Build your workspace now, and get a free trial until March 1.  Here's a secret:  We bill monthly, so if you delete your space before the end of the month, you will not be billed.  Use this trick to try some of our great new features.

The list of goodies is long, as usual.  Please read on because there is probably something in here for you. 

We made massive upgrades to our server infrastructure this month.  All of our servers are now on Amazon EC2 with an upgraded four-tier cluster architecture (Web, app, db, repository/tool).  We also upgraded our application code to Rails 2.2.  If you noticed nothing but an uptick in speed, that's good. Our server administrators are working their magic behind the scenes.

My favorite upgrade is the nice cool blue and gray style. We are almost finished an incremental process of applying  new standard styles, where in the past we had a variety of design influences.  I feel better, much calmer, already.  A big thanks goes out to our designers.

We are phasing in fixed-price packages.  We are starting with the Max pack for our bigger customers, who are often consulting and outsourcing firms supporting a lot of projects.  This includes 100 users, 1000 projects, 30 GB, for $150/month, paid  annually. 

We are also making life easier for our best customers by giving them better ways to manage a list of projects in a portfolio.  If you have more than four projects running on Assembla, you should try adding them to a portfolio tool, where you can manage subscriptions, see a combined activity stream, get consolidated ticket reports, and generate time reports that include activity in all spaces.  Assembla is still the biggest user of these management tools, so we will continue to push on this.

We now have a full line of Git support, including Assembla Tickets with the new and recommended Source/Git tool, the legacy Git with Trac, and Assembla Tickets for Github.  We fully released the Source/Git tool that uses our beautiful new code browser and has full support for branching, code highlighting, rendering web pages, and repository copy or clone.  If you have an existing Git/Trac tool, you can switch to the new browser by selecting "Use the integrated code browser."  Use our Ticket tool with any repository - it's linked, convenient, agile, and constantly improving.

We did not forget to upgrade our bestselling Subversion tools.  Subversion users  will also get the benefit of months of work on the beautiful code browser, with faster and better looking rendering of code, changesets, and Web mockups.

We believe that Assembla is unique in offering one-click copy for Subversion repositories, so that you can copy and upgrade code templates the same way that git and mercurial users do it.  We have published two new templates to our catalog for publishing subversion and git code without extra tools.

We added tool-by-tool permissioning - the top request on feedback.assembla.com - to help you work with clients and other observers.  Check the Admin/security page on your workspace.  You can now assign someone as a "watcher", and then decide which tools they can see (for example, Messages or Tickets) and which they can't (for example, Time or source code).

If you have a username that is an email address, we recommend that you change it.  If you post in a public place, people will see your username.  You can now go to the user/Profile page and change your username in the sidebar.