Today we enabled our first Flowr translation: Slovenian. While it’s a small language  in global sense, it presented interesting challenges because of it’s grammatical complexity. By using it as a test case, we’ve shown that Flowr can be translated into most complex European languages and prepared translation infrastructure.

You can enable it from your profile settings (‘edit profile’).

Would you like to contribute your language? Let us know and we’ll give you access to translation interface.

“Flowr should speak my language,”

was one of the most often heard feature request in our last months’ survey. Since English is not our native language, we know that using localized interface instantly makes the user experience better.

That is why we’re announcing Flowr Translate program, that enables Flowr community to help localize Flowr into your own language. Standing on shoulders of open-source community, we created easy-to-use web translation interface. This way everyone can contribute, without having to learn specialized tools. We do support them, if you prefer using them.

Now, we need your help with translations. If you’d love to see Flowr in your language and help with translation, send us an email and we’ll give you access. To thank you for your contributions, we have premium accounts for your own networks.

While small distributed teams happily embrace online services like Flowr, established enterprises often require additional branding and security requirements to ensure that access limitations are properly in place.

With this in mind we’re happy to announce two branding related features and a new security enhancement:

1. Custom Flowr themes for your network

This feature allows you to prepare custom themes for your network users. This ensures that default look of your network is aligned with your other intranet and corporate web-pages.

To learn more about setting custom themes for your network, check out our blog post about Flowr custom themes.

2. Flowr on your domain

Second most requested feature was the ability to map your Flowr network to your own sub-domain, e.g. flowr.mycompany.com or community.mycompany.com.

To setup Flowr network on your domain, send the name of your network to support@theflowr.com and we’ll send you instructions on how to configure your DNS servers.

3. Limit access to your Flowr network based on IP ranges

Depending on security policies inside your enterprise you might need to limit access to your network to certain IP addresses. Inside admin panel you can define your network ranges. This way only people that are inside your corporate network or are using VPN can access web version of your Flowr network.

Both IP address and CIDR notation are supported.

What other Enterprise features are you looking forward to?

Corporate branding is important for many aspects and while we believe that our default themes provide a positive experience towards online applications, we also support creating custom themes for your network.

To define custom themes for your network, go to Admin -> Themes and define your theme in Custom theme area:

After setting your theme, press Add custom theme button, to add the theme to available set of themes.

Once your theme is added, you can go to Edit Profile -> Profile Settings -> Themes to test your Custom theme in action:

Your custom theme will be default theme for new users in your network. Existing users will have to set it manually.

Have you created a great theme for your network? Send us a screenshot and we’ll feature it.

Listening to your feedback about Flowr, we hear a lot of questions regarding capabilities for Flowr that many times relate to the task of managing a project: deadlines for tasks, dependencies, master list of open task and similar activities. Since Flowr already includes a simple task management tool, it looks like we just need to extend it with additional features.

Discussing ideas on how to extend tasks we quickly realized that there is a big difference between building a project management tool and an information sharing tool. Project management is largely about tasks, deadlines and who has to do what and that doesn’t fit into idea of streaming river of news and information that helps your team know better what’s happening and easy sharing of ideas.

That is why we decided to focus on creating the best service for privately and securely sharing ideas inside your team. This way we’ll be able to provide the best user experience and keep the service itself simple to use.

To make it easier to manage projects with help of Flowr, we’ll be providing strong integration with popular project management tools. This way you can use the best tool for the job.

While we have our own favorites for managing project, we would like to hear which ones you are using. This will help us prioritize which ones to integrate first. Leave a comment or send us an email.

When we released Flowr, we were focusing on user experience and getting the best tool out to you. Following with the updates in the last month, most notably Google Apps integration, we’ve shown that Flowr is ready for serious use in enterprise. One thing that was missing was a clear pricing plan.

Today we are announcing Flowr pricing – it’s 5 USD per user per month for hosted solutions. We also offer educational and NGO discounts.

To help you further evaluate Flowr and as a thank you for trying us, we’re extending everyone’s network to a full Premium account for free until the end of September 2010.

There will also always be a free version of Flowr.

We recognize that pricing per user might not be the best option for everyone and we’re working on more optimized packages for different types of companies and teams. We’ll be announcing them in the fall, together with exciting new features that we’re busy developing.

If you have questions regarding pricing or would like to offer your perspective, please let us know.

When we talk about enterprise collaboration people often think of email, intranets and wikis. But our experience tells us that these tools are not always welcomed with open hands. Old Intranet solutions were pushed down from management and did not cache up. Wiki’s were an attempt where companies tried to give “power” to employees directly, often failed because of usage complexity.

In personal lives, people are increasingly turning away from e-mail as their communication tool towards social networks. Facebook has proven that microblogging in form of status updates, private messages is much easier and attractive when used in our everyday lives.

As modern enterprises move towards decentralised work units with teleworking and employees on the go, it’s time to re-examine how we do business. E-mail is one of the most cited reasons for lost productivity, closely followed by meetings.

While some enterprises are trying to optimise their e-mail usage, others are learning from emerging technologies in consumer markets. Facebook has shown us that next generation of social interaction will come in a form of intelligent news stream of status updates. Receiving highly relevant information from social graphs with ability to comment, share and promote items present highly engaging and personalised experience, which in turn means more interaction and engagement from users. Businesses that embrace this in their DNA will be more agile and have better turn-around time than the competition, that is still using previous generation of tools and processes.

Since launching Flowr last month, we heard one clear request from many of you: integration with Google Calendar and Google Docs as they are important part of the way your work.

We are happy to announce that Flowr is now available for Google Apps users. There are two main aspects of integration:

Google Docs integration allows you to upload the files directly to companies Google Docs or attach documents from Google Docs to your messages.

Google Calendar integration allows you to Synchronize events from Flowr network to special calendar – Flowr events.

Single sing on integration means that your users don’t need a special password for Flowr anymore, but login through your Google Apps. They’ll also get access to Flowr through Universal Location bar on top of their Google applications.

To get access to this functionality, go to Flowr for Google Apps at the Google Apps Marketplace and Add it to your domain. Signup process will allow you to convert your existing network or create a new one.

If you enjoy using Flowr, write a review on the Marketplace, so others will know what to expect.

On 7 June 2010, Flowr has been presenting at Central Europe Venture Forum (CEVF) in Budapest (Hungary). CEVF allow the most promising life sciences, clean technology and information technology entrepreneurs from Central Europe to meet and present themselves to active international investors and corporations seeking investment and partnerships. The Forum play an active role in the Central European innovation scene.

From the 45 pre-selected companies international jury of investors and experts selected Flowr as one of the 10 most promising companies based on criteria of their business potential, team experience, product / technology merit, competitive position, investment interest and project presentation quality.