Organize
With Central Desktop, information is at your fingertips instead of scattered across multiple desktops and inboxes. Group projects into Workspaces. Invite others and set user permissions.
Share
Store version-tracked files and documents in a Centralized File Manager that everyone can access from any location. Search across multiple Workspaces, Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets, PDF Documents, HTML Files (web bookmarks) and Text Files.
Collaborate
Create searchable discussion threads to capture the thinking of a group or project as it evolves. Invite colleagues, customers, partners, suppliers and vendors to collaborate with your team.
Testing
I've subscribed to the free service and made it public here. I have it set so that you can only View the pages, but it can be set so that public users could Modify or Add items.RSS is enabled for the site - if you hover over the "More Actions" link you can see the feed subscription. I like this feature for both frequently updated collaborations and rarely updated ones. You don't have to log in to see what has changed.
Speaking of changes, Central Desktop keeps meticulous logs of changes made within the site.
Some features I've noticed, but haven't worked with yet:
- Ability to backup the site to your own computer (it must download as HTML pages?)
- The Calendar is iCal compliant, so you can subscribe to it if you use the appropriate calendar (Apple iCal, Mozilla Calendar/Sunbird)
- A Milestones feature tracks projects
- It looks like a Database feature is currently in Beta
- Site-wide search capabilities
Pricing
Compared to a hosted Sharepoint solution, Central Desktop is pretty inexpensive. The free version is limited to 2 workspaces, 5 members and up to 50 activities per month (creating a task, creating a new page, starting a discussion, replying to a discussion etc...)Plan 3 is just $99/mo (far cheaper than most Sharepoint hosting) and offers 25 workspaces, 50 users per workspace, 1,000MB storage and a host of other options.
They offer one hour webinars frequently - I'm going to see if I can't schedule one in and dig a little deeper in the capabilities.
Thanks for taking notice of Central Desktop. I particularly appreciated the comparison to Sharepoint....we too believe that we are a viable alternative for SMBs and Enterprise Business Teams. Many of our happiest customers are former Sharepoint users that never got their projects off of the ground or became very nervous when looking at the real costs associated with supporting the Sharepoint Platform.
Sharepoint is a great product. But, without the staff and resources to support it, its just not a viable option for SMBs and VSBs (Very Small Businesses). The truth of the matter is that we have many business teams inside of large companies using Central Desktop....in spite of their having direct access to Sharepoint and and army of support staff.
-Isaac Garcia
http://www.centraldesktop.com
Posted by: Isaac Garcia | May 24, 2006 4:05 PM | Permalink to Comment