Google Sites
July 23, 2008 in 4 out of 5 stars, A service, Collaboration, Free, Hosted "Office", Hosted software, Issue trackers, Productivity, Project managementGoogle Sites: A poor man's (pretty darn good) intranet. An online, Google-hosted wiki-meets-project management software service. Google gobbled up Jot Spot (a hosted wiki service headed by Joe Kraus) before it even really got going, it was later re-born as Google Sites. Google I have a growing and widely dispersed team for my latest venture. I've set up a Google Sites website which is serving as an "intranet" for this team, and it's working quite well. It's like a wiki in that anyone (whom you allow) can edit or add pages or documents. It also has several built-in tools to help you create things like, a file download repository, a todo list, an issue tracker, or an announcements board. Most anyone can set one up and manage it, it's not difficult, there are no HTML skills required. You have some limited control over the look and feel; for example you can easily brand it with your own logo and colors. They've made management of the site very simple. You can invite others as owners, collaborators or just viewers. You can also optionally make the site visible to everyone on the internet. You get 100MB of storage space for free, and can bump that up to 25GB per account for their paid version which costs $50/user/yr. They even have an API. My primary beef is no discussion forum built in. That would make it twice as valuable for us. Even if they just took Google Groups and married it in, we'd have a winner. This is a huge omission. I would also like the option not to have previous versions of all my pages available to everyone. It's not a huge deal, but I don't need the last umpteen version of a page viewable forever, and there's no facility to disallow this. Free for most everything, $50 per user per year for the deluxe version with lots of storage space. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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There are also many more options available through "Gadgets" like a Google Calendar, a Presentation (read: Microsoft Powerpoint-like document), or a Spreadsheet. Plus hundreds of third party gadgets like maps, weather, games, news feeds, and chat. Not to mention a million other useless things no one would ever want (Woody Allen quotes?). Fortunately it's easy to ignore that stuff.What could be improved?
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FogBugz
June 11, 2008 in 5 out of 5 stars, A piece of software, Hosted software, Issue trackers, Project managementFogBugz: They say it's project management software, which it is — but its real strength (and reputation) is issue/bug tracking. They have hosted, and installable versions of the software. I use their hosted version (dubbed FogBugz on Demand). Fog Creek Software I like and use Basecamp, but on a current large project I found myself heavily using Basecamp's ToDo lists for issue tracking, and they weren't sufficient.
So several months ago I signed up for FogBugz. FogBugz didn't give me that instant love-at-first-site experience I've had with other software. But as I've begun to use it heavily, I have grown to adore this software, and I now completely rely on it to manage my projects. Its genius is in its maturity. It is mature, seasoned, and polished software that makes tracking multiple issues with difficult sticky elements not just easy, but enjoyable. You know software is great if you still love it, and use it heavily after several months. Now I can't live without it. It allows me to constantly keep on top of the hundreds of issues currently at play with my project, tracking them by sub-project, by team member, priority, and time. I have to say, it has also trained me to work more efficiently in managing my projects. Because it is easy to use, we use it comprehensively, and because of that, it has helped us improve the quality of our software. There are only four of us on our team, I'm sure it would really come into its own with much larger teams, and still be helpful for even smaller teams. My only real complaint is that it's packed with additional features, but they aren't real approachable. The usability, once you get the hang of the features you need, is solid, and even claravoiyant, but beyond that, the other features and capabilities of the software requires some hunting, digging and experimenting to get rolling. Hosted: free for 2 users, or $25/user, per month Installed: $199/user or less Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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TaskBin
September 18, 2007 in 3 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Issue trackers, ProductivityTaskBin: It is a group task management tool. It helps you allocate tasks to your team members and is built around the concept of sharing tasks as a group (or groups). All of your tasks are visible to others and can be shared. Other members can add tasks to your plate or edit tasks already there. Mangospring Very smooth interface, attractive, feature-rich, and for a group working on a project, it offers a simple way to share and keep track of tasks. Nifty constructs like softer deadlines (today, tomorrow, next week, sometime soon) introduce an interesting (and more real-world?) way to prioritize tasks. It has a highly annoying construct where it forces you to add first and last name for anyone. None of the marketing pages outline what the "premium" account is, or what it costs. The confirmation link they email you is beastly-long, but not a hyperlink (easy fix, guys!). Free for everything I could find. There's mention of a "premium" account during signup, but I never saw anything else about it. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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Bug Juice
August 7, 2006 in 2 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Issue trackers, Software DevelopmentBugJuice: A bug tracking application for web developers. SmallPositives This hosted software is simple and uncluttered. It's a glorified to-do list nicely tweaked for issue tracking. You can add "pages" (kinda like a wiki) for whatever purpose you like (e.g. one for each project), which is nice and flexible. You can add comments and screenshots to bugs. An interesting option for small teams, or single person development. It's missing most of the features of a mature issue tracker (although that's kind of their point). No support for Safari browser. Admin should be able to assign users to bugs (but can't, for now). Free, $5, $10, $20/mo. Reviewed by Carson McComasWhat is it?
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16Bugs
June 30, 2006 in 4 out of 5 stars, Hosted software, Issue trackers, Software Development16Bugs: An online bug tracking and management system for those of you creating software to take over the world. Michele Finotto I've been around many bug management systems at various size companies and I've found most to be too tedious to use and too complex to navigate. 16Bugs does a great job of making bug management simple, offering only the needed features. It's also a javascript-driven site which helps make the entry and review of bugs quite simple. There are some small items that could fixed. For instance, right now you can only add an attachment to a bug when you create it and not later. However, 16bugs is very responsive and multiple times I've supplied feedback and had new features and/or fixes implemented the same day! As a startup, they both encourage feedback and take it to heart. Tiers based on storage & features: free/$8/$15/$25 Reviewed by Mike LewisWhat is it?
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