Thats Interesting

The review team at odinjobs.com showcases up and coming companies and their products. Who knows one of them may be the next Google.

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Near Time - The Big Wiki Wave Begins!

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Near Time is right there at the head of the pack. Based at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Near Time’s on-line collaboration platform, with plug-ins that include instant messaging, live presentation tools and shared, secured online workspace, has received flattering attention and even more flattering funding to the tune of $2.25 million from Wakefield and Bruce Boehm.

Near Time uses the innate user friendliness of Wiki to its advantage, creating a tool that even the most tech-phobic can be made to try. At a base level, it’s an online space for file sharing, collaborating, blogging, scheduling (it has a web calendar) and knowledge sharing between team members. It comes complete with editing tools for uploading and managing anything from word documents to multimedia files. Tags and links are part of the set up, to allow everyone to see the work process and access files. Near Time offers multiple levels of access. Users can decide the level by choosing options such as editor, author, commenter, or reader, thus clearly defining public and private spaces online. RSS and pod-casts are also possible.

Being a hosted product, Near Time needs no installation and no management.

The word from Carol S. Holzberg at machome

Web publishing glitches notwithstanding, Near- Time Current provides a streamlined environment for viewing, manipulating and authoring web based information in a familiar Home page format, thus contributing to the ever-expanding dominance of the web as our workspace of choice.

An even better review from infoworld ranked Near Time the best among peer applications like Social text and Atlassian Confluence.

Near-Time integrates a group Weblog with wiki pages, team event calendar, and shared files through a secure hosted service. The system makes it easy to invite members and control access rights, plus there’s easy page editing and news posting. Content’s organized with categories and tags, which are also used for advanced searches.

And for the “seeing is believing� school, we found a neat video review of how exactly Near Time works.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CdltFz7NgCw

In their own words – a chat with Near Time

How is Near Time superior to other online collaboration tools available?

Near Time was developed to help organizations that are more distributed. Given the Increasing number of consultants & contractors and outsourcing, the need for a collaboration platform is evident. A typical system has internal firewalls that are too rigid. Imagine running a business with 1000 business professionals in 40 countries!

How does the RSS feed feature help users?

It’s a faster, lighter way to share info and many use it with their mobile phone. Many clients use it for rich media such as pod casting, although the use for business is still in the developmental stage.

What are the capabilities 60 day trial versus the full versions?
The trial version has all the capabilities of the full version.

Who are your ideal clients?
Small & medium size business. Sales & marketing professional who really like their tools.

Where do you see the movement of web 2.0 sites going in the next 3 years?

We are seeing a trend to privately collaborate then distribute to the interested parties, get feedback then take the info to other media

How does Near Time compare to Google Docs and Speadsheets feature?

NT focuses on collaboration in documents, but can work within spreadsheets. It is built to integrate with weblogs & wikis where people collaborate with each other privately to share publicly.

Are there new products or features that will be released this year?

We currently allow advertising through Near time. Later this year we will offer a premium version that will allow our clients to charge members to join the community they build

Are there any limits in the amount or number of users for Near Time?

The invitations are unlimited and collaborations will vary in size. Some operate in a small space, others a large space, others are open to the public, NFL for example…allows clients to build communities based on interests, such as marketing etc.

Information and web content are so vital to web sites, how does Near Time help with tagging and sharing with others?

NT supports any applications that use categories or tags such as Near Time.

Near Time – It’s High Time

Though no new company actually says they are competition to the big M, the fact is all around us we are seeing the road to a Window-less world. Where applications will have to seamlessly move from online to offline and offer meaningful features in an increasingly dispersed work environment. And smart players like Near Time have already moved off the block. The only question is, whether they can keep up this pace of innovation and keep those clients logged in!

Posted by Sally Richardsson       Posted at 08:56AM Jun 14, 2007 by Sally Richardsson   


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