The Good: Otixo was featured on Lifehacker this week. The review was amazing and brought us a huge amount of new subscribers.

The Bad: The review was amazing and brought us a huge amount of new subscribers…which overwhelmed our little “startup” servers and had us licking our wounds for a few hours. But the Otixo Team has been working non-stop since the review to upgrade our system. We’re happy to say that we’re back up and much faster now (with further performance updates coming). But we’re really sorry that so many of you experienced our outtage and speed problems just when you were getting to know us. We’d love to invite you back to get a second first impression…

The Extra: As a small startup, we’d especially like to thank Melanie Pinola from Lifehacker for writing about us. The positive response has been incredible. Our servers might not love you, but we sure do. Read Melanie’s post on Lifehacker here.

Happy Otixoing,
The Otixo Team

There was something beautiful in our inbox this morning. It went something like this:

“Dear Otixo,

It is my pleasure to inform you that Otixo has been selected as an Official Honoree of the 16th Annual Webby Awards in the Web Services & Applications category.

In recognition of the exceptional quality of submissions received this year, the Academy has acknowledged outstanding entries as Official Honorees, alongside our Nominees. With nearly 10,000 entries received from all 50 US states and over 60 countries, the Official Honoree distinction is awarded to the top 15% of all work entered that exhibits remarkable achievement.

Congratulations – this is an outstanding accomplishment for you and your team!”

The Otixo Team is elated. It’s been under a year since our beta period began, and just a few months since we launched our payment model. We’re thrilled to be a Webby Award Honoree in the “Web Services and Applications” category, and we look forward to securing our first Nomination next year. Thank you to the Webby’s and thank you to our users!

Here are the links to the Official Honorees and Nominees for this year’s Webby “Web Services and Applications” category. Congrats to all!

 

Introducing three ways to get MORE Otixo:

1. Get an additional 25 MB of bandwidth added to your account each month when you invite a friend to use Otixo. To get more information or to send invitations, login to your Otixo account here and click “Get free credits.”

2. Invite a new user to collaborate on a Workspace, and receive 25 MB of bandwidth added to your account each month.

3. For the Otixo Business plan users: If a friend you invite signs up for the Business plan ($9.99/month), Otixo will credit you both with a free month.

Otixo CTO Jürgen here. I want to share with you a tip that allows me to review, edit, and reupload documents in GoogleDocs or in Dropbox from my iPad or my iPhone. Because our team spans continents, this nugget has made my work while on the go much easier!

1. Launch Apple Pages, Numbers or Keynotes from an Internet-connected iPad or iPhone.
2. In documents view, click the + button and select the “Copy from WebDAV” function.
3. Sign in to Otixo with server name “https://dav.otixo.com” and your Otixo user name and password.
4. Navigate to the file you want to view or edit and select it. The application imports the file to your documents view, where you can open and edit the file.
5. When finished, call the “Copy to WebDAV” function from the Tools -> Share and Print menu in the documet editor.
6. Pick a file format, navigate to the cloud service and folder of your choice and press the “Copy” button.

We’ve been talking about it in hushed tones, but today we’re finally ready to announce a new, beta version of our latest creation… Workspaces. You may have noticed the Workspaces label on the left sidebar in Otixo.  It will lead you to Otixo’s most powerful feature yet.

With Workspaces, you can share folders and documents from all your different cloud apps in a single project context. That means when working with your clients or team, you no longer have to decide where all those files must live in order to collaborate. Just leave your files where they are and simply link them from FTP, Dropbox or Google Docs etc. into a Workspace. Then invite your clients and coworkers. Depending on their access rights, they can see everything, link their files, make comments, and download the project files from Otixo—all without knowing on which service they are stored.

Attach items and invite collaborators

Share comments

Choose collaborator’s access

Invite Collaborators and Receive 25 MB of Bandwidth

We built Workspaces for you. Now let’s perfect it together.

Take a look and try out Workspaces today. It’s a Beta feature, so no bandwidth will be subtracted from your account when using Workspaces. Send us your feedback, your suggestions, your wry, witty observations – even your foggiest notions. Let’s test fly this thing together.

To all our UK users – be sure to check out the current issue of Web User magazine to see how they’ve featured Otixo! If you aren’t in the UK and still want to see the spread, here it is:

The Otixo Team is oh-so-very-happy to introduce SkyDrive! Log into Otixo and connect your SkyDrive account now.

Note: We’re releasing SkyDrive as a Beta feature to get your feedback. That means using SkyDrive doesn’t count against your bandwidth credits! Tell us how it’s working for you.

Otixo is excited to offer two new account types:

• Personal Plan - 250 MB monthly bandwidth usage for free
• Business Plan - Unlimited monthly bandwidth usage for $9.99 

All existing accounts have been converted into a free Personal Plan accounts. There’s a usage meter located in your account settings for monitoring purposes. To upgrade to the unlimited Business Plan, click “Upgrade” in the top right corner of your Otixo screen.

A gift for our beta users . . . 

The outpouring of feedback, ideas, and praise from our beta users has been inspirational. Thank you all.

As a token of our appreciation, we have credited each of your accounts with an extra 50MB of bandwidth each month, forever.

Invite others = free bandwidth

Invite friends and colleagues to Otixo by clicking on “Get Free Credits” at the top of your application screen. For each new person who joins and uses Otixo based on your recommendation, we will credit 25 MB of bandwidth to your monthly quota.

The past two weeks at Otixo have been record breaking. The influx of new users has provided us with so much new feedback, and it’s really helping us improve our application.

We’re working around the clock to get some new updates out to you as soon as possible, but we just wanted to take a moment to thank all of our supporters.

Coming from the Boulder startup community, we see new startup ideas – good, solid ideas – come and go with the Colorado weather. Statistics for how long a startup lasts and how “far” it gets abound in this area. When Otixo was first started it was dangerous not to be nervous about the future.

But in the past few months, and especially the past few weeks, the Otixo Team is suddenly confronted with how “far” it seems we’ve gotten.. A year has brought us a long way, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds. Thank you.

Yesterday AppStorm posted an Otixo review by blogger Justin Stravarius. We received some great traffic from the publicity and are tickled pink by some of the things Stravarius wrote.. for example:

“The friendly, intuitive interface and the ability to switch between multiple accounts blazing fast are the two strong suits of Otixo.”

Ah, the satisfaction that comes with a comment like “intuitive interface” just doesn’t wear off. Thanks, Justin.

Please head over to the full review here.