Go Team!

Thank you all who have been giving us feedback on the - team edition. We really appreciate your involvement and help in improving skrbl.
New users we need your feedback too, pls. feel free to mail your comments, suggestions & critiques to rashidATruvekaDOTcom. Please be gentle ;)
And for those who haven't tried out the team edition yet, check out the features on this comparision chart.

Have you checked out the changes in the video? Instead of a person to person call it is now to all users on the whiteboard. Of course you still have to be a registered team user to initiate a video conference but all whiteboard participants are invited to the video conference by default. The logic being - the team is on the whiteboard to work together, so a video conference with the whole team is more natural than one on one calls.

Of course if you want to communicate one on one with a team member there is skrbl's one click skype call or text chat.

More changes are in the works, a simple new widget for your whiteboard, changes in how tasks are handled. We will continue to try making skrbl "harder, better, faster, stronger"...

In users we Trust

What would the skrbl home page look like if we turn it over to user control? What if we replaced most of the page with a graffiti board for user scribbling?

Think about it - Anonymous strangers crowded into a shared virtual space... it is interesting enough as a social experiment but it is potentially far more. Here are some reasons why I think this is such a big deal.

The fundamental question is - do you trust users? I mean Really trust them. First that they wont be put off by a radical new take on the whole 'home page concept. And second, that they will take to the interactivity and transform the page into a living thing with a mind of its own.

We are going with the idea on skrbl, changing our home page to give pride of place to a graffiti board & squeezing off most of the present content. Our users will write, draw & skrbl creating a dynamic, continually changing home page for all visitors. What you see will depend on when you happen by and how long you stay. And if you dont like what you see, wipe it off and put in your own stuff.

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.