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Recommend collaboration software (over internet, offline or online)

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superboyac:
Hi everyone, a friend and I are working together on a project.  I'm wondering what you guys recommend for collaboration tools.  I already know about Google Wave, you don't need to mention that.  I don't want to use it even thought it's good, because I can't print or anything like that.  Basically, you can only use it inside of Google Wave itself.  So let me describe what I'm looking for.

There's a lot of emails going back and forth.  So, instead of finding them in our inboxes, I'd like to store them easily in some of collaboration center, that can be accessed through the internet somehow.  The other thing we'd share are other documents, audio files, video files, etc. Anything.

Now, my simplest solution so far is to use HFS and just create a folder where I can dump all the files in (even email message files).  However, it would be better if the files can be viewed on the web also, rather than just hosting a bunch of files.  Google Wave would be perfect if not for the printing and all that.  Is there any desktop software that can do this, or help out in some way?

Another idea would be to share a MS Onenote notebook.  But I haven't looked into that yet.  From what I hear, the MS Office Live capabilities aren't full featured yet.

Google Docs?  Possibly.

My ideal solution would be a software that runs on my desktop where I can drag my desktop files onto it and organize there.  Then, I can sync it with something that sends it to a website.  On the website, you can view the contents right there on the site itself.  Even better would be if you can edit everything on the website.  Add things, modify things.  But desktop applications usually offer better options and features for that kind of thing, so it's not a must.

So, let me know what has worked for you, what you like to use, etc.  Please don't tell me to google this or browse here.  I'm doing that now.  I want to know your experiences and what you have used and enjoyed.

Paul Keith:
Never participated in online collaboration so I don't have first hand experiences for these services:

Dropbox is the easiest one I can think of and was my first thought rather than Google Wave.

Depending on the size you may need to open up a separate account and re-invite each other to get a bigger space for free.

Zoho also has lots more collaboration features than Google setting Google Wave's specific real time elements aside.

If it needs to be public or semi-private - Ning Alternatives are potential options.

http://delicious.com/search?p=ning+alternatives&chk=&context=main|&fr=del_icio_us&lc=

Zerista.com looks to be the most interesting because of it's mobile capability however it's limited early beta.

The others have their bugs and quirkiness from what I read and it's difficult to narrow down anything without bugs. If you trust your files with Ning, you could probably pay for that.

As a social networking service they have forum + attachments, audio, video, gallery last time their free service was open. (and you could set the network as private)

There are also tons of web operating systems but again, I'm not sure which have evolved to really be viable for collaboration.

JavaJones:
Use Zoho with Zoho mail to handle your emails and Zoho docs and all the other features to do everything else. Other alternative is Dropbox but it doesn't really address the email issue. If you don't want to use Zoho mail exclusively you can  setup a forward from another account based on tags so you can partition mail on this project as separate from your other mail.

- Oshyan

superboyac:
I thought dropbox just allowed you to sync files?  I didn't know it does anything more than that...

I've been thinking about it...how's this for an idea:
Is there an application out there where I can drop a bunch of files into the website, and the website can display the contents?  Kind of like a universal viewer for all sorts of TYPICAL documents. Very typical documents like pdf, word, excel...nothing too out of the ordinary.  There must be something like that, no?

JavaJones:
Dropbox does just sync files, but if you use files to put your data into, you can both have access. So you could share a bunch of Office/OpenOffice files, and maybe drop email (EML) files or something in there as well. The email sharing/documenting is the trickiest part of all of it IMO, and I think Zoho might have the best solution for that in that it's a separate but integrated mail system in their suite.

Google Docs will basically do what you describe as far as document viewing and even editing. It's not necessarily as easy as drag-and-drop to put the files up there, but it's not rocket science either. And it sounds like you want to edit the documents anyway, which no "website viewer" that is "displaying the contents" will let you do. You need an online office suite pretty much, and that limits your options.

- Oshyan

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