DeskAway was reviewed by CMS Wire last weekend. CMS Wire is a blog about content management and other related fields with more than 7K subscribers and a couple of thousand twitter followers. They have appreciated our less expensive rates compared to other softwares. We appreciate the support!

Thanks Chelsi Nakano and CMS Wire Team!

“Message from Sahil Parikh, Founder”

Earlier today (IST) users were unable to login to their DeskAway account. Since it was past midnight here, we only got to the problem on Saturday morning around 10:00 am IST when our staff resumed office. Initially, we thought it was a high load issue (due to a possible log rotation), but after going through a series of tests, we realized that the reason people could not login was because of an issue with the database that enables logins/ authentication. We fixed that and everything seemed to work again. Though, users were still seeing an error message while logging in, which was due to a caching issue on the browser. Once the browser cache was removed and the login page reloaded, the login process worked.

Our server was functioning fine and there was no downtime. Hence, we were not alerted by SMS or email when this issue happened. We are very prompt with customer service almost 16 hours in the day (except for times when its night time here) but with this incident we will be putting in a process to fill in the gap in the coming weeks.

Things do go wrong online but we should have communicated this incident clearly to everyone. I sincerely apologize to everyone who were waiting on a response from us.

This issue has been fixed and we have got confirmation from a lot of you’ll that you can now login to your accounts. Our team will be monitoring everything this week (including Sunday) to make sure things run smooth.

Regards,
Sahil

Working on your project when your personal life is not going the way you want it can be a real bummer. On the other hand, having your work-conflicts  affect your personal life is as bad. Here are some simple tips to increase work-life awareness within your team:

1. Leaving on a Jet Plane? The simplest thing you can do is put up some posters in the office with a tag-line that promotes taking a holiday like “when did you last have a holiday?” or some quiet time with yourself. We have a picture of the Maldives island

2. Encourage Family/Friend Time: It’s really important and healthy to spend quality time with their friends or family. Send out an email about how you had a great time with your spouse, kids or friends and tell them it’s time they set their dates with their loved ones.

3. Encourage Hobbies: Make a ‘hobby list’, where team members can write their own hobbies or take note of other people’s hobbies. This recognition will encourage people to pursue their non-work interests - something that will get their mind away from just work (obviously, during their non-work hours!). How about organizing a hobby workshop on Fridays?

4. Simplify Work: Take a look at the various procedures followed by the team and simplify them by using web apps (some of them are mentioned in our blog post) or do away with unnecessary technicalities.  This way the work will be simple and people can get things done quickly, without hassle and complication.

5. Increase Team Building Activities: Team bonding can help integrate work with life, where coworkers have open conversations, thus avoiding conflict at work.

Are there any other ways you manage a work-life balance within the workplace? Do let us know your thoughts.

While working, one task can lead to another to another… and so on. Especially, if you are working on the web, with a few clicks you can be working on something entirely different and get pulled in into the whirlwind of things.

Today, we have listed out 3 tools that will help you regain your sanity and help you become a little bit more productive, so finishing work on time is not a struggle everyday.

Google Reader - Checking out blogs is a daily routine for a lot of people. Aggregating good blogs to your Google Reader (or any other popular readers), gives you a quick way of skimming through new articles and presents all your popular blogs under one roof. Just like how you get your news delivered via the newspaper everyday.

Bookmarking Toolbars - Interesting links and articles can become distracting especially if you see them while working on something else. Instead of getting distracted and clicking on them, it’s a better idea to bookmark them for later. Most bookmarking websites like Delicious, Digg have bookmarking toolbars, which lets you save articles in just one click so you can come back to it whenever you want and from any computer.

Online Photo editing apps - Graphics are sometimes needed to accompany an article, blog post or updating your profile on the web. Editing them in right proportions, making small changes can become time consuming and tedious if you have to use bulky softwares like Photoshop. This can be easily avoided by using online photo editing tools like Piknik. You do not even need to register for making minor changes.

You should probably give these a try because it will not only save you time but also allow you to organize your work life better. Feel free again!

On Software a blog that reviews software and web applications, recently reviewed DeskAway.

The website is very intuitive. It’ll hardly take you a few minutes to get everything up and running, but if you get stuck at some point, you can always watch one of DeskAway’s video tutorials.

Thanks On Software team!