Sites That Make It Easy to Collaborate Online
You can collaborate with one or many people virtually using online collaboration tools.
Aliza Sherman
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Sites That Make It Easy to Collaborate Online
Hi there, The Digital Marketer here, ready to help you put the power of the Internet and technology to work for your business.
As more and more people telecommute part time or set up a business at home, company teams are becoming more virtual. I’ve been testing out all kinds of online tools to make virtual collaboration easier so I thought I’d share some of them with you.
I’ve talked about online project management applications in a previous show and even explained the concept of cloud computing or working with your documents permanently housed online for easier access and collaboration. Here are some of my current favorite online collaboration tools that are either free or freemium sites.
“Freemium,” by the way, means that the service has a free level but you can get premium features for a fee.
Nifty Collaboration Tools
If you’ve ever found yourself emailing team members back and forth and back and forth as you try to get feedback on a design mockup or a document, you may want to check out Backboard at GetBackboard dot com. Backboard is an elegant Web-based application that allows you to upload images, documents, add custom text or even insert a Web page. Then you send a message to your collaborators and ask for feedback. You can even specify if you’re asking for approval.
Even if you never register to use the site, Backboard gives you a permanent URL for the Backboards you’ve created. Their free account level gives you unlimited Backboards and 5 MB of file storage. For additional security features and to use Backboard commercially, they ask that you opt for at least the Individual level at $9 per month which also gives you 20 megabytes of file space. There’s also a Team level at $19 per month and an Office level at $49 per month.
Two tools that allow you to draw on documents and images in a collaborative way are Bookgoo and Scriblink. Bookgoo emphasizes highlighting and annotating documents, and you can share them and edit them in real-time with collaborators. When you go to Scriblink, the site opens immediately to a WhiteBoard where you can begin marking up and collaborating using text, shapes, lines, and other doodles as well as equations. One of Scriblink’s biggest user bases is online math tutors.
What’s A Wiki?
Wikis were also made for the collaborative editing of text documents online. The most popular wiki out there by far is Wikipedia where people from around the world work on updating and refining the content on this enormous encyclopedia-style website.
Wiki publishing tools with hosting services are sometimes referred to as wiki farms. One popular wiki publishing tool where you can set up your own wiki and invite others to participate is WikiSpaces. For $5 a month or $50 a year, you can make WikiSpace private. Otherwise, with the basic free level, your wikis are all available to the public.
You can also subscribe to RSS feeds of activity on your wikis so you know when they’ve been edited to stay on top of the content changes.
I have to admit that I avoided wikis for quite a long time because I didn’t quite understand how they worked or why you would want to have one. But recently, I began using wikis for projects that were more complex than collaborating on a simple document. The easy-to-use wiki editing tools plus the ability to create additional pages and link to those pages makes a wiki feel less like document editing and more like collaborative web site and content creation. I created my most recent wiki to help a client document all of the online marketing tactics we’ve implemented so they would have a private, online instructional handbook for future reference.
Some other wiki publishing tools that allow you to create and then host your wikis include PBWiki, WikiDot and TiddlyWiki.
Can’t Forget Google’s Offerings
Now I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention Google Apps and the collaborative tools that Google has created and offers for free. I’m a huge fan of Google Docs which allows you to share word processing documents, spreadsheets and presentation files with others. I love the way Google Docs tracks the changes made on documents by each collaborator. Their document history feature is far superior to the tracking feature on Microsoft Word.
I just signed up for Google Apps to explore how to use it for my company and my virtual team of independent consultants. I’ll report back to you in an upcoming episode about how it’s working for my business and how it might work for you.
Contact Me
That’s all we have time for today. Visit the show’s website at digitalmarketer.quickanddirtytips.com for links to all of the sites mentioned in the show. If you’d like to ask a question or request a topic for The Digital Marketer, email me at digitalmarketer@quickanddirtytips.comcreate new email or leave a message by calling 206-339-6279.
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The Digital Marketer’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Building Your Business With Web Tools is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips network at quickanddirtytips.com. Tune in for another business boost from The Digital Marketer, the host who’s not afraid to go under the Internet’s hood & get a little dirty!
Resources
Backboard
Backboard
Scriblink
Scriblink
Bookgoo
Bookgoo
Wikispaces
Wikispaces
Tiddlywiki
Tiddlywiki
PBWiki
PBWiki
WikiDot
WikiDot
Google Apps
Google Apps
Google Docs – Google Docs