Due to the surprising success of our Microsoft Office Enabled Plug-in, I am happy to announce we are releasing a new version of that as well as 4 more plug-ins for Photoshop, 3ds Max, Open Office and Acrobat Professional. In addition, we have created an Apps Directory which will link to these, and other popular plug-ins and applications that use the Box API.

We’ve seen some great development in the past few months, and we’d like to show off all the hard work of our API network developers by making their software available to all Box users. Additionally, James Levy has joined our team and will now head up the API dev network.The Apps page will be a directory of all enabled plug-ins, applications or other projects. Feel free to start browsing and trying some out, or if you would like to develop one yourself, click here for our listing requirements, and we’ll add it to the apps page.

http://www.box.net/apps

Thanks to everyone who used our Office Plug-in and gave us feedback, we hope you enjoy this expansion of that idea.

-AD

As the only iPhone user on the Box team, a position I proudly hold, I’ve been very impressed with what the iPhone allows me to do while travelling. Besides being a fun and pretty device, I found it solves quite a few problems as well. Having perused the web for iphone apps that would be useful on the go, I’d like to share some of my favorites with you here. I’d also like to announce Box has made an iPhone app as well, allowing you to access and share files on the iPhone. Click here to get it.

Top 10 Actually Useful iPhone Apps

	1. iBox – http://i.box.net Having filled my own iPhone, all 8gb, with music, being able to access additional files has been really useful. Use it to stream music that didn’t fit on the pod, store PDF, word or excel files and read them on the go, or access any other files you have stored on Box.net.
	2. FlickIM - http://www.flickim.com I’ve seen so many AIM chat clients “for” the iPhone, I was happy to finally find one that works well. It’s a very simple and clean instant messaging client. Unlike some of the others, this one loads and refreshes quickly.
	3. Digg - http://digg.com/iphone I know Apple advertised the NYTimes, but let’s face it, a news site formatted for the phone is much more fun to read. Since it complements the iPhone audience anyways, what’s better than Digg to go?
	4. Recopies - www.101cookbooks.com/iphonerecipes/ I was in Trader Joes a few days ago, and having the iPhone was very handy. This is a beautifully formatted site with recipes and meal ideas. I will admit, however, I wasn’t entirely happy with the selection offered, so I have www.epicurious.com bookmarked as well.
	5. Games – http://ichess.morfik.com/aqua.html Finally, a game to play until Apple *cough* lets you buy games in iTunes *cough*
	6. Move Times - http://www.moviesapp.com/#_theaters Pretty self explanatory, get movie times anywhere. This is so much easier to use this than a standard movie website. Fast and painless.
	7. Munitime - http://www.munitime.com/ For those of you in the bay area, this is especially useful. No more waiting around for an hour for the bus, use this to get schedules and locations of stops.
	8. Banking – www.yourbank.com Ok, so I’m cheating, this isn’t an iPhone app, but until Quicken does something, this is pretty useful. If you have online banking, use your bank’s website to check account balances, make payments or transfer money. Stop overdrawing, check your balance with the iPhone before you buy something!
	9. Dictionary - http://idotg.com/apps/iword.php Assuming you can use the iPhone keyboard, you might enjoy having a dictionary accessible at all times. Next time one of your friends uses a big word, just say you have to make a call.
	10. Yelp – www.yelp.com Again, not an iPhone app, but Google maps only helps so much when you want ideas of where to eat or what to do. Yelp is a great site for doing exactly that, and with the iPhone, you’ll be able to get restaurant reviews without planning ahead of time.

Hope you find these useful, please let me know if you have any suggestions for the Box app adunn@box.net

-AD

In the happy mainframe era (80’s), one question in the enterprise was “Should we use PCs in the office?”. The same problem happened in the 90’s with the transformations linked to the adoption of the Internet. In both cases, CIOs could not stem the tide: employees would naturally bring new technologies they used at home to the office… In the end, the question was not “Should we implement these new tools?, but rather “How can we adopt changes that our employees are bringing anyway, while making sure our systems and data are safe?”. And it’s the same today with wikis, blogs, and other web based tools such as Box.

If you visit our site frequently you probably noticed an “Enterprise” section on our home page. Many of you use Box for personal needs. But a large portion of you use Box to be more efficient at work, whether that is a home businesses (architects, marketing, PR agencies, consultants…) or a large corporation. From your feedback, Box has been very successful at solving the problems of single employees needing to access files from anywhere, exchange large files, or quickly set up collaborative workgroups. Also, distributed teams tell us Box makes it easy to set up a space to collaborate on files with clients, partners, contractors and any other actors involved in the extended enterprise. We are seeing users making our service part of their working tools to be more productive in their daily operations, advocating our service in their companies, and converting other employees to the Box cause…

However, until we introduced Box Enterprise, our bottom-up approach (where the base of the corporate pyramid is pushing our service within the company) had its own limits. While employees were happily finding a simple way to collaborate with people outside of their firewall, the IT department had its own concerns. IT’s role is to ensure that the company’s “digital assets” are safe, that the tools their employees use are aligned with the company policies, and that the IT tools in place make employees more efficient in their day to day job. If you work at a large company you probably know what kind of friction can happen, right? So we saw the need to provide the IT department with an easy way to deploy Box and have an overview of what employees do on the network, while continuing to offer a flexible and easy to use solution for the end-user. This is what we included in the Enterprise package. This will hopefully contribute to mid and large size companies adopting Box with a top-down approach, helping both their employees and the organization - Top-down meets bottom-up.

And you? Do you see your company benefiting from Box? Do you have stories about your company adopting Web 2.0 tools? We’re curious to know what you think about our approach…