GigaOM » Collaboration

Flowr: Microblogging and More for Organizations

Charles Hamilton — Fri, 07 May 2010 21:00:50 +0000

Web-based communication systems for companies and groups seem to be all the rage these days. From what I can tell, such systems fall into two groups: the ones that are built around projects, tickets and the like (such as Basecamp and the app that my company uses, activeCollab), and enterprise microblogging platforms that are more like Twitter and Facebook (such as Socialtext and Socialwok). Flowr is definitely in the latter category, but adds many features that are specifically aimed at organizations.

Flowr’s home screen looks very Twitter-like. But in addition to status updates, users can create several other types of posts, including ideas, questions, events, to-do list items, and polls. Flowr also allows posting of larger documents (complete with links and images) that can be edited, wiki-style, by anyone who the original poster gives access to. One can mention others using the Twitter-style @ syntax, and files and tags can be attached to each type of post.

Each of the above post types can be shown in one main screen, called “My Flow,” or can be viewed by category, so that, for example, all of the to-dos can be viewed together.

Flowr also includes groups, which are rather like a cross between a private BBS and LinkedIn’s Groups. Users can create and join groups related to specific topics. Group discussions can be public or private (invitation-only).

Flowr’s people directory links to user-editable profiles that show contact information. The directory is searchable by such fields as expertise and language skills, which I can see will be very useful in larger organizations. As in Twitter, one can follow the posts of selected users.

Flowr has several tools that allow it to integrate with your workflow, including an iPhone app, a bookmarklet for saving and sharing web content, and a system for posting via email (like Posterous). Updates from Flowr can be shown on the desktop via the Yip extension for Firefox. Interestingly, though, Flowr doesn’t include an instant messaging function.

In addition, Flowr is planning integration with Google Apps, which is scheduled to become available next week. And Flowr has an API so that developers can create custom applications using the app.

The free version of Flowr supports up to 10 users and two groups. Flowr is currently rolling out a premium version with unlimited groups, custom themes and analytics, that will be priced on a per-user basis.

Flowr isn’t Basecamp-style project management, but it may be just the thing for organizations whose members like to interact via social networks.

Have you tried Flowr?

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise

Google Reader Adds Easy Sharing, Other Features

Charles Hamilton — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:00:02 +0000

I read a lot of online publications, and I like to share interesting articles with clients and friends on Twitter. If you use Google Reader to browse RSS feeds, as I do, it’s now easier to post links to news articles you’ve found in Google Reader to sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg.

In Google Reader’s Settings, you’ll now find an option called “Send To.” On that screen, you can specify which services you want to be able to post to. Once you’ve set it up, at the bottom of each article in the main Google Reader screen, you’ll see a “Send To” menu.

The system does work, but it’s decidedly low-tech. As an example, if you click “Send to Twitter,” Google Reader brings you to your Twitter account via a popup window, meaning that you’ll need to turn off popup blocking for google.com in your browser — something many people will prefer not to do.

By comparison, most of the other services that allow you to post to Twitter, like FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Streamy, Amplify and Posterous, use the Twitter oAuth system, which is much slicker — although oAuth has been down a lot recently due to the attacks against Twitter. I will probably continue to use FriendFeed as my link between Google Reader and Twitter, but the new Reader feature is a nice alternative option.

In addition to the “Send To” feature, Google Reader has added a dropdown menu to the “Mark All as Read” button that allows you to mark as read only those articles older than a day, a week, or two weeks. You can also easily subscribe to the feeds of people you follow, and there are added enhancements to the comment screen, and to the start pages of the mobile versions of the Reader.

How do you post links to Twitter and other social sites?

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Streamline Photo Sharing on Multiple Social Networks

Doriano "Paisano" Carta — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:00:18 +0000

Here are a couple of ways to be more efficient when it comes to sharing your photos online from events. Like most web workers, you’re probably on many different social networks. How do you share those great photos from the event with all of your contacts on all of your social networks, without having to log in to each one separately?

Fortunately, there are ways to automate the process of cross-posting photos to many different services at one time.

Flickr

One of the best ways to broadcast your photos is via Flickr. It’s very simple to set up, and the results will save you a great deal of time. You’ll be able to send any photo from your mobile device to your Flickr account via email, and it will then automatically send a link to that photo on Twitter and Facebook at the same time, if you choose to do so. To set up Flickr to automatically share photos with your contacts on Facebook and Twitter:

Login to Flickr
Go to your account settings: http://www.flickr.com/account
Click Extending Flickr
Next to “Your Facebook account” click the “Link Your Accounts” link, which will allow you to connect your Flickr and Facebook accounts. This doesn’t mean photos will be stored in your Facebook Photo albums; it’ll just post a message in your friends’ newsfeeds with a link to the photo in your Flickr account.
Now connect Flickr to Twitter by going here.

6. Click the “Go to Twitter to Authorize” button which will display the following screen that will allow you to connect both of your accounts.

After this step, you will also be able to post links to any Flickr photo to your Twitterstream via the “Blog This” option on your photos on Flickr.

That’s all there is to it. As easy as 1 (Flickr), 2 (Twitter), 3 (Facebook)!

Posterous

Posterous allows you to accomplish the same thing, and more. Not only can you automatically share a photo on Flickr, Twitter and Facebook with a single upload, but you can also post it to other services such as Tumblr, Picasa and popular blogging platforms. Another useful feature is the ability to pick and choose which services you want to post your photo to, just by using unique email addresses. Here are some of the most popular ones:

twitter@posterous.com
flickr@posterous.com
facebook@posterous.com
tumblr@posterous.com
blog@posterous.com (for any blog)

If you use post@posterous.com then the photo will go to all of the accounts you’ve set up in your Posterous account. You can also create combination emails to send the photo to any combination of services you want, such as flickr+twitter@posterous.com or twitter+facebook@posterous.com and so on.

Parting Shot

Whether for work or play, connecting your online services will save you a lot of time. It can very easily become point, click and share everywhere online.

What services do you use for sending photos to multiple social networks?

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How to Market Your iPhone App: A Developer’s Guide

Clearing The Cache – Email

Scott Blitstein — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:00:55 +0000

Like many of us, I spend quite a lot of time on the web and come across a staggering number of interesting things. In Clearing The Cache I choose a theme, pull out some of my favorites and share them with you here.

Execupundit shares The Biggest Email Sin

jkOnTheRun takes a Poke at the Peek: email only device

Merlin Mann talks Inbox Zero

Publish just about anything by email with Posterous

Convert your webmail to standard POP/SMTP with IzyMail

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