With web 2.0 there are a huge range of tool to help you work. I have been investigating some recently to help creative collaboration. Here are a few ideas:
Brainstorming -
- Mind42 (mind maps)
- Mindmeister (mind maps – incl iApp (£))
- Xmind (downloadable app for mind maps)
- Prezi This is a web app designed as an alternative to Powerpoints and the domination of bulleted lists. Might be good for outlining ideas, pitching stories etc.
Collaboration -
(real time)
- Etherpad (Google has recently acquired this technology and the future of the free service is not clear).
- Google Docs, either presentations or documents.
- Facebook, for groups and communication
- Celtx studio. I have a test account.
- Acrobat.com has ‘buzzword’ for documents and presentations too. Slicker than Google Presentations. But only embeds pdfs like Google (so not documents).
- iPaper embeddable documents!! Really aiming as a way of publishing. Works in VLE like Blackboard/Minerva.
- Evernote Its possible to share research through their note sharing facility. iPhone app, Firefox add-on, downloadable application. Here is a shared notebook. I can add research so all can see. But others can only read it. It is an easy and very quick way of gathering and sharing material. But its one sided. Creating a generic account might be one way around this. But you could share a ‘look book’ or scrap book for filmmaking etc
Distribution (cross platform)
Dropbox (Docs and PDFs work well but text files don’t on my iPhone) Optional download App that lives in the Mac Finder window. Really neat idea. You can share items from your dropbox. Last year this seemed very slow, but it seems to work better now.
box.net – free 1GB up to 25MB file size.
The future will be strongly influenced by Google Wave. Its buggy and in beta now. I’ve messed around with it alittle. One to watch next year.
regards, Mike J
Advertisement
