Gatelets Blog and News

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Gatelets is now leveraging Marcellus.tv for video delivery - these guys know how to deliver video and it allows us to start publishing video content with confidence. This is a major direction for Gatelets as we deliver new services for our customers and also release BrandBox 2.0.

Marcellus.tv

Gatelets and BrandSpecs LLC have created a strategic and technical partnership. The partnership enables Gatelets and BrandSpecs to leverage each others technical strengths and increased resources. In months to come we will release further details about the relationship and how it is helping our customers.

Brandspecs.co.in

Ok, we agree, this blog is about as boring as it gets! The site is pretty darn bland. Well, it has to do with the fact that we are so busy working with our customers and working on BrandBox 2.0. There is some damn cool stuff coming along, we promise! We have some new strategic partnerships in place and are working with some cool cats in various companies. Anyway, if you are here, you might as well read this really cool endorsment from one of the BEST developers we have ever met!!!!

"I've been in software development for 20 years and Jean is the only person I've encountered with true marketing and web-design talents in combination with the level of software-engineering skills necessary to adequately realize those abilities. Gatelets is a testament to Jean's highly-perceptive insight into the problems companies encounter everyday, problems that largely go unsolved and become part of the normal inefficiencies that increase costs and frustrate employees. Jean's innovative solutions, robust software engineering practices and UI design skills have put the Gatelets product-suite in a class of their own." - Nick Chappell, Software Developer & Architect, Sharkscope"

"Jean is a force of nature. He is one of those rare individuals whose skill set covers the spectrum from concept/strategy to the actual nuts and bolts of implementation... and he has the energy to match. His ability to approach a project simultaneously from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives allows him to quickly leap-frog to an effective, engaging solution. Jean had a keen intuition for the right aesthetic & tone to suit my project, and the impementation was flawless."

Shane Curnyn.

Get a super early sneak peek at events handling in BrandBox 2.0. A full video collection is being put together along with the new Gatelets.com site. Send us your thoughts/opinion/suggestions etc.

Click here

We have updated MikaelaSouth (refer here to see old site). The original site was 100% Flash based and since Steve Jobs lashed out at Adobe we started thinking about some of those Flash-based sites. The new site is 100% standards-based and only uses jQuery for animation. (Gallery, home sliders etc). We will be extending the site in days to come to include 100% Google Blogger capabilities.

Check it out

We have begun work on the new Gatelets.com. The site will be released along with BrandBox 2.0, expected end of summer 2010. Any projects or new work will be reflected in the new site and the current site will be archived. TeamServer and Webkit will be phased out and we will be focusing purely on the BrandBox code streams.

This site has so much more behind it than you will first realize - it is designed to look simple, but it is jam-packed with many features and capabilities. Some of the features:

• Powerful content management system - contributors can add news, learning information, and events without knowing HTML or calling on other experts
• Content can auto-expire (example: news), be sticky (promote one piece of news more than another), define whether item is on home page or not, assign content to different categories
• Real-time search of huge wine portfolio - simple or advanced searched options
• Immediately see where wine can be bought or enjoyed. Integrated Google maps show locations immediately using geo-coordinates.
• Suppliers can run current reports to see their inventory depletion etc. - full integration with backend business system. Users can export to Excel or have custom (on-the-fly) PDF output.
• Sales Managers can create events and accept registrations in minutes - no need to wait for IT or other site experts.

This site is designed to be a content powerhouse - it is designed to enable Henry Wine Group to promote wines or information faster than ever before and provide customers with real value-add services. The site is built using Gatelets WebKit.

www.henrywinegroup.com

Steve has lashed out against Adobe - read here

Gatelets has used Flash in many projects, however we have already begun a concerted effort to move to jQuery or other technologies to create effective interfaces. Our goal with all our new sites and software is to be small-device ready and all software is now tested on Android phones, iPhones and iPad. Our stated mission is to help customers tell their story better - it seems nuts to have such a mission and not be fully capable of supporting of the communication vehicles.

There is a lot taking place that is NOT reflected on this site - we don't have time right now. Gatelets is developing BrandBox 2.0. TeamServer and WebKit will be replaced with the BrandBox system. BrandBox will be supporting Enterprise-level customers, Small businesses and Home/Personal use. Some of the BrandBox features:

• Full CMS - no coding needed. Create dashboards, pages and deep content segments. Add images, videos and files to anything in seconds.
• iPad, iPhone and Android support
• Unlimited dashboards
• Localization/Internationalization capabilities
• Powerful and extensive "Event Management" (Manage number of registrations, timelines [including multi-day events], registrations and various other rules)
• Powerful news and blog management - everything you would expect and more
• New Forums environment - add forums in minutes
• TeamTalk improvements
• New bug-tracking system
• New Albums - support creation of image and video albums. Select many album formats and integrate directly into pages and dashboards.
• Powerful file management - add resources with ease. Many download options (multiple file downloads accross many dashboards at once etc.)
• New security - typically portals only think of users and group. BrandBox takes it further and allows a business to create additional companies with associated users and groups. This means BrandBox 100% supports sales/partner/customer channel development. Security can be set at the dashboard level, page level or even asset/resource level.
• New support for "Field Trial" dashboards (Beta programs)
• Ability to create "quick" surveys and add anywhere
• Extensive reporting - see how the dashboards are being used
• Flexible "Gatelets" - add content and functionality to any dashboard with ease - maps, custom content, tabbed-content, video, files and more
• Many other personalization capabilities and tools to help companies communicate better.

Ok, that is a mouthful. To help you understand what BrandBox does, we are developing a brand new Gatelets.com site and this will show off the product in many simple and effective ways. The new site includes video, case studies and a ton of other goodies.

As indicated above, we are releasing a "Small Business" version - this enables companies to leverage many of the BrandBox features within their small business corporate site or micro site. (Content management, events and news management, portfolios and albums). Customers can upgrade to the Enterprise version in seconds. Gatelets works with you to create a 100% custom look and we plug BrandBox into the mix so that you can use your new site to communicate quickly and effectively. Want an example? Check out www.sbxip.com

If this is of interest to you and you want to get an early peek, contact us and we will put your on our mailing list or discuss how you can participate in early Beta programs.

We are 2 weeks away from launching HenryWineGroup.com. This is a super-exciting site with a full background CMS (employees with appropriate security grants can manage all content from events through to learning and news), sales event system (Sales managers can create their own wine-tasting events in seconds and start accepting registrations), full live portfolio search and customer reporting. Suppliers can get live reports on purchase orders, inventory depletions and other sales activity.

Using Gatelets WebKit and a custom event registration system, Henry Wine Group had over 1000 people register for their Taste the World 2010 Event. This included 5 exciting seminars (The Ultimate Under the Table Tasting by Peter Neptune M.S., Cain and Hanzell Vertical - "They do Age" Tasting, 2008 Burgundies, Piedmont and Taste of Tuscany). The three events took place in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Gatelets is currently working with Henry Wine Group to deliver a new Web 2.0 site jam-packed with business features including real-time supplier depletion reporting and powerful portfolio searching capabilities. The site is expected to release May 2010. For more information, visit Henry Wine Group

Gatelets has helped Tanya launch her business with this new site developed using WebKit. The site is able to scale as needed and as Tanya's business needs change.
www.tanyasgardening.com We worked with John Douglas Joy, a talented illustrator, to create a unique logo and identity.

Gatelets is hard at work on BrandBox 2.0. This will be a significant update to the products provided by Gatelets and will be the solution replacing both TeamServer and WebKit. Gatelets will be focusing on a single product that will encompass functionality found in the current BrandBox 1.0, WebKit and TeamServer 1.3 and add a whole lot more. Some of the new stuff:

• Code from the ground-up. We have learnt so much in 2 years - BrandBox 2.0 will leverage these best practices and experiences. BrandBox will be optimized to support a global community, built to perform super fast in the Bay Area, East Coast, Europe ... anywhere.
• Streamlined and tested widgets - calendars, charting, spreadsheetds and more.
• Power Event and News management system - tons of new features to help companies manage news and events in a whole new way!
• Flexible content and dashboard environment supporting text, video and images albums
• In-built Training system
• In-built Forum environment
• Microsite and Corporate site connector - share and manage content on many sites
• Powerful reporting - cool new charting environment and automated monthly delivery of reports for executives
• New workflows to support the Marketing and Executive teams - support product ideation and creation process.
• and much much more...

BrandBox 2.0 will be available in the 2nd quarter, 2010. We will be updating the entire Gatelets.com Web site to provide everything needed to understand the product. So, if you have questions in the meantime, just contact us.

Gatelets just released the site www.avacen.com, built using Gatelets WebKit. AVACEN is an innovative product that non-invasively heats or cools blood - enabling you to change core temperature in minutes - not hours. Simply place your hand in the glove for 5 to 10 minutes to immediately control your core body temperature.

Today Gatelets has released TeamServer 1.3. Below is an exerpt from Vertical's announcement to about 2800 companies.

"Vertical is thrilled to announce several important updates to V-Connect, our second generation partner Website, including:

• Enhanced Search - Search engine has been extended to now search over assets at the document level (searches PDF/Word file contents)
• RSS feeds - Automatic RSS feed creation for assets, notifies user when assets have been added or updated.
• Large file support - Improvements for large file downloads (Save > File extended to include resume/cancel, if download interrupted)
• Extensive layout and visual improvements

Gatelets has begun working with The Henry Wine Group. Gatelets is helping develop a new corporate site with many new interactive components to help customers find the right quality wines. Our goal will be to take the TeamServer framework and expose many new tools suppliers and users will find very useful. You can learn about Henry Wine Group - click here

Gatelets just released the SBX IP micro site. Similar to Wave IP, SBX IP works transparently with the V-Connect environment, enabling administrators to push news and events immediately to SBX IP and then begin capturing event registrations.

SBX IP is developed using the TeamServer framework, enabling Vertical to create consistent sites delivering powerful capabilities.

Gatelets just released the Wave IP micro site. This site works transparently with the Vetical Partner Portal V-Connect - meaning information such as news, training and events are all pushed out from V-Connect to this site and others. The Wave IP site provides an overview of the product line and underlying applications.

Wave IP, V-Connect and SBX IP are all built using the TeamServer framework.

Wonderful and Gatelets have released The Green Wine Book site to support the release of the book by Céline Guillou. You can learn about the book, register for future information or even order copies.

We have started work on something pretty neat - the 'Green Wine Book'. The Green Wine Book, the only comprehensive guide to California's greenest wineries and vineyards. Fresh off the press, this first edition lists more than 120 green wineries as well as information and tips on understanding organic and Biodynamic wine.You can pick up a copy of The Green Wine Book at Yield wine bar in San Francisco. (on 3rd Street) Working with Wonderful we will be developing the new Web site that will also provide eCommerce functionality and a bunch of other interactive goodies. The site will be driven by both TeamServer 1.2 and WebKit. We will post information on this new venture in weeks to come. If you are interested in this, consider subscribing to the feed.

Today was a long day for the Gatelets crew - we have finally released version 1.2 of TeamServer. After extensive testing and working with customers, we have released a brand new version of the TeamServer framework. The V-Connect version of TeamServer has also been released. V-Connect from Vertical Communications has over 1640 partners/customers and is supporting thousands of users.

Working with our partners such as Vertical Communications, Inc, we tackled usability, performance and key new requirements. The news environment has been created from the ground up to provide a significant level of flexibility and power. Reading these blogs, you will see that they tend to 'roll down the page', however with TeamServer 1.2 you have the power to work with pieces of news and assemble them along with video and images in many many ways including pushing news to other micro-sites. It is all very exciting. 1.2 also has many enhancements in content management, security and reporting.

Now you might wonder why we are using Blogger.com to deliver these blogs? After all Gatelets.com is built using TeamServer and WebKit? We did this to work with and test the various Java APIs from Google. This is the beauty of the Web 2.0 world - you can leverage services (AJAX, Java, Web Services,...) to obtain content from varied sources such as SalesForce.com, Siebel, Jira, Google or Yahoo! Maps, Blogging services, FaceBook, LinkIn and of course Twitter and package them in a desired way.

Interestingly, we demonstrated TeamServer to another company called Vertical*i Inc. today. The response was from the Account Executive was "You have something here that is quite fascinating!" - this feedback makes our day.

In future blogs we will be talking about projects we are working on such as 'The Green Wine Book' and provide thoughts on services we are leveraging such as Google's APIs, Zazzle.com, Balsamiq Mockups and more.

Subscribe to this feed if you are interested in keeping up to speed on Gatelets and the new TeamServer product.

Gatelets Team

We recently started using a product called Balsamiq - this is an Adobe AIR application that is installed and enables you to do rapid prototyping and mockup development. This is one of the coolest and simplest applications we have seen in a long time. Really worth checking it out.