft SharePoint, this add-on is a
great compliment that brings in the advantages of online productivity
applications to SharePoint. If you are able to access SharePoint,
you'll be able to view/edit documents without having to invest on
productivity suites for every desktop in your business.



Additional information is available @ http://www.zoho.com/sharepoint



Please do give it a try and let us know what you think. 
If you'd like more details on this announcement, please join our presentation at 10 AM PST.

1-866-206-0240
128660#
URL: http://www.tinyurl.com/zohoshow 


-------

Microsoft, SharePoint are either registered trademarks
or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or
other countries. ZOHO Corp is not affiliated or endorsed by Microsoft
Corporation.


XING iPhone App 2.0 – Now with even more features
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:17 GMT
News in my network: See what your colleagues and friends are doing.
We launched the first version of our iPhone client at the end of 2008, designed to give you mobile access to the most essential XING features (status updates, messages, and contacts). And we were pretty overwhelmed with the response. More than 1,500 reviews in the App Store go to show just how important mobile networking is to our users. We gathered all your feedback - from our blog, from Twitter and from the store reviews - and got to work turning the best ideas and suggestions into reality. Today we're pleased to announce the latest version of the app, which is available for download right now in the App Store. In case you were wondering, the new version is of course still completely free.
Brand new: Visitors to your profile, XING invitations and member search
The new version is packed full of improvements and new additions: “What's new in your network” has more features for Premium Members; you can search in your Contacts by name and company (which saves your scrolling finger a lot of effort!).
Furthermore, all contact details that your contacts have shared with you is now automatically updated in real time. You can now check out the “Visitors to your profile”, search for members and add and confirm contacts. So the new iPhone app really does come with the whole range of core XING networking features on-the-go.
We also optimized the login and logout interfaces - again, in response to your feedback.
We're confident that this update represents a giant leap towards making XING's mobile capabilities more user friendly. But remember - we're always looking to enhance our products, and welcome any suggestions for improvements you have. If you have feedback you can post a comment right here, for instance!
 



 
  



Marc at GigaOm's Structure '09 Conference
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:32 GMT

Marc Benioff is keynoting GigaOm's Structure '09 Conference here in San
Francisco on June 25th.                                                  
The theme this year is "Put Cloud Computing to
Work."  
If you're in the area, come
down and check out Marc's keynote and conversation with Om Malik. 
Or, listen on the Web.  



Enterprise Content Management - The Single Platform Approach
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:31 GMT
Alfresco 3.2 Labs is due out in a couple of days and I wanted to share some thoughts on where we’re headed with the product. Alfresco 3.2 Enterprise (due in August) will be a significant release, the development of which has provided us the opportunity to step back a bit and invest further into our [...] Read More


Open Source ECM Transparency in the Twitter Age
Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:19 GMT
One of the primary benefits of open source software over closed-source vendors is the degree of transparency. Open source roadmaps are developed with input from this community. Closed-source vendors, on the other hand, will typically protect their roadmaps as fiercely as they protect their “intellectual property”. At Alfresco we publish our roadmap on the [...] Read More

URI	HTTP Methods
/contacts/	[GET, POST]
/contacts/{contactId}/	[GET, PUT, DELETE]
/contacts/categories/	[GET]
/contacts/{activitySegmentName}/	[POST]
/contacts/{activitySegmentName}/{activityId}/	[PUT, DELETE]