Box Announces Collaborative Notes Tool, New iOS App

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By Emily Price2013-09-16 18:18:46 UTC

To the sounds of Blink 182, and sporting a suit, bright red tennis shoes and Google Glass, Box CEO Aaron Levie took the stage Monday morning to kick off Box’s annual developer conference, Box Works, in San Francisco.

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At the three-day conference on everything cloud, Box took the opportunity to show off a number of new products it’s currently working on — including a new Notes app, Preview and iOS app that are all set to be released later this year.

Box Notes

The biggest news from Box’s keynote presentation was Box Notes.

“Box Notes lets you capture, share and build on ideas in real-time with anyone,” says Levie.

A sort of Google Docs competitor, the service runs on Box and lets you collaborate with others on documents.

A function lovingly called “Note Heads,” after Facebook’s Chat Heads, puts an avatar on the page for each person who is currently viewing a document, displaying that image exactly where that person is within the document.

Rich media can also be embedded within a document.

If you need to leave a note on part of the text, you can highlight the section you want to call attention to and leave a message. Other people with access to the document can see the note through a pop-up. You can see that pop-up when you need it, but it will disappear into the background when you don’t.

Notes will be available offline and via mobile. You can sign up for it in beta at box.com/notes.

Box Preview

Box’s new preview takes advantage of technology from Crocodoc, a company Box acquired earlier this year.

“Photos, video and media have been remade for the web, yet documents remain the same,” says Levie. “We’re reimagining what you can do in the cloud.”

The new preview takes your documents, PDFs and PowerPoint presentations (100+ different file types in total) and then converts then to HTML5 so you can view them in the cloud.

More than just a static reader, the new feature lets you zoom in on photos, pan, and navigate through content just as if you had downloaded it onto your computer.

New iOS App

“We rethought the mobile experience from the ground up,” says Levie.

Box’s mobile apps have currently been downloaded more than 8 million times and represent 40% of Box’s traffic.

The new app has a new user interface, and a number of new features, including the ability to download files to view them offline. You can fip through PDFs within the app, find something specific within your documents via in-document search and see all your photos at once with photo gallery. The app will be available later this year.

Box is currently used by more than 180 thousand businesses.

What do you think of Box’s announcements Monday? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Image: Mashable, Emily Price

Topics: Apps and Software, Box, cloud, Mobile, Tech