ZipLine Blog

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This is the new Dashboard menu.  Here you can see recent activity in your account, reminders of upcoming meetings and due dates, and lists of all of the action items you have coming up.  Also notice that we've changed the orientation of the menu bar to horizontal to allow you to make greater use of horizontal space with our windowing system.

This is the dashboard window for a project.  The sub-tabs allow you several different ways to view the tasks and other information associated with the project, including a map view (formerly called ZipBoard).  Tabs across the top still appear as needed based on the content you've added to a project.  On the right-hand side you'll find the action bar with primary and related actions you may want to use.

The personal to-do list has been simplified so that you have more space to look at other windows while using it.  We've also improved your ability to filter and categorize to-do's.

Our interface is still optimized for Smartphones, so you have access to all your important information wherever you are.  No need to download an app, it works directly from your phone's web browser! Still want to see more?  Check out the ZipLine overview video here to get a full tour of the new look.

It’s been an interesting week in the world of web development. Microsoft’s patent suit against Salesforce.com has sparked a tremendous amount of discussion ranging from analytical to angry. The breadth of the nine patents invoked by Microsoft has caused particular alarm to many companies using web app technology because, taken at face value, they seem to cover a number of practices that are quite standard and widely used in the industry. For example one of the alleged infringements stems from Microsoft’s patent on a “[s]ystem and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu.”

While the facial scope of these patents may be alarming to some, the patents themselves are really a secondary issue to Microsoft’s decision to file suit. If Microsoft truly does hold patents on these commonly used web development practices, then why is it only now seeking to enforce them, and why against Salesforce?

Several theories have been floating around to explain Microsoft’s actions. One possibility is that Microsoft is looking to use its patent arsenal and legal muscle to undercut Salesforce which is a direct competitor to Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM, and one which had been making some major inroads into the CRM market over the last few years. It may also be looking to establish an advantage over Salesforce's Force.com platform which is a major player in the rapidly growing cloud computing market that Microsoft is trying to break into with their Azure platform. In either case, Microsoft’s interest is less in protecting the patents themselves, and more in using them as a weapon against competitors it perceives to be a threat. This would be good news for other web development companies… at least until they reach the level of being perceived as a threat by Microsoft.

A second possibility is that Microsoft is simply seeking to preserve their patents, and Salesforce makes a strategic target because 1. it’s a big enough name to be recognizable 2. it lacks a sizeable patent portfolio of its own with which to counter-claim and 3. it lacks the resources to fight an endless litigation battle. This would also suggest Microsoft won’t be seeking broad enforcement of these patents anytime soon, though they would remain as a potential axe hanging over the head of most web applications.

Yet another possibility is that Microsoft simply is getting serious about enforcing these patents and want web application development to be something that nearly requires a license from Microsoft. This is certainly the scariest possibility for web developers, very few of whom are large enough to even survive discovery in a legal battle with Microsoft. If Microsoft comes calling, you’d either have to work out a license agreement from a severely disadvantaged bargaining position, or you’d have to pack it in. Fortunately there is reason to believe this isn’t Microsoft’s motivation.

The entire system of software patents is a legal house of cards. Software patents represent a grafting of modern circumstance onto a system originally intended to protect tangible products and inventions. Having evolved rapidly from a mixture of appellate court cases and Patent Office decisions, the current framework is ill-understood and relies largely on selective and minimal enforcement by many of the largest patent holders. A behemoth like Microsoft suddenly laying the smack down with it’s plethora of patents could be enough to provoke Congressional review of the system, which those major players would likely wish to avoid.

All this is of course speculation, and it may be many months before we have any inclination where this case is headed. Especially if Microsoft is reluctant to settle, as some have theorized. For now all web developers can do is continue going about their business and keep an eye on how this suit unfolds.

Sometimes its the little things that make you happy. Making the subway right as the door closes. Finding five dollars in your jacket pocket. A giant coffee mug.

The same is true for ZipLine. We've created a comprehensive solution that gives us everything we need to organize and run our business, but today the thing that made me smile was our Rapid Date Entry system. Whenever you're entering dates and times in ZipLine, for meetings, events, due dates, etc., you can just type the date in the way that feels natural to you.

For instance, for a meeting on Wednesday May 5th at 3pm, you could type "5/5 3pm". You could also type "Wednesday, 3pm." If it were the 4th you could type "tomorrow 3pm". You get the idea.

It would take a very long time to list all the variations you could use and honestly it's more fun to play with than to read about anyway. Our goal was simply to let you type in the information as quickly and easily as possible without having to check a calendar, count days, or tab through multiple input boxes.

Another way we've tried to make date management easy is by giving you the ability to use date offsets to manage dates relative to each other. So if you had a project that was due May 30th and wanted to create a task that was due two days before the project, you could simply enter "-2days" in the date field and that task would be due on May 28th. If the project deadline changed to June 5th, the task would then be due June 3rd. If you have a lot of linked deadlines this can save you tons of time updating your projects when you have to make adjustments to your timeline.

Is the ability to enter dates and times more quickly and easily going to revolutionize the internet landscape and usher in the era of Web 4.0? Probably not. But it does make my day just a little bit better, and sometimes it's those little things that you appreciate the most.

That's right, as promised our file syncing now works on both Mac and Windows platforms! Mac users: welcome to the full power of ZipLine. You can learn all about it on our website, or watch this video for a quick demo.

The end of March Madness is almost as sad for me as watching my bracket get obliterated during the Sweet Sixteen was. Still, it was one of the most exciting tournaments I can recall, and we had a great time following the action here at the office.

This year we used ZipLine to help organize our office pool, and it made things much easier. I created a project for the tournament pool, assigned everyone so they could participate, and set reminders and notifications to make sure they got their brackets in on time. Then I threw in a template bracket for everyone to fill out, and when they were done they just dropped their filled-out brackets in using our file syncing tool.

Once the tournament began we could all easily track and compare our brackets. We could even use message threads to discuss the games as they were played, and talk a little smack to each other.

Less time spent organizing, more time spent reading up on which 13-seeds to watch out for. Yet another sweet use of ZipLine.

It’s an exciting day for ZipLine. We’ve released version 2.0, our first full public release!