Business Week Best of the Web

Business Week Online released its annual Best of the Web Report this week.

Central Desktop came in 2nd Place for the Reader's Choice for Best of the Web for Collaboration (Do-It-Yourself) Category.

Central Desktop came out ahead of some of the most popular apps on the web (Basecamp and Jotspot).

A Big Thank You to all of you who voted for Central Desktop!

Business Team Collaboration - Wikis and Web Conferencing

Fall 2006 Release Simplifies Collaboration for Business Teams

PASADENA, Calif., September 12, 2006 - Central Desktop, a pioneer in the business software collaboration market, today announced its Fall 2006 Release of Central Desktop, which features Central Desktop Live. Central Desktop Live is the industry's first web conferencing tool fully integrated into a collaborative, wiki environment. Central Desktop users can now schedule and host real-time web conferences directly within Central Desktop.

"Central Desktop is about making web collaboration affordable, not just in terms of dollars but in terms of the time necessary to get things done", said Isaac Garcia, Central Desktop CEO. "By unifying different collaboration technologies behind an intuitive web interface, Central Desktop users spend more time working together rather than juggling tools."

"Central Desktop provides us with the option to communicate and collaborate with our customers in real-time or on their time without switching programs or logging into other services," said Doug Mitchell, Vice President of Dispatching Solutions, Inc., a provider of GPS and Logistics Software. "Rather than piecemealing tools together to meet our various needs, Central Desktop vastly simplified our collaboration experience. We cancelled our other web conferencing and audio conferencing subscriptions."

Central Desktop's business wiki empowers users to efficiently organize and share information in a flexible, user-centric environment. It unifies traditionally disconnected collaboration tools such as wikis, web conferencing and discussion groups under one umbrella, providing users with tools that accommodate different types of team and project collaboration.

Designed from the bottom-up for business teams, the company provides simple and affordable collaboration solutions primarily to small-and-medium-sized businesses. Central Desktop is delivered 100% on-demand making it affordable to new users and still scalable with their budgetary and technological needs.

Fall 2006 Release
The Fall 2006 Release of Central Desktop is a major step in providing a simplified online collaboration experience for business users. In addition to traditional collaboration features such as project tracking, task management, document management and discussion forums, the Fall 2006 Release includes Central Desktop Live, an integrated web conferencing tool that allows users to schedule and host real-time web meetings directly within Central Desktop.

"Business users don't have time to integrate, configure and track credentials for different applications," said David Coleman, Managing Director for Collaborative Strategies, a collaboration software Industry analyst firm. "Central Desktop aids in productivity by enabling users to use just one product for all their collaboration needs."

Key Fall 2006 Release Features:
· Integrated real-time web conferencing (Central Desktop Live)
· Integrated free audio conferencing
· Email In (Create and assign activities and send files to Central Desktop via email)
· Email discussion groups (Subscription based discussion groups)
· iCal supported group calendaring
· Microsoft Outlook calendaring support for events
· Enhanced enterprise grade search (Full text document search)

Central Desktop Fall 2006 and Central Desktop Live are available immediately at www.centraldesktop.com. Standard pricing starts at $25/month for 10 users with plans accommodating larger teams and companies. Central Desktop Live is available as an option for each plan. A free version of the service is available for limited use as well.

About Central Desktop

Central Desktop, a pioneer in the on-demand collaboration software market, provides affordable and easy to use online collaboration tools to business teams in small and medium sized businesses. Used by more than 10,000 teams and individuals around the world, Central Desktop is an alternative to complex, traditional groupware products such as Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Notes. Central Desktop clients include groups within Fortune 500 companies, academia, government agencies, manufacturing firms, and software development firms around the globe. Founded in early 2005, Central Desktop is headquartered in Pasadena, California. For more information, visit www.centraldesktop.com.

©Central Desktop. All rights reserved. Central Desktop, Central Desktop Live and the Central Desktop logo are all registered trademarks of Central Desktop. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

###

Tags: Central Desktop, wiki, web conferencing, collaboration, SaaS, team collaboration , Office2.0

Email for Collaboration

Earlier this year, we wrote about both "The Good in Email" and "The Bad in Email." Both articles criticized and hailed the qualities of Email as a collaboration tool.

There has been a recent bout of discussion again about whether or not email is good or bad. Anne Zelenka thinks it's good enough. So does Rod.

I'd like to remind everyone that Email is BAD as a project collaboration tool. And, in case you forgot, I'll refresh your memory:

-Email is Silo'ed
-It Perpetuates Many Walled Gardens
-Email is Not Secure (bring on the "Notes Crowd")
-Group Email is actually complicated
-Email is Not a Document Manager
-Email Communications Do Not Correspond to Priority
-Email is Inconsistant
-Email is not Permission Based
-Spam Filtering is better, but still not good enough
-Email does not work well for multi-users
-Email is prone to viruses
-Email makes us lazy

Full details can be read here.