Local web application development company Icon has launched an online product that promises to make life easier to condominium administrators and tenants. Blockmonster.eu creates a two-way communication system between block administrators and residents by restructuring duties easily and efficiently.
It offers cost-transparency and ease-of-use to both novice and experienced administrators.
“Even though there’s a law in Malta to regulate condominium administration, there is no defined structure of how this job is done,” an Icon spokesman explained. “Every administrator has his or her own way of managing finances and communicating with the block residents. This lack of structure may lead to insecurity and disputes.”
This solution is designed to facilitate communication among the condominium residents; to increase financial visibility as everyone would know what their budgets are being spent on while expenses can be clearly defined; and make it easy to do this job as it saves administrators time and money from planning and chasing the other residents.
The product is based on the ‘cloud’, i.e. it is accessible through a web browser and there is no need to install any software on a computer.
“The cloud brings about a very strong element of flexibility both for us developers of a products as well as end customers who use the product regularly,” the spokesman added. “The infrastructure is more dynamic, allowing users to access Blockmonster.eu from anywhere in the world provided they have an internet connection. For us, it means that customers can access the service at their own leisure and ease without the need of installing software on specific devices such as computers, tablets or smartphone. The cloud allows access from any of these devices simply by accessing the website Blockmonster.eu.”
The cloud also comes into play when dealing with the technical back-end aspect of the service. Microsoft Windows Azure was used to give considerable scalability options resulting in a product with a fantastic always-on service.
“For data storage, we have used both SQL Azure for our databases and Azure Blob Storage for files. For hosting the web application, we opted to use Azure Web Roles which allowed us to deploy the service portal with Azure Caching for blistering fast session management. Programming on these platforms was less challenging, especially with ready-made (and well documented) APIs and libraries.”
As far as the end user is concerned, Blockmonster.eu can be accessed on any hardware connected to internet, be it a computer, tablet or smartphone, though at this stage it is more geared towards a desktop platform. Icon is looking at launching mobile specific applications optimised for tablets and smartphones in the near future, possibly introducing some cool features which are device specific.
The cloud aspect also exploits social media elements. This is done through the creation of an online community and the use of social media like Facebook.
“We wanted to create an easy interface which tackles the difficult tasks of building administration which we are calling the ‘community’. The community allows both administrators and residents to post messages, respond to messages, and pin important notices at the top of the page. In essence this is the very basic element of a communication network.
“When it comes to using Blockmonster.eu we wanted to make it as simple as possible for the user, giving them the option to login through their Facebook accounts. In this way, they are not required to input basic information and can go ahead and use the product instantly.”
The solution is free for managing up to five units, and then there is a pricing structure for more units. However the free version has all the functions of the priced version.