The chalk gives way to the mouse. The canvas to the screen. But essentially online whiteboards try to do the same thing that real world whiteboards used to do in our good ol’ school days. Online whiteboards though have gone a few steps beyond the mimicry.
Dabbleboard, a whiteboard application brings its own host of features to heighten the whiteboard feel. Call it a ‘thinking’ whiteboard.
For the uninitiated, let me just define virtual whiteboards. Whiteboards are software applications that allow for collaborative communication through writing or drawing, in fact all the attributes of a real world whiteboard (and more).
Sometimes the words ‘Microsoft software’ conjures up an image of a gigabyte sized bloated package. But Microsoft too sometimes goes against the grain and some of the tools available from the “Sysinternals Lab” prove that size doesn’t really matter. One example is ZoomIt.
What would a bundled app of 145KB have to offer? Some nifty help if you look at it closely. Imagine you are giving a PowerPoint presentation to a roomful of people. Perhaps you need to get your point across with a chart but the guy on the fourth row can’t make it out. With a click of a mouse you can now zoom in and focus on that part of the screen with the important information and then zoom back out. You save your audience the pain of squinting.
As much as some people hate it, there will always be times where you might have to collaborate with someone else. While working with someone else might make it easier to get ideas and finish faster, it’s going to be a nightmare if you don’t have the right tools for working together.
Who would want to have dozens of windows open while trying to explain some website to a fellow worker? It seems that there have been a lot of people who have been frustrated by working with others because there are quite a few tools out there to deal with this problem.
From basic all-accessible (students, PR folks, etc) multi-person live brainstorming dashboards TO feature-rich, techy diagram creation tools.
Basic Mind-Mapping Tools
(1) ImaginationCubed - awesome looking, simple to use, live brainstorming tool. Invite your partner and share single dashboard to create mind maps. Draw, add objects, type, etc.
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Features: Demo
(2) Bubbl.us - lets you quickly create custom bubble mind maps and share them with colleagues for further refining.
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