The last couple of months have been crazy, and its about time you folks heard from us!

We’ve made a LOT of changes to Remindo based on user feedback. We hit the design board and realized that apart from some frequently requested features (like file deletion – which is available now, btw) there were certain usability chokes that were hiding some very useful features from people (did you know that you can reply to email notifications to post comments – even attach files?)

We made a series of releases over the last two months that addressed feature requests, UI enhancements and backend optimizations. Here’s what we added:

1. You can now (finally )delete files, discussion threads, tweets and comments – before the paid plans come in April,  as promised! Deletion of tasks and milestones is coming next with a BIG feature addition that left us thinking, why didn’t we think of that before!? More on this in another post.

2. Things will be simpler with a whole bunch of UI enhancements.

• The mailers now read better, with clear call-to-actions
• Progress bars on file uploads.
• Removal of “moderator” privileges. Now you are either a project manager or a user.
• Simpler and streamlined invitation processes.
• Creation of sub-projects straight from the dashboard.
• The ‘more projects’ tab will also give you a list of all projects that you manage.

3. The chat will now behave! We kept getting complaints about the chat. After much heartburn with Jabber we found out that it doesn’t function well when a system resumes from idle or standby modes. It’s now been fixed and we are continuously monitoring its performance. If you still face problems, please let us know.

4. Optimizations. We noticed that certain parts of Remindo, like the week-view in the calendar were acting sluggish under stress conditions. While it was heartening to see that people were putting so much data on it – sure sign of it being useful – we immediately started work on super-optimizing the code and database. We did this before we started work on the new features and now that its out of the way, we are going full steam ahead.

Some people ask us why we were giving away so much for free? Here’s what one of our users Karishma Dorai from MAA Communications had to say:

“ … Love Remindo by the way, it’s simplified our processes to a great extent. Great job! … we’d be more than happy to pay a nominal fee when you officially release it. “

Now how often do you hear that? We are convinced and are being repeatedly told by users that Remindo is adding a lot of value to their organizations by saving them time,  creating painless workflows and keeping things together.  Remindo -as a  SaaS Intranet – was a compelling idea that we are turning into a real product. We are not worried

When we started work on Remindo last year, we spent a lot of time on the design, because design is just so important to us. Yet, within a year and even before our 1.0 release we seem to have outgrown the design we started with. This happened mainly due to the way we found ourselves interacting with the design as our features came to life. We felt the design did not have enough space and gave the feel of a crowded screen.

The design you see here is based largely on internal and user feedback received. It gives a feeling of space, without compromising on convenient functionality and it’s more contemporary in the use of colors and graphics. We are now busy turning this design into code for the upcoming 1.0 release in October. We hope you like what you see and would love to hear your view.

When they log on, they’ll find that they already have IM set up, they’re already in their proper grouping on the contacts list, they already have everyone in the company on the list, and they even have non-company people like clients and partners on their contact list if those people have registered with the company on Remindo. And since Remindo is web-based, they didn’t have to load anything on their computer.

One of the biggest fears associated with having a virtual office seems to be distrust in its security.

“The concern that most internal IT organizations raise when it comes to cloud computing services is that they can not be sure how secure data will be as its moves from their internal systems out to a public cloud service,” says Michael Vizard at eWEEK (Source: http://tr.im/gClQ).

We often get asked about our security at Remindo. Businesses are very concerned, and rightfully so, about the risks of their data being online, but while it’s a common fear, I would contend that having a tool like Remindo.com in your workplace actually makes your data much safer!

Look at your security today, what do you have? Passwords, virus detectors, firewalls, and hopefully a back up. All of these functions are good and you will still need most off them if you take your office online.

But how safe is your information today?

If you store all your information on your laptop, you don’t have any back up if the system crashes, and that means you will lose all your work. Hopefully you are better equipped than that!

Look at it this way: if you don’t have a shared, common place to store and manage projects, people throw things everywhere. It’s like your keys. f you have a place to keep them at home, you generally know where they are. If you don’t, you constantly have to search for it. Knowledge is the same thing. A simple tool that helps you organize and store your data will keep you from spreading it around – making it safer.

So let’s say you store all your files in a common server in the office. What happens if that crashes? Your IT guy might be able to fix it in a couple of hours, IF the data was not erased.

To be safe you need to have an extra server with another round of hardware and software, maintenance, etc. and keep that as a back up. This is the ideal solution for private servers, but it is very expensive and also doubles your storage cost.

Neither of these solutions seems cost effective, so let’s look at how a virtual server operates.

The most important thing to understand is that you don’t need any particular computer when you use a virtual office. You can access it from everywhere, and it will store your information safely regardless of what computer you are working from. Your information is stored in gigantic servers that offer a lot more security and service than smaller ones. Thus, if something goes wrong, you information is instantly backed up.

Convenient, right?

Now let me tell you about how Remindo security works.

At Remindo, we want to keep your files safe. That’s why we selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as our hosting and data storage partner. AWS is widely regarded as the Platinum Standard when it comes to hosting and data storage.

This partnership represents Remindo’s use of Amazon’s EC2 servers. For you as a user this means that your information such as your profile is stored on these servers. When you upload files, they are stored on Amazon’s S3 data storage systems.

Both Amazon EC2 servers and Amazon S3 data storage systems are highly available, secure and backed up. Another great feature is that the EC2 servers are scalable, which means that it can scale in terms of storage, request rate and users to support an unlimited number of Web-scale applications. The reliability is also great since it has a store data durably with 99.99 percent availability. They promise no single point of failure and that all failures must be tolerated or repaired by the system without any downtime.

After all, says AWS, “Ensuring the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer’s systems and data is of the utmost importance to AWS, as is maintaining trust and confidence.” (Source: http://aws.amazon.com)

Impressive, right?

So give me one good reason to keep your old, time-consuming and expensive system, when you can get access to Remindo secure servers FREE?

We’re super excited to be adding some new features that we really think changes the game.

As you all know, Remindo has always been about being social in the office.  It started with external information–ways to manage your contacts, ways to share competitive and market intelligence, and now, it’s about social productivity!

What’s social productivity? Simply put, it’s a better way to get projects done at the office.  And in the latest release, we’ve added a bunch of social productivity features like:

• Shared calendars, todos, and milestones. Now, you can manage your projects from a shared location on the web.  No more passing spreadsheets around via email.  It’s truly a great feature we’ve been using a ton inside Remindo for a while. You should find it super easy to get organized and keep everyone aware of what’s happening and what needs to get done.
• Message threads. Now, you can discuss topics, respond, and organize your project, and it’s all in organized and in the right place.  Message threads are great for sorting, organizing information, brainstorming, tracking comments, really just about anything that involves messages. We use it to track versions of documents and to brainstorm mostly. But, you can use it for virtually anything.
• Shared file storage. All the files you use for the project can now be stored in 1 place.  No more searching around for the right file.  It’s always up and available on Remindo.
• Unlimited projects. When you check out Remindo, you’ll realize just how powerful this feature is.  You can have unlimited projects!  Organize your team, the retreat, an event you’re managing, even project manage your products!  You can organize your team any way you want.

There are a ton of other features under the hood (like inviting people from other companies onto your projects). So, check it out, dig around, and let us know what you think!

We have a bunch more features planned.  This is a taste of things to come.  Thanks everyone for your patience, and as always, we are looking forward to your comments, both good and “constructive.”

William