I like to imagine the heads of software companies at the moment when they’re trying to think of a name for their latest product.
Men in bad suits all perched around a boardroom table in a cloud of cigarette smoke, like something from a ‘60s Cold War crisis meeting, barking out gritty, masculine product titles.
Nitrous is up there with the best of them [we’d like to hear any of your suggestions], and Autodesk got it first with its latest cloud-based collaboration service for design files (2D and 3D DWF fact-fans).
Despite it’s jacked-up title the description of what it does sounds like one of the many cloud-based storage sites that have popped up in the last year or so, although Autodesk are keen to point out its strong points.
“Architects, Engineers, Design Professionals, and their clients can all use Project Nitrous to view, edit, and share their 2D and 3D design files. There is no need to own an Autodesk product or to download special software to use this service,” bleats the press release. “Getting started is as simple as creating an account and uploading your first file.”
It continues: “We have large plans and a big vision for where this service is headed, and this is an early glimpse into where we are going.”
It’s a nice idea, and one that should make web-based file sharing, viewing, editing, commenting and multi-collaborating easier to work with. But there’s a catch.
1GB of online storage is free… That’s it at the moment.
It’s all still in ‘Labs’ mode at the minute (check it out here), so it’s unclear how this will expand and whether we’ll see it integrated into other applications such as Autodesk Vault, and if we’ll see a cost stamped onto it for increased storage use.
But it’s called Nitrous, so whatever shortcomings it might have are already forgotten.
