Great tools for project collaboration

In their latest release, binfire has introduced many innovative features which I will cover briefly two of them here.

1. File Staring; which makes collaboration around a file very easy. By staring a file, you are following any changes made to that file. Other people in your project can star the same file. This way a group is created around a file. Everybody is notified about the status of the file at all times. Assume you create a document and assign it to one of your engineers to make corrections. Your boss is also interested to know when the document is ready. When you upload the file, the system automatically stars the file for you, your boss will star the document too. Now as soon as the engineer is done his job (always the engineer :) you and you boss are notified immediately. This way you and your boss get notified on time, and the engineer does what he likes and nothing else (he calls everything else BS!).
2. User categories and permissions; The new release lets you create new user categories and give them unique permissions. The system has a few default catagories like manager, team member and so on. You can create supplier, customer, contractor or anything else you might need in you work. You can give each category its own permissions to the pages of you projects. You can control access to each page of your project with full access, read access or no access permissions. This way you control who sees what and can do in you project.

For a comparison of what binfire offers compared to the competition read binfire's blog Collaboration corner

Happy collaboration!

Binfire's New Release 3 leaves the competition in the dust!-Press Release

Binfire®, Inc., a project collaboration innovator, today announced the latest release of its project collaboration software. The new version includes comprehensive project management and real-time collaboration tools.

Binfire provides online Project Collaboration tools and services. It is the only company which provides all the essential tools needed for project collaboration in one easy to use package. “No other company in the project collaboration space provides the tools we are releasing today in a single package. Companies like basecamphq.com (37 Signals) and others don’t offer anything close to the complete package which we are offering for free. Compare binfire’s free package to 37 Signals’ paid package for $49 per month and you will notice that they don’t come even close! ” said David Robins, the CEO of Binfire.com. “In addition to real-time interactive whiteboard (which 37 Signals doesn’t offer), intuitive integrated group chat, tasks and milestones with dependencies (again 37 Signals doesn’t have this) and status reporting (nope they don’t have that too) we have added object staring (a real cool collaboration tool which they don’t offer), user defined categories for permissions (again they don’t have this feature) and intuitive dashboard to see the status of all your projects in one page. We have built a virtual project room that allows project teams to work online and achieve better productivity as though they are working in the same building”.

“Object staring for files and tasks enables you and your team to follow and keep track of any file or task in your project. This makes collaboration seamless for any size team. We use our own tools to manage our own projects. We use a combination of scrum and extreme engineering to release a new version of our tools every month. Our tools plus our talented engineers are the reason for being able to bring products to the market in the record time” Said David Robins. The new version also lets the user define project member’s category and give each one a unique permission. “This way you could define managers, team leaders, team members, customers or any other category you need in your project and give each category its own permission levels. This way, customers or consultants can have access to your project and only see the pages you want them to see. All other pages will be either read only or off limit to them” Said David Robins.

“We are offering our users comprehensive tools to manage their projects. Our competition’s offering are several years old and does not fare well against web 2.0 compatible solutions we offer for ease of use and intuitive collaboration. The new dashboard enables a project manager to see the status of all his projects in a glance. Currently all services provided by binfire.com are free. In the future we will have a combination of free and paid services” Said David Robins. Binfire uses highly respected Rackspace.com to host its web and file storage servers.

Contacts:

Email david@binfire.com

Web http://www.binfire.com

Phone 561-910-4567

Fax 267-545-5422

Interactive whiteboard

Soon we will release an innovative whiteboard as part of our project collaboration tools. This is an interactive whiteboard in which you and your team members can collaborate by writing or drawing in real time. What makes this whiteboard special is the option to open documents (images and PDF files) on the whiteboard and collaborate on them by using a marker, a pointer or any of the drawing tools available in the whiteboard. At the end of each collaboration session the content of the whiteboard could be saved for future use. We may let the whiteboard open other types of documents like Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the future.
Using the whiteboard plus the group chat will create an excellent collaboration environment in Binfire.

Coming soon to Binfire

We have seen great interest since the relaunch of the site! I would like to thank all those who sent email and had good things to say and those who suggested new functionality and improvements and those who pointed out to short comings.
A new version will be out before the end of 2010. In it, we have improved Tasks and Milestones greatly. We are adding task reporting mechanism and project progress monitoring. Now the project owner has more control over the project. The project overview and dashboard will have live links to events in the project.
In addition we are bringing new functionality.
1-Project chat- You can talk to one or all your project team members using group chat.
2-Interactive whiteboard- write, draw and collaborate with your team in real time.

We need feedback from our users. Let us know what is in your mind. What you like, what you don't and what functions you think we should add to the site.

Please remember, inactive free accounts will be deleted. If your account is not accessed in two months we will delete it (we will send you a notice first, but please don't rely on receiving a notice. Sometimes emails are lost or go to spam box etc!)
Best,
David
David(at)binfire(dot)com

Report issues or suggestions

If you encounter any issue while using binfire.com or have suggestions on how to improve the service please contact us at: support(at)binfire(dot)com
We greatly appreciate your help!

The best collaboration and project management site on the web!

On September ,1 2010 we launched Binfire.com new site. It is by far the easiest project management and collaboration tool on the web. If you plan to subscribe to basecamphq.com or Clarizen.com, stop! Check our free version and you will never go back. What we offer for free has more features than what basecamphq.com offers for $24 per month. In a few months we will release a new version which has more innovative tools to make your job easier and more productive! We promise increase in productivity, ease of use and project visibility for all project stake holders.
The new release has project control panel, tasks & milestones (each task could be broken down to sub tasks), A project file folder to manage project files, status Tweet for project reporting and communication and a whiteboard! In addition each user gets a private web folder to store his personal files.
Give binfire.com a try, you will find it a highly productive tool.

Update about the move

As I have mentioned in this blog for the past few weeks we plan to update and move our site in the late August. We will host our website and online file storage servers on Rackspace.com, one of the best and most secure site in the internet! The functionality in the site will totally change. The site will look very different too; I have attached a screen shot of the new interface here. Our emphasis will be collaboration and project management tools. We will have a better file hosting and file sharing scheme than what we have currently plus collaboration & project management tools including tasks & milestones, project folders, Secure Status Tweets and whiteboard.
We are investing heavily in the new site and plan to update the site again in late 2010.

Important things you should know about the move:

• In the first week of August we will disable registration in the old site, we will not accept new users!
• You need to request by email to move your account from the old site to the new site. Send email to support@binfire.com
• The deadline for move request is August 8,2010.
• All user accounts and files which are not moved to the new site will be deleted!
• You have until end of August 2010 to download your files if your account is not moved!
  
• Make sure you get an acknowledgment email from binfire.com regarding your request. If you do not receive an email within three days, please send the request again (we usually get back to you within a few hours)!
  

Update

We had a bug related to IE6 & IE7 which prevented folders from opening. This was fixed on April 20'th version release. I have heard from many users that our hotlinks are too long. We will working to have an internal link shortening solution.
Also we are revamping the site, the UI and functionality will be enhanced tremendously. I will put a link here to the new site soon.
Join the best free online data storage site on Internet.

Binfire.com's version V is released!

We just released version V of Binfire.com . In this version we have improved the UI for index page share (no login is required). You can upload and send as many files as you want to your friends using this tool. The max size for each file is 100MB. There is no wait or other gimmicks like what Rapidshare.com and others do. You also get hotlinks for sharing and deleting your files whenever you choose to. I feel we have the Best File Sharing tool on the web today!
When you login, you can get hotlinks to files and folders in the file center tab. You can also send multiple files to as many friends and colleagues as you want.
In the home page you can upload 10 Pictures (3 MB each), a video file (100 MB) and an audio file (100 MB). Remember that you have 10 GB free space in your web folder in addition to files you place in your home page.
We have one of the fasted upload tools on the internet and plan to increase the file size limit from 100MB to 200MB or more in the near future.
The collaboration tool is improved too. Go to collaboration tab, create a group, invite members and now you and your colleagues have access to a new web folder which lets you collaborate on projects and tasks. The name of this folder is the same as your group's name.
Give the new binfire.com a try!
contact us at support@binfire.com if you have any questions or suggestions. We love to hear from you!
David