Huddle is online project management, storage, and collaboration service. In the upcoming series of blog posts, I review and examine what Huddle has to offer.

From reading the Huddle web site, I note the following as features and capabilities:

1. Huddle is on online service, hosted in the cloud, so both internal employees and external people can access a Huddle account.

2. Huddle offers whiteboards and discussion forums for sharing ideas between people.

3. There is full-text search in Huddle, to allow you to find what you need.

4. Huddle offers a variety of tools to support project management – such as document sharing, calendars, and tasks.

5. Documents can be viewed inside the browser, or viewed via the Huddle media viewer. In other words, both Word and Excel files can be created and edited with a browser, without having to open them in Microsoft Office.

6. Feedback on documents, whiteboards and discussions can be posted by other people, in the form of comments. These are time-stamped, in context, and searchable.

7. Huddle includes integrated phone and web conferencing services.

8. Huddle can be accessed on a variety of devices – there are “fully-featured” apps for iPhone, iPad, and BlackBerry – and well as via a desktop computer. From the looks of iTunes, though, the Huddle app is for the iPhone, and therefore works on the iPad. There isn’t a specific iPad app, based on my initial look. There’s a Microsoft Office add-in too, which enables users to save / upload new Office documents directly into a Huddle workspace.

9. Huddle users can log into the Huddle account via four social networks – LinkedIn, Ning, XING, and Facebook.

10. Each user has a dashboard, showing an at-a-glance view of what’s happening with projects.

11. Completed projects can be archived.

12. Users have a profile page, for sharing information about themselves.

13. Users can schedule meetings, and invite other people. Some calendar magic happens, so scheduled meetings appear in each user’s desktop calendar.

14. There are a variety of control and customization options – for setting permissions for workspaces / folders / items, enabling and disabling specific features, invitations, directory integration, and branding and re-skinning.

15. Huddle offers a workflow-lite option, for requesting and tracking approvals on documents and other items.

16. Huddle tasks and meetings can be added to Outlook and Google calendars.

17. Free accounts offer a certain level of security (using SSL), and paid accounts offer more.

18. Pricing is US$15 per user per month. There is a free 14-day trial available.

19. Some very big organizations use Huddle – Walt Disney, KIA Motors, HTC, and more – as well as many smaller organizations.

20. Huddle, the company, is based in London and San Francisco, and have been in business since November 2006.