MakeUseOf Directory » Collaboration

Thinkbinder: Create & Organize Study Groups Online

Israel Nicolas — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:01:43 +0000

If you are thinking of starting a study group online then you should try out Thinkbinder. This website builds a social-like platform for study groups to share files, post ideas and status updates, collaborate, and just keeping in touch.

Creating a study group with Thinkbinder takes less than a minute. Then, you will find a dashboard where you can post your news feeds, upload files, and share ideas on a whiteboard. You can invite friends through e-mail and once they are all in, you can collaborate through video chat, private messages, and more. Anyone can join the group as long as they know the code to your study group.

Thinkbinder also lets you post stuff from the web using the Bind bookmarklet. This helps students in clipping, referencing, or sharing resources that members in the group can learn from. And while this tool is designed for study groups, it finds more mileage in other uses like meetings, as a private group network, or even as a tool for teachers.

Features:

Start your study group.
Use the Bind bookmark button to share with study group.
Add buddies and start a video chat.
Add status to your news feed.
Share files and post in whiteboard.
Join study group by entering the code.
Similar Tools: OpenStudy, P2PU, and Khan Academy.

Check out Thinkbinder @ www.thinkbinder.com

CanvasDropr: Get An Online Canvas To Collaboratively Share Photos With Friends

Umar — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:01:35 +0000

Today people usually share photographs of events through their Facebook photo albums. But only you can upload photographs to your Facebook photo album; if your friends have pictures of the event, you first need to get them and then upload yourself. Here to offer a convenient alternative is a wonderful web service called CanvasDropr.

CanvasDropr is a free to use web service that lets you easily share photographs with friends by letting them collaborate on the albums you create. You start by creating an account on the site after which you can create a ‘canvas’ where you simply drop photographs from your computer. You can give your canvas a relevant title and share its URL with friends. Friends visit your canvas, request to be added to it, you accept their request, and they are able to add photographs too. It’s that simple.

Features:

A user-friendly web service.
Lets you upload photos.
Lets you give access to others to add photos to your albums.
Lets you create multiple canvases.
Similar tools: ZangZing, Photomemo, Troovi and Strobox.
Also read related article: 4 Sites for Groups to Easily Share Photos from One Event.

Check out CanvasDropr @ www.canvasdropr.com (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

Kl1p: Quickly Share Plain Text, Rich Text & Code Texts For Collaboration

Umar — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:01:41 +0000

Although there are numerous web services that let you share text files with friends for collaboration, most of them require you to sign up for an account first. One site that lets you start sharing texts right away is a web service called Kl1p.

Kl1p is a free to use web service that lets you quickly start sharing and collaborating on text files. All you have to do is visit the site’s homepage and specify a subdomain where your text files will be present. You can then create a plain text file, a rich text file, or a programming code file. The rich text version offers various formatting options including various font styles and sizes.

The programming code portion lets you write codes in a variety of programming languages including PHP, CSS, C++, and JavaScript.

When you want to share the text, simply provide your friends with the URL you made earlier and they will be able to view and edit your files.

Features:

A user-friendly web service.
Lets you quickly share text.
Supports plain text, rich text, and programming languages.
Enables collaboration by letting others modify your text.
Similar tools: Codr.cc, TextSnip, HTML Instant, Ecoder, PHPAnywhere, AmyEditor, PrettyPrinter and Codepad.

Check out Kl1p @ www.kl1p.com (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

Asana: Time Management For Teams Of People

Dave LeClair — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:01:40 +0000

Trying to organize a large of team of people and keeping them on task can take as much as time as the task itself. The folks at Asana are hoping their team based task manager will solve those problems. Their task management program works on all kinds of platforms. You can use it on mobile platforms as well as right in your web browser on your computer. It makes keeping everyone on task easier.

Asana syncs with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook and Apple iCal, so your team can get the information no matter where they are. You can even have multiple teams stored, so you can keep your work tasks separated from your clubs and team tasks.

There are lots of keyboard shortcuts in the app, making it quick and easy to change things. Speaking of speed, everything is in real-time, so everyone will see the changes as they happen. You can also be notified when a change occurs to a project.

Features:

View the people in a task and assign tasks.
Syncs with Outlook, Google Calendar and iCal.
Works on computers and mobile devices.
Keyboard shortcuts.
Real time changes.
Follow and be notified of changes to a project.
Integrates with email for easy task creation.
Similar tools: DeskTime, TimePanther, CronSync, CronSync and Yast.com.
Also read related articles:

Find Asana @ www.asana.com

AndBang: A New User Friendly Collaboration Tool For Teams

Umar — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:01:51 +0000

There are numerous websites available online that let people collaborate in teams. While most of these tools offer effective solutions, they often come with distracting side-features that disturb a team member’s work; for instance someone may keep getting chat notifications for the group even if they are not being referred to. These problems are solved by the excellent collaboration web app AndBang.

AndBang is free to use for two-member teams and costs $10 per month for additional members with a 14 day trial. With AndBang you can quickly setup tasks and invite team members to your team’s online dashboard. Here you will find all the listed tasks. Team members can click on the lightning icon next to a task to indicate that they are working on it. By viewing the task a team member is working on, you will not need to ask them if they are available or busy. Group chatting is also supported by the site but it notifies you of messages only if conversations in the group are referring to you.

Altogether, these features work to provide you with a distraction-free workspace.

Features:

A user-friendly web service.
Lets you collaborate in teams.
Is free for 2-member teams.
Lets team members indicate which task they are working on.
Chat notifies you when group conversations refers to you.
Similar tools: Conceptboard, CoSketch, Twiddla, Squareleaf, Pindax, and Workhack.

Check out AndBang @ www.andbang.com (By Umar from AllThatIsApple)

Substance: Open Sourced Collaborative Document Editing

Dave LeClair — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:01:44 +0000

If you are looking for a free alternative to Google Docs for your group document editing needs, Substance is a great option for you. The web-based writer is much like Microsoft Word, only a little simpler. It’s easy to use and navigate for users of all levels. Best of all, because it is open source, it’s one hundred percent free!

You can invite an unlimited number of other users to edit the document with you. Users can subscribe to a document to be alerted whenever a change is made. This way, you will always be in the loop with what your collaborators are doing to the document. If you are working with a large document, they will have a convenient table of contents feature.

You can also export any file created in the application to other formats. These formats include PDF, ODT, RDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown and more. You can also use the tools in the application in other applications because the code is open source.

Features:

Simple to navigate.
Invite any number of users to collaborate with you.
Can be alerted when someone makes a change to a document.
Table of contents to navigate large documents.
Code can be used in other applications.

Find Substance @ Substance.io

QikPad: Collaborate Notepad Online

abhijeet — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 21:01:34 +0000

If you need to quickly collaborate with a bunch of people on something that could be done via text, for example discussion on a few lines of code or maybe general chit-chatting, then you might want to try QikPad. It’s a simple online tool which you can use to create a collaborative notepad and invite people to participate in a discussion.

Quickly create a “pad” as they call it, share the URL with friends, and see what everyone is typing at the same time through color coding. Text decoration options are there, as are other sharing options.

QikPad also allows you to create a read-only version of the pad and when you close the session, it can play a time slider that shows you who typed what and when. Overall, some nice features for a simple tool.

Features

Collaborate together in an online notepad.
Different text background colors show who’s typing what.
No registration required.
Similar tools: XY WriteIt, Co-ment and ShowDocument.

Check out QikPad @ www.qikpad.co.uk (By Abhijeet from GT Mobiles)

JSBin: Test And Debug Code With Your Team Online

Israel Nicolas — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:01:01 +0000

If you are into Javascript development and working with a team, you will quickly find out that the usual tools do not do a good job in sharing and visualizing code to your team. Fortunately, we have JSBin, an online JS development tool that will let you test, render, and debug your code for collaborative work.

JSBin is most helpful as a teaching tool or for anyone who want to share their JS Tricks. While the interface looks clean, it has a load of powerful features like allowing you to add custom libraries, drag-and-drop, and render the code live. You can also get the latest URL for the project and share it to your friends so that they can make their own changes or save a new version. It just saves time.

JSBin is useful for anyone who is codes in Javascript and works with teams to get projects done.

Features:

Drag and drop functionality.
Add custom libraries.
Live previews.
Resizable panes.
Autocomplete.
Use clones instead of saves.
Custom template for starting points.
Test Ajax request.
Save your history.
Similar tools: Codr.cc, TextSnip, HTML Instant, Ecoder, PHPAnywhere, AmyEditor, PrettyPrinter and Codepad.

Check out JSBin @ www.jsbin.com

Friend-Pointer: Share & Navigate Websites With Your Friends

Israel Nicolas — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 01:01:02 +0000

Do you want to share websites and navigate through them with your friend? Then here is a simple browser extension that will get the job done. Friend-Pointer is a cool tool that lets you surf and navigate websites from multiple PC’s with your friends in real-time. The implementation is pretty simple – once you have the extension installed and connected with your friends, you can control a common cursor that will serve as a marker on where you are on the website.

In addition, Friend-Pointer has a chat window so you can discuss the website you are currently viewing. You can also invite friends through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and more. The extension is available for Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and the Android Browser.

Features:

Browse websites with friends at the same time.
Chat with your friends on the same page.
Browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
Similar tools: Channel.me

Check out Friend-Pointer @ http://friend-pointer.com/homeen.html

Zwiggo: Collaborate With Friends To Plan Group Activities

abhijeet — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:01:25 +0000

If you were to plan a weekend trip to the hills with a bunch of friends or acquaintances, having all the itinerary sorted out before the trip begins would be a prudent thing to do. Doing it through email or Facebook Groups or Google+ might not be very convenient. Zwiggo is a web based service that lets people like you build a collaboration space for planning such group tasks. You can invite others and add apps that help you create maps, share photos, create blogs and much more.

The Spaces or the dashboards as they are called, can be public or private. The interface is neat and easy to use. It also has the ability to facilitate group chat, share documents, calendars, bookmarks, files etc. Overall quite a feature-rich tool for personal collaboration.

Features

Create public or private collaboration spaces quickly.
Invite others and add apps.
Create maps, share documents, calendars, photos.

Check out Zwiggo @ www.zwiggo.com (via AllThingsD By Abhijeet from GT Mobiles)