Foldera Simplifies both the Desktop and Collaboration

I just took on a project with a company called Foldera.  I'll be rehearsing their founder-CEO Richard Lusk for a company launch presentation at an O'Reilly eTech Conference breakout session in about two weeks. Richard's more than a little apprehensive because eTech audiences have been known to treat product presentations about the same way a school of piranha treats a cow in midstream.

Personally, I don't think Richard has much to worry about. He's a quality guy who wants to show off some very cool technology and I think tech enthusiasts will applaud what his team has labored five years to create.

Foldera removes the near-universal Saturday morning hemorrhoid so many of us suffer in reorganizing our computer desktops, because the components of the multiple projects we are involved in are splattered throughout our email, SMS, calendars, ask lists apps and storage silos. Our projects become fragmented .  If we work with others on a project, each member of the team needs to synchronize versions, dates, etc. I cannot recall any tie when I was always current on all projects with all participants for more than one day in the past 20 years. Foldera will allow me--my workgroup or any size business group to stay always organized and current on everything all of the time and it does this with simplicity and elegance  Each activity folder contains everything related to that activity and it dynamically keeps your folder current as well as everyone else in the workgroup.  When you update, Foldera lets yo simply update all your workgroup collaborator's folders.

Now, most of you who know me, will smile knowingly, when I say I am not product guy  I'm an end userist and I work hard at seeing new technology from the perspectives of end users who are many circles away from geek-at-heart insiders. I try to explain technology to people who do not hang out at Web 2.0 mashups and still think Ajax is something you use to clean bathtubs. But, when I saw Foldera for the first time, it took less than two minutes for me to understand the disruptive implications of Fedora. I wanted to slap myself on the forehead and wonder why no one had previously done this including me. The answer is that it is hard to accomplish what these guys have done and the technology they employed simply was invented yet. Unlike me, Michael Arrington, is a product guy's product guy and he has posted a superb Foldera description over here.

Michael's readers are tech sophisticates and hard-nosed and cynical, just like eTech attendees are reputed to be.  He received about 15 pages of comments, many of which contended that Foldera is just another knock off of this product or that product and of course, someone contended that Mac users already have something like that, Mac always has cooler stuff, first.

Maybe Mac does have it for the 3.5% of of computer users employing that platform.  But Foldera, is for all of us. It is Open Source downloadable software that works on and with everything--Safari, Outlook, Windows, Firefox--whatever. This is important for work group collaboration. Other solutions mentioned really do similar tasks.  But they happen to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, require support and are designed just for the global enterprise. Foldera is a free download and most people who can write their own names can figure out how to use it.

Foldera is ideal for the most overlooked segment of the computerized business community--the small business user. Richard, whose roots are in Chicago and the construction industry, clearly has his heart on the side of the little guys of commerce.

Yet, I can see no reason why a global enterprise could not use Foldera, at least on a departmental level, unless they really like paying more money for software that requires far greater support.

I won't be at eTech, but if you are, I'd advise you to check out Foldera. If you happen to be a piranha by nature, I would ask you to be cautious--you are what you eat.

Comments

[Paul W.]

I'm a little confused. I also read the TechCrunch blog about this, and they described it as a web application. But now you're saying that it's "open source downloadable software". It sounds like maybe I need to download a client program to access it, then?

[Jeremy Pepper]

I'm confused, but on a different level - was this supposed to be a Naked post or an It Seems to Me post?

How do you determine what gets posted where?

[Shel Israel]

Paul,

I'm betting that Mike had it right and I had it wrong.

[Shel Israel]

jeremy,

You have a folder for each project. Everything relating to that project goes into the folder.

[Tony Garcia]

Shel,

Thanks for the kind comments about Foldera. I noticed Paul's question and your response and wanted to help clarify things.

Foldera is a web application - everything is entirely web-based, so you don't need to download anything in order to use it - assuming you already have a browser :)

Being totally web-based is what makes Foldera platform-independent, so Mac users can easily collaborate with their PC-using co-workers.

To keep Foldera as widely accessible as possible, we have worked very hard to insure that our service works on most popular browsers, including the "big 4" for PC: IE, Firefox, Netscape, and Opera, as well as Safari - we definitely want to include the Mac community as well!

Again, thanks for your comments - and sorry we'll miss you at eTech...

Tony Garcia
Web Developer
Foldera.com

[April]

Tony,
I have noticed a lot of comparison's of Foldera to "competing" companies technologies but I don't think anyone has the capability to automatically sort you data except for Foldera. Is that correct?

[George Scott]

Foldera is no longer taking registrations and has deactivated there beta users accounts. http://www.officezilla.com is another system you can use, it is free, but it has a better track record of staying online (since 2002).