Another way to look at this question is “which realms will become the most important to your productivity and warrant your focus / nurturing to maximize value?”

Solve360 details your business relationship with all your Clients, Colleagues, Vendors, etc and manages the flow of activity within your organization.  It will soon replace Solve360 (old) and in the New Year will be positioned as a “hub” interconnecting other applications and devices such as Blackberry, Outlook, Address Book, mass-mail services etc.  If you will I’d suggest Solve360 is purpose-designed to be the “heart” of your business system.

The pervasiveness of Google through the fabric of the Internet makes it a very important utility to connect data and people for some things.  It does not have the same accountability or trust as a business system like Solve360, but for some temporary / ad-hock tasks it’s “enough”.

Social networks such as Linked-In and Twitter enable you to reach-out to other professionals and the broader market to 1) learn more about individuals (qualify people), 2) have spontaneous and transparent conversations to develop leads, nurture your brand, offer support (al a CRM 2.0).

Floydie - Dec 22, 2008 06:29am

LinkedIn is a powerful tool, and I like the way that Solve360 connnects with it.

How many vitual locations (looking forward 6-12 months) do you think contact lists would require separate managing by Solve360 users? Do you see ways to integrating some of these?

Currently I see:
Solve360 (for mail and blog management)
LinkedIn (for professional contacts)
Googledocs (for file sharing permissions)
Google Calendar (for global calendar access)
Solve360 (old)/webmail address book (for emailing)

hi floyd,
  my issue with linkedin is the flexibility and the speed of using it for contacts - I depend heavily on networking and word of mouth for my business, with many of these contacts not using much in terms of social networking - a friend, or an acquaintance could be my next hot lead, or most likely, find my next hot lead - how do they fit into my contacts?
  Solve360 is flexible enough to just tag them the way I want and put them in the system - if i meet them once and never hear from them again, I’ll clean it out later - but as I get referrals from these contacts, i just swap their tags from “potential” “network” to “proven” “network.”

  The main issue I’d like to see Solve360 handling is preview and slideshowing of images (for my business that’s important, but it seems like it’d be a good feature for many people)  - and being able to show certain aspects of data from “contacts” in “blogs” - so as projects go, I can just pull contact info into the blog so that everyone is on the same page,

cheers
adrian

Firstly, Merry Christmas (or holidays as is said in Canada).

Thanks for you comments Steve. Google Docs appears to provide the best Web2.0 interface for live collaboration on uploaded Microsoft office files. Would it be possible for these GDoc files to preview within the blog window itself (except for pdf files)? I understand MS Office is going more web2.0 will this influence things?

Adrian, Thanks for the insight into tabs – my collaborations tend to be NGO related. Therefore, funders, project collaborators, board members, practitioners, partner organisations… Thanks for your tip that is useful. Do you use Skype for international calls? It would be useful if this were accessible through Solve360.

Regards slide shows for images this could be useful. Although, I am unsure whether storing images in Solve360 is the best option, or linking to a image server (e.g. Picasso) that integrates with Solve360. Then the contacts and blogs would reference the same image files.

What would be really great is to be able to create a Wiki page for a blog. Also the option of adding a threaded blog such as this discussion forum would be great. These features could be present themselves as part of the blog descriptor.

Cheers to a hot toddy.

p.s. “vitual locations” was a typo, but on reflection could be a good ‘09 catchphrase.

Thanks Floydie.  Best wishes to you and yours as well!

I just want to point out that Google Docs is a great example of an area that we want to spend more time on i.e. deeper and richer (seamless) integration.  Bringing these features into Solve360 adds context to the documents and helps the organization of data, story telling and workflow.

I really enjoy reading threads having fresh and inspiring ideas like this one.

Floydie - Dec 23, 2008 06:53pm

Firstly, Merry Christmas (or holidays as is said in Canada).

Adrian, Thanks for the insight into tabs – my collaborations tend to be NGO related. Therefore, funders, project collaborators, board members, practitioners, partner organisations… Thanks for your tip that is useful. Do you use Skype for international calls? It would be useful if this were accessible through Solve360.

A good chunk of my business is in europe, and every country has a different calling code and tarif (mobile phones are unbelievably expensive if you’re used to North American rates) - so we do use Skype quite a bit and it would be nice to see a skype button next to phone numbers in the same way that the map feature works with addresses (saved my life in Warsaw, Poland).

Regards slide shows for images this could be useful. Although, I am unsure whether storing images in Solve360 is the best option, or linking to a image server (e.g. Picasso) that integrates with Solve360. Then the contacts and blogs would reference the same image files.

For me, the ideal “blog” is one that has a lot of control when I publish it - being able to show and hide certin aspects of it, and as well, being able to have one central page to present proposals and bids.
As of now, I can upload images (best image uploader I’ve come across be it flickr or picasa) straight into a blog or contact, but if someone wants to view it, they have to download the images. If i were doing property sales, this would be tiresome for my client to have to download all the photos and view them for each property (in this case, each blog) - I’d like to see a situation where they can preview or slideshow, look through the photos and that’s that.
Also, being able to comment on individual photos, items in a list, etc. would be fantastic for collaboration (i’ve seen some of this in 37 signals basecamp product).

What would be really great is to be able to create a Wiki page for a blog. Also the option of adding a threaded blog such as this discussion forum would be great. These features could be present themselves as part of the blog descriptor.

I think what you’re keying in on here is already being setup in Solve360 via the publishing feature, which i’m excited to see develop.

Basically I can see this used at least in one archetypal blog (for me), which would be the “proposal” blog - the blog that you show to your clients (or perspective clients) that documents any collaboration with them (via comments), proof of expectations (via google docs, photos, files, etc.), and timelines for meeting their demands and delivering the project.

Of course, this blog will change to either “won” or “lost” depending on what your client thinks, and either way, it provides you with an invaluable whiteboard that maintains its history and can be flexible enough to change as the project develops or goes bust.

And for me, there’s nothing more invaluable than reviewing bids and proposals that didn’t work out - it allows me to better understand my market and clientele, and deliver a better project the next time around.

whew, and with that, some irish coffee and a candycane,

best wishes for the holidays and the new year,
adrian

Hi Adrian,

Skype, absolutely - we use it here too and would like to encourage more of that.

While it’s not exactly adding a comment you can change the caption of each photo to add feedback (without changing the filename).

Opportunities is another area we are really interested in and will be giving this area serious consideration in the New Year; after a couple of new modules are complete.  We’ve bee thinking about implementing this as a new activity type (a contact/blog could have multiple opportunities).

Have a great rest and stay warm!

Skype support was added today (icon located beside the phone number fields)