Posts Tagged
Collaboration
No software will ever defuse the cooked hand grenade that is a newly formed project group. Leading a project is like leading a pack of rabid dogs. Motley crews rarely form, norm and perform like the textbooks say the will. In fact projects can often be a forum for non-stop arguing, cut-throat tactics and ridiculous organisational methods. Did I mention trench warfare? They’re also a lot like trench warfare. When your shot they pour salt in the wound and laugh.
In the past, the most well-thought out Gantt charts, plans and strategies have crumbled right before my very eyes. Meetings go unattended to and emails remain unopened.
Objectiveli is a web app for the lucky. Those in awesome, hard working groups with brainstorming sessions, lateral thinking and dedication to realise the goals of the group. After a few minutes use I realise the developers knew a thing or two about how to run a project efficiently and effectively. Caution – May induce serious work.
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I’ve often needed to share a collection of images with others, to show off a project or get feedback. Unfortunately, the solutions I’ve tried haven’t been that good. I’ve printed images to make collections on boards that can be passed around the team members in a meeting. I’ve tried keeping the images on my computer, but then too many are forced to gather around a small screen. I’ve even tried a few different digital collections, but nothing has ever really given me a good opportunity to engage in conversations and share feedback.
Recently, however, I found out about a new web app called Marqueed which is made for this purpose and I couldn’t wait to try it out. Marqueed is a new, free web application made by a group of designers which allows teams to communicate visually, all online. It promises to be quite the useful application, but read on after the jump to learn more about how it works and how I feel about it.
Google Docs actually is quite a nice office suite, and can be quite useful for putting together the documents and spreadsheets you might have otherwise made in Microsoft Office. The integration of Google Drive has made it a bit more confusing to navigate, but the individual apps themselves remain some of the nicest examples of high-quality web apps.
While the apps work great for individual use, they really shine for collaboration. I was initially skeptical that I’d ever need to live-edit a document, but have found dozens of reasons to do so in the past years. From writing group reports together in college to keeping up with our AppStorm article schedule, or from translating a song to planning details of events, I’ve come to rely on being able to co-edit documents with others online.
That’s why I was wondering if our readers use Google Docs to edit documents with others, or just to create their own documents. How do you use Google Docs? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Back in June last year, we took a look at Cage, a design collaboration tool that we awarded a full 10/10. Since then, big changes have been happening resulting in the all new Cage, a beta product and the subject of today’s review.
Cage is a collaboration tool that allows you share images of designs with others and then have them feedback on them. Or, that was the premise of the original Cage. Now, you can manage tasks, use Cage for video projects, have designs approved and more. (more…)
It’s no lie that there are plenty of project management apps out there. However, most of these are targeted at businesses and while this is completely understandable as these are the core user base for this type of productivity app, some of them can seem a little bloated for the everyday user who just wants to get productive with their friends or smaller organisation.
If you’re part of this sector and are interested in an app that can do this for you, a nifty app called Groopt may be right up your street.
Pretty much ever since I’ve been using computers, spreadsheets have been one of the programs I have used the most. I started out back when I was 7 years old and learning how to do formulas in Excel ’95, and have continued using it all the way to my university work now, where I’m pretty much doing the same thing (though on a much more complicated level)! But that’s not suprising: spreadsheets were considered the original killer app for PCs back in the early days of personal computing.
The concept of spreadsheets has been around for a long time. Spreadsheets are a powerful way to display and manipulating data, and now even being applied to project management. Smartsheet is a way to collaborate on and manage your projects without that traditional Gantt chart layout. Instead, it turns your project into a spreadsheet. It’s definitely unique – as far as I know, no other project management app takes this kind of approach – so let’s take a look and see what Smartsheet has to offer.
We here at Web AppStorm love a good project management app and the one we’re going to be looking at today, activeCollab, is not just a project management resource but also a way to collaborate, work with clients and invoice, all in one great app. Yes, it’s another project management app and another invoicing app, but it happens to be a really nice one, one that’s definitely worth looking at, even if you think you’ve already seen all that project management and invoicing apps could offer.
So, without further ado, let’s dive straight in.
Within a business, the necessity to be able to communicate with every single department within your company is pretty much vital, no matter whether it employes 50 people or 5,000 people. There are plenty of ways to do this (such as e-mail and telephone) but now, more companies are pushing towards an actual Internet platform, or intranets, as the medium for collaboration and sharing information.
There are plenty of sites out there on the net that will help you set up a company intranet (most require little technological knowledge as well). Today, let’s look at Igloo, which promises to be much more than a simple corporate intranet, but rather an entire digital workplace as a platform for all your ideas and a place to go to collaborate with your team, coordinate with your partners or even interact with your customers.
I got in touch with the developers and they kindly provided me with a free demo version to evaluate for this review. Read on after the break for my thoughts.
Ever since my team has started move its work to the web, I’ve been looking for more ways to use the web to make our team more productive. One of the things I’ve wanted to do is use the web as a better collaboration tool. In my line of work, better collaboration equals more productive.
There are a variety of web apps out there that let you collaborate around different projects, but the one I am reviewing today has lots of potential to become a good one. It is called CanvasDropr, and in its basic sense, it is a place on the web where you can collaborate on many different things. Let me show you around the app itself.
Earlier this month we covered several apps for sending files online and even asked you which were your favorites – and over half of you said you use Dropbox. While that’s great for sending across files, it’s not the best choice for collaboration, especially if you need a place to discuss the files you’re sharing and what you’re doing with them.
Glassboard wants to be that place – a meeting room where you can share files securely and talk about what you’re working on, without having your privacy invaded. The app allows you to invite friends, colleagues and clients to view and share photos and files in a private environment and is simple to use. Is this the collaboration tool you’ve been looking for? Let’s find out.
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