Welcome to our second edition of the Synage Inside ePublication, a monthly newsletter on simple things you can do to increase productivity in your organization. For all our new subscribers, you can check out the first edition on the DeskAway blog by clicking here.

Whether you are a freelancer, manage a small office or are part of a large organization, you will benefit from the information provided in this publication. Thank you for your time and Happy Diwali!

Best,
Sahil Parikh
Founder, deskaway.com

The other day I was talking to a freelancer and he mentioned that he literally uses email for everything - for planning, organizing, sending files, sending reminders to himself, updating clients on progress etc. etc…wow, the list goes on. It’s amazing how email has become the killer-app for every individual and company (oh, I forgot the Blackberry!). People cannot do without email. Why should they? It’s always there, open right in front of you to take advantage of. It’s simple to use, free and staring right in my face as I write this newsletter! It’s great for getting updates and notifications but it doesn’t do too well as a knowledge management tool. This is the same problem the freelancer had. He sends out a few files for review to others and then it turns out that he spends a few hours next few days digging through his email compiling comments/ suggestions and merging different versions. On another occasion, he got burnt by his client since they exchanged so many files that the one that he worked on finally was the wrong one. Ouch!

What I am seeing is that we are slowing moving (or will move) away from email. Take for example the much acclaimed social networking site Facebook - you can message your friends right from the app. Gauranteed no spam since you can only send and recieve to people in your network. Ditto LinkedIn.

As we get busier day-by-day, collaborating with people from across the globe, time is going to be of immense value. Anything that saves time is going to be the “killer” app. So, I leave you with an article I read a while back by Lars Plougmann call “A 10-to-1 rule of email based project management“. This is just one of the ways people can save time and money when on the clock! For everything else, there is email

Would love to hear your views on this here.

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Never lose a bookmark again! Try this service for free by going to del.icio.us

Thank you for all those who have signed up on DeskAway after our first newsletter edition. Just to give you a heads-up, these are some of the features that we are adding in the next few weeks:

Reporting

A picture does speak a thousand words! In this case, it lets you visually see how your projects are performing. We will be adding a variety of printer-friendly charts and analytics to every DeskAway account (its free, ofcourse!).

Improved File Upload

Not only can you view the latest comment that is added to a file, but now you can see the different versions for the same file.

We are happy to have got the following reviews and mentions last month in leading Indian publications:

PCQuest Magazine- Synage’s DeskAway Software
Financial Express- Who needs an office address?