Let’s start with such an understandable and well known notion as password. By entering password user authentication, i.e. confirmation that the account will be used by its owner, occurs.

Users should know that operating systems are generally well secured to prevent unauthorized use. That’s why for a violator it’s much easier to get somehow user’s password and login into system pretending to be an authorized user. So instead of cracking security systems that become more and more complicated, violators tend to use methods of social engineering, manipulating users for the only purpose of gathering the information they need.

Kevin Mitnick (former hacker, current security consultant) emphasizes that “it is much easier to trick someone into giving a password for a system than to spend the effort to hack into the system.” He argues that it was the single most effective method in his arsenal.

To prevent such kind of situations follow the below mentioned recommendations:

1. Do not write your password on the display of you PC and do not attach any stickers with passwords to it. Anyone can see them!
2. Do not save your passwords in text files, unless you’re sure that those files cannot be read by someone else.
3. Do not store corporative secret information in the common folders (such as Documents, Pictures and etc.), which can be accessed by anyone
4. Create strong passwords (at least 8 characters, digits and letters, different letter case).Violators use different kind of software that allows them to enumerate all the possible passwords in order to get the right one. Given process is generally known as “brutal force“. Thus the shorter and the more “typical” (violators use special dictionaries that include all the frequently used passwords like “12345″, “password”, “iloveyou” and the combination of users’ last names, first names, and birthdays) your password is, the faster it will be detected. You can check most common passwords and brutal force analytics here.Let’s discuss given point a little bit more.

   You should know that the weakest passwords are short or are words, names, or derivations of words or names. If you simply change an “A” to a “4” or an “s” to a “$”, it won’t significantly increase the security of a password. The password crackers generally have customizable sets of rules that they uses to try various permutations on supplied dictionary words and user information as possible passwords.

   There are three main properties that define the security of a password: length, character set, and randomization. Strength in one of these properties can make up for weaknesses in the others (at least to a certain degree).

   If passwords are not limited to seven or eight characters, length is probably the easiest way to increase the security of a password. No doubt it is easier to choose a very long password than a very random one. Thus, a 40-character password that uses only lowercase letters and spaces will be extremely difficult to break.. However it’s not a great idea to pick a password from a popular text such as one of Shakespeare’s plays or sonnets.

   As for the characters used in a password, they have a major effect on the security of the password, especially when the length of a password is limited. An eight-character password with lowercase letters and punctuation is over 800 times (!!!) harder to break than a password of the same length with just lowercase letters. When considering the characters used in a password it is useful to break the character set into groups: uppercase and lowercase letters each account for 26 characters, numbers account for only 10, and special characters account for 34. Strong passwords should have at least one character from each of three different groups.

   Although truly random passwords are pretty hard to remember, they are very strong as well. It’s more logical to generate a password from a pattern that is meaningful only to you. For example, “NwtfcIuf2y”    is meaningful only for me, because I know that it stands for “Nokia was the first cellphone I used for 2 years”. Remember that adding a number to a random password would make it even better.

   In addition to that we would recommend you to use password managers which help you to generate strong passwords and store them in an encrypted form. As an example, you can check KeePass that is available for various operating system including Linux.

5. Сhange your passwords on a regular basis. Software used to crack passwords tries to discover passwords using the data trapped in the Net or snatched from the system files of your operating system. Remember that violators may try to discover your password for years, in case it’s of great value for them.Though some may say that you need to change your passwords every week, there is no need to do this so often. For a usual user it’s recommended to change passwords once in 90-120 days. As far as Microsoft policy is concerned it’s 42 days by default.
6. Scan you computer for malware software (in particular for the software that can track the sequences of key presses) on a regular basis and take appropriate measures to prevent their appearance (check the post “Choosing an Antivirus for Linux“).
7. Do not open suspicious letters and do not run unknown programs.
8. In case you are really concerned about the security of your data, you should use multifactor authentication, which at the moment is available for all Linux users and represents the most reliable and modern solution. In comparison with the usual authentication that is based on the fact that you know the password, multifactor authentication includes several principles, such as: “you know” (the password or PIN code), “you are” (biometric data – fingerprints and iris scan), and “you have” (hardware keys). Hardware keys, being effective protection devices that are plugged into the serial, parallel or mostly used USB port, ensure that only authorize individuals access your sensitive information. Using them you can significantly strengthen Virtual Private Network security for remote access, protect data on laptops and PCs, improve network access security and simplify password management and protection. They include such devices as smartcards, USB authenticators, hybrid authenticators and etc. Linux users can use a broad spectrum of authentication devices from well-known manufacturers, such as Aladdin, Safenet (Rainbow), Bestoken (the information about other devices can be checked on the website of OpenCT project), there is even a solution that allows you to use a usual USB Flash for authentication.

Of course, all the above mentioned recommendations should be used simultaneously as a system; otherwise they will hardly bring the result you want.

One of the most characteristic features of secret information is a strictly restricted amount of people who have access to it. To prevent the acquisition of secret data by outsiders you need:

• to use capabilities provided by operating system for differentiation of access between users
• not to install and use unrelated services on workstations, where secret information is stored or used. In case of great data importance it’s better to disconnect the workstation form the network and physically not to allow someone to use it, except the intended ones.
• to use data encryption facilities. This is the only way to protect data from administrators who have unlimited access to the system.It should be mentioned that there are a lot of different types of encryption, both for individual files (PGP, GnuPG), and disk partitions (TrueCrypt). All those programs ensure extremely high level of security being at the same time free software.

One of the free software features consists in the fact that its source code is generally free to access. Some security experts consider that the opportunity for violators to scrutiny the algorithms of your OS represents potential threat. However more often free access of the algorithms is considered to be an advantage, because security experts have the opportunity to analyze code and satisfy with it if it’s enough secure, or to inform developers if there are any mistakes.

You should know that at the moment all the widespread encryption algorithms, including the ones presenting state standards, are published to be studied and examined by experts and the ones who are interested in them.

Another great thing about the open software is that users do not depend on vendors as far as security policy, updates, support and security patches are concerned. Given fact allows them to prolong the life of software for ever and ever. Moreover having the full access to the specifications and the source code of the software even a small company can improve and change it according to their certain needs.

That’s why we strongly recommend you to use software with open source code for data security; because it’s well examined by experts and does not have any loopholes to be used by violators. In addition to that you should always check if there are any vulnerabilities found in the OS and install updates.

Related posts:

1. Password Manager Usage in Linux
2. Working with MS Office Word documents in Linux OS
3. Free Software Advantages

Staction represents absolutely innovational tool for team collaboration and project management. This very unusual tool is designed with the communication in mind. Staction is an extremely simple and fast way for team members to keep each other up to date on the work that they are doing. As the developers emphasize, this solution is absolutely different and should be compared with standard ones (such as Basecamp and etc.). No doubt some users will love this tool because it allows them to work together and communicate while working; still for others this solution may just not work for several reasons.

Here is the first screenshot – Home page:

The most important thing is the communication panel located in the middle. It’s used to communicate and create projects and tasks (using tags). Created projects and tasks automatically appear in the second panel – the sidebar.

The next screenshot presents a Detailed View of Home page:

In fact this screenshot was made just to provide you a better view of two panels, which represent the only things you are going to work with. As you can see the sidebar has a search box and a timer for tracking time you spend on fulfilling the tasks.

Main characteristic features:

• Simplicity and intuitiveness
• Time tracking
• SSL encryption
• Opportunity to generate summary pages
• Tag-based organization system and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ extremely easy communication
+ pretty attractive interface
+ easy-to-use
+ auto-completer for the meta box

- no descriptions for tasks
- no separate panel for files
- no calendar
- no subtasks

Customer support service

We didn’t get the response at all.

Project Mark: 3+

Wrike

Wrike is an easy-to-use and intuitive business management solution that makes your project planning and management quicker and easier. It offers a new approach of collaboration based on email communication. Wrike has quite an unusual folder structure, which is very flexible and allow managers to coordinate every tiny detail of their projects. Its dynamic timeline provides users a real-time, clear picture of multiple projects. It’s a pretty complete tool, but some users may not like the way it works.

For now let’s take a lot at Dashboard page:

Dashboard consists just of project activity – the list of current and overdue tasks. Moreover you can see if there are some comments on tasks.

Here is the screenshot of Project with Tasks page:

This page is very informative and has everything you need: descriptions for projects and tasks, status of tasks, the amount of comments, the opportunity to request status update, editing tasks and etc.

The last screenshot to check is Discussion of a Task:

Here you can just check existing and add new comments with rich formatting options. Moreover there is opportunity to edit and delete comments.

Main characteristic features:

• Very simple and easy-to-use tool
• Folder structure for projects and tasks
• Different prices for managers, collaborators and viewers
• Windows Mobile sync
• Outlook sync and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ very intuitive hierarchical folder structure of the interface
+ ability to add as many subfolders as you want
+ comments on projects and tasks
+ descriptions for projects and tasks
+ rich text formatting
+ priority for tasks
+ Gantt chart
+ detailed reports

- no separate panel for discussions (in fact there is no need in it)
- no Calendar

Customer support service

Though we got a response, it took customer support several days to answer.

Project Mark: 4+

Related posts:

1. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 3
2. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 2
3. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 1

Pelotonics represents an online service that is used to securely manage communications, organize files, and assign and track tasks. There is no excessive functionality you don’t need, so you can deal with only those things that are truly important. In addition to that it has really simple and easy-to-use interface, still it doesn’t mean that there aren’t any drawbacks. Of course, there are some, but we will talk about them a little bit later. For now let’s check the screenshots.

Here is the screenshot of Dashboard:

This page being divided into three sections (what’s coming up, what’s late and what’s new) provides all the information in an easy and understandable way.

Next screenshot displays Tasks Page:

Probably the only thing missing here is the opportunity to add and, as a consequence, to check the description of a task. In other respects there are many useful features: task priority, opportunity to add comments and check the current amount of comments, task time tracking, task filtering and etc.

And Messages Page:

Of course, it looks pretty ordinary, but at the same time allows editing and deleting comments, and has rich text formatting options.

Main characteristic features:

• Opportunity to schedule free 30 minutes phone consultation
• Six different packages, including a free one
• SSL 128bit encryption
• Very intuitive and easy-to-use interface
• Great list of current customers and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ pretty intuitive interface
+ commenting on tasks
+ rich text formatting
+ customizable Calendar panel
+ separate panel for communication
+ separate panel for files
+ task priority
+ opportunity to create task lists

- no subtasks
- no description for tasks (just for projects; still you can describe the task in the first comment)
- no detailed reports
- no way to comment on projects

Customer support service

We got very fast response – within 24 hours.

Project Mark: 4

PlanHQ

PlanHQ is a project management and planning tool that allows you to turn your static document and spreadsheet into a dynamic and up-to-date overview of where you’re going and how you’re tracking. It gives you the opportunity to align and prioritize team work against company goals, and track progress towards achieving the goals. The most noticeable things about PlanHQ are its simplicity and really attractive interface; as for the functionality it might be better.

Here is the way Dashboard and Tasks look:

As you can see given page is extremely simple including just tasks and goals. Tasks (actions) are displayed with the priority and due date. To check the description of a task and other details you need to click on a task.

The next screenshot represents Goals with Comments:

In addition to the fact that this page is well organized it has some valuable features, such as: comments, actions (tasks), attachments, and description for a goal.

Main characteristic features:

• Nice-looking and easy-to-use interface
• Forecasts and budgets
• Opportunity to export data
• SSL encryption
• Opportunity to create private goals

Pros and cons:

+ very intuitive and nice-looking interface
+ the opportunity to create plans
+ priority for the tasks
+ description for tasks
+ detailed progress reports

- no text formatting options (tasks, comments)
- no comments for tasks (just for the project, i.e. goal), still there is a history for each task, which may replace it to some extent
- no separate panel for communication
- no separate panel for files
- no subtasks

Customer support service

We didn’t get the response at all.

Project Mark: 3+

Related posts:

1. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 4
2. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 2
3. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 1

DeskAway is an online project collaboration service that provides teams a central location to easily organize, manage and track their projects. It has really great functionality and very intuitive interface, ensuring thus a simpler and a more powerful way to collaborate and work smarter. In addition to that there are some really nice features which you can hardly encounter in any other online service of this kind, but we will talk about that a little bit later (check pros and cons).

Here is the first screenshot – Project Overview page:

Given page contains just the information you need (project description, latest activity, overdue tasks, milestones and issues) – nothing extra, but it’s more than enough for a project overview.

Another important page that is checked very often as well – Tasks Page:

Here you can do everything you need: expand and collapse tasks to check the description, reorder, add comments, edit, delete, check the priority, reassign and etc.). All tasks are grouped in task lists. To my mind there is nothing to add to this page – it’s really well organized.

Messages Page is also of great importance:

This page is as simple as possible – you can just create topics and add messages to it.

Main characteristic features:

• Opportunity to create own templates
• Issue tracking
• SSL 256bit encryption
• Five different packages including free on
• Opportunity to export all the data and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ descriptions for projects and tasks
+ ability to create task lists
+ separate panel for files in each project
+ separate panel for discussions in each project
+ Blog panel
+ commenting on tasks and files
+ detailed reports
+ Issues panel in projects
+ opportunity to create documents
+ opportunity to create own templates
+ adding tasks and replying to task comments via email

- no subtasks
- poor text formatting in tasks, comments and descriptions (using tags)
- no comments on projects (frankly speaking in this case it’s not a big deal)

Customer support service

The response was received in 2 days – pretty decent result.

Project Mark: 5-

Huddle

Huddle being very decent web-based project management solution gives you simple and secure online workspaces containing powerful project and collaboration tools. It has really nice interface with moveable widgets displaying all the activity across all your workspaces, so you can easily get an overview of what’s going on in your projects. Though it has extra features like Huddle meetings and conferencing, there some things to be added; still in general it produces the impression of a balanced and efficient tool.

The first screenshot we are going to check is Workspace Overview:

This page provides the most important information about your tasks and projects in general: latest activity (what’s new), upcoming tasks and late tasks. It’s a pretty standard view, but sufficient for the majority of users.

Next screenshot presents Task Overview with Comments:

As you can see, it’s very simple (I would even say too simple) – there is no detailed information about the task (just title, description, due date and attachment). However it’s very nice that you can comment on a task.

Finally we will check the screenshot of Discussions page:

Given page represents a simple forum allowing you to edit and delete comments.

Main characteristic features:

• Phone conferencing
• Personalized and multi-language support
• SSL encryption
• Five different packages, including free one
• Opportunity to create whiteboards and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ very easy-to-use tool
+ rich text formatting (except tasks and comments)
+ Discussions panel
+ commenting on tasks and files
+ opportunity to create a document online
+ meeting scheduling
+ descriptions for tasks and files

- no opportunity to create projects
- no subtasks
- no priority for tasks
- no reports

Customer support service

We didn’t get the response at all.

Project Mark: 4-

Related posts:

1. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 4
2. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 3
3. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 1

In fact at the very beginning we didn’t plan to prepare a couple of reviews dedicated to OPMTs; however after deciding to use such a service to quicken and simplify the working process, we felt the necessity to carry out a thorough research in order to find an even bigger amount of decent OPMTs, ensuring thus the opportunity for everyone to get the tool he/she needs.

Despite the fact that given review should be regarded as a continuation of the first one, there are some distinctive points concerning the way it is written that should be emphasized:

1) In addition to the main characteristic features we decided to mention most important pros and cons (though we tried to be as impartial as possible, you may disagree with us in some cases);

2) At the end of every OPMT description there is a rating, so you can see what our approximate estimation of a certain service is. As you understand there are several points we take into consideration while giving a mark:

- functionality;

- usability and user interface;

- advantages and disadvantages;

- customer support service.

3) Emphasizing the way customer support service works. We sent a letter to every OPMT’s customer support service, so you would be able to see how fast we received responses if we did at all.

4) At the very end of this review we are going to mention “Lampdocs’ choice” OPMT.

As far as the services that we are going to describe are concerned here is the complete list of them (please pay attention that they are listed and described in alphabetical order):

1. 1st Manager
2. ActionThis
3. AjaxWorkspace
4. CentralDesktop
5. Copper
6. DeskAway
7. Huddle
8. Intervarls
9. LightHouse
10. LiquidPlanner
11. OnStage
12. Pelotonics
13. PlanHQ
14. Planzone
15. ProjectManager
16. ProjectSpaces
17. SamePage
18. Staction
19. Wrike

1st Manager

1st Manager represents a decent project management and team collaboration online solution that has an intuitive user interface and is very easy-to-use. 1st Manager can hardly be considered as a multifunctional OPMT, because it includes only the basic tools to plan and monitor your projects. Overall given solution produces quite a positive impression having some nice features you may need. But before we go ahead with the features, advantages and disadvantages of this tool, let’s check the screenshots that were made from our account.

Here is the Project Overview page:

As you understand this is one of the most important pages because it provides all the information about the project, and allows you to do many things: to check all the tasks (current and overdue ones), to check the latest activity, to export the data in .xls, .csv or .txt formats, to generate PDF documentation and etc.

Another important page you will visit a lot is Tasks Page. Here is the way it looks:

Here can do almost everything you need as far as the tasks are concerned: to check the status of a task, to see if there are some comments on a certain task, to check task priority, to learn more about a task (to check task description) and etc.

The last screenshot we are going to check is the Detailed View of a Task:

Here you can get or edit all the information about a task, edit alarms, change status, assign users and etc. Moreover as you can see there is an opportunity to comment on tasks.

Now as you have an idea about this solution we can proceed to its main characteristic features:

• Simplicity and intuitiveness
• Multilingual support (currently just 3 languages, 5 more coming soon)
• You can choose the version you like (hosted solution, own installation or even source code option)
• Opportunity to create project templates
• SSL enables browsing
• Exporting all the data in an appropriate format (Excel, PDF, CSV, Text, iCal and etc.) and may others.

Finally let’s see what the most important pros and cons of this OPMT are:
+ rich text formatting (tasks and comments)
+ ability to enlarge and decrease the editing window
+ description for tasks
+ commenting on tasks
+ priority for the tasks
+ Gantt chart view
+ a lot of ways to configure alarms (notifications)
+ detailed reports

Related posts:

1. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 4
2. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 3
3. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 2

Generally all the website builders are divided into two types:

1. Online Website Builders: represent online tools or SaaS (Software as a Service) provided by web hosting companies which help users to build and publish the websites without learning something.
2. Offline Website Builders: represent the software which runs on your computer and helps you to create pages for a website offline, so you can publish them on any host you want.

In the given review we are going to discuss the Online Website Builders because they are generally easier to use, so almost every single Internet surfer can use them to build quite decent websites. In fact the only thing you need while using an online website builder is to be a little bit Internet experienced, know how to use your mouse and be ready to create something.

Despite the fact that online website builders are very easy to use, it doesn’t mean that they should be used just in case you want to create a basic personal web page; if you need to create a professional business website or even a design free (not template based) website they can be helpful as well. That’s why some of the professionals use online website builders to save time and easily maintain the websites. Another reason why a pro may decide to use an online website builder is that some of these tools provide users with the source code.

Let’s take a closer look at the major advantages of Online Website Builders:

• it’s a really fast way to create a website
• no need to have any skills or programming experience
• the opportunity to use your tool from any system (any OS, any browser and etc.)
• «what you see is what you get» tools (WYSIWYG)
• the ability to save money (generally such tools are pretty cheap or even free)
• everything you need in one single place
• quite a significant amount of templates to use

Related posts:

1. Online Project Management Tools Part 1
2. Online Project Management Tools – Part 3
3. Online Project Management Tools Part 4

GoPlan is an online project management and team collaboration platform that has been recently released. Before we start discussing given solution I would like to emphasize that it strongly differs from everything we reviewed before. In fact it’s an application that is really funny. You can hardly find a serious company that might use this service, but small groups of developers, designers and young people may consider it as a perfect tool to use on a daily basis. There are just the things you need, nothing else – as simple as possible.

Despite its simplicity it has some really nice features to be mentioned:

• Customizable interface (you can change the themes and your company’s logo)
• Pretty nice calendar that syncs with your external calendar applications like iCal and devices like the iPhone
• Tickets feature (familiar to software developers and customer support companies): make it easy to track issues on a given project. Goplan integrates a fully featured issue tracking solution
• Documents Tab: maintaining a repository of assets for each of your projects. The image gallery makes it easy for designers to have an overview of their concepts.

As I emphasized before this application should be compared to the other ones we discussed. I decided to write a small review about it just because I found given tool very simple, nice and funny. It’s a really joy to use it.

Let’s look at the screenshots made from the user account.

Here is the Dashboard:

The Calendar:

And the Tasks:

Please visit the official web site if you would like to “play” with it and check if it’s convenient for you.

Action Method Online

Action Method Online is a new innovational online project management tool that has nothing common with its counterparts. AMO (Action Method Online) has absolutely unique approach to the project management and team collaboration. In comparison with the other solutions its users do not share whole projects with each other. AMO developers believe that everyone organizes their projects differently, and it’s most productive only to share the relevant parts of projects.

The whole approach is based on the Action Steps – tasks to be completed. Given solution provides everything you need to work efficiently and collaboratively, without spending a lot of time on details that do not apply to you. Everyone is accountable just for their own Action Steps.

Another really nice feature of AMO is its speed. While using it I personally even forgot that it’s a web-based tool. So should be considered as an important advantage.

Before we discuss in details what the components of this tool are, let’s check the screenshots in order to review its extremely cool design.

The Action Steps Page:

The Discussions Page:

And The Project View Page:

Really nice interface, isn’t it? I would suggest you to visit the official website’s tour page in order to learn more the solution and sign up for a FREE account.

Now let’s describe in detail each section of the user account in order to better understand features and capabilities of AMO.

Action Steps: You have your own Action Steps, and you can delegate Action Steps to anyone with an email address. When they receive it, they assign it to a project within their own system. You are notified when they complete the step (and can Nag them if they don’t!)

References: The notes, files, and links that inform a project. You can share a Reference with anyone with an email address, and they will be able to access and edit that Reference.

Discussions: You can start a Discussion with anyone – they can reply, and if you are a Premium Plan subscriber, they can even upload files to your Discussion for free. It’s an easy way to work together and communicate within AMO.

Events: The deadlines that you’re working toward. When you invite Collaborators to an Event, you can view their Action Steps for that Event, as well as your own. So you know what everyone needs to accomplish before a certain date.

Activity Feed: See what others are working on. When someone “shares” a project with you, you can go to Activity Feed and view ALL their project activity – Action Steps they create, Discussions they join, everything they do within that project.

Project View: An at-a-glance view of your projects, or others’ projects. If someone chooses to “share” with you, you can see every item that currently lives within their project (all their Action Steps, References, etc).

In addition to that there is a mobile version of Action Method for iPhone.

Teamspace

Teamspace is a multifunctional collaboration system for every kind of working group. Being one of the first tools of this kind (founded in 2001) Teamspace has enjoyed considerable success across a wide range of various countries and industries. Most likely the main reason for that was a great functionality and company’s ability to customize their solution to meet the unique demands of each client. Here are some of Teamspace’s clients: BMW, BBC World Service, New York Stock Exchange, Daimler, Philips Lighting Inc., Institute of Risk Management, and etc.

Teamspace provide three different versions of their solution, so the customers have what to choose from: Online Service, Enterprise Server (providing the opportunity to uniquely adapt the tool to meet your needs), and Enterprise Portal (has to be hosted on an own web server. This server can either be provided by the client himself, his provider or through Teamspace).

As regards the interface this solution has quite a good looking and understandable one. Unfortunately it’s not as customizable as it might be (comparing to the other solutions), still it’s pretty decent. Here is the way Team Administration Page looks:

Calendar Tab:

And Discussions Section:

Unfortunately there is no nice tour to watch, so I would recommend you to create a new test team at one. This will help you to check all the features in action. Please visit this page to do so.

While talking about the main characteristic features of the given tool, here are the ones that should be mentioned:

• Enterprise Portal version
• SMS Module ffers an easy way to send Short Messages to your team member all over the world
• Brainstorming and idea evaluation: the feature that gives you an excellent tool to facilitate a delayed brainstorming
• Microsoft Outlook® or Lotus Notes® synchronization
• Notice board and Bulletin: these features represent an informal communication platform for all team members. It works just as a physical notice board functions in an office: Notes can be attached, removed or changed by any member
• Myteams tool: the tool used to connect to more than one team without entering your access data each time

Here you can find a more detailed list of Teamspace’s features.

Teamwork PM

Teamwork Project Manager is a web-based easy-to-use project management, collaboration, and task management solution developed to help users work faster and be more productive. Given tool probably represents one of the best attempts to combine nice functionality and usability. There are a lot of different pricing plans with the opportunity to create a “forever FREE” account, so you will be able to choose the option that suits you the most.

It should be mentioned that Teamwork PM is designed for any person, company or group of people who have multiple projects on the go. It is really perfect for any type of organisation, group, team or individual. Teamwork PM is an ideal solution to create an environment where both management and employees can easily keep up to date with the project’s progress.

It has a really attractive and customizable design that ensures pleasant working process. Here are some of the screenshots taken from the TPM user account.

The Dashboard Page:

The Project Overview Page:

The Tasks Page:

And The Milestones Page:

Unfortunately there is no video tour, so it will probably be better to create a FREE account and check TPM in action at one. However if you don’t want to create account, you can take a tour (screenshots with features description) here.

As for the main features of this software the following ones should be emphasized:

• Resources tab in each project allows users to embed 3rd party applications, links and web pages in a popup window such as Google Documents, YouTube Videos, Standard Webpages, ProofHQ Proof tools and hundreds of over services we haven’t even thought of!
• It can be run the both on your own server and as a software-on-demand service
• Multilingual support (though there are just a couple of languages supported)
• PMBOK / PMP compliant Risk Register: a modern approved methodology for risk assessment in projects
• Business Card View of contacts
• Daily Overdue Items Report : daily email ensures you know when you are running late on certain tasks

Comparison table

Finally as we are done with the review I would like to present you a comparison table that can be very useful for you while choosing the right tool. Using this table it’s much easier to pay attention just to the features which are important to you. Remember that in this table just the main features were mentioned; moreover the features which are the same for all the tools are not included as well.

The bottom line

Summing up it will be rational to emphasize the main aspects you need to take into account while looking for an Online Project Management tool. Of course, you need to understand that these recommendations are relative enough, because everything depends on your needs, the way you run your business and the team you have. It’s impossible to find an absolute solution that would help in any situation; however there are some common notions you should remember if you are trying to find the most convenient solution.

• A decent online project management and collaboration application has to be flexible enough and can be used to manage different kinds of projects.
• Functionality: If you are not a manager who has to track a great deal of projects at once, there is no need to get a certain tool just because it possesses all the features you can imagine. It should be enough functional, but not excessive.
• Ease of Use: This is probably one of the most important points. The application you are going to choose has to be simple enough for you to understand. In any case you need to spend some time to learn the features of the tool, but you mustn’t spend days or even weeks on that (of course in case you don’t need all those functions).
• Help and support: Don’t forget to make sure that your project management services-to-be offer a prompt and qualitative customer support service (via phone, online chats, different online forms and email).

I hope you will find this review very useful and it will help you to choose the right solution.

Related posts:

1. Online Project Management Tools Part 1
2. Online Project Management Tools – Part 3
3. Online Project Management Tools Part 4

Projecturf is a web-based project management solution that has quite a significant amount of features to help you better manage your projects. Extremely nice and thoughtful design makes it a snap to learn and easy-to-use for both your personal and professional needs. Large icons on the top of the screen represent the navigation that is pretty simple, as each interface icon leads to a corresponding area, which in turn is divided into two or three tabs for different needs.

All plans are loaded with all the features (the difference is just the amount of projects you can manage), so you don’t have to worry about paying more for different add-ons and extras. In addition to the great interface there is another nice thing you will like for sure – no storage limits. It really offers unlimited storage on all paid plans. This means that when you need to share large amounts of files, you won’t be faced with storage restrictions or constraints on the number of files you can upload.

Despite the fact that Projecturf is not the simplest tool created it’s pretty easy to use; so you don’t need to worry about that. The only thing that I personally would like to be changed is the speed. It’s not as fast as many users would prefer it to be. However this is not a characteristic problem just of the given solution, because in fact the majority of web-based applications lack the speed as well.

We already mentioned Projecturf’s design, so let’s check the screenshots to see how nice it is.

Here is the Dashboard Section:

Tasks Section:

The Milestones Section:

And The Discussions Section:

There is a possibility to get a 30-day trial account, so if you would like to you can sing up here. But before that make sure you watch a short tour about this solution.

To sum up let’s go through some of the features Projecturf possesses:

• No storage limits
• All Plans loaded with all features
• The possibility to customize the interface using integrated themes and others

Please visit this page to learn about all the features.

Clarizen

Clarizen is online project management software solution that can really impress the users by its functionality. It has powerful project managing tools and helps you to accommodate the variety of users in a dynamic and diverse team. It uses personalized dashboard, innovative roadmaps, and a unique graphical approach in order to make your collaboration much easier. Clarizen uses an email-style look to manage projects in a simple, almost one-click interface.

Though the developers and some of the users especially emphasize how easy-to-use this tool is, given opinion can hardly be taken for granted, because Clarizen is too multifunctional to be considered as a simple solution. There is no doubt we can find quite a decent amount of tools (Basecamp, 5pm, and etc) which are much easier than this one. That’s why I would say that Clarizen represents a nice combination of functionality and simplicity being a very balanced web-based project management application.

As regards the disadvantages probably the most important one is Clarizen’s speed. In fact it’s not very low, but it’s no better than the one many other applications of this kind have.

We have already mentioned some of the features of the user interface, but now it’s time to take a closer look at it. Here is the way Home Page looks:

The Projects Page:

And The Work Items Page:

Here you can take a Product Tour in order to learn more.

Finally let’s mention the main distinctive features of this application:

• Actual versus Remaining Efforts Completion Reporting
• ProjectMail: solves the challenge of receiving progress updates from the team by allowing each user to report their progress directly from their inbox, without the need to log in to Clarizen
• Integration: AutoCAD, MS Outlook, MS Project, and Solidworks
• Interactive Resource Load Views
• Delta Change Updates: Instant, Aggregated & In-Contextand etc.

If you would like to go through all the features, please visit this page.

ProjectOffice

ProjectOffice represents a web-based project management and collaboration solution built with a cutting-edge Web 2.0 technology. In addition to the standard project management features, it provides all-in-one functionality with more intuitive approach to organizing communication and team collaboration. Despite the fact that there are some disadvantages which will be mentioned in the next paragraph, it’s a really high-quality, nice-looking and multifunctional tool.

The first shortcoming I managed to encounter is the absence of the video tour. The greatest majority of similar products have at least a short video tour. In this case there are just some screenshots of the user account. However taking into consideration the fact that each of those screenshots has a detailed description, this can hardly be regarded as a significant disadvantage. As far as the tool itself is concerned it seems to be pretty complete with a lot of features available. Still it would be much better if the developers implemented a forum, because it really ensures the collaboration.

In the other respects it has a great deal of nice features, but we will discuss them a little bit later. As for now let’s check its really attractive and modern interface.

The Dashboard Page:

Projects and Tasks (in a single tab):

And The Reports Page:

If you need to check some more screenshots with the description, please visit screenshot tour page.

It’s time to learn what the main distinctive features of the given tool are. Here are some of them:

• The ability to add/import contacts: you can add your contacts or import them from Yahoo, MS Outlook 2003/2007, Gmail, Hotmail, AOL as well as from the resource pool in your space.
• The opportunity to use project templates: you have some options from the very beginning and can create you own templates
• Available Gadgets: you can be notified for all changes that happen in the spaces where you work right there on your web desktop. The iGoogle, Pageflakes and Netvibes gadgets will keep you up-to-date even when you are not logged in the application. Learn more here.
• Buzzer for Desktop: use the Buzzer for Desktop and receive notifications for all recent changes right there on your computer desktop
• Buzzer for Blackberry
• In-house version of the solution: you can install ProjectOffice in-house on your network and infrastructure

Here you can check the complete list of ProjectOffice features.

Related posts:

1. Online Project Management Tools Part 1
2. Online Project Management Tools – Part 3
3. Online Project Management Tools Part 5

Zoho Projects is an online project management tool to collaborate and execute projects easily. It provides a great deal of features for a collaboration and project management: creating tasks, assigning ownership, setting deadlines and tracking milestones, a clear view of projects’ status, a time sheet for calculating the exact number of hours put in by each of your project members, a central forum for your team to discuss and upload project related files, Gantt charts and etc.

A nice thing about ZOHO Project is that there is a way to create a FREE account. Of course, there are some limitations but as it’s mentioned on the official web site it should be considered as a “starting point for Online Project Collaboration that is ideal for schools, freelancers, consultants and individuals”. So if you would like to check it right away, here is the page you should visit. But before you go ahead with that make sure you watch demo videos in order to understand the way it works.

In addition, it has pretty simple, but still attractive, interface. Let’s check some screenshots made from ZOHO Projects User account.

The Dashboard:

Tasks and Milestones Section:

Timesheet Calendar Section:

As it was mentioned before it’s a complete multifunctional tool with a lot of features; as regards the main characteristic ones the following should be considered:

• It’s a part of ZOHO Services (ZOHO Sheet, Writer, CRM, Show, Planner, Share, Chat, Invoice, Reports, Docs, Meetings and etc.)
• Multilingual: supports 15 different languages like Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English(US), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese(Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish.
• Gantt Charts support
• The opportunity to create invoices for clients
• Zoho Projects is 100% free for open-source projects
• and many others

To learn about the ZOHO Projects features, please visit features page.

ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab is a very functional next generation project management and collaboration tool. There is one important point about this solution that has to be mentioned from the very beginning – it’s not a SaaS solution, i.e. when you are buying it you don’t pay for the service (each and every month), but purchase the license. Of course in this case you pay more, but you need to take into consideration the fact that you buy license one and use the tool forever.

There are two version of ActiveCollab available – Small Biz and Corporate (this version has much more features included). Here you can learn more about the difference between two versions and the features they have.

To my mind given tool has one of the best user interfaces among the applications we discussed. Please check the following screenshots in order to estimate it.

The Project Overview Page:

The Discussions Page:

The Calendar Page:

Most likely it will be much better for you to try it yourself, so you will be able to make your final decision much easier. Moreover you need to pay attention to the speed of this solution, it’s really fast.

Finally let’s see what the main distinctive features of this application are:

• Ticket system feature
• One year of free support and upgrades is included for both Small Biz and Corporate license
• Full source code is provided in both licenses, which means that you can tailor ActiveCollab to fit your business needs perfectly
• Touch ActivCollab: ActiveCollab mobile interface will detect if you are using iPhone or iPod Touch and will make proper adjustments to be more usable with Touch interfaces
• Perfect for integration: API lets you easily integrate activeCollab with other applications. Use it not just to give access to your data to other application, but also to let them work with it, create new records and more
• Write, Share or Sell Module: you are free to create modules and sell them or offer them for free to the rest of activeCollab community
• Per User Language Settings: every user can select preferred language from their Profile page and etc.

Please visit the features page to check all the features.

5pm Web

5pm™ represents an online project management and collaboration application that has been evolving for the past five years. One of the greatest features of this solution is its simplicity. It’s considered to be much simpler and easier than well-known Basecamp. Thus there is no way you can encounter any problems with using it. It really takes just some minutes to get used to it. Moreover despite its simplicity it packs many powerful highly organized features.

The original customizable interface is another nice feature to be mentioned. Moreover to my mind it was a nice idea to use side-by-side window action. There is one more striking feature that you will notice at one – speed. It’s really fast and responsive for a web-based application. Of course, there are not the only characteristic features of the given tool.

Before we go ahead with the rest of the features I would like you to look at some screenshot of the user account in order to be aware of the interface 5pm has. Let’s start with Projects Section that has the abovementioned side-by-side look:

The second one is the Timeline Section (it has 4 Gantt-style chart views):

And the last one is Reports Section (that is customizable as well):

In case you are really interested in this product, you can check all the screenshots here.

Now let’s mention the other features you may find to be useful:

• The opportunity to import contacts from Gmail
• You can drag around and resize the projects and tasks directly in the Timeline
• It behaves more like a desktop app than a web-app, i.e. right click menus, quick response time
• iCalendar integration
• The opportunity to import Google Docs™ links and etc.

You can try it for FREE (14-days) and check the list of all the features on the overview page.

Related posts:

1. Online Project Management Tools Part 1
2. Online Project Management Tools Part 4
3. Online Project Management Tools Part 5

AtTask (@task) represents very nice solution for all knowledge workers to collaborate and accomplish the work most essential to the enterprise. This tool gives executives and managers the ability to increase productivity and reduce costs by helping bridge the strategic vision and objectives of their portfolios with project execution.

One of the things that really attract attention from the very beginning is AtTask’s Client List. It’s hardly possible to find another company that would have similar client list. Here are just some of the clients: Apple, Adobe Incorporated, Amazon.com, Hitachi, Toyota, Volvo, the Walt Disney Company, Fujitsu, McDonalds and etc.

The only thing I didn’t like at once is that there is no way to watch the demo before you leave information about yourself. Probably this can be easily explained by the quality of service company provides and the niche they occupy, still many users may not like it.

Moreover despite the fact that this product is a multilingual one, it supports just most widespread languages (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and English).

In other respects you will like this solution for sure. It’s really multifunctional having some unique features. But we will discuss it a little bit later. Now let’s check AtTask’s user interface.

Here is a fully customizable Dashboard:

Projects Page:

Portfolio Optimization Page:

And Timesheets:

As you see it’s a really modern, nice looking, customizable, and user friendly interface. In fact there are much more screenshots to look at; they are divided according to the topics (Management, Collaboration and Integration) and subtopics. Please visit this page, if you want to check all of them (first of all you will need to choose topic).

Finally l would like to mention the main distinctive features of this tool:

• Make the reports you need: over 50 standard reports with the ability to customize them according to you needs
• Complete all-in-one tool: providing Management, Collaboration, and Integration tools in a design that is easy to use and full of powerful features that help companies get work done.
• Clik feature: desktop extension of @task that makes managing tasks and updating status easy, so managers and executives have the up-to-date information they need. You can view, download, and upload documents with Clik.
• Mobile device support (iPhone, Blackberry and etc.) and WAP integration
• What-if Scenario Tools
• Gantt Chart support
• Capacity Planner: planning multiple projects while keeping all resources equally balanced and usable without overloading their workloads or over-booking their schedules
• and many others

To check all the features available, please visit features page.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a very popular web-based project-management tool developed by 37signals. It offers pretty standard features (to-do lists, milestone management, file sharing, time tracking, messaging system and etc.), and you can hardly find in it something unique, unavailable in other applications. That’s why given solution has been criticized for being too simple.

However to my mind it’s a little bit irrational, because in fact its simplicity is the only reason the great majority of Basecamp users like it a lot. Of course, you can find a lot of disadvantages of the given solution if you want to (we will discuss them more in detail a little bit later). But in this certain case the main idea of the project can be stated as following: “Why should you pay for a more expensive multifunctional tool and spend a lot of time to learn how it works, if there is something cheaper and simpler that includes only the features you need?”.

Another point of criticism consists in the fact that Jason Fried, 37signals Chief Executive Officer, refuses to implement different kinds of changes requested by some of the users. We can hardly know for sure what the reason is for that, but most likely 37signals don’t want to make their tool more complicated.

For justice’ sake it should be emphasized that there were some positive reviews as well (for example, in New York Times). Moreover this tool is not as poor to features as it may seem to be from the very beginning, because there is a decent amount of add-ons and extras. It works with a variety of iPhone apps, third-party billing/invoicing tools, mock-up review software, time tracking tools, widgets, and more. You can learn more about that here. In addition to that Basecamp offers integration with its own Campfire product.

As regards the disadvantages (if we can call them in such a way) here are some of them:

• There is no way to install Basecamp on your own service. Moreover they don’t offer installable versions of any of their products. The products are only available as hosted ones.
• They don’t provide phone support
• At the moment there are not so many languages supported and etc.

Finally let’s take a closer look at the UI of this tool.

Here is the Dashboard:

To-Do List:

Milestones Page:

Time Tracking Page:

You can watch a tour or check more screenshots here.

Daptiv PPM

Daptiv PPM represents a browser-based project management solution that makes collaboration easy and efficient. This product should probably be ranked among the best ones. It offers an extra handful of collaboration features, including a discussion board/forum. As developers mention, given tool “being flexible for both simple and complex methodologies, is designed to work the way you work”.

Despite the fact that Daptiv PPM is pretty easy to use, you will need to spend some time to learn all the features and capabilities, because it’s a really multifunctional tool. Its dashboard being very informative is completely customizable. Another thing you will like for sure is a user friendly interface that facilitates your working process.

In addition to that, Daptiv allows you to easily extend the standard capabilities of our software. Designed for business users, not coders, Dynamic Applications give you the power to model and support your business processes with new applications.

Let’s check the screenshots of the main sections of Daptiv’s user account.

The first one is Dashboard Page:

Capacity Planer Section:

Tasks:

And Investment Map:

Such an intuitive user interface will be accessible to everyone in your company – from product developers and IT teams, to senior executives, marketing departments and portfolio managers. Please visit this page to take the tour and see Daptiv PPM in action.

As far as the main distinctive features of Daptive PPM are concerned they are the following:

• Daptiv’s Capacity Planner allows you to better plan, schedule and manage resources.
• The opportunity to work the way you want:team members can view their tasks in a variety of ways
• Dynamic Applications feature: Daptiv lets you build your own business applications
• Daptiv Work Intelligence ™: critical insight into how your business is performing at both portfolio and detailed execution levels
• Project Transit feature: projects created in Microsoft Project can also be integrated with Daptiv, and vice-versa
• The opportunity to publish web forms to collect data from users outside of Daptiv PPM
• Monitor project health using color-coded Project Health Indicators and etc.

If you feel the necessity to learn more, please check benefits and features pages. To be Continued…

Related posts:

1. Online Project Management Tools Part 1
2. Online Project Management Tools Part 4
3. Online Project Management Tools – Part 3