Maybe you’ve noticed that I have an interest in collaborative software applications. That is because now, the outsourcing is very evolved and it needs tools to be productive. Outsourcing is productive from cost point of view, but it also have to optimize the development process and time.

In this post I will describe a new application, with good capabilities regarding collaboration. I know that many users think that the web has enough collaboration tools and Google, Adobe and Microsoft have already all the features. They are right, but in the white boarding domain, there are few good players. The white boarding application that I’m talking about is Twiddla.

Pros
I’ve discovered this application when I was searching for a real-time collaboration tool. I wanted an application that could allow me to collaborate with another two colleagues from two different countries. And Twiddla can handle this task quite well. This application can open web pages in order to make sketches or annotations. Also with Twiddla the user can import own images, use mathematical formulas through a LaTex equation editor and many more.

Cons
The major drawback is that the application can freeze and you will have to restart the browser. This is the only visible drawback. Also the application can have a better user interface, with main focus on space optimization.

Conclusion
Overall the application is good. Twiddla can help teams to easy collaborate and share ideas through a virtual white board. You can try it without making an account, through a guest feature.

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About a month ago, Adobe made available the latest version of their Acrobat family: Acrobat 9. This is a big release with many new features like speed and the most wanted Flash enabled PDF. Along with this new product, Adobe made a new announcement: the availability of Acrobat.com - collaboration suite.

Acrobat.com was a good idea and a new step taken into Google’s world. Google with its Docs suite, has now a very powerful competitor called Adobe. This new website is a suite of several services from Adobe that are quite used: Adobe Connect Now (online meeting), Adobe Share (online share) and Adobe Buzzword (online text application). So, you can write articles, share your files and also make video web conferences. All this services along with the possibility to create online PDF files are very good features for a collaboration suite.

Intuitive User Interface
The collaboration will worth less without the nice interface. As usual, the interface features a “green” style. By green I mean a eco-friendly web environment. All interfaces have a dark color scheme with big buttons and proper graphic elements. The placement for objects is good and also the fact that each feature is labeled is truly helpful. I would like to see the same interface on the desktop applications like Photoshop or Dreamweaver. But for now, this good user interface implementation is providing the user with a good experience.

It will be interesting to see more and more Adobe applications going into this collaboration suite. But at the same time it will be pretty hard to monetize these kind of projects. Overall the service is most welcomed and I think that Adobe User Interface should be a must for every new UI designer.

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Do you remember ConceptShare? It was that promising web application for designers and their clients. Well it still is, but at that time the company was seen as an innovative one. Right now I can say that the only good thing in ConceptShare is the logo.

Let me explain my negative feeling.
About a year ago, I heard about this company. It was something covered on Cnet’s Webware.com at Under the Radar Conference. This application was presented as a collaboration tool that helps the designer or any user, to get feedback and reviews regarding their visual work. It was developed upon the .net framework using Flash as presentation layer, and at that time ConceptShare was quite a buzz.
Due to ConceptShare’s value, Corel made an agreement and got the web application connected with their main product Corel Draw. So, at that time, ConceptShare was basically the king of visual collaboration on media files. …Not anymore!

My anger…
So, I have nothing against the product. Actually the application is quite useful. But, when all was going well for the company, the web design team went crazy. They went crazy and applied the copy/paste technique. Yes, the site changed its style and copied Apple.com style.
This is not a bad thing, because all designers know that Apple is a trend setter and their website is always next to perfect. I have nothing against inspiration and outsourcing some ideas. But this is wrong, when you copy the overall look, the placement and secondary elements as well.
Below I will show you 2 screens and let you decide weather the redesign was a good thing or bad. Honestly I think they’ve destroyed the visual brand.

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I wanted to publish this post two days ago but I went to a party and my inspiration also. So here I am starting the post again.

In the past year, one of the hottest topic in the webtech industry was collaboration. Many companies developed a wide range of products with the main purpose of making the development process easier. But don’t imagine a website where you type your wish and all the development issues are resolved.

This product that I’m covering in these lines is DimDim, an advanced desktop sharing web application. It is available both under open source and commercial licenses and has good collaboration features. First of all, the main feature for the attendees is not having to install anything to attend a meeting. Also the application has the basic Audio/Video/Screen sharing features, annotations and markup tools and other important features. A big plus is that the free account can support up to 20 people in a meeting awesome for small-medium teams.

The commercial versions have more advanced capabilities and can deliver desktop content up to 1000 people. I honestly believe in this application and I’ve used it in my designing process and it is quite productive. We need this kind of products with high quality and low costs. Support Open Source

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And I am not joking. Not a long time ago my opinion regarding the spreadsheets applications was next to zero. Why? … I don’t know, maybe because in my area, in my work-flow I didn’t need such tool. But lately the power of spreadsheets has come to me.

First, I was surprised to see how money management for a start-up was able through spreadsheets. That was a video tutorial by Ryan Carson published on Vitamin. It was a simple yet well explained tutorial from the basic costs of a start-up to the monthly income.
Later, I started to manage certain elements from my upcoming website and it really helps me in keeping the work-flow very fluid. And the nicest part is that the applicability is not limited, you can keep your game scores in a spreadsheet or you can hold your coding snippets.

Well, this graphic rating is about spreadsheets but, it is also about Google Spreadsheets. As you know Google has an online spreadsheet app. And also there are others like Thinkfree or Zoho in this area, but not as powerful as Google Spreadsheets.
This has to do with an issue I had in my work-flow regarding a collaborative task. So basically the task was planning a to-do list. And we tried at our coordinator’s suggestion Google Spreadsheets. It was awesome. Realtime multiple editing with highlight feature. Chat feature between session members.
For our task it only had one drawback - tiny comments in fixed size boxes. C’mon … that was the worst idea in the spreadsheets user experience.

In the end we thank all mighty Google for this product.

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