Simple question: What happens to your data if we go belly up tomorrow?

We do not provide an import/export data feature in Remindo right now but its one of our top internal dev projects and you should see it live soon.

Once it is released, the new import/export feature will let you export all your data from Remindo as well as let you use exported data from Basecamp.

We understand its importance because quite honestly, if we were to trust our business data to a 3rd party service, we would want to have the freedom to move around our data easily between different software so we don’t ever get locked with one particular project collaboration service provider.

With the clean new look and useful feature additions coming up, we hope that you will never want to use the export feature

A couple of months ago we announced that a clean new look for Remindo was coming up soon and now here we are!

The new user interface is being tested and its performing really well. The internal feedback has been very positive and we can’t wait to roll it out for everyone to see

What we did not tell you then was that the new UI is a part of a much larger release that address various perfromance issues. We are introducing a host of new useful features and making older ones more accessible (and hopefully more useful).

Here’s what to expect:

• Increased project visibility – a completely new navigation system that will let you manage multiple projects from a common dashboard.
• Increased personal milestone visibility across all projects – you will now see them on the dashboard.
• An all new activity feed – It will keep you updated on all projects. Think of it like the facebook news feed, except instead of telling you about lost sheep, it will help you in project planning, task tracking and participating in discussions with your team and clients.
• A much faster user experience – a whole lot of performance issues have been fixed with code and query optimizations

There is a lot more juice packed in (especially for freelancers and small business owners), just hang in for a little while longer!

And did I mention that Remindo will continue to be a free project collaboration and management software?

This post is long overdue;

Internet Explorer 6 has given us hell and we know that we are not alone. There has been so much furore over IE6 that Microsoft had to explain their position on it. Nevertheless, there is a sizable 12.1% of internet users that still used IE6 in September, 2009.

So where does that leave us? Remindo is heavy on browsers and there is really no way for us to support something as antiquated as IE6. Thankfully, Google gave us some hope with Chrome Frame.

The way it works right now is that users will need to install the plugin and add a cf: in front of URL’s in the addressbar.

So if you are running IE6 and have chrome frame installed, you need to enter a URL like this:

cf:https://www.remindo.com.

This will make Remindo load within the chrome frame and bypass most restrictions that web developers hate about IE6.

Also, if you are feeling especially savvy, here’s a detailed guide by Google that talks about registry changes that you can do to load pages through chrome frame by default – and fix IE6 for good.

Of course, Chrome Frame right now is just a developers’ baby but we really, really hope that it catches on with the masses to solve the world’s IE6 problem!

As always, BarCamp delivered. Between Kunal (in-house PHP guru) and me, I think we were able to catch most of what was going on. There were excellent sessions on client side optimizations (we plan to give some ideas a spin soon), upcoming web standards and surprisingly numerous sessions on SEO.

The place was swimming with fanboys, evangelists, bloggers and barely-out-of-school hackers and of course, web developers and teams from indian startups. Here are some photos.There were puzzle sessions and some very informative stuff on how big brands are creating content exclusively for the web – we even got treated to some sneak peeks into content made specially for advertising festivals.

In short, a Sunday spent very, very well.

PS: We are so going to talk about Remindo in BarCamp 7!

One of the most common queries that we get about Remindo is about our pricing plans. So we’re setting the record straight.

Like so many SaaS and web based project management apps out there, it would make sense for us to go with what is described as freemium pricing. Enough has been written about it, but in 3 simple steps:

• Give out your service for free.
• Develop a user base.
• Offer premium value added service to people who wish to upgrade.

This has been hailed by some as a great business model for startups and also criticized by others. Anyone who provides a free service on the internet must have grappled with the question of what to give away for free and what to charge for. Here’s our take on this.

Remindo is a free and simple project management service and we have been growing (and retaining) a user base so step 1&2 are taken care of. It is step 3 that we have a fundamental problem with.

We dislike the idea of having a paid “enhanced” service vs a free basic service. Why? it implies that we are holding back on a part of our user base who have helped us get to step no 3. We don’t think its wrong (someone’s gotta pay the bills after all!) but we think it is avoidable. And we sure as hell will try!

Why do we feel this way? That’s because we have a whole bunch of users who work in small teams but have given us tremendous amounts of feedback/feature requests and bug reports (some even suggest fixes!). They have been patient when bugs have cropped up or their feature requests were not included (because they were not in sync with our broader plans). In short, they have helped us get where we are and we hope they will be with us when we go forward.

Fred Wilson wrote:

Free gets you to a place where you can ask to get paid

Sure, but we don’t want these guys to pay. Surely there has to be a way to give back to these wonderful folks, right? And we think that the least we can do is to let these guys use for free, what they have helped create.

So here’s the deal, Remindo will be free to use with its entire feature set (unlimited projects, unlimited users -and all the rest) available to people who are helping us build, test and improve Remindo. There will of course be a paid subscription model coming up soon, but not for this group of people.

How do you become part of this group? Just sign up, use Remindo for a project or two and start a conversation with us – let us know what you think, what you like, what you hate and what you wish we had.

PS: In fact, if you have your own service or product that you want us to have a look at or you just want to bounce some ideas off of us – because we have picked up a thing or two – we would be more than happy to pick your brains and let you pick ours! Just drop us a line.

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.

We are very excited to release a great new way of getting deadlines done by giving users the ability to add & edit milestones & tasks by clicking on a date in the calendar. This easy to enter, easy to edit and easy to mark as complete, makes project management a breeze. Check out the video we’ve created to show you how to do this.

We have also added a new “Resource” view to the calendar, which gives you a Week by Week overview of who is working on what. This way you can see what your colleagues are working on this week, next week or any other week. This simple yet extremely powerful view will keep everyone in a team in sync with what their colleagues are doing; and will also help managers move things along. We’re betting you’ll be as excited about this as we are.

If that was not enough, this week we released 100s of small tweaks and large improvements to Remindo, from a Live Feed that brings everything to you, to graphical improvements, to a whole new intelligent alerts system, all to numerous to mention. A team of 12 engineers, 2 testers, 2 product designers, 2 artists and 2 content producers have worked 4 months on this! With this release, we are now officially in Beta.

We are now working hard to get Remindo to the big 1.0 release in October. This will include substantial improvements to the look and feel of Remindo, ensuring its a delight on the eyes; small tweaks like the ability to reply to messages from emails; and the ability to set-up a private URL to run Remindo in your company. Plus a few surprises.

We’d love to hear from you, do leave us comments and your thoughts.

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?

Social media platforms offer new ways to create a productive and organized office. The platforms, like Remindo.com, can be used to share files, delegate assignments, share milestones and keep track of teammates via a joined calendar. This helps eliminate time spent searching for people or material, and it keeps everyone connected through a shared community.

Krishna De, Founder and CEO at Biz Growth News, says “I’ve found deploying social media platforms in my own business and with organizations I work with has enhanced productivity.”

Using social media platforms are also a way for employees to get to know one other better. Even though they may share the office and talk over coffee, they do not necessarily know each other. But add in a platform where employees can communicate instantly, and they are now more free to build closer relationships. A tight organization where everyone knows one another will work better together and feel comfortable around each other.

When you are organized it is also easier to let your work force grow. New employees can easily catch up by logging on to the platform where they gain access to all the shared material, reducing the need for introductions and educations. And they can also access and read about previous project and gain understanding about company. They know whom they represent before starting their first assignment.

Another benefit with social media platforms is that they can be accessed from anywhere. Even if you go on a business trip, you can still access the company network and files. Maybe that will help close a few sales that you otherwise would not have gotten. Or, if you are using contract employees, you can engage them in conversations and groups that they would otherwise have a hard time joining.

So, if social productivity platforms bring all these advantages, why haven’t they been adopted more?

Many companies use the excuse that it will take too much time exporting all their work from current storage. This is not a very legitimate excuse, however, since there is no real need to move all storage at once. It is best to transfer the files gradually anyway.

Another reason seems to be that they are afraid of the security – or lack thereof. Most people do all their banking online and aren’t worried, so your files should be as safe. If you trust you dollars online, why not your intellectual property?

Finally, there’s cost. Platforms cost money, right? Well, in the modern SAAS and cloud-computing environment, this isn’t always the case. Platforms like Remindo.com are actually free for most users and uses, so there’s really no excuse to use budget as a deciding factor.

Listen: Now is the time. And you have a choice. Either quit making excuses and let your company evolve, or don’t take action and let your employees continue to chat around the water cooler.

Fortune favors the bold, someone once said. Are you bold?

Here at Remindo.com, we’ve recently launched a bunch of new features that we think really help businesses be more productive and organized. Check it out now it’s FREE @ http://www.remindo.com/