Syncnode

I’ve been testing a web collaboration app called Staction from Paste Interactive and its funky enough that I’ve decided to review. Their website claims that the tool isn’t a me-too Basecamp app and they weren’t kidding.

Main screen after login

The tool is extremely simple and elegant but because of its innovative design, is very functional too. Think of this as Yammer on steroids. So it is a micro-blogging tool at its core. However it has two input boxes instead of one.

Main textbox on top and the metabox just below

The top is your traditional text box. What really sets this tool apart is the ‘metabox’ below it where you basically tag your message. That might not sound very novel but there’s more to it than that. There are three types of tags, preset system tags, project tags and people tags.

The system tags are inbuilt and help you do things like assign a todo, track time or upload files. Todo’s are automatically appended to the bottom of your dashboard and time is recorded.

Dashboard

Attached file linked in stream

Project tags collate all the updates that relate to them and have their own set of permissions that can be set by the administrator. People tags can only be view by people they are assigned to. There are a few other cool functions such as custom views and assigning others todos that I haven’t had a chance to play with.

The only downside is that while you can get RSS feeds, there are no email updates. I’ve messaged the guys behind the project and they have told me that this is something they are thinking about building in. I think they are somewhat against it in principle as “Email is not a great solution for internal group communication. Keep your inbox for your clients.” I agree however I think unless you have lots of buy-in with your team or can mandate it, getting everyone off email is a big step.

In the works is their API and a desktop app. Let’s hope this catches on and we get a little ecosystem around it. Worth a try if you are want a simple but powerful.

Staction Pricing

Edit: Found a review with the creaters at ehub. Might be a worth a ready to find out a little more about the app and the people behind it.