I’ve been talking to some of our customers lately. Wanting to get a feel for who is using WizeHive, what industries you’re in, and how WizeHive helps you solve a problem, I’ve started reaching out to some of you and have received great feedback from great people.

Talking to copywriters, engineers, marketers, CEOs, students, foundation directors, musicians, designers  and more, I’ve been learning firsthand why people need project management software, what makes them tick, and how WizeHive can make their lives easier and their workflow more productive. From simply assigning tasks to members of a team, to enabling file sharing and group collaboration amongst foundation volunteers around the globe, to tracking the status of open issues, I’m thrilled that WizeHive is providing a much-needed and efficient solution to communities and networks of colleagues, associates and friends worldwide.

One of my favorite stories was from a VP of Operations who actually projects his WizeHive workspace up on the wall of the conference room during his weekly production team meetings so everyone can review the project plan and task list together and provide feedback to keep the project on track successfully.  Talk about efficient collaboration!

I think I’ll share some of these stories with you over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned and find out how WizeHive is helping people Work Smarter and Work Faster.  And I’d love to hear from you too! Please drop me a line (fern@wizehive.com) and let me know how WizeHive helps you. Looking forward to chatting with you soon… thanks again!

The flow up updates has been slower this past fall as we spent time catching up and laying the foundation for our future growth.    That is about to change.  We have a slew of new features ready to go and hope to put updates out every week or two.   We have a number of small features that we plan on releasing or upgrading for the next few weeks and then we will focus on different areas – tasks, files, calendars, and so on.

This week we are pleased to release a few new features and upgrades.

1. Page List: The page list has undergone changes behind the scenes.  We found that our prior version worked well with certain browsers but got very slow when people had large lists of pages in Internet Explorer.  This version should work the same but generally be a bit faster.   Please let us know if you see any problems with it.

2. Desktop Client:  We have fixed some bugs and made some enhancements to our Adobe Air based desktop client.   If you use the Desktop Client and want to upgrade or are interested you can download it from our home page.

3. Task List: When you group tasks by person, list, priority or any other method, you can now “collapse” or “expand” the group by clicking on the + or – sign in front of the group name.   You can also see a count of tasks for each group in the yellow bar.   This should make navigating and working on longer lists easier.

4.  Calendar Control: We have added a calendar control to the “ALL” workspace tab (for those of you that have more than one workspace).   You can now see all calendar entries across all workspaces on this tab.     After implementing we realized that this may cause you to see a large number of tasks on a calendar without knowing at a glance which workspace they belong to.  So for our next release we will implement a few features to make this more obvioius.

5. File Check-in / Check -out: This is almost ready (we hoped to have for this release) but may get released tomorrow (Monday) or Tuesday.   The idea is that when someone downloads a file for editing they can set a flag indicating they have “Checked out” the file.   This will put a small red lock icon by the file so someone else will know that the file has been checked out.    It won’t stop a 2nd person from downloading the file but if  they choose to download it anyway, they will have to bypass a message sharing this information in another way.    When the file has be re-uploaded it can then be “checked in” again.

6. Workspace Tab font:  We made the workspace tab fonts a little smaller so that you can use a few more characters in the name of your workspace.    (Although the change to display more characters still needs to be uploaded).    Therefore you should be able to see about 12 characters displayed instead of 10 from before.

We have about 50 items planned for the next 3 or 4 weeks.  If you have a favorite request please send it in to MikeL@WizeHive.com and I’ll try to make sure it gets on this list or a subsequent release.

WizeHive Learning Center

I’m excited to announce the launch of our new Learning Center, where you can watch eight Demonstration Videos to find out more about how to use WizeHive’s powerful project management and collaboration tools. Yes, these videos have all been available before, but now they are more easily accessed and shelved together for a comprehensive tutorial of WizeHive’s capabilities. Keep coming back for more updates and enhancements as they become available.

The Overview is the best place to start, whether you are new to WizeHive or a well-seasoned beta-tester who has been with us since the beginning (and thanks, if you are!) Learn how WizeHive allows you to easily share notes, ideas, messages, files, and to-do lists with team members, partners and clients you’ve invited to your own secure, private workspaces. You’ll see how information can be entered directly into your WizeHive workspace or via email, Twitter, or mobile devices. You’ll also see how your data can be viewed for each project individually or collectively on the ALL tab for a comprehensive look at all of your workspaces.

Wondering how to post notes? Check out the Recent Activity video to learn how, and see how this feature keeps you abreast of all activity in your workspaces, including newly created tasks, uploaded files, and added links. Did you know you can drag and drop your tasks on your task list to help you prioritize and manage your assignments? Or that you can integrate your WizeHive calendar with your favorite iCal-compatible calendaring system? Managing and sharing your files is paramount. Learn how to email files directly to your workspace and manage multiple versions of the same document. And many people don’t realize it, but now you can use your Twitter account to interact directly with WizeHive. Learn how to set up your workspaces to receive notes and tasks sent directly through Twitter. If you want quick desktop access to your WizeHive database, and do not want to load up your browser, you can get much of the same functionality using our free desktop client for PCs, Macs, Linux and other operating systems.

We hope these Demos help you become better acquainted with WizeHive’s features so you can increase productivity and  streamline project management. Go check out the Learning Center… good luck!

Congratulations to @NicolasWarren, the winner of our $250 Amazon Gift Certificate giveaway! We also want to thank everyone who voted and tweeted about our Crunchies nomination for Best BootStrapped Startup of 2009. Voting has closed and now we wait to find out who won. The Crunchies Awards start at 7:30 pm PST this Friday night (1/8/10) and will be streamed live at http://crunchies2009.techcrunch.com/. Good luck to all the finalists!