Are You Peepel Ready?
July 10, 2007 |
Since my original review of Peepel back in April, the folks there have been very busy adding new features to make Peepel ready for prime time, and I think they are there!
When I first reviewed Peepel, it was still missing a few key features such as file sharing and uploading. I was in touch with CEO Stephen Kelly at the end of last week, and I'm really excited about the new and improved Peepel!
The biggest add is collaboration ability, and Peepel has taken a somewhat novel approach in the online office suite area: while all authorized users can view the document at the same time, only one person can edit. I'm a recovering programmer, and the one thing that makes me the most nervous about Google Docs is that everyone can be mucking around in a document at the same time, over-writing each other's edits without even realizing it. Peepel uses a token system to prevent that from happening, which keeps conflicts at a minimum.
In addition, Peepel now has a contact manager, providing you with a quick and efficient means of adding collaborators to your documents. More document types can be imported, including Microsoft Office 2003 and Open Office formats (this makes life easier for me, since I'm a NeoOffice user often collaborating with MS Office users). Up to 10 documents can be placed in a .zip file and uploaded at once, speeding up transfer time.
Other new features include a mini-browser for quick look-ups, an internal notifier to let you know when you've been added as a contact, had file sharing authorization changed, or shared files are edited.
Best of all, however, is the addition of an RSS feed that allows you to receive updates on your shared documents and contacts without actually being in the Peepel Workspace. They are fully integrated with my favorite service, Particls, being the first InTouch partner (we here at Profy are also part of the InTouch program) using authenticated feeds.
As you can tell, I'm very excited to start using this new and improved Peepel. If this is what they've accomplished in the past three months, I can't wait to see what the next three months bring!
