I don’t generally like living on the bleeding edge, but some betas are very usable, and I’ve already incorporated them into my daily workflow. Others look promising, but are not stable or are lacking too many features right now. But all of the following are worth trying, and watching as they develop. We’ll review them more thoroughly as they mature.

Adium is my favorite IM client for the Mac OS. Its latest beta supports all of the instant messaging protocols, and also has rudimentary support for Twitter and Facebook Chat. Unfortunately, the latter is not working as I write this, although a fix is expected shortly.

VoxOx is an ambitious program combining IM; social networks (Facebook, MySpace and Twitter); SMS texting; faxing; private email; file sharing; video conversations; and voice connections. As I wrote a few days ago, it is very rough around the edges now, and desperately needs improved tools for managing contacts.

Imo.im is a web-based multi-system instant messaging client with some intriguing features, like shared whiteboards. This service is listed as being in alpha, so we can assume that it has considerable development ahead of it.

Brizzly is a web-based service that looks a lot like Twitter’s own web interface, but with improvements. It supports multiple Twitter accounts and has recently added Facebook support. The multiple accounts aren’t as well integrated as I would like, but I assume that will come.

Tweetminer is another web-based service that includes support for multiple Twitter accounts, tweet scheduling, and RSS feeds. Its interface is attractive, but features are minimal at the moment. There are also Adobe AIR or Fluid-based desktop versions, for those who prefer standalone apps.

Socialite (formerly EventBox, which Imran wrote about here) has just released beta 2, which seemingly broke support for Facebook updates. When this issue is fixed, Socialite could become my favorite, as it combines support for Facebook, Facebook Pages, multiple Twitter accounts, RSS feeds and Google Reader in one attractive interface.

Seesmic Desktop is another Twitter and Facebook program which has worked well for me, but it shares with many Adobe AIR programs some ugly screen fonts and a propensity for using large amounts of memory. Seesmic also has a promising web version, but so far, it lacks support for multiple Twitter accounts, and for Facebook.

Nambu only does Twitter, but does it very well, in what I think is the most attractive interface of any program of its type. I can choose three different layouts, and switch between them easily. Nambu’s development is very rapid, with a new beta released every couple of days.

I find the popular Tweetdeck to be totally unreadable and unusable, due to its AIR interface. I wish Adobe would make AIR on the Mac look as good as the native OS X fonts and windows.

There are lots more betas out there, of course. What beta software and services do you use?

Image credit: Stock.xchng user OmirOnia

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I find a project management system indispensable. Like a lot of web workers, I’m always juggling multiple projects and clients, and such systems are the only way for me to easily track deadlines, time spent, and progress. So I’m always interested in new options, although my three-person company has been generally happy with ActiveCollab.

Thus, when I look at a product like WizeHive, I confess that I have some preconceived ideas as to how a project management system should operate. I’m not entirely sure that WizeHive would work for me, but it does include some good ideas, and the latest update offers some nice features:

• Email and Twitter integration. The folks at WizeHive understand that some people prefer to use tools with which they are familiar, rather than navigating through a web site. Thus, it’s possible to post files and comments, and to follow discussions, directly from email and Twitter.
• Desktop software. For people who’d rather have a standalone application, WizeHive offers an Adobe AIR-based client. I haven’t tried this, but it’s supposed to have the same functionality as the web app, and can be customized using the WizeHive API.
• Easy setup. The first time you log in, you’re taken through a series of screens that help you set up the basics. These screens are well-written and easy to understand; much more so than many others I’ve seen.
• Home screen. There are actually several home screens, depending on how many workspaces (sort of like meta-projects; see below) you create. Each workspace has its own home screen, marked “Recent Activity.” Here you can see messages and tasks from you or others related to the specific workspace. You can specify whether to show replies or not, and whether to limit the length of messages that are displayed. The resulting effect is somewhat like the Twitter web site. There is also a tab marked “All,” which shows activity from all workspaces.
• Task management. I like the layout and customizability of the task screen. You can choose to view just about any aspect of tasks, and arrange the display to suit.
• Version management. WizeHive automatically saves multiple versions of the same document; earlier versions can be retrieved if needed.
• Backups. WizeHive told me that they do real-time mirroring, with another mirror every 15 minutes, plus document backups through Amazon S3. I like that approach, since project management data really is mission-critical.
• Extendability. WizeHive has developed an API, and is working on an SDK, that will allow users to develop their own modules. It already has a “ratings” app for clients who need to conduct votes among project participants.

I haven’t decided if I like some features of the other WizeHive features, though. They may appeal to you more than they do to me.

• Workspaces. This is one of the features that WizeHive is most excited about. It describes workspaces as being appropriate for people who have more than one company or organization with which they work. Thus, you could have a “Company A” workspace and a “Family” workspace, each with its own color scheme, layout and set of users. I’d probably want to make each project a separate workspace, which would cause the need to scroll the tabs at the top of the screen. Luckily, it’s possible to change the order in which the tabs appear.
• Pages. Most other project management systems would call these “Projects,” but WizeHive has made Pages more open-ended. WizeHive pages can be created for aspects of a project, or they can be used to collect data on present or potential customers.
• Email archives. I’m not thrilled about getting a daily update of activities from the program, but it’s easy to turn off. I prefer RSS feeds, which WizeHive also has.

There are also some limitations in WizeHive that I’d like to see addressed. Some seem to be simple bugs, which I assume can be fixed relatively easily.

• Management of user profiles. Administrators can invite new users to share a workspace, and have control over whether they’d like the program to send invitations, or send their own. Users can create their own profiles, and add a significant amount of information. But administrators can’t edit other people’s profiles, so WizeHive can’t easily be used as a CRM solution.
• Documentation. Given that the introductory setup screens are well-written and laid out, I was surprised that I found some parts of the help system to less than clear. It could be that the help hasn’t yet caught up with the new features, so let’s hope that it will improve.
• Creating files online. WizeHive has options to create documents or spreadsheets online. These options redirect users to Zoho Writer and Zoho Sheet, respectively, but after creating and saving test documents, one has to close the Zoho window manually and refresh the WizeHive screen to see the updated list of files.
• Uploading files. WizeHive now allows uploads of up to 50 files at a time. When I tried it, however, it crashed Firefox 3.5. Their one-file-at-a-time uploader worked, but the image preview function did not display either a small GIF or a small PNG.
• Pricing. WizeHive is currently in beta (although it’s been available for over a year) and is free. The WizeHive folks told me that the plans listed on the pricing page are subject to change. Right now, they’re thinking of making the number of users for all plans unlimited, and charging for the amount of storage used and for some of the more sophisticated features. Hopefully, they’ll decide on their pricing structure soon, so that potential users can make informed decisions as to whether they want to deploy WizeHive.

Mike Levinson from WizeHive told me that he and his colleagues couldn’t find a project management system they liked. So they built one. The result is an admirable attempt at creating a very flexible system that can be used in many different ways, while giving users guidance in how best to make the most of it. However, I’m not entirely sure they’ve succeeded, as WizeHive reflects an idiosyncratic view of how to organize projects. WizeHive’s flexibility could be a great strength for some people; for others, a more structured product may work better. Nonetheless, WizeHive has potential, especially for those who haven’t used a project management system before. For those of us who are familiar with other systems, it definitely takes some time to get used to how the site is organized.

Have you used WizeHive? What project management systems do you prefer?

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There are, however, a number of useful smaller options. Late last year,  Mike Gunderloy evaluated the popular Balsamiq Mockups and its deliberately sketchy wireframes. I recently discovered FlairBuilder, another up-and-coming wireframing tool which, like Balsamiq, is based on the Adobe AIR platform.

While lacking Balsamiq’s cutesy, sketchy style, FlairBuilder has a number of interesting features useful for wireframing:

• A tabbed interface, enabling users to work on multiple projects and pages, along with tools to create “master” templates for a number of pages within a particular project.
• A pretty comprehensive gallery of components, segmented into palettes, along with a nifty search-as-you-type tool to help locate individual components.
• Integration with web applications, including Google Maps, Vimeo and YouTube, allows live content from third-party services to be incorporated into a wireframe layout.
• An online viewer allows non-FlairBuilder users to open and view projects created within the app, which is great for working with clients.

At $99, FlairBuilder is inexpensive enough for most web design or development professionals to take a chance on — in fact, it’s only marginally more expensive than Balsamiq.

Both Balsamiq and Flairbuilder do a reasonable job at a low cost. Personally, I use a combination of MindNode for high-level site structure and OmniGraffle-based wireframing templates to put together information architectures. But I can’t help thinking there’s great potential in an application or service that’s more integrated into the workflow of other common design tools such as Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Photoshop, or that’s oriented around web-based collaboration like Google Docs.

Incidentally, there’s a great unsung blog called Wireframes that’s worth adding to your feed reader.

What wireframing tools, methodologies and practices do you use?

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AIR app or not, the real question is: Will this bring Facebook back into my daily professional life?

Facebook has fallen out of favor with me. Sure, I still check it occasionally, but mostly I find myself hiding poll and survey results from my stream, rather than actually interacting with people. Twitter is by far my weapon of choice when it comes to social networking, owing partly to my ability to use it without actually paying a visit to the web-based app. I have lots of Facebook-only contacts that I’d like to interact with more, but the drawbacks of the site prevent me from using it with any real frequency.

With Facebook Desktop, I partly get my wish. Because the interaction I’m after from Facebook is based on my stream, Facebook Desktop gets the job done. Truth be told, I don’t miss having access to the rest of Facebook’s features, since I hardly use them anyway.

Thanks to Facebook Desktop, I now find myself viewing Facebook almost as a more exclusive Twitter user group. I can stay in touch with professional and personal contacts with whom I have deeper and more meaningful relationships, without having to filter through all the distracting stuff that’s almost inescapable on Twitter.

Does it mean Facebook will remain professionally relevant to me? It’s too early to tell for sure. Suffice it to say, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

Do you still use Facebook for work? Will the new API or Facebook Desktop app affect your Facebook usage?

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Polaris is free for the single-account version, while a multi-user account will cost $15 per year. It’s based on Adobe AIR, so you’ll have to download that first if you don’t already have it. Once you have Polaris installed, you just use your sign-in for Google Analytics to start tracking site metrics from within the Polaris widget. It automatically creates an icon on your desktop that you can use to pop it up at any time.

RefreshingApps has posted a good video showing how Polaris works. You can view both graphs and numerical data in Polaris, and you can view several types of metrics concurrently, such as site visits, page views, pages viewed per visit and more.

If you’re interested in going beyond what both Polaris and the Google Analytics site do in terms of customization, there is an open-source site analytics application called Piwik that is worth trying (I wrote about it here). The great thing about Piwik is that an open community of users creates plug-ins for it, so you can get access to all kinds of widgets for analyzing site traffic data. It’s essentially like customizing your own dashboard for looking at site metrics, and is worth trying in addition to Polaris.

What do you use for analyzing site traffic metrics?

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First, KonoLive does require registration, so if you’re partial to services that are more pick-up-and-play, it might not be your first choice. One nice thing about the sign-up process is that it automatically signs you up for a box.net account if you don’t have one, since you need it in order to use KonoLive’s services. As a consequence, however, whenever you start KonoLive, it redirects you to the box.net homepage to sign in. I’d really appreciate an option to save my login and do this step automatically.

Once you get into actually using KonoLive, adding tasks  is simple. You can either type directly into a field on your main window to quickly create one, or you can click the “New” button next to that to launch a detailed “Activity Space” with lots of additional options for task creation.

Here you can set a task title, due date, tags, and make it private or public. You can also invite contacts to share the task, assign it to others, and discuss it live with coworkers online. Finally, you can upload and share docs from either box.net (hence the required sign-up) or Google Docs. Once created, activities show up in your main window under the relevant tab. All users that you’re working with can see new tasks in the notification area at the bottom of the main window.

KonoLive would just be a glorified task list if it wasn’t for its collaborative ability. To take advantage of this, you can add contacts either using their KonoLive account name, or by importing them from your other existing online address books, including Yahoo, Gmail and LinkedIn, among others. Unfortunately, there’s no option to import a desktop address book archive file at this time. Contacts can share your activities, add new ones, discuss tasks and upload files. This could potentially be very useful if you’re working with a small, far-flung team.

KonoLive does what it claims to, offering task management for multiple users across platforms. For me, though, it isn’t the best solution in its category, and I think it says a lot about the app that it’s taken this long to see release since our first look last year. And despite the intervening year, KonoLive still has many bugs that need working out, including an incredibly annoying failure to quit every single time. I have to force quit out even just to get my computer to restart. I’ve also had some difficulty logging in on occasion.

Though it is a free service, there are other options that better accomplish what KonoLive wants to do. Hiveminder, for example, is a terrific tool that we use here at WWD and at other multi-author blogs I’ve worked at in the past that also lets you share tasks with a specific group of people. It lacks KonoLive’s live discussion features, but those are easily taken care of with AIM or any other instant messaging application. Unless you really need to have document sharing features and live chat in the same place, I’d check out other options before you settle on this one.

What tools do you use for collaboratively managing tasks?

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