Today's the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Mac fans all over the world, and about half of the Jive office, are eagerly anticipating Steve Jobs' keynote. The number of Mac users here is significant, given that almost no one used Macs 16 months ago.

We've seen a pretty amazing shift in the types of computers we buy our new hires over the past months. It all started 2 years ago when Intel-based Mac computers were announced. Shortly after that virtualization software like Parallels came out and since then it's been easier than ever to make the transition. Around the same time we announced two new benefits at Jive: first, a credit for employees wanting to buy their own personal computer and second, the choice of platform for their main work computer. The credit was meant to address the fact that some people wanted to work at home but had old computers. Since a home computer is also for personal use we offer to pay for some of it but not all. The policy has worked really well and our employees are able to work at home on good machines. The second part of the policy was mostly for new hires, though people who have old computers at work (because they've been here at while) are eligble too. The choice of platform acknowledged the fact that some people are more productive on a Mac and didn't want to learn something else. I'd guess that most people choose laptops but many choose the new iMacs.

At first, there were a handful of us willing to figure out the best OS X environment and application stack for Jive. The good thing is that most of the applications we use are still usable on the Mac -- web applications, Java IDEs and creative apps (Photoshop). For email, some were happy with the built-in Mail application, others wanted to use Outlook (like me ). Once we started using Parallels it became possible to run apps like Outlook or even use a few of the Windows apps we are familar with. iWork '08 has made office files easy to deal with -- it'll open any Word, Excel or Powerpoint app out there. Overall, it took a good 6 months to iron out the kinks and give IT a handle on supporting us (in fact, most of them use Macs!). Running a non-homogenous IT environment is definitely challenging but so far they've been able to make it work. One thing I'd recommend is a policy of needing to prove your platform. That is, we didn't want to have our employees request a Mac because they thought it looked cool. You had to actually be a Mac user and be familiar with the OS.

Overall, we definitely spend a little more for Macs but I think it's worth it. People like the choice of platform (we offer Windows or Linux as well) and I personally think the productivity gains are worth it. We're all looking forward to what Apple announces today.

We released Clearspace 1.6 last Thursday, and it's got some really nice improvements and new features. I'm personally very excited about customizable spaces. This allows space owners to decide what's important in their space and customize the layout of the "Overview" section. We've found that a lot of our customers are using the main space page as their department's front door and they wanted a lot of flexibility around the content and layout. Be sure to check out the main Clearspace page for more info or watch the short video about the feature.

Another minor new feature is the ability to migrate content back and forth between different databases. This was a pretty highly requested feature from customers. We've had a number of people start an evaluation on the embedded database then want to migrate that to a more production ready database. We added a simple page in the admin console which allows administrators to point to another database and transfer the content.

Finally, a bit of a marketing update: we've refreshed the content on the main Clearspace page and also have a dedicated page up for ClearspaceX, the external community version of Clearspace. Oh, and anyone notice the changes to our front page?

We're happy to announce the release of Clearspace 1.2. We also have a very slick new Clearspace webpage to go along with it -- check it out!

We managed to get quite a bit done for this release: 4 new features, 13 improvements and 52 bug fixes (see the full changelog for details). Some of the new features and improvements are: a Windows installer, internationalization ready UI, a new image editing UI for the text editor, document workflow and approval improvements, and tweaks to the "Browse" menu item for long space lists.

Fast on the heels of 1.0.0 comes Clearspace 1.0.1 (download, README). This is a bug fix release and an easy upgrade for anyone using 1.0.0. Overall, we fixed 37 bugs (that sounds like a lot but most were pretty minor) and made some nice little improvements like keyboard shortcuts for the user bar menus.

We're also announcing a public issue tracker for Clearspace. We're excited to get the community involved in reporting issues and by voting on issues you care about. As always, please first report issues in our support forums and hash out any feature ideas you have in our feature forum. Speaking of features, we'll publish a roadmap for Clearspace soon.

What else is next? A developer area, developer blogs, a 1.0.2 release and more details about upcoming work.

We're happy to announce the public beta of Clearspace. We've been using Clearspace in our office for a while now and a number of customers have been testing it as well. It's really exciting to see it in use, especially here at Jive. We're really taken with the blogging features.

There are  two ways to try Clearspace: as a standalone server or as a WAR file you can drop in your own appserver. There is a README to check out which lists some of the known issues. We have a feedback forum set up as well, which we'll transition to a support forum when the final release is out. We'll also launch our public issue tracker soon, watch the feedback page for more details. The final version will be out soon!

This is really a post about Spark (our IM client) on the Mac. First, a quick story and some photos.

!http://jivesoftware.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/bill-eats-words.jpg!Several years ago I promised a good friend of mine that Id never buy a Mac. I was a die-hard Wintel user and told him many times that macs suck! and Id never own one. Well, last Thursday I bought a new MacBook Pro and now Im a happy Mac user. What changed about the Mac? Everything: better hardware, a better OS and better apps. So Nathan: enjoy watching me eat my words.

Using a Mac means using Spark on it full time. Adium is a very popular client for the Mac and integrates in to the OS well. Spark is a good client but it's not integrated as well. Here's some of the things we're going to change about it:

• We're going to remove the extra "Exit" on the menu. On the Mac there a menu option that all applications get which includes an option to quit and has a nice key binding as well. The extra "Exit" menu item can be removed when on the Mac.

• We'll improve the upper menu bar icon for Spark -- here' s a screenshot of what it looks like now. Obviously it sticks out like a sore thumb. We'll change that so it fits the style of the other icons.

• Right now something we're doing is hiding the resize icon on the window frame. We'll make sure that appears correctly.

• We override the UI of some of the widgets so they look better on Windows and Linux. We'll back off that for the Mac so the widgets look like the native set.

• We'll fix a few bugs around window focus and automatic reconnect.

Overall, Spark is a great client on the Mac and the changes above will make the experience better.

BTW, yes I really did make the cake (that's not a photoshop job).

Jive Forums 5.0.3 and Jive KB 1.7.3 were released earlier today. Notable in this release is a new user search feature which you can see in the end-user UI and the admin console. You can also see it in action in our Open Source community website, jivesoftware.org.

Our team kicked some major butt by churning through over 80 issues (new features, bugs major and minor, tweaks, etc). Now it's back to development on newer and exciting things (to be announced soon).

No, it's not a disease but rather a style of meeting that we've recently started to use in our engineering team. We started a few releases ago -- it worked so well that we decided to continue even when it's not cruch time.Scrum (a rugby term meaning to huddle) actually refers to a whole management methodology. We're just using one part of it -- the daily stand-up meeting. This isn't groundbreaking and our use of it is by no means unique but the results so far has been pretty dramatic. A brief 15 minute meeting gets everyone on the same page and really helps communication.

Here are a few crucial things to a good scrum style daily meeting:

1. 15 mins, tops. It's also key that people stand up -- when they're standing there's less incentive to get comfortable and stay for a long time. Being mindful of the clock means you'll be mindful of everyone's time.

2. Start on time. If someone shows up late, beat them up and steal their lunch money.

3. Come prepared. Everyone involved should think about what they're going to say so they don't waste time coming up with it during the meeting.

4. Have the meeting in the afternoon (ours is at 1:30). We originally tried it in the morning but that didn't work out because people get in to the office at different times.

5. For engineering meetings, make sure to involve your support team. It's their chance to listen in, stay in the loop and (most importantly) they get to ask about bug fixes and relay important customer issues.