One of our most important upcoming milestones is the release of our public API and our App Store.
This is something we’re very excited about and working very hard to achieve; but being such a young and small company means we have limited resources to do everything we want right now.
We will enable developers to create applications that will open inside Kohive just like a native application. The apps will load in iFrames inside our windows and will be hosted by the developers. The great thing about this is that developers won’t need to learn a new language in order to build an app for us and any existing web app can run inside Kohive with very little effort.
Since opening the app automatically authenticates the user, it means they only have to login to one place to have access to several online apps. Our app store will give developers a unique space online to sell collaborative apps where they’ll keep 70% of the revenue and also be able to charge their own monthly fees for their services.
We plan to be as open as possible and allow developers to do whatever they want. But only apps that maintain our guidelines for style and usability will get our seal of approval and get featured on the store.
For the latest information about our API and other news please follow us onwww.twitter.com/kohive
For decades the desktop interface found in all operating systems has been the proven solution for working with several applications. Kohive aims to bring that desktop power to the web, and become the definitive platform for web applications. We realise that’s ambitious, but we like that.
So, to get us started with this colossal project, we developed a few standard set of apps that demonstrate the potential that our platform has and how users can use it for several different purposes. Sharing photos, posting messages, displaying tweets, importing videos, collecting bookmarks, drawing together, chatting… it’s all there!
Where do we go from here? Well, we are now focusing on making this set of apps more useful for web developers as they are always keen to try new tools that make their lives easier and more productive. Also, who best to target than the very people who will hopefully one day be making apps for our platform?
We are really excited with what we’ve built so far, but what you see is really just the very start. So, what’s coming next?
Desktop syncing app so your Kohive files are always in sync with your computer and that of every hive member. That means everyone working on a project will always have the latest files. And once we have the address book and calendar apps, these will also be synced with everyone’s computers as well! Magical!
iPhone app What’s a good website without a good iPhone app? First we’ll likely launch a push notifier application so you get alerted of new Kohive events. Soon after we’ll release a full featured app with all its main applications, file access, etc.
More apps • RSS Feed Reader • Gmail viewer • Address Book + Calendar • Opinion Poll / Event Planner • Wiki • Widgets (like weather, calculator, world clock, etc etc) • Real time collaborative word editor
iFrame apps This will let you create a link to your favorite web apps - so you can load gmail, google docs, and any such app from within Kohive for easier access. Say you’re working on a project that uses the bug tracking tool Light House… you can create an iFrame app to Light House and load it alongside all the other Kohive apps.
API We believe Kohive is the best platform on the web. It’s the young love child of a great operating system and a social network. And we can’t wait to release our API and let developers create lots more great applications to distribute through our app store.
Harder, better, faster, stronger There is so much room for improvement on our current apps we can’t quite list all the things that we plan on doing - but get ready for a harder better faster stronger Kohive soon(ish).
London, UK—8th October—Kohive, the online collaborative desktop that facilitates communication and collaboration between groups, today announces the launch of its range of premium services.
Aside from a large number of free applications that are part of the standard service, the premium service includes a task management app, increased file storage, and both an upcoming iPhone and desktop app which keeps users’ files, calendars and addresses in sync with their web interface.
After joining Kohive, the user is greeted with what looks like a computer desktop. There’s a dock of applications on the left and a tab panel at the bottom. Each of these tabs or “hives”, provides a completely separate space from which to invite people, share content and communicate with them live.
Kohive’s desktop interface allows for an unlimited number of uses since any number of web applications can be created and embedded into user generated hives. It’s a ‘collaboration platform’ where the user is in control.
Kohive’s founder Edward Sanchez gives a few examples:
“A freelancer could create hives to share and communicate with his team and clients. He’d create another hive to talk to his family, share photos and recipes. And another to share and talk to his closest friends. It’s that range of uses that makes the platform so effective.”
While other sites carry the legacy of page-driven navigation (each link takes the user to a new page) Kohive uses AJAX for seamless data retrieval and Ext JS, a new front-end JavaScript library that provides a desktop window driven interface. This means information loads more quickly and navigation is smoother as only the content (and not the page) gets transferred.
Edward Sanchez says:
“Design and usability is at the core of Kohive. The site mimics familiar user interfaces as well as using the latest technologies and best practices for user navigation. By doing so, we make sure that users can always get from A to B with a minimum amount of effort. Kohive is to current collaboration sites what the iPhone was to previous generation phones. It offers a superior user experience and an expandable service where custom applications can be installed. What you see now is really only the start - we’re working on lots of great apps and features that will be coming over the next few months - the Kohive roadmap is exciting for both users and developers”
To celebrate the launch of the premium suite of services, Kohive are giving users the opportunity to win some shiny prizes:
Tweet the Kohive URL for a chance to win an iPod Touch
Free account signups are entered in a competition to win a MacBook
Paid account signups are entered in a competition to win a custom coloured MacBook Pro
