We have made a couple of updates to SambaJAM. We have added Powerpoint to the family of office documents we support and introduced some enhancements to make it better to use. Thanks to our community for the feedback. Here is some information on whats in Release 1.1:

View Slideshows and Edit Powerpoint Documents Online

* We now support editing of PowerPoint online in Zoho.

A customer inspired me to look at how to improve SambaJAM, so that it would fit into their everyday workflow. Many of us use Google Calendar to keep a track of meetings and important dates. Well it is now possible to use Google Calendar while in SambaJAM.

Our Web Dashlet can be used to embed web pages of other sites and in addition allows users to embed their Google Calendars.

We have put together a guide below on how you can add your Google Calendar to your SambaJAM Dashboard using our Web Dashlet.

There are a whole bunch of challenges to be faced if you are thinking of working from home or are already remote working. Though you save on the commute to work you still have to deal with the psychological journey from the bedroom to your home office and if you live in an urban cul-de-sac it is unlikely that Prêt a Manager or a Starbucks have procured next door’s garage for you to pop to for lunch. So, to help the work at home pioneers, we have come up with some online comforts and new gadgets to make your home feel more like the epicenter of your personal corporate universe.

1. No one likes talking to themselves. Fire, hire or hold that “one to one” virtually using Voice Over Internet with www.skype.com together with the machismo new JABRA Dog Tag Bluetooth Headset.




2. As you predicted working at home your personal wealth will soar. While it is growing keep an eye on your Finance and Expenses over the internet with the powerful www.xero.com.



3. Pretend you oversee the sales arm of a large global firm. Email a bunch of people you don’t know with angelic ease using www.mailchimp.com.



4. The desk drawer and the gopher kid only exist in the movies from the 80’s. Share your documents and the office memo with the rest of the team online and in technicolor with www.sambajam.com.



5. No time to grab lunch? let lunch grab you, order food over the internet with www.tescodirect.com.



6. Missing the timpani from the office lift, let background music lift your spirits when the house is too quiet with www.spotify.com.



7. No office can be complete without a designer executive chassis. This one is the Ferrari of Office Chairs for a low carbon drive, The Charta Chair.



8. The world's sleekest desk you can eat your cereal off it. The Computer Desk by Milk.



9. So reflective you can gaze incessantly at your own corporate reflection. The only feedback you need is yours with the Ultra slim Sony TV with 3D Glasses.



10. So you don’t have forty stories, your home office is in a bungalow or a flat in a two story converted semi. Doesn’t mean you need to feel left out. Get big brother to watch your new pimped out home office with security from Vitamindinc when your away.

At Sambastream, we are trying to build the Future Workplace.

What does that mean?

The Future Workplace, is a term we coined to describe our ideal workplace. If you are a project manager trying to manage your local team, international teams, intergalatic teams whilst managing "a complex set of stakeholders". You know what we are talking about.

(April 13, 2010 - Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)

Today David Cameron was discussing flexible working at a Celebrating Women's Organisation at Southwark. There is a benefit to both Employees and Business Owners to support flexible working. It enables Employees to balance their work and lives, whether the Employee is a carer for family members, or whether it is for the flexibility to spend time on other commitments. For Business Owners, their is a benefit to support remote working as it enables their companies to retain staff or access a talent pool of professional employess at a lower cost based on part-time hours.

SambaJAM aims to support such opportunities, enabling employees and business owners to work securely and productively whether in the same office or from remote locations, such as working from home.


SambaJAM provides a structured way for businesses to manage their employees and their work, whether it is a financial controller's excel spreadsheet, a solicitor's legal document or an editor's final draft. SambaJAM enables you to create flexible work areas online to share documents and view auditing trails and activity feeds that provide you with the confidence and transparency that your remote workers are deliverying.

If flexible working is important to you, why not try out SambaJAM. Visit our product site at www.sambajam.com or contact us at www.sambajam.com/contact

Wow. I have always wanted to have my Adam Garcia moment and be an Iron Man at the La Honda Institute like in the hilarious movie "The first $20 Million is always the hardest". Looks like the invention of the $99 computer is just around the corner. My dearest mother in-law, who I have just discovered is web 2.0, sent me a link to a very interesting talk by Pranav Mistry inventor of SixthSense. Watch the clip below to see the possibilities of Pranav's invention... uses a Sony type eyecam object recognition and a mini projector to turn your panaroma and any surface into an interactive environment, I am sure a hologram version is just around the corner. May be Amazon and Sony should pack up the ebook readers and come out with some headered paper instead for the SixthSense device. It gives a whole new meaning to OLED

The First $20 Million Is Always The Hardest

SixthSenses $300 Computer

Gary Hustwit has produced an interesting documentary about the relationship behind design of our everyday objects and the people who create them. We deliberate emphatically about the design of SambaJAM so that it works for our users and it is inspiring to listen to the designers in the documentary discuss their own ideas and design principles.

We recently made an interim decision not to support the IE6 browser due to the gradual decline in browser usage and due to the many issues and limitations its rendering engine has in meeting latest HTML standards. SambaJAM will be launched on Google Chrome, FireFox, Safari and IE8 and will have support for IE7.

The latest news on the web is that the new Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 will not provide full support for IE6, Salesforce has announced future UI enhancements will not be supported on IE6, Google owned YouTube will be phasing out support for IE6, in addition Google have announced the beta launch of their Google Chrome IFrame,  to seemlessley replace the IE rendering engine on IE6, 7 and 8.

Understandably many organisations still use IE6 due to having internal applications built n tested to work with it. Migrating from IE6 can therefore be quite costly, the Google Chrome Frame looks to be an important option in reducing the burden of migrating completely away from the old browser.

We are following the progress of Google Chrome Iframe and will review our decision not to support IE6. Ultimately we will respond to our customers needs.

For those of you who have never ventured into web development or for those who would like a good reference for common issues surrounding the IE6 Browser, the following link provide useful information about common limitations: IE6 Common Issues

IE6 is like an old car that has come to the end of it's motoring days. Repairing its parts are no longer the cost effective option. It may be time to say thank you to IE6 for its years of service, but we now need more fuel efficient engines, inbuilt satnav, bluetooth handsfree kits, power assisted wheel breaking, automatic lights and seat warmers for more enjoyable and productive web travel.