Monday Morning Blues (& Blackouts)

skrbl was down for a few hours due to a power outage at our Web Hosting company this morning. Sigh! Theoretically an outage like this shouldn't happen what with the failsafe power supply and stand by generation that data centers provide, but then "The real world is a special case".

My apologies to the users whose work was interrupted, sorry, & thank you for your patience.

File this under useful

Share Files on your skrbl whiteboard.

We deployed the file sharing feature Wednesday. It just makes sense, in the middle of a meeting why turn to email to send a file, just share right there on your skrbl whiteboard. The guests who want the file can get it, and stuffed mailboxes everywhere will be forever grateful. Or you could put files on your private skrbl where only you have access; your personal online parking place. And yes it is still free.

File sharing works like picture sharing. You upload from the file menu or by right clicking in any tag. Browse to select the file and hit upload. The file is uploaded and an icon appears on the whiteboard with the file name. To download, right click for the context menu. Simple isn't it?

You do need to login to upload files, this keeps file ownership straight. Deleting the file icon from a dashboard doesn't delete it from your online storage, only the file owner can do that from the 'my files' section of 'my skrbls'. When you're logged in, you can see a list of all your online files in the file menu, so your files are handy to share on multiple whiteboards, just click on the file name in the file menu and your file is shared on that whiteboard.

Online storage is limited to 10 mb per user, I know, I know this is quite low but still enough to be useful in a meeting - don't you think? We will try to increase online storage but hey we don't have google's budget or else skrbl too would be giving you a 'Goozillion' MBs. :). Individual files need to be less than 2 MB.

So go ahead, start sharing files on skrbl, we think you will find it useful, do let us know what you think.

Write, Draw... Share

File Sharing, skrbl's next feature is just about ready for release. We are excited about it because we think it is a useful feature, the ability to share files instantly while in a meeting.

I think it is a big deal to make file sharing a part of the skrbl whiteboard experience. Just put(upload) a file on the whiteboard and it is instantly available to all guests on the session. So in addition to writing or drawing together, you can pass along documents and other stuff that you need. Your skrbl whiteboard becomes that much richer, you have a new tool for online collaboration and you get more done.

We are currently testing file sharing feature and plan to launch it to all users within the next 3 - 4 days. Meanwhile we are also rewriting the web-site so that it catches up with all the skrbl feature releases over the past few weeks.

I will write more about this when we do launch file sharing, appreciate your patience and as always, thanks.

Drawing lines...

We rolled out freehand drawing yesterday.
*fireworks and applause*
We had planned to release drawing in January so it is some 5 days later than expected, sorry folks, and thanks for being so understanding.

So in addition to text, you can also draw freehand on skrbl, whiteboarding/brainstorming/just plain doodling suddenly became more fun. We've been spending a lot of time at the office creating 'skrbl art'. This is all supposed to be us 'testing' but it feels too much fun to be work. I have a widescreen tablet and am 'hard at work' drawing directly on the screen with a stylus.

What we have now is plain simple freehand line drawing, use the pen tool to draw lines of different colors.
Use the pointer tool to select drawn lines.
Use the (right click) context menu to delete lines.

Drawing became so much fun that our skrbl boards became very cluttered very quickly and we had to add a 'Erase all' button. The 'erase' button is available from your 'My skrbls' page and you use it to clear the entire whiteboard - Notes as well as drawings.

The last month has been hectic, we have been adding features into skrbl while the rest of the site (FAQ etc) did not keep up. We have one more big feature to be launched next week and then we will get the site up to date, promise.

Meanwhile keep skrbling, let us know what you think and as always thanks.