Unofficial Spiceworks

So better late than never, Spiceworks have got 4.6 early access out for everyone to try it out and give feedback.

The early access window was meant to run from March 3rd-11th, but due to some last minute issues was released a day late.

Please read the following posts on information on how the early access program will work. Please be sure to test your favourite 4.5 features as well as the new 4.6 features!

• 4.6 Testing Guidelines
• 4.6 Testing Plan

Progress Bar as Spiceworks Starts Up The first thing you will notice when you start up Spiceworks 4.6 is the new splash screen. It will give new users the chance to watch some videos on how Spiceworks can help them.
The registration box has also been cleaned up and a “existing user” link put on to help stop confusion.

Click read more for the rest of the review

Read More…

Less than two months after releasing Spiceworks 4.0 we’ve released Spiceworks 4.1.  That would be our 16th release in three years (and I’m not counting the 20+ community releases).  Summer vacation?  What’s that?

Spiceworks 4.1 included 183 fixes, changes and new features, 159 of which we’ve documented in our 4.1 release notes. If you’ve used Spiceworks for a while you know that one of the reasons we can move so quickly between releases is we’ve “crowdsourced” product management.  More simply, users tell us what to build and vote on what they think is most useful with a Digg-like voting system (though we use chili peppers… natch).

Read more of this post on the SpiceBlog

Spiceworks is slowly but surely growing into everything IT.

As you can see by the image on the right timshady has been searching the Spiceworks before using Google. This is giant proof that Spiceworks is slowly growing and the information that Spiceworks user’s are producing is useful to everyone.

The community has so much information about a wide range of products from Microsoft to Cisco and round to Apple there is something for everyone.

We have more great posts about how Spiceworks is everything IT on there way… Well when I get around to writing them up… The ideas are there.

Spiceworks… It’s (becoming) Everything IT.  Join us.

The community is a great place for vendors like IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco and well any company to get feedback.

The water cooler area is no expectation to this Justin Davison has just posted a great article (well a rant) about “What I want from the vendors I deal with”

So a couple of conversations I have had recently and a flood of invitations to seminars and meetings have gotten me thinking about what I am looking for when dealing with vendors at seminars, in meetings, and even in the SpiceWorks community.

<rant>

Please don’t read me the marketing brochure, I am very good at reading and if I am actually interested in your product I already have reviewed your marketing materials in literature and on your website. I want the meat, I want to know how your product or service does what you claim and I want to know how it will fit in my organization. Be ready for technical questions, if I have taken the time to meet, attend, or interact with you in the forums it is because I want that technical knowledge.

Read More

Its the morning after the community update and seem seemed to go well (the community is working at least)

We are still awaiting a full list of things that have changed but here are the things I have spotted so far:

Spiceworks News

All the latest Spiceworks news is now shown on the My Community Page to help make sure you don’t miss anything

Points System

Due to the outburst of point cheating the points system has changed.

You can now get points for windows even comments.

Insted of getting 10 points for every post you now one get one point per new topic you talk in, meaning it is more contribution based.

If you fill out all of your profile you automatically get 100 points.

Channels

There are now channels in the community but i have yet to find a full list of them, the networking one is http://community.spiceworks.com/channel/show/3-networking

Channels are aimed to help organise groups, If you visit the Networking channel you’ll see all the topics from groups like Cisco, DNS, etc.

Share-It

At the bottom of all topics there are now social media buttons so you can share something from the community on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Linked In, and Reddit.

So hopefully Tabrez will post up a list of everything that has changed soon and I can do a full write up, but I think I got most of them.

Tabrez has just posted:

We’re planning on pushing out an update to the Spiceworks Community tonight (Jul 14) at 7pm CST. The Community will be offline during this time. We should be back up in 4 hours. For those of you with S.C.A.D – rest assured we’ll be back and spicier!

Some of the changes you’ll see are:

• A few changes to the point system (I’ll post back tomorrow with the details but in a nutshell: you can now earn points for providing troubleshooting advice and comments on Windows Events)
• We’re testing out a new way of organizing groups around a concept called Channels. For eg: If you visit the Networking channel you’ll see all the topics from groups like Cisco, DNS, etc.
• Topics will now have social media buttons so you can share something from the community on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Linked In, and Reddit. When you share something you found interesting on Spiceworks you’re also helping spread the word about Spiceworks!

I’ll post more details once we get the release out.

Its going to be a hard time of everyone with SCAD but well fight though it.

• Do you find it a pain tracking all the groups about networking or software?
• Getting tons of emails about stuff you don’t want to know about just so you don’t miss that one bit off information?

Spiceworks Channels are coming soon and are aimed to help save you time.

I’m subscribed to loads of groups just so I don’t miss a important bit off information and I’m sure you are as well.

Spiceworks channels are going to be a collection of groups to make it easier to watch topics, for example there will be a networking channel which will show groups like

• Cisco
• Networking
• Netgear

It will make it easier to find and watch the groups about the things you love.

We have another VERY exciting exclusive coming in a couple of days… promise its more exciting than this…

Get the latest technical documents from the big name companies for free! Companies such as Cisco, AMD, MessageLabs and Zimbra give their whitepapers away for free on Spiceworks.

Keep in the loop with all the new technical changes, or just read the guides and reports provided for IT pro’s.

From free Trials to practical guides all the information you need is in the one place.

Its quick and easy to download your free Whitepapers, find the one that interests you fill in the details and click submit. Spiceworks will then drop you an email with the link to download.

The whitepapers are an ever growing part of the Spiceworks community, as with everything Spiceworks is always growing and evolving into something new and brilliant.

Why not check them out and download a couple?

So you joined the best community of the best network management software around? Now what?

The up coming posts (unsure of how many yet) will guide you though the different things you can do within the community.

From Ratings and reviews to the best practices from IT pro’s like you. Then right back to simple questions about installing windows to complex ones about creating multiple VLAN networks with Cisco gear.

The community will provide you with all the tools you need to make your job easier. All of this for free…

Over the up coming day’s well be going though bit by bit the different things within the Spiceworks community.

• Ratings and Reviews
• SpiceLists
• Whitepapers
• Asking and Answering Questions
• How-to’s
• Discussions Groups
• Spreading Spiceworks
• Water Cooler
• Jobs and Careers
• IT Calendar
• Shared Reports
• IT News
• Plugins
• Badges

Coming tomorrow, Part 2 – Ratings and reviews