Primadesk is a web app that wants to be a kind of desktop file manager for the cloud. By integrating with a variety of  cloud storage providers, it allows users to access and manage all of their documents through a single interface. Simply being able to view all of your documents in one place is handy, but the company has now added some new features for the app,  such as comprehensive document search capabilities and the ability to copy documents between services using drag-and-drop, that make it much more useful.

When you click on a document to open it, Primadesk actually opens a new browser tab, automatically signs in to the appropriate service, and then takes you to the document. While it’s not quite as seamless or as fast as using, say, Finder on OSX or Explorer on Windows, it does provide a simple and convenient way to search for, and take action on, content that’s stored across many different cloud services. And unlike Joukuu or Gladinet, which are Windows apps that provide similar “cloud file manager” functionality, Primadesk is web-based, and so works cross-platform and on mobile devices.

As well as document management, Primadesk can back up documents using Amazon’s S3 cloud storage, manage photos stored on Picasa, Flickr, Facebook and other services, and can also offer a unified inbox that can monitor emails from several different accounts.

Primadesk is currently in beta and is free. After launch, the product will likely move to a freemium model, possibly charging for the backup features. The company also plans to make money by charging OEM license fees for the use of its technology.

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Soonr is the first cloud file storage service to offer integrated editing for Microsoft Office documents on the iPad. Unlike cobbling together of file storage apps such as Dropbox and SugarSync with editing apps such as QuickOffice and Documents-To-Go, Soonr brings it all together so you can directly edit any files stored in the cloud using a single app. No configuration, no hassle, no cross-app interdependency. It also works offline when you don’t have a Wi-Fi connection and will sync back up when you do. And you can store, share, access, search, edit and sync your files from any tablet securely through Soonr.

Available both on iTunes and the Android Market, Soonr offers a 30-day free trail. A Premium account costs $7.95 per month for three users with 10 GB of storage, while Soonr Pro is $19.95 per month for five users and 40 GB of storage. Soonr supports Mac and PC, and mobile devices including Android, iPhone and BlackBerry; and iPad and Android (Honeycomb) tablets. The Soonr editing feature currently supports Microsoft Office 2003 (Excel, PowerPoint, Word) and Microsoft Office 2010 (Word only) files.

Here’s a short video demo of Soonr’s editing function:

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Here is a list of five basic categories of tools all remote workers should have at the ready, and a variety of options to consider for each category.

Document Collaboration and Workspaces

There is a bit of a blur between virtual workspace and project management tools. These tools emphasize collaboration:

1. ideapi. Recently reviewed by Simon, this is a simple online tool for creating documents and collaborating on discrete sections of the documents.

2. Glasscubes. I’ve been using virtual workspace Glasscubes for a while now. Here’s my latest post taking a fresh look at the app.

3. Binfire. A free solution that lets you “manage projects by adding members, creating tasks and milestones, and assigning responsibility.” Here’s what else Amber has to say about Binfire.

4. Hyperoffice. A collaborative suite bundling email and communication, project management, database management and group meetings. Reviewed here by Amber.

Project/Task/People Management

Some of these tools also offer collaboration features, but they are more focused on managing tasks and people and getting things done efficiently.

5. Huddle. Many moons ago, we reviewed Huddle, and the team collaboration space is still going strong.

6. Cohuman. Delegate, assign and prioritize tasks with others for free. It even integrates into Google Apps. Simon published a screencast about this app.

7. Teamly. A collaboration tool with an emphasis on priorities, as Thursday explained in her initial review.

8. ProjectTurf. A collaboration app for running a project including briefs and time cards. Thursday reviewed it here.

9. Zcope. Simon felt this combined project management and collaboration tool had a lot of potential. It has slightly more advanced project management features than many of its competitors.

10. Mavenlink. This SaaS app neatly integrates project management, collaboration and invoicing. I reviewed it recently.

11. Microproject. Simple,  online project management for the smaller team. Here’s our review.

12. Wrike. We’ve covered Wrike several times, including most recently when the company added mobile apps to its project management and collaboration solution.

Desktop Sharing/Presentation/Web Meeting Tools

GoToMeeting is one of the leaders in the desktop sharing/web meeting space  (did you see the announcement of its Skype integration?), but there is an array of other useful remote presentation tools out there:

13. iMeet. Elegantly combines video and audio calls with document sharing. I reviewed it in March.

14. join.me. A  no-registration, free screen sharing app that fills a gap now that DimDim is now defunct. We’ve praised it here on WWD before, including announcing its iPhone app.

15. yaM. An app to streamline the process of holding meetings including planning, scheduling and note taking. See our review.

16. Zipcast. Slideshare’s quick presentation tool adding video and chat to your slideshows for public (free) or private (fee) presentations. Mathew reviewed it here.

17. CrunchConnect. Charles recently reviewed this web conferencing solution with an emphasis on sales.

18. FuzeMeeting. A fee-based video conferencing solution with collaboration features.

19. Yugma. Free and fee-based Web video conferencing with desktop sharing.

20. Zoho Meeting. Free for one-to-one video call meetings, or starting at $12/month for up to five participants.

File Storage/Sharing/Syncing

Giving the entire virtual team access to files – especially big ones – without having to email them back and forth is critical for remote work processes.

21. Dropbox. Store and share files in the cloud securely, and get access to them from your mobile device. Ryan covered the latest version of Dropbox late last year.

22. Box.net. An enterprise-friendly file sharing and collaboration, reviewed most recently by us here.

23. SugarSync.We’ve written about this file sharing and backup solution before including most recently about new features for its iOS app.

Miscellaneous Useful Cloud-Based Tools

A couple of online tools that help you do things that previously required pricey desktop software.

24. Diagram.ly. Simon recently reviewed this easy-to-use site for creating flow charts and other diagrams.

25. Tom’s Planner. A Gantt chart-based planning tool, with easy drag-and-drop functionality; it’s now iPhone and iPad compatible.

What are some of your must-have tools for remote work?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user spekulator

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Like a lot of my WWD colleagues, I’ve been a big Dropbox user. But the new version of the SugarSync app adds some unique and attractive features, including:

• The ability to copy, move and delete files on a remote computer, and to copy files from one computer to another.
• The ability to grab a public link to any file in your SugarSync account and email it. The recipient doesn’t need to be a SugarSync user to download the file.
• The ability to add images from remote computers to the image gallery on your iOS device.

The SugarSync (iTunes link) is free for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch; it requires iOS 3 or later. SugarSync has a free 5GB plan (as opposed to Dropbox’s 2GB), as well as personal and business plans with a variety of storage levels and numbers of users. According to the SugarSync blog, there’s an Android app update in the works. Apps are available for other platforms, and there’s a mobile website as well.

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In my previous post, I examined the specific needs our team: communications, management, archiving and interaction. Then I identified the processes that fall under each of those needs. Here’s an updated diagram illustrating this:

Also in my previous post, I identified the software solutions — all cloud-based — that my company was testing out or using to fulfill these needs. Here’s how I illustrated the disparate applications that we cobbled together to try to create the illusion of a seamless solution.

One of the main things this diagram shows is that there we were using many applications in an attempt attempt to mimic the experience of working in a single physical location. Our virtual team has the fundamental need to keep everything in the cloud, because we don’t have the ability to pop our head into the cubicle next to us to ask a question, or walk down the hall to access a shared filing cabinet to retrieve important documents, or gather by the water cooler to get to know one another better.

But how do you pare down these multiple online solutions to be able to use fewer applications and yet get more functionality? We’re finding that, over time, developers are contemplating these same needs and processes and coming up with more integrated solutions. For example, in just nine months since I wrote my last post about virtual teams, a new cloud-based workspace solution called Glasscubes has come onto the scene that seems to take a different approach to distributed work and project management.

Glasscubes starts with the premise that virtual teams need a “space” in which to work and that all of the functionality should then reside within each space. In most cases, cloud- based apps seem to come from the standpoint of their specific function — such as “project management” or “task management” or “time tracking” — and then work to solve that problem. In the cases of some services — such as 5pm – the app’s “environment” derives from its functions.

But when you fundamentally begin with the “environment” — such as with Glasscubes — it appears to me that you end up with a solution that is better at fulfilling our need for a “place” or “space” for working in the cloud. Because of the more integrated feature set in Glasscubes, much of what we’ve been using prior to it is quickly becoming redundant. Here’s a diagram that shows the changes in our process distribution, thanks to Glasscubes’ more complete virtual workspace solution.

As you can see, we’re still having to use other solutions, because even Glasscubes doesn’t cover all of our processes. However, now many even seemingly disparate needs are fulfilled with a single solution.

The Adoption Quandry

As our team grows, we continue to struggle with the problem of adopting new software solutions that each team member can embrace. Because of our different personalities, we’re each comfortable with some, but not all, of the different solutions we’ve been testing out to improve work processes. That’s why, for example, we’ve never adopted SugarSync for file syncing, sharing and archiving for example even though, in theory, it could be an amazing and seamless solution for us. It’s also why never did adopt Socialtext, even though I personally can see the tremendous functionality of that product to integrated distributed teams.

Glasscubes, however, took me seconds to begin using and, more importantly, to understand how it worked and how I could use it. And even though I had the benefit of a personal demo from the company’s founder, every team member who I brought into the Glasscubes system took to it straight away. When our most creative team members and our most linear team members both felt comfortable within a single solution, I knew we were on to something.

Cost Considerations

One problem with having to piece together multiple solutions can be cost. As a boutique agency, we don’t have massive budgets for technology and while many of the applications we are using have both paid/premium and free versions, we have to pick and choose which ones we can afford to purchase.. Luckily, many of the freemium applications offer a good amount of features for free.

Right now, we are paying $125/month for a professional account with Glasscubes. This is more than we were paying for 5pm, but with the new addition of time tracking on Glasscubes and the overall comfort level everyone on the team has with the solution, we’re feeling the extra expense is worth it. We are still having to pay a minimum of $18/month for 5pm at the moment as we try to figure out how to get our archived files, content and conversations off of that system in an organized fashion.

What are your team’s needs and processes? What are the solutions you are using and how adequate are they?

Editor’s note: If you’re interested in what makes the type of cloud working that Aliza describes in this post possible, check out our Structure conference in June.

I got a demo earlier this week of SugarSync‘s new features, then Kevin over at jkOntheRun beat me to the punch with his features announcement post (SugarSync Adds Email Attachment Uploads, 500 GB Plan). Like Kevin, I agree that these new features are a good thing. But unlike Kevin, I have yet to actually start using SugarSync.

Each time I hear, think or blog about SugarSync, I feel the pain of my virtual team. I hang my head in shame because, yes, we still use back-and-forth emails with attached documents with painstakingly modified file names so we know who made the changes and when. We also have started sending deliberate, emphatic emails to each project team saying “I am now giving up this document. So and so is the Keeper of This Document.”

To say that our process is antiquated is being kind. To say that it is inefficient, confusing, and painful is more like it. So once again, I experience a demo of SugarSync and get into a great discussion with the company’s CEO Laura Yecies about work process, document sharing, backups and working in the cloud. I want what she’s selling, but I’m also feeling a different kind of pain: The Pain of Adopting New Applications and Processes.

Anyone who has started and grown a company will tell you how some of the greatest challenges come as you add more people and your processes must change, but you’re so entrenched in “the way we do things” that you can’t seem to budge. The beauty of small companies like ours is that we can be nimble and flexible for our customers. But when your company is small and growing rapidly, internal flexibility can stall.

How Does SugarSync Compare to DropBox?

One of the applications my company uses now and then for file sharing and, more recently, in document versioning is Dropbox. While we like the “instant” file sharing for large files, I’m not convinced it is the way to go for sharing files that will experience further revisions over time, mostly because there isn’t a revision history. If you move something into your DropBox, the new version is now available to anyone you’ve shared the DropBox folder with and you cannot go back to an older version unless you change the file name before sharing.

SugarSync keeps a version history and renames new versions in the cloud for you to return to older documents.

DropBox is great for desktop and web working, but SugarSync beats it in terms of mobile access. SugarSync has set out to cover a set of processes that I think confounds many companies: Sync, Share, Access (including mobile). And it doed these things instantly and securely, whereas DropBox requires specific actions.

The Business level of SugarSync gives administrative controls such as adding and removing users at any time and setting specific access and storage limitations for each team member. With DropBox, I have to always remember that if I move something into my DropBox, it is now “gone” from my own computer files and now resides in the DropBox. With SugarSync, your files stay on your computer but sync into the cloud as well.

How Can SugarSync Ease the Pain?

I posed this question to Yecies on our call: “What do you say to people who are hesitant to adopt a new technology because they’re overloaded?”

Her reply resonated with me. “It’s easy to get started.”

Easy? I’m there. I signed up for the 2GB Free plan that allows only two users to sync and share to test the waters.

Here’s a summary of the benefits of SugarSync that I find immediately attractive for my own global virtual team:

• Our data is accessible across multiple devices and platforms.
• We can upload to SugarSync with email, which is already a tool we most commonly use anyway.
• Administrative controls helps us manage data per team member i.e. “selective sync” capabilities.
• It cuts out the need to same something locally and then to a pre-determined folder to share.
• It works behind-the-scenes so we don’t have to remember to do something to trigger syncing or sharing.

I’m sure as I start actually using SugarSync, I’ll uncover additional benefits, but when an app and service comes out that already has a lot of useful features going for it, resistance is futile.

How are you sharing and syncing your files with your team?

Photo by stock.xchng user amandaism

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Who Owns Your Data In the Cloud?

Some Monsanto executives learned the value of safeguarding their data the hard way when they couldn’t access key information they needed during the chaos after 9/11. So in 2003 they founded Morgan Street Document Services to help individuals and businesses protect their important documents from disasters. Orggit was launched recently to bring this service to a wider consumer audience through a user-friendly interface.

Unlike storage and sync services such as Dropbox and Sugarsync that are just storage space for files, Orggit has a user interface that allows for organizing various types of information records.

After logging in, users are greeted by four tabs across the top of their Orggit home page:

Wallet: This section stores information about all the cards you might carry in your wallet. It is organized using tabs down the left size for various types of cards, and each tab’s contents appear in the main area of the screen when selected. Each card type’s fields are customized to hold standard data types for those cards, including customer service numbers. Images of the cards can even be added. A “wallet report” can be printed containing details of all of the stored cards to use as an offline back-up or for reference in filing a police report or canceling stolen cards. This section of Orggit is similar to a Palm app that I used to have that is now available for a variety of mobile phones called SplashID. However, SplashID syncs only between a desktop and mobile device with no cloud backup of data; that redundancy is a key feature of Orggit.

Medical: This section contains a service I’ve never seen offered by any other back-up or storage service: 24/7/365 ICE (in case of emergency) medical record forwarding. It allows a user to create and store a complete medical history for themselves, including scanned documents. This history can then be downloaded in a nicely formatted PDF form for sharing with healthcare providers. Orggit will also fax or email it 24/7 to healthcare providers that request it in an emergency if they provide Orggit the member ID number found on the ICE wallet card that is mailed to every Orggit member. The card provides instructions on how to call and retrieve the records, or report a lost wallet.

As someone with a complicated medical history involving several chronic conditions, I love the idea of healthcare providers being able to access a comprehensive healthcare record for me if I have a problem away from home. My one complaint about this section is that the date fields for items require complete MM/DD/YY date entries and it can be hard to be that specific about things that were a long time ago. It would be helpful to be able to enter an incomplete date, such as just the year, or just month/year. What I’d like to see added would be more fields for recording routine doctors’ visits, and events such as routine illnesses or symptoms. Perhaps a calendar or journal function in this section could serve for those purposes.

Accounts & Codes: Designed to store logins, this is the least robust of all the service’s sections. It keeps a single alphabetized list of your logins. Clicking on the item will take you to an entered URL but won’t log you in. For day-to-day password retrieval, this can’t compete with applications like 1Password for Mac or even Firefox’s built-in password manager. But it has some advantages those sorts of programs don’t, such as the cloud storage of the data and being able to make it visible to other family members in case of emergency.

Filing Cabinet: The filing cabinet is designed to store scanned copies of important documents, similar to Dropbox and other storage services. However, unlike Dropbox, it doesn’t sync files with edits in another location. This lack of file syncing to an offline source in Orggit’s filing cabinet is not as big a deal as it might seem. Most of the files that Orggit is intended to store are scans or PDF’s of static files such as legal documents that would require creation of a whole new file if they were changed. They also aren’t documents that are typically updated that often.

Using the filing cabinet is simple. There are buttons for its drawers across the top of the page. Six drawers are already named and come configured with pre-named folders to suggest contents for them. Users can add a seventh drawer or tailor the existing ones to meet their needs. Basically, the drawers and folders are just a user-friendly way of representing a file storage structure to users.

The iPhone app is a nice addition to the service but not a key component of it. It has the ability to trigger the faxing or mailing of medical reports from its emergency section. The iPhone app also gives you the ability to use your phone’s camera to take pictures of your ID cards rather than having to scan them or use your camera. The camera can also be used to update family members’ profile pictures. You can also create a custom home screen for your phone using one of your pictures that includes a banner with instructions for accessing the Orggit ICE service.

The app is very limited in function beyond those nice features, however. Information cannot be added or edited (besides adding the photos), only read. And there is no access at all to the filing cabinet.

Orggit has the capability of holding virtually the entire identity of a user if they use the service to its full potential. The site obviously requires a high level of security. So before I commit a large volume of my data to the site, I wanted to know what security measures are in place to protect my data — and me.

The Orggit’s representatives that I contacted say that the site uses the same standards of security as the National Security Agency to secure customers’ data. They have servers in multiple locations, and those servers are behind a firewall and use the highest-grade Extended Validation SSL Certificates from VeriSign. Orggit also says it encrypts all member passwords, security questions and phishing images with AES 256 bit encryption, “rendering brute force attacks unfeasible.” They also use the VeriSign Extended Validation green address bar to signify to users that they are connected to a legal web site.

Although at first glance Orggit may seem oriented towards personal use, it can have several important business applications. The wallet tab and the ICE service can provide extra security for road warriors. One of the filing cabinet drawers can be configured to hold work documents (an especially critical mission if you are self-employed and have documents like tax returns and articles of incorporation to protect).

Orggit costs $49.99 for an annual subscription. The subscription includes the company’s free iPhone app ; the addition of up to nine family members on the account; auto-reminder service for expiration dates of credit cards, drivers license and passport; 24/7/365 ICE medical records forwarding service; and 5GB of storage space. Added family members must have an email address and get their own “wallet,” medical and accounts/codes section; the filing cabinet is shared between all users. The primary member controls whether family members can see each other’s data or not, and whether they can see the shared file cabinet.

It does take time to enter all of your critical data into an application like Orggit. But in an emergency, having access to that data via Orggit will make the investment of that time seem like a tiny price to have paid.

Do you keep important documents safe with off-site backups?

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1. Shoeboxed. Organize your receipts and business cards through this service (see our review here). With the web app, you scan in what you want to save and organize or mail in your “shoebox” of items to scan and let Shoeboxed do it for you. The results are searchable and easy to organize. With the iPhone app, you can take a photo to digitize a receipt or card.
2. Evernote. The Evernote browser bookmarklet makes it easy to save all or portions of a web page to categorize content and images (see our review here). The Evenote iPhone app lets you do the same with a snap of your iPhone camera, create notes and record audio memos.
3. Bento. If you’re using the personal FileMaker Pro application (see our review here), you might want to try the iPhone app which can operate as a standalone app or sync with your desktop version. You can get mobile access to your Bento libraries and collections, create new records, edit details, sort data, and modify forms.
4. Freshbooks. If you’re looking for easy invoicing, Freshbooks is a great solution (see our coverage of the app here). You can use the MiniBooks app to sync with your Freshbooks account and manage invoices, time, and other related functionality.
5. Task2Gather. Gather, manage and share your tasks, subtasks and projects for yourself and your team (see our review here). Sync the iPhone app with the free Task2Gather desktop application and manage tasks on the go.
6. SugarSync. Work in the cloud, collaborate, back up and sync important documents across all platforms and key devices with this pervasive application (see our review here). View and share files on your iPhone to keep the work flowing, even if you’re not near your computer.
7. TimeBridge.While TimeBridge sets out to be your meeting and conference call one-stop solution (see our review here), the iPhone app gives you control of your meetings while you’re traveling. Call in and handle business on the go.

And a little something extra: Starbucks has not one but two iPhone apps, so you can find the Starbucks nearest you and even build a perfect drink that you can share with friends. Then use your iPhone and the Starbucks Card Mobile to pay for your java (in selected stores) and manage your account. I’ll take my cuppa joe with extra cream, please.

What is your favorite web application with a companion iPhone app, and why?

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While speaking with the CEO of SugarSync, I quickly realized that my post about running a virtual team was missing a critical component: backup. As I listened to the company’s presentation of its product, my mind began working overtime. SugarSync isn’t just about backing up files securely in the cloud. It can also be used for secure file sharing, collaboration and file syncing with cross-platform and mobile device access and compatibility.

How could SugarSync fit into my ever-expanding vision of efficient management of a virtual team? Looking at the diagram below, SugarSync could augment some functionality and replace others as follows:

1. Add secure backups for critical files. While our team does save important files to our 5pm project management tool, finding them can be a bit challenging. Using a project management tool for backup is also a bit shortsighted.
2. Replace Google Docs as a document collaboration tool. A major drawback of Google Docs is its hiccups when trying to open new Microsoft Word or Excel files, and other limitations that make true document collaboration impossible. Google Docs lets you collaborate on content, but SugarSync lets you collaborate on the actual documents without having to email them back and forth.
3. Replace Dropbox as a large file-sharing archive. You can share password protected folders via SugarSync, without having to use a special app on your desktop.

I’m a little wary of the price of SugarSync for my company. Even though it is geared toward small business, and you can start at about $30 per month for three users and 100 Gigs of space, each additional user is $10 per month extra, which adds up quickly. Since we’d be replacing two free solutions (Google Docs and Dropbox) with a paid solution, this really cuts into our apps budget. Still, my company’s team is going to try SugarSync over the next month using the free 30-day trial. I’ll report back on how it is working for us.

How are you collaborating, sharing and backing up your critical files? Are you using multiple applications or an all-in-one solution?

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Good news! SugarSync, a file synchronization and backup service for PC and Mac (reviewed positively here on WWD), today started offering free accounts (previously the cheapest option was $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year.)

The catch is that free accounts are limited to 2GB of storage, which will be inadequate for backing up large collections of files or music, but for syncing a few big files between machines — accessing project files on the road, for example — it could be very useful.

SugarSync differentiates itself from its competitors (like Dropbox) by offering comprehensive mobile support, with clients for iPhone/iPod Touch, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile devices. The free accounts announced today include access to the mobile clients.

Let us know what you think of SugarSync in the comments.

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