Marketing: March 2006 Archives
In our constant effort to build on our mantra that Good Collaboration Has Good Search, we are proud to finally announce that Central Desktop
has added Powerpoint Files to the Central Desktop Search Index. Until
now, Powerpoint files and their contained text were not included in
Search Results.
While Central Desktop Search has always supported Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe PDF, HTML and txt file indexing...we've been sorely lacking in not supporting Powerpoint. Many of you have been requesting this feature for several months. Thank you for your patience. Adding Powerpoint File support to the Search Index was actually more difficult than we ever thought it would be. But, alas, we've done it.
Many thanks to our resident Lucene Search Expert Monsieur Tropo!
While Central Desktop Search has always supported Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe PDF, HTML and txt file indexing...we've been sorely lacking in not supporting Powerpoint. Many of you have been requesting this feature for several months. Thank you for your patience. Adding Powerpoint File support to the Search Index was actually more difficult than we ever thought it would be. But, alas, we've done it.
Many thanks to our resident Lucene Search Expert Monsieur Tropo!
The San Francisco Business Times is reporting that NetSuite (a leading on-demand "mini-ERP" solutions for small and medium sized businesses) is planning to IPO later this year.
With the stock success of Salesforce and RightNow Technologies still in the air, the NetSuite IPO could be another shot in the arm for software investors trying to find real value in the Web 2.0 Hype.
In the midst of the consumer-driven Web 2.0 hype, we are glad to see a shift in investor interest for On-Demand Business Solutions (Software As Service) in both the Enterprise and SMB Markets.
With the stock success of Salesforce and RightNow Technologies still in the air, the NetSuite IPO could be another shot in the arm for software investors trying to find real value in the Web 2.0 Hype.
In the midst of the consumer-driven Web 2.0 hype, we are glad to see a shift in investor interest for On-Demand Business Solutions (Software As Service) in both the Enterprise and SMB Markets.
Just a quick announcement that Central Desktop now offers UTF-8 support for character encoding (otherwise knows as Unicode). Until today, Central Desktop
supported ISO-8859-1 (also known as "Latin1") character encoding which
created character discrepancies for our international customers as well
as customers that used heavy scientific annotation.
UTF-8 allows users from virtually any language to now use Central Desktop, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hewbrew, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cuneiform Hieroglyphs and many, many other languages.
And, in case you were wondering....as a result of the UTF-8 conversion, Central Desktop also supports JRR Tolkien's Tengwar and Cirth Languages - recently repopularized by The Lord of the Rings.
Being that 20% of our customer base and prospects are from international communities, this is actually of greater significance than most of us can appreciate. We've been listed and referred to on many international blogs and we will never know how many users we alienated because of our limited character support.
We released this over the weekend and we've already received high praise from many of our customers. Many of our international customers were forced to use Central Desktop in English Text with their colleagues. This, obviously, created large adoption hurdles for the rest of the team to jump over before they could appreciate the value of using Central Desktop.
To say the least, we are very thankful to our international community for their patience and understanding with regards to the character shortcomings that they have experienced. Thank you all.
The actual conversion process from Latin1 to Unicode was a laborious procedure that is worthy of recounting in a future blog posting.
For the benefit of our techie audience out there...A piece of wisdom that we learned from this experience was: "Start off, from the beginning of your development cycle, with UTF-8 / Unicode Character Support, rather than 'dealing with it later.'"
UTF-8 allows users from virtually any language to now use Central Desktop, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hewbrew, Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Cuneiform Hieroglyphs and many, many other languages.
And, in case you were wondering....as a result of the UTF-8 conversion, Central Desktop also supports JRR Tolkien's Tengwar and Cirth Languages - recently repopularized by The Lord of the Rings.
Being that 20% of our customer base and prospects are from international communities, this is actually of greater significance than most of us can appreciate. We've been listed and referred to on many international blogs and we will never know how many users we alienated because of our limited character support.
We released this over the weekend and we've already received high praise from many of our customers. Many of our international customers were forced to use Central Desktop in English Text with their colleagues. This, obviously, created large adoption hurdles for the rest of the team to jump over before they could appreciate the value of using Central Desktop.
To say the least, we are very thankful to our international community for their patience and understanding with regards to the character shortcomings that they have experienced. Thank you all.
The actual conversion process from Latin1 to Unicode was a laborious procedure that is worthy of recounting in a future blog posting.
For the benefit of our techie audience out there...A piece of wisdom that we learned from this experience was: "Start off, from the beginning of your development cycle, with UTF-8 / Unicode Character Support, rather than 'dealing with it later.'"
UPDATE 11/13/08: Central Desktop announced it's new updated Affiliate Program with no cap, residuals, and improved marketing materials. Read all about it here.
Today, we are happy to officially announce the Central Desktop Affiliate & Referral Program.
Now, you can earn cold, hard cash everytime you refer someone to Central Desktop and they sign-up as a paying customer. Depending on the Plan that they subscribe to, you could earn up to $249 for each referral !
Anyone can sign-up to be an Affiliate and there is no limit to the amount of money you can earn (as long as your referrals are converting to paying customers).
Click Here To Learn More About the Affiliate Program.
To become a member of our Affiliate Program, you must have a Central Desktop Account.
If you do not have a Central Desktop Profile, click here to create your Central Desktop Account now.
Once you are logged in to Central Desktop, go to the "My Account" link in the upper right hand corner and select the Affiliate Program Tab.
After you accept the terms of the Affiliate Program, you will be directed to a page with your very own Affiliate Code, Banners, Badges and Logos that you can post on your Blog, Email or Website.
So, sign-up as an affiliate, post our logo on your Blog or Website and start making some easy money.
Technorati Profile
Today, we are happy to officially announce the Central Desktop Affiliate & Referral Program.
Now, you can earn cold, hard cash everytime you refer someone to Central Desktop and they sign-up as a paying customer. Depending on the Plan that they subscribe to, you could earn up to $249 for each referral !
Anyone can sign-up to be an Affiliate and there is no limit to the amount of money you can earn (as long as your referrals are converting to paying customers).
Click Here To Learn More About the Affiliate Program.
To become a member of our Affiliate Program, you must have a Central Desktop Account.
If you do not have a Central Desktop Profile, click here to create your Central Desktop Account now.
Once you are logged in to Central Desktop, go to the "My Account" link in the upper right hand corner and select the Affiliate Program Tab.
;)
After you accept the terms of the Affiliate Program, you will be directed to a page with your very own Affiliate Code, Banners, Badges and Logos that you can post on your Blog, Email or Website.
So, sign-up as an affiliate, post our logo on your Blog or Website and start making some easy money.
Technorati Profile
The online collaboration space continues to heat up!
Just announced, Google Acquires Writely.
Congratulations to Writely for a job well done! Let the games begin.
Just announced, Google Acquires Writely.
Congratulations to Writely for a job well done! Let the games begin.
Central Desktop File Drop Zone is here.
Most web services (including Central Desktop) provide users with the familiar
button as the primary means of uploading files to the web.
The good thing about this method is that its easy for developers to code. Its a fairly simple process to enable on most websites. The bad thing about this method is that its painfully inefficient for users.
Most of the time, the Function
only allows users to upload one file at a time. This is not only time
consuming but most users have a difficult time navigating to their
computer desktop folder to access the most popular files - besides-
what if the user needs to upload multiple files?
At Central Desktop, we've explored alternative options for uploading files to the web (WebDav, Installable Client Applications, FTP Configuration, Partner Programs) and we decided on the option that provides our users (and our company) with the most bang for the buck.
Our final decision was based on the following criteria.
The solution must:
1. Allow for Drag & Drop Functions from the Desktop
2. Allow for multiple file uploads
3. Be available to our users quickly (days, not weeks)
4. Be 100% web based
Based on the above, we decided to beta-release a service (for lack of a better name, we are calling it the Central Desktop File Drop Zone) that enables users to easily drag and drop files from their local computers into Central Desktop.
The File Drop Zone is launched from the File Manager within a Central Desktop Workspace. Clicking the File Drop Zone link will launch a small window that displays the Workspace and File Folder Name:
Once the window is opened, users can move it to any part of the computer screen. Any files dragged into the File Drop Zone window (up to 25 MBs) will automatically be uploaded into Central Desktop.
A bonus feature of the File Drop Zone is that all image files, such as JPEG and GIFs, uploaded through the Drop Zone are automatically optimized and resized for faster uploading and quicker viewing.
So, say goodbye to the Button forever. Launch the File Drop Zone and Drag Away!
Most web services (including Central Desktop) provide users with the familiar
button as the primary means of uploading files to the web. The good thing about this method is that its easy for developers to code. Its a fairly simple process to enable on most websites. The bad thing about this method is that its painfully inefficient for users.
Most of the time, the
Function
only allows users to upload one file at a time. This is not only time
consuming but most users have a difficult time navigating to their
computer desktop folder to access the most popular files - besides-
what if the user needs to upload multiple files? At Central Desktop, we've explored alternative options for uploading files to the web (WebDav, Installable Client Applications, FTP Configuration, Partner Programs) and we decided on the option that provides our users (and our company) with the most bang for the buck.
Our final decision was based on the following criteria.
The solution must:
1. Allow for Drag & Drop Functions from the Desktop
2. Allow for multiple file uploads
3. Be available to our users quickly (days, not weeks)
4. Be 100% web based
Based on the above, we decided to beta-release a service (for lack of a better name, we are calling it the Central Desktop File Drop Zone) that enables users to easily drag and drop files from their local computers into Central Desktop.
The File Drop Zone is launched from the File Manager within a Central Desktop Workspace. Clicking the File Drop Zone link will launch a small window that displays the Workspace and File Folder Name:
Once the window is opened, users can move it to any part of the computer screen. Any files dragged into the File Drop Zone window (up to 25 MBs) will automatically be uploaded into Central Desktop.
A bonus feature of the File Drop Zone is that all image files, such as JPEG and GIFs, uploaded through the Drop Zone are automatically optimized and resized for faster uploading and quicker viewing.
So, say goodbye to the
Button forever. Launch the File Drop Zone and Drag Away!
Central Desktop made it over to Barcamp Los Angeles Saturday Night along with 70 other local technologists. It was exciting to meet other techies from the Los Angeles Area. And, the beer was good (free). Hopefully this is the start of a uptrend?
The event venue was the Little Radio Warehouse just south of downtown Los Angeles. While we probably weren't the largest Barcamp in the country, we were definitely the hippest and coolest:
;)
;)
Here is the entire Flickr photo stream.
Here is a picture of me (Isaac Garcia) giving my intro.
Special thanks to Jason Roberts, Kareem Mayan, Sean Bonner and Ian Rogers for organizing the event.
I'm only disappointed that we didn't meet everyone and that we didn't attend on Sunday.
In preparation for an article he is writing for InformIT, the infamous Jeremy Wright interviewed Isaac Garcia of Central Desktop and Jason Fried of 37 Signals a couple of weeks ago as fodder for his piece about Team Software Applications.
Jeremy posted the notes to the interviews on his blog. You can read them here.
We particularly like Jeremy's open-kimono style that he applies to blogging and journalism. By posting his interview notes at his blog, Jeremy is embracing the original spirit of journalism. While such journalistic transparency might make Jeremy vulnerable and exposed, its also honest and truthful (both traits that we all look for in good journalism).
In today's world where we all yearn for more transparency from business owners, politicians, parents and teachers, I believe that journalists should be held to the same standards.
We'll be sure to post a link to InformIT article when its released.
Jeremy posted the notes to the interviews on his blog. You can read them here.
We particularly like Jeremy's open-kimono style that he applies to blogging and journalism. By posting his interview notes at his blog, Jeremy is embracing the original spirit of journalism. While such journalistic transparency might make Jeremy vulnerable and exposed, its also honest and truthful (both traits that we all look for in good journalism).
In today's world where we all yearn for more transparency from business owners, politicians, parents and teachers, I believe that journalists should be held to the same standards.
We'll be sure to post a link to InformIT article when its released.
In the March Issue of Security Management Magazine, Peter Piazza writes about the security and infrastructure concerns in the Web 2.0 world.
In the article titled Riding the Web 2.0 Wave, Peter discusses security and infrastructure perspectives from Isaac Garcia of Central Desktop along with Jason Fried of Basecamp and Jen Mazzon of Writely.
In the article titled Riding the Web 2.0 Wave, Peter discusses security and infrastructure perspectives from Isaac Garcia of Central Desktop along with Jason Fried of Basecamp and Jen Mazzon of Writely.
On Wednesday, March 1, 2006 Benjamin Kuo from from SoCalTech.com interviewed Isaac Garcia, co-founder of Central Desktop.
"Isaac Garcia is CEO and co-founder of Central Desktop (www.centraldesktop.com), a Pasadena-based firm developing a web based collaboration tool, often lumped into the Web 2.0 category of companies. I thought it would be interesting to talk to Isaac about his company and their web-based application."Read the entire interview at SoCalTech.com.
