Having all your images in a gallery on Glasnost is really useful for many people. But sometimes you want to share a gallery with people who are not Glasnost users.

Well, now you can.

If you go to the images module and hover your mouse over a gallery thumbnail you’ll now see an option to ‘Share’. Click on this and it allows you to share a gallery with multiple users just by adding their email addresses. Then you can send a message, define how long you wish the gallery to be shareable, whether you’d like people to be able to download the original images and whether you wish to password protect the images.

Once done, your colleagues will get a personalised email with instructions on how to access the gallery, in HTML format, via a web browser.

A gallery that is shared will be indicated by a small swoosh icon. Click on this to review the sharing criteria or to make a copy of the gallery URL.

As the shared galleries are HTML based they will work in any browser, including smartphones.

We hope you like this new feature.

Sometimes you want to quickly share a document with someone who is not a user of your Glasnost system. Or perhaps a group of people.

But you do not want to download the document and then send it on via email.

And sometimes you want to password protect the document.

Or make it available only for a certain amount of time.

Well, now that is all possible from within Glasnost.

Click on a document so it shows in spreadsheet view. You’ll see a new button to the right of ‘Delete’ entitled ‘Share’. Click on that and you’ll see the pop up below.

In this pop up you can specify one or more emails of people you wish to share the document with. Add a message to go with it and decide how long you want it to be available for. Finally, you can add a password if you wish.

Your colleagues will then receive an email with all the details and a link to click on which will take them to a secure webpage to download the document.

Simple, elegant…. and very handy.

There are a few hidden features in the Glasnost interface that make it easier to view information, especially if you have limited screen space.

We use them day in day out but you may not know they exist.

So, instead of boring you with dull text explaining do this, do that…. here is a very quick video (now in HD).

You can also watch the movie on Vimeo.

ONE OF Einstein’s colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. “You don’t remember your own number?” the man asked, startled.

“No,” Einstein answered. “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?”

Yesterday I read a tweet asking how to remember someone’s Twitter handle, saying they usually looked up their LinkedIn profile and tried to get it through that. Well, bringing Einstein’s thinking up to date I think, not entirely humbly, that he’d have used something like Glasnost21. For with Glasnost it’s like ‘write once, read anywhere’ – simply ensure you log the full details of your contacts and then, as if by magic, you’ll never ‘forget’ anything again.

Take a look at this:

This is a screenshot from the Glasnost21 iPhone App. Telephone numbers, email addresses, LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog profiles are all there. In fact, whatever contact method you use or might need can all be found in one place. Click on a telephone number and the call is placed, click on twitter and it’ll load their stream, tap on LinkedIn and their profile comes up immediately.

So, as I am sure Einstein would appreciate, you just need to write these details down once. After that, forget about them and free up some space in your brain for something more important.

Maybe though, ignore this other piece of advice: ‘”WHEN I was young I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock,” Einstein once recalled. “So I stopped wearing socks.”‘

Antony Slumbers

In the Telegraph today is an article entitled ‘Commuters face worse overcrowding’. It describes how:

“Overcrowding on Britain’s railways is going to get “substantially worse”, an influential committee of MPs has said.” And goes on to say “In a highly critical report, the Public Accounts Committee warned that the Government and rail industry would fail to provide the extra seats needed to keep up with soaring demand for rail travel.

The plight of commuters in major provincial cities is particularly bad, with the rail industry on course to deliver only 25,500 of the extra 38,000 seats that are needed to prevent overcrowding deteriorating further by March 2014 – a shortfall of around a third.

In London only 99,000 of the 117,000 extra seats will be provided, leaving the capital’s commuters 15 per cent short of the what the Department for Transport had identified as necessary.”

The full piece can be read in full here

Now the detail that is really frightening is that all this will occur despite £9 billion (yes BILLION) being spent on the railways in the next 5 years.

So £9 billion and still, in London, there will be 15% more commuters than available seats.

How then can we, as a country, ensure that everyone gets a seat? Well really the solution is simple. Use the technology that is available, simple and CHEAP to work just one day a week from home. Or from some other place that does not involve getting on a commuter train.

How hard can that be to organise? Really, can you not imagine organising your working week enough to ensure that for just one day you do not need to spend large amounts transporting yourself to a very expensive office to sit and work?

Personally I do it the other way around and commute one day a week to London. The rest of the time I work from my (admittedly abnormally lovely) home office at the end of my garden. The day I’m in town is for reviewing progress, defining new goals and sorting out issues that need to be sorted out in person. It is an intense but enormously productive day. 5 days worth of water cooler moments, brain storming and analysis in one day. We’ve worked like this for ten years and it is mighty effective.

And on the days at home I use Skype for phone calls, screen sharing and video chats. Powwownow when we need to conference call with people away from their net connection. And of course Glasnost for getting things done. I have ALL my information on Glasnost, every comment, document, task or image I need to deal with. and when I’m not at my own desk I have the same access to everything through the Glasnost iPhone App.

It’s really that simple – use the right tools, save yourself a lot of money, and solve the tricky problem of too many bums for seats!

Try it – it works

Antony Slumbers

Glasnost21 - Bringing people together

In the spirit of ‘it does what it says on the tin’ we’ve tried to encapsulate the ‘point’ of Glasnost.

Have we succeeded? What do you think?

Glasnost21 iPhone App V2

We are delighted to announce that Version 2 of the Glasnost21 iPhone App is now available for download.

What’s new in this version?
Full Project details – Comments, Tasks and Documents. Access to all Image Galleries

In short, this is a major upgrade and gives you access to pretty much all you need from Glasnost – on the go.

It works on an iPhone, iTouch and iPad.

There is something enormously comforting knowing that wherever you are you can access whatever you need. We’re addicted! Hope you will be to.

For more information, take a look at this.

We are delighted to announce that Version 1 of the Glasnost21 iPhone App is now available for free in the Apple AppStore.

The Glasnost21 iPhone App provides a tightly focused subset of features to subscribers of the web-based system, concentrating on contacts data, and tailored to the requirements of Glasnost21 users on the move.

The App requires a subscription to the web-based Glasnost21 system, but you can of course try it out in conjunction with our free 30 trial offer.

Get it on the iTunes App Store!

Following user requests we’ve added a really useful new feature that allows you to add an iCal notification to a project task. When you add a task you have the option of attaching an iCal file to the email that Glasnost sends out to all those assigned to the task. With this all the recipients can easily add the task date details into their calendars, pretty much irrespective of what software they use.

By doing this you can make better use of the tasks feature as it now makes sense to add meetings, appointments or reminders into Glasnost. Or indeed, you can block out a team members diary for a set time to work on a particular task.

To make use of this, just add a start and end date and time to a project task, check the new box ‘Send to Calendar’ and that’s it. The recipient will receive an email with a .ics file attached. They click on this and add to the calendar of their choice.

Easy to use and very useful. Hope you like it.

As well as making full use of Skype we are also great fans of Powwownow. This service allows you to easily set up landline conference phone calls. And the real beauty is that it costs you no more than making a normal call.

Using the free version you first give Powwownow your email address and they send you a telephone number and a pin code. Distribute these details to whoever you want to conference with, and ask them to phone the number and follow the instructions. It’s really so easy and efficient.

There are paid for versions which offer other features that may or may not be of use to you but we just use the standard version.

Typically what we do is:

1. Start a Skype Conference Call
2. Enable screen sharing
3. Dial in to Powwownow
4. Get on with business !

Working this way, Skype provides free screen sharing and powwownow ensures high quality phone calls.

Combine both of these with Glasnost and you’ve pretty well got all you need to operate anytime, anywhere and with whoever you like.

And of course if you want to see each other then simply turn on video mode in Skype.

Glasnost, Skype and Powwownow – what more do you need?

www.skype.com
www.powwownow.com