BlueTie Blog

Version 6.0 Launches

The installation of Version 6.0 is complete and the new features now available to everyone. It's been a long time coming and a lot of hard work by everyone here and we're very excited to bring you these improvements. We've put together a summary of the new features in this PDF. Enjoy!

Product Improvements Update

Well it's been over a month since our last product update. During that time we've been working hard on the improvements we outlined in the last post and here's the latest:

Version 6.0

Version 6.0 is current being testing by our Quality Assurance department. Originally scheduled for late March, we're now looking at a late April implementation for Version 6.0. All of the features we noted previously are going to be included in the release. We're taking some additional time for two reasons:

1) We're ensuring that the application quality is high. As I noted last time, when it comes down to a decision between getting you updates by a specific timeframe and getting you quality updates we're going to err on the side of quality.

2) We must ensure that our larger customers, who have their own internal IT staff and training departments, have plenty of time in a pre-release beta to prepare and complete their training documentation and course planning.

We'll post here on the blog two weeks before a definitive implementation date but as noted we are currently scheduled for late April.

Version 6.5

Our development team is making great progress on this Version which is focused entirely on improving speed. The scope remains unchanged from our previous note and I'll post additional details on the project over the next couple of weeks.

Spam Management

Thanks to everyone who recently provided feedback to our Spam Management survey. We got some great insights and are just about done mapping out a specific series of changes to improve spam management. We'll have our approach nailed down by the end of the month and the first set of improvements should be complete in April. As soon as we've put the final touches on the plan I'll post details here on the blog. Look for an update next week.

Direct Connect

We recently released an updated version of our Direct Connect Plug-In for Outlook. The new wizard included improvement in configuring synchronization for new customers and email synchronization is faster. We're continuing to finalize plans for a long term replacement of our existing plug-in. Our original synchronization tool was around long before webmail synchronization with Outlook was offered by everyone and there are some additional features we would like to offer before the end of the year.

Check back next week for another update.

BlueTie Launches a New Way to Book Travel

Today we, in partnership with Orbitz, launched it's new travel planning feature. With it, you can do flight searches and overlay flights right on top of your personal calendar. You can see if a flight will get you there in time for a meeting or see if there is a sufficient gap for you to leave the meeting and get to the airport before a flight. No more tabbing between your email and the Orbitz site to figure out what flight times will work, it can all be done on one screen in BlueTie. And the ability to just type it in, "Flights from ROC to SFO" for example, is just plain cool.

Another great thing about the travel planning is the way you can sort the hotel results. All the hotels come back in a list, one per line. You can double click on any hotel to get the details; photos, does it have a gym, pool, etc. But what I love about the one per line listing is how easily I can sort and compare prices and stars now. There just isn't a faster or easier way to compare these items that I have seen anywhere else.

There is, of course, an official press release, but if you really want to see how cool it is, just go view the demo via travel.bluetie.com.

Let us know what you think of the new travel planning feature.

How to Innovate: 1 million ideas

"Innovation is trying to figure out a way to do something better than it's ever been done before"

David Neeleman, Founder and CEO, JetBlue

Toyota implements 1 million new ideas each year. That's over 3000 per day! To achieve this astounding level of innovation they have developed a culture of creativity based on elegant solutions, those which seek to constantly improve every aspect of what they do. Change This offers a manifesto by Matthew May on how Toyota built this culture of innovation. It's fascinating reading for even the smallest business owner and entrepreneur.

Lesson: Imperfection drives innovation

Walk Softly….

This morning we launched a free version of BlueTie’s online business email, calendaring and collaboration suite. There aren’t any strings attached: Each account supports up to 20 users and offers full administrative controls, domain support and more. It's the latest version of the product we’ve been selling for years.

We started looking at free distribution models several months ago. We knew there was a need for a free software app that was designed for business use and that ours fit that need. And even though we’ve fine-tuned our ability to deliver at a low cost per user we still need to make money. So we brainstormed a bit internally and did research on various existing revenue models for free online Software as a Service (SaaS).

The results were not very encouraging. Everyone seemed to depend on either PPC ads, banners, up-selling premium products or more storage or adding a search bar to generate revenue. Our experience told us that none of these options would be sustainable in a business application. So we kept thinking.

We knew there were aspects of the way people use BlueTie that should lend themselves to generating revenue without ruining the user experience. Users of organization and communication software like ours spend a lot of time in the application on a daily basis (our users average 4.6 hours daily). They schedule and organize their business activities while using the application. And they can easily share those schedules and activities with others.

Eventually we figured out how to make it work and decided to go for it. Patents were filed, partners brought on board and engineering challenged. The result is something really different: a free application that earns money without intrusive text ads, banners or limited capabilities.

We‘re pretty excited about it.