Archive for the ‘Collaboration’ Category

Terri Griffith at GigaOm offers 10 Tips for Respectful — and Effective — Shared Calendaring. These useful “tips cover three important dimensions: Technology settings and strategies, our developing calendaring etiquette and norms, and broader organizational practices.” Here are the first five recommendations:

1. Set up appointment slots.
2. Make your wishes known.
3. Set your default meeting time to a smaller increment.
4. Schedule your own time so you can get some work done.
5. Check the other person’s schedule first.

Richard Byrne writes for School Library Journal about The Best Online Presentation Tools: Top picks for hosting a live tutorial or collaborative session. If you’re working on a collaborative project, or are looking for tools to provide live support to patrons, students, or clients, you’ll want to have a look at this list. Here are just a few:

• Join.me
• Big Marker
• Vyew

Amber Singleton Riviere at GigaOm writes about 10 Tools to Improve Communication. This useful list provides brief reviews and feature summaries for ten tools which are great for collaboration of all kinds. Here are the categories of the tools discussed:

• Shared to-do lists
• Project management
• Online meetings and conferencing
• Collaborative social media
• Mobile communication

David Strom at ReadWriteBiz creates a list of 8 Simple Ways To Share Data Online. If you’re interested in working collaboratively on data sets and spreadsheets, you’ll want to check out this guide to online services and applications which enable you to share these files. Pricing information, customer support, storage limits, and distinguishing features are discussed for each online spreadsheet sharing service. I would just add one other that I didn’t see on the list which is Zoho. Zoho Office has over 4 million users and offers a free spreadsheet application as well as a database creator which is free for one user, both of which might be useful for these types of projects. Here are the services discussed in the post:

• Spreadsheet Live
• Google Docs
• Microsoft Live
• Smartsheet
• Longjump
• TrackVia
• HyperBase
• QuickBase

Aliza Sherman at GigaOm suggests 18 Tasks You Can Crowdsource. Looking to outsource some of your projects to the masses? Here are some recommended activities organized into Technical and Creative tasks, that work well when tackled by “the crowd”.

• Website design. Need a new website interface design? Try crowdSPRING.
• Photo tagging. Looking to get photographs tagged or classified and support a good cause? Try the nonprofit crowdsourced labor site Samasource.
• Transcription. Have audio files that need transcribing, such as a podcast? Try CastingWords.
• Website testing. Looking for usability testing for your site? Try Usertesting.com.

And check out even more in: What’s Crowdsourcing Useful For?

Jason Fitzpatrick presents a list of the Five Best Web-Based Conferencing Tools. Each list entry includes cost, if any, a discussion of major features, and a video tutorial for getting started. Here’s the list, be sure and check out the full article for reviews and videos:

1. WebEx
2. Tinychat
3. GoToMeeting
4. Dimdim
5. Adobe ConnectNow

Dawn Foster at WebWorkerDaily writes about Old-school Collaboration Tools That Rock. While many of us enjoy experimenting with the latest Web tools, not everyone is an early adopter so it’s important to remember these tried-and-true tools for working with remote groups.

Free Technology for Teachers rounds up Nine Tools for Collaboratively Creating Mind Maps. Each entry in this helpful list includes a discussion of the application’s best features, cost, and usability.

Isaac Gube at Six Revisions has published a lengthy article on How to Make Remote Team Collaboration Work. He provides tips and guidance by discussing common remote collaboration problems and how to address each in turn.

• Problem #1: Staying in sync
• Problem #2: Task management
• Problem #3: Idea generation and brainstorming
• Problem #4: Version control of files
• Problem #5: Task delegation

Cory Bohon at Mac|Life discusses 20 Real-World Uses for Google Wave. Each recommended task includes an illustrative screenshot and instructions. Here are his top five suggestions for making the most of Google Wave:

1. Keep in touch with friends
2. Share your photos
3. Share files
4. Collaboratively Drafting Documents
5. Trip Planning

Both Mashable and TechCrunch have coverage of Ning Apps, the suite of application tools which will soon be available to Ning network creators. Ning is a social networking platform which enables people to create their own social networks quickly and easily without having any particular technical knowledge (there are now 1 million Ning networks). Ning Apps is now in private beta but will soon deploy 90 new features which will add functionality such as wikis, the ability to sell merchandise, store files, host contests, buy tickets, etc. Different from Facebook and MySpace Apps, Ning Apps are geared toward network creators who can roll out the functionality to the entire network, vs. just for individuals. Here are just a few of the upcoming Ning Apps slated to be released at the end of May:

Collaboration
A Wiki (Wiki)
Huddle (Share documents and collaborate through whiteboards)
Box.net (Store files on your social network)
Google Docs
NewsShare by Slinkset (collaborative news sharing and discovery)
WordPress (Integrate a WordPress blog into the main page of your social network)
Reviews by Notches (Add review functionality to your network)
Classifieds by Adbhai (Add classifieds functionality to your network)
SearchMe (Searchme reviews) (visually search your network’s content or the web)
Flinkit by Sapplica (share interesting links)
Zoho Office Suite (six separate apps for Calendar, Docs, Mail, Planner, Contacts and Tasks Apps)
Clackpoint (Add voice conference functionality to your network)
VoxBox by Sapplica (Add polls and discussions to your network)

Communication
Ustream (Streaming of live events)
Twitter Tracker (Display a Twitter stream on the main page of your social network)
Tokbox (Video chat)
Mailchimp (Email campaigns)
Qik (Live streaming from mobile devices)
Zorap (Live multimedia chat and sharing)
YapLoud (lightweight browser-based chat)
Superchat by Sapplica (alternative chat environment)
Contact Us by LiveWired (add a simple contact form to your social network)
Internet Voicemail by Meternet (add voicemail to your network)

See more in the full Mashable post.

Matthew C. Clarke, Business Area Executive with Rocket Software, writes about Control and Community: A Case Study of Enterprise Wiki Usage in this month’s issue of Boxes and Arrows. The article describes the CorVu company’s initiative to use wikis to capture the internal knowledge of its products and also to disseminate it to their customers. The company used two wikis to capture knowledge from two teams of employees – an R&D wiki and a Professional Services wiki, and then a third public, customer wiki to disseminate a sanitized version of that knowledge.

“Like many companies, CorVu has extensive knowledge of its own products and a desire to make that knowledge available to customers. A major block to achieving that desire has been a lack of people with the time to either record the internal knowledge or to fashion the knowledge into a customer-ready format. We needed to spread the load so that a broad range of developers, tech writers, professional service consultants and others could all contribute what time and knowledge they had to a shared goal. Our hope was that a process built around several Wiki sites would facilitate this collaborative approach.”

Dana Coffey at Crazeegeekchick.com has put together a guide to 27 Free Must-have Online Collaboration Tools. These Web-based apps make working with distributed team members easy and include whiteboard tools, mind-mapping applications, and tools for project management. The annotated guide is divided into the following categories:

• Whiteboard, Bullitin Board and Workspace Tools
• Project Management Tools
• Collaboration Tools – Intranet Style
• Social Networking and Information Sharing Tools
• Bug Tracking and Source Control Tools
• Customer Service Tools
• Web-Conferencing Tools
• Mind Mapping Tools

Earlier today Google officially launched Knol which had previously been in beta and invitation-only (see previous coverage). Knol is a collection of authoritative articles, written by a community of experts and a direct competitor to Wikipedia. Knols are written by individuals or teams who are credited for their contributions and can share in the revenue generated from the Google Adsense ads on their subject pages. Readers can rate, review, and comment on knols as well as suggest changes or additions to the content which is subject to the article authors’ approval.

Further coverage:

Knol: Google Takes on Wikipedia – ReadWriteWeb

Google’s Wikipedia rival, Knol, goes public – C|Net News

Google Launches Knol, The Monetizable Wikipedia – TechCrunch

Web conferencing applications which enable a presenter to host a Webinar or meeting with live video and audio, text chat, whiteboards, shared files, and even desktop sharing offer countless opportunities for collaboration, online training, and remote assistance. While many of these sophisticated programs are costly, a new crop of free Web conferencing applications has emerged which offer amazing alternatives to traditional online meeting programs such as WebEx and GoToMeeting.

Librarians could use these free applications for holding office hours, reference consultations, library instruction, hosting their own Webinars, conducting live interviews, or collaborating with remote team members on projects.

VRoom by Elluminate is “three for free Web conferencing”. Elluminate lets users sign up for their own virtual meeting room (vRoom) in which they can hold Web conferences with live Webcam, two-way audio, application sharing, IM chat, whiteboard, and file transfer with up to 3 simultaneous users.

Yugma is a Web conferencing application which allows a presenter to share their desktop with conference attendees in order to demonstrate, share, or collaborate on projects. The free, personal version of Yugma enables conferencing with up to 10 people along with an IM chat interface within sessions. Professional accounts can record sessions, share files, change presenters, and share mouse and keyboard controls. The Skype edition integrates with the VOIP application and includes the users’ Skype contact list.

WiZiQ is a completely Web-based education platform which lets teachers present to up to 25 students from within a virtual classroom through live video, audio, and text chat. WiZiQ allows content sharing, provides a whiteboard and records sessions. They have a module which integrates with the Moodle LMS.

Dimdim is a free, open source live meeting software which offers audio and video conferencing and lets hosts share their desktop with attendees. This application requires no download or installation for meeting participants and can be used with up to 20 people with the free version. Dimdim offers whiteboards and both public and private chat options.

PalBee enables members to conduct video conferencing sessions complete with whiteboards, text chat interface, file sharing capabilities, and free recording of sessions. Presenters can hold unlimited sessions with up to five people for up to one hour, and also can pre-record sessions and then share them

Vyew is a fully Web-based conferencing and collaboration application which features white boards, audio and video support, and an integrated chat client. Hosts can share their desktops, take screenshots, conduct conference calls with up to 150 others, and hold conference sessions with up to 20 participants with the free version.