Near-Time Enhances Hosted Collaboration Service with a Wealth of New Features

September 13, 2006; 02:47 AM

Near-Time, Inc. announced enhancements to their hosted collaboration platform that deliver improved collaborative capabilities to their expanding base of users including businesses, schools, government agencies, and NGO's. Near-Time integrates Weblogs and Wikis, maximizing interaction for organizations of any size.

The new features include the addition of a dashboard overview of activities, improved group file management, tools to automatically organize Wiki content, and podcasting enhancements. These new features contribute to Near-Time's platform in bringing collaboration, content, and knowledge management together leveraging Web based standards.

"The latest improvements demonstrate Near-Time's dedication to transcending email and optimizing cross-organizational collaboration," said Reid Conrad, CEO of Near-Time. "Near-Time's model is simple - collaboration creates content, content drives knowledge, knowledge enhances collaboration. The result is faster group thinking and better execution by the organization."

The Near-Time dashboard lets members see all of their group activity in a single screen, bringing individual needs and community interaction together. It gives users a comprehensive view of what has occurred across their collaborative spaces, integrating Weblog posts, Wiki pages, calendar events, and files. Users can view and sort new changes in chronological or contextual order. This feature brings organization to unstructured group information across multiple collaborative environments and various projects.

"My company serves IT efforts in academia and not-for-profits almost exclusively," said Fred Westbrook, President and CEO of C'Access, Inc. "Near-Time has reduced the need for key management committees to get together in person as often, and dramatically decreased the amount of email required. The new features and capabilities - especially the dashboard - make this blog-Wiki toolset the best I've encountered."

Near-Time's new Wiki home page creator organizes Wiki pages automatically by category and recency. Automatic home pages enable users to work together contextually. Users can also create their own Wiki home page and toggle between automatic and custom modes. This allows multiple users to discover and access content in a much more efficient and organized manner, thus consolidating information across all collaborative groups.

"Near time is essential technology for my company because it provides a virtual space for my geographically dispersed project teams and clients," said Doug Hudiburg, CEO of MarketingPathway.com. "Near-Time offers flexibility and scope that other tools simply don't have. With the built-in Wiki framework, Near-Time project spaces can be easily modified to meet our needs. More importantly, the team at Near-Time keeps in close contact with users and is continually evolving the tool. This is very important to me because committing to a tool like Near-Time is a cultural commitment for me and my clients. I want a tool that will evolve with us because the cost of changing is high and involves an inevitable learning curve. For example, the Near-Time team just gave me a sneak preview of the new Dashboard feature that makes it incredibly easy to find new information across multiple project spaces. It can help me quickly find new items and comments that need my attention. Near-Time has tapped the power of blogs and the flexibility of Wikis and lifted them out of the geek world to make this technology accessible for average people."

Near-Time's new file services enable users to share and organize files in folders and directly upload files. File folders can be assigned categories and leverage the contextual tools of the application and the Internet itself. This feature enables users to create, organize, and share a knowledge bank of files on the platform.

The podcasting enhancements allow users to make podcasts available from both public and private Near-Time spaces. This allows groups to bring together rich media with text-based collaborative and publishing efforts, which enables interoperability and accessibility with standalone applications.

About Near-Time

Near-Time brings collaboration, content and knowledge management together. Near-Time integrates weblogs and Wikis with Web technologies to enable groups to work together more effectively in a secure, hosted platform. Near-Time users can share information, files and create group calendars. Near-Time is in use in over 40 nations by hundreds of businesses, academic institutions, government agencies and non-profit organizations to maximize internal and external collaboration. For more information, go to http://www.near-time.com/.