Chatbox Adds a Collaboration Layer to Dropbox: Online Collaboration«

Chatboxis a Mac app that adds simple collaboration features to popular cloud file sharing and storage service Dropbox. It allows you to post status updates and comment on the files stored within your Dropbox account, and even chat in real-time with other Chatbox users. Cleverly, all communication and storage is done via your Dropbox account, so there’s no need to register a separate Chatbox account, and the app will also work offline, syncing data when an Internet connection becomes available.

The Chatbox application’s window has a fairly basic interface: a field for entering status updates or comments at the top, with a pane showing recent updates underneath. It’s a fairly basic app, but if all you need is a simple way to discuss, comment on, or annotate the files you store and share via Dropbox, it works pretty well. A couple of minor criticisms I have of the app: There doesn’t appear to be a way to edit or delete Chatbox updates that have previously been posted, and also it’s not immediately obvious how you associate a Chatbox status update with a particular file. (You need to right-click on the file and select“Show Chatbox” to bring up the Chatbox window for that file; any updates are then associated with that file).

Dropbox isn’t the only file storage available, but its popularity and open API mean there’s a thriving ecosystem of third-party apps built on top of it. Chatbox is a pretty useful add-on (not bad for what wasapparently a weekend project), but I wouldn’t be surprised to see developers building on this concept and bringing out more full-featured and polished collaboration apps for Dropbox.

Chatbox is a free app currently in beta and only available for Mac OSX; you candownload it here. It requires a Dropbox account.

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SpiderScribe Helps With Online Brainstorming: Online Collaboration«

SpiderScribe is an online Flash-based tool that helps with brainstorming through the creation of mind maps,diagrams for sketching out ideas and concepts. There are already quite a few similar web-based tools available,MindMeisterandBubbl.usfor example, but SpiderScribe is free, very easy to use and has a few neat features that make it useful for collaborative brainstorming with your team, most notably that the mind map nodes can be documents, images and calendar events, rather than just text, and maps can easily be shared with others.

After creating an account you can get started. There’s ademo videoand a demo map provided to give you an idea of the kind of thing that you can put together, but the interface is reasonably intuitive. There’s a palette with the nodes you can create (this is originally docked at the bottom of the window, but you can reposition it; I moved it up to the side, as shown in the screenshot), while across the top of the screen are controls such as undo, redo, search  and sharing. Nodes can be text, images, files, locations or calendar events and can be added to the map, repositioned and joined together by dragging and dropping. It works well, although I should note that in my testing I had issues with deleting location nodes; the app is currently in beta so hopefully this issue is just a small bug the developers can iron out.

By default, your maps are private, but you can share them with others, either by sending invites or by publishing the map to the web. Invites are sent via email and you can elect to make the folks that you invite“Readers” (who only have permission to view the map) or“Editors” (who can view and edit the map); you can also decide whether to allow them to then share the map with others. They will then need to sign up to SpiderScribe to view or edit your map. Real-time collaboration is possible (changes made to the map by others will automatically appear on your screen), but it doesn’t have the advanced collaborative features of tools likeMindJet Catalyst. Public maps are published on the web and don’t require people to sign up to view them, but the maps are not editable.

SpiderScribe is free and in beta; you cansign up here.

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Adobe’s File Transfer Tool SendNow to Get Branding Option: Online Collaboration«

Adobe’s file transfer toolSendNow, which helps users send large files without FTP,  is getting a few updates, including compatibility with audio and video files, a desktop client and, perhaps most usefully, the ability for users to customize the SendNow site with their own branding,

The ability to send audio and video files using the tool is available immediately. It’s surprising it wasn’t available previously, given many of Adobe’s customers are creatives who likely want to send large audio and video files to colleagues and clients, although perhaps Adobe was concerned the service would be abused, and used to send copyrighted materials.

The custom branding option is coming in June, and will be available to customers on the paid Basic and Professional plans. I think it’s the most interesting update to SendNow, as it will provide freelancers and small businesses with an inexpensive yet professional-looking way to send large files to clients with their own branding.Users will be able to upload their own logos and imagery to the service, then check a box to add that branding on their file download pages, as shown in the screenshot below.

The desktop client will, unsurprisingly, be an Adobe AIR app. It will be released in the third quarter, and should enable users to send files without having to open a browser. From the look of the early screenshots, it will simply replicate the website without providing any additional functionality.

There are three SendNow plans: Free allows for transfer of files up to 100MB in size and includes 500MB of storage; Basic allows for transfer of files up to a whopping 2 GB in size and includes 5 GB of storage, will include the branding option and costs $9.99 per month or $99.99 per year; Professional allows for 2 GB file transfers, custom branding and includes 20 GB of storage for $19.99 per month or $190 per year. SendNow isn’t the only cloud-based file transfer solution available, of course. LikeYouSendIt,Minusand many other similar apps, SendNow facilitates simple transfer of larger files that are too big to send via email without having to mess about with tricky FTP clients. Adobe will hope that its integration with other Adobe products (it’s available via a menu option in Acrobat 10 and Reader 10, for example) and these new features will help give its service an edge.

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TribeHR Brings Your Human Resources Department Online: Online Collaboration«

Managing human resources can be very labor intensive. For example, when you post a job listing online, you’re practically begging to wind up with a large stack of files to wade through. The more you can do to automate the steps that actually get a suitable resume in front of you, the more you can focus on finding the perfect applicant.

TribeHRattempts to automate and streamline as many human resources tasks as it can. The web-based application will, under different plans, handle anything from a handful of employees to an unlimited number. Whether you are the owner of a small business and handle all of your human resources needs yourself or you have an entire HR department, TribeHR can provide you with the tools you need.

Get the Ordinary Out of the Way

The thing about human resources is that as it involves people, unexpected situations will always pop up that need your full attention. That’s not going to change, but the more you can do to get routine form-filling matters off your desk, the more you can focus on those issues that actually require you to make decisions. TribeHR’s approach is to simplify those standard HR tasks and let software do the heavy lifting.

Through TribeHR, you can handle vacation requests, plan employee development and hire new employees. The application is set up so that each employee in your organization can have a login, making it easy to share information, like new policies. There are permissions controls in place so that while you maintain employees’ records online, not everyone with a login has access to all the information in the system.

Switching to TribeHR

The problem with switching to any new human resources setup is that, no matter how good the new tools are, getting switched over can be expensive and time-consuming. TribeHR has tried to minimize the stress, though, by implementing the capability to import different kinds of data, as well as data export and an API. You can also access setup services by email. There is support available through TribeHR’s support site and Twitter. My only complaint is that I’d like to see at least one support or contact method that doesn’t require Internet access.

TribeHR is not the only online HR app available. Competitors includeBambooHRandEffortless HR, but TribeHR has a fairly comprehensive set of features and ispriced reasonably, starting at $19 per month, with plans based on the number of employees you’re working with, the number of job openings you have and how much information you need to store. There is an absolutely unlimited plan available at $399 per month. All plans include a fifteen-day free trial.

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Mailbox Adds Gmail to Your Mac’s Menu Bar: Online Collaboration«

Looking for a way to access your Gmail acount from your Mac’s menu bar? Zentertain’s Mailbox is a lightweight app that does just that, adding an envelope icon to your menu bar that, when clicked, pops open a window containing your Gmail inbox. You can read emails, reply to conversations and compose new emails from within that window, all without having to open up your browser.

The first time you click the icon, you’ll be asked for your login details before being taken to your inbox. Eagle-eyed users of the mobile-optimized version of Gmail for the iPhone will probably be very familiar with the version of the web app that pops up; it looks like Mailbox is effectively just a browser window, and the app is tricking Google into thinking that it is serving the site to a mobile device. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: the iPhone-optimized version of Gmail is nicely-designed, provides access to Gmail’s more advanced features (Priority Inbox, Google Buzz, labels, stars, etc.) and works well on smaller displays— like the window that Mailbox uses to display your inbox on your desktop.

As a very simple, lightweight app that provides speedy desktop access to your Gmail account via your menu bar, it works pretty well. However, if you’re a Google Apps for Domains Gmail user, you’re out of luck: unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work properly with those accounts. Additionally, there are a couple of extra (albeit probably technically hard to implement) features that would turn it from merely being a convenient way to access the Gmail website into a much more useful application. Robust offline access would be really handy, and make the app more of an equivalent to full-featured desktop email clients like Outlook and Apple Mail. Some kind of notifications system for new and unread emails would also be useful— perhaps having a count of unread emails next to the app’s icon in the menu bar, and also having the option ofGrowlnotifications for new emails.

Mailbox can bedownloaded from the App Store. It’s free, and requires Mac OS X 10.6 or later

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15 Tips for Accomplishing More in Less Time: Online Collaboration«

I’m a huge fan of anything that can make me more productive, so I’m always looking for ways to accomplish more while not killing myself doing it. It’s easier to excel if you can do more than your peers while still having time to relax and recharge.

Here are my tips for getting more done in less time:

1. Stay focused on the important work. Keep your eye on the work that will have the biggest impact, and make sure you finish the most important work first. Don’t get caught up in tasks, even those that seem urgent, if they aren’t really important.
2. Learn keyboard shortcuts. The more you can do without taking your fingers off of the keyboard, the faster you’ll finish your work, so take the time to learn available keyboard shortcuts for commonly-used tasks. Email, RSS readers, browsers and any other frequently-used apps are good places to start. Keyboard shortcuts aren’t only available in desktop apps; many web apps, such asGoogle ReaderandGmail, also have keyboard shortcuts.
3. Know whom to ask for help. If you can spend less time trying to figure things out for yourself, you can get more done. Make connections with people in your company and your industry you can ask for help. However, you’ll need to be prepared to help others, too.
4. Filter anything you can. If you get really good at automatically filtering out the noise, you can focus only on what you really need to see. Set up filters wherever possible: in youremail,RSS readerand more.
5. Learn to skim. If you get good at skimming over content without reading every word, you can quickly determine which items require your attention and which ones can be ignored. This works for reading social network posts, news and email.
6. Touch once. This one is hard for me to stick with, but when I do it, it really makes a difference. For email or other communications, look over it and decide what to do with it right away: archive, respond, create a task item, flag for followup, etc. Regardless of how you process communications, just make sure you deal with them once rather than looking at them multiple times.
7. Take control of your calendar. I’m really proactive about my calendar, and I only attend meetings where there is some benefit from my attendance. If you want to have time to get any real work done, you’ll probably need to occasionally decline meetings.
8. Become the master of your email. Don’t let email control you. Finding ways toreduce email overloadand proactively deal with email will allow you to spend less time on email and more time on actual work.
9. Work in chunks and focus. Despite what some might think,humans are not great at multitasking. We work better when we focus on one thing at a time. I do this bybreaking my work up into logical chunkswhere I can focus on specific tasks.
10. Get really good at using search engines. Learnlittle tricks for your favorite search engine. For example, with Google, you could search for“productivity site:gigaom.com/collaboration” to find all of the productivity tips posted on this blog. Spending less time looking for information means that you can get more done.
11. Automate routine tasks. For any mundane tasks that you perform manually over and over, you should find a way to automate them if at all possible. I write scripts, automatically process email with rules and filter RSS feeds toautomate tasksand spend less time on things I can have the computer do for me.
12. Prune. Have less data to process. Dump those irrelevant newsletter subscriptions, drop the social network contacts who don’t have anything interesting to say and prune feeds out of your RSS reader. Focus on the important information and get rid of the rest.
13. Keep it simple. When faced with any task, look for ways to keep things simple and avoid spending time on complexity that doesn’t add much value. Simple document formatting is a good example. Focus on the content that matters without getting too caught up in having elaborate formatting that could create more maintenance problems later.
14. Get news from podcasts. I pick and choose the news sources important to me with a combination of mainstream news and news on niche technology topics, and I listen to that news when I’m doing household chores, driving, grocery shopping, working out and more. I get only the news I want, and I listen to it at times I wouldn’t otherwise be productive, which allows me to keep up with industry news while spending little time on it.
15. Take time to recharge. If you work constantly, you’ll look like you are busy, but you’ll burn yourself out. If you really want to be productive, you need to take time to workout, do something fun, take a vacation, read or do something else relaxing. You’ll find that you come back to work with new ideas and focused energy to make a real impact.

Share your productivity tips below.

PhotocourtesyofFlickr user pasukaru76.

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Portable Presentation Power With MightyMeeting: Online Collaboration«

Ever get that“a-ha!” moment when seeing a new app in action? That’s how I felt seeing a demo ofMightyMeetingfrom CEO Dmitri Tcherevik. The app allows users to store demo videos and presentations in the cloud and then share them in online meetings and discussions from the web, iPad or iPhone, and is particularly useful for a web worker who is often on the road.

Who would use MightyMeeting?

Anyone who wants to make a presentation— either from the road or in person— using their iPhone or iPad. And yes, even through a web browser if you really, really want to lug your laptop around.

How does it work?

Download the freeMightyMeeting apponto your iPhone or iPad (or both) and either register through the app or through the MightMeeting website (also free).

The free version lets you attend anyone’s MightyMeeting and also lets you cache your presentations for offline, face-to-face meetings (so no Internet connection is required). You can show your slide presentation directly on your iPhone or iPad or connect your iPad to a projector for an instant big screen presentation. You also get a 14-day free trial period of the Pro version when you sign up.

The Pro version ($4.99/month) lets you host meetings. You can invite others to online MightyMeeting meetings— an unlimited number of meetings, with an unlimited number of attendees— and show your presentation via your iPhone while speaking to them on your phone as well. Or you can be speaking by phone and control the meeting on your iPad.

(And yes, Tcherevik conducted our entire meeting and controlled his slideshow presentation from his iPhone.)

How is this different fromSlideshareorSlideshare’s Zipcast?

I often access my slides by visiting the Slideshare site through my iPhone or iPad’s web browser. It’s not ideal but it works. Kind of. MightyMeeting offers much more seamless mobile capabilities, enhancing phone meetings with shared slide presentations.

You can carry your presentations with you wherever you go and have instant access to your slides to show on-the-fly, either offline or online through the MightyMeeting app. Because of the caching in the app, you don’t even have to worry if you have an Internet connection, or carry a bulky laptop wherever you go. Seems like a no-brainer to me, and it literally puts the power of portable presentations into the palm of my hand.

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Xobni’s Gadgets Bring Third-Party Collaboration Tools to Outlook: Online Collaboration«

Xobni, a popular productivity add-on for Outlook that automatically displays additional information about email contacts, has announced that it is making available“gadgets,” third-party additions to Xobni that will allow well-known collaboration tools as Yammer, Chatter, Dropbox, Evernote and Salesforce to become an integral part of the Outlook interface.

The first crop of gadgets includes tools for web-based document sharing, lead tracking, issue reporting and monitoring, and note-taking, such as:

• An Evernote gadget that automatically displays notes containing the name or email address of a particular contact, and allows adding and editing.
• A Dropbox tool for finding files and sharing them by creating links that are entered into email messages. Drag-and-drop file sending is planned for the future.
• A JIRA bug tracker tool that allows programmers to update project status inline.
• A Google Translate tool that automatically translates entire conversations, both incoming and outgoing. Xobni says that the translations are good enough to be helpful for use in customer support.
• A WebEx tool to schedule meetings, and start them on the fly.

Other gadgets available today include:

• Productivity: GoldMail
• Collaboration: Huddle and Microsoft SharePoint
• Content: Facebook, Flickr, Hoover’s, Klout, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing, YouTube, Yelp
• CRM: Salesforce CRM

Xobni was one of the first companies to bring“social CRM” services to the inbox, but has more recently seen significant competition from the likes ofRapportive,GistandLiaise. By hooking into third-party services, the gadgets can offer offer additional capabilities not offered by Xobni’s competitors.

When I spoke with Xobni representatives recently, they said that the rationale for developing this platform was simple: research shows that in the enterprise, people spend 38 percent of their screen time in Outlook, so it makes sense to make Outlook as capable as possible.

Xobni says that its system relies on open APIs, and it is based onOpenSocial. Developers can create their own gadgets;they can be createdwith straightforward web development tools. The infrastructure can even be hosted on intranets to take advantage of corporate LDAP servers. Gadgets are not yet part ofXobni for Gmail beta, but they are on the way.

The new Xobni gadgets are available fromthe company’s website. Most of the Xobni Gadgets are free, but the JIRA and Saleforce gadgets are priced at $9.99 per user per year. Xobni handles billing and payment for developers.

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5 Tips for Better Performance Reviews: Online Collaboration«

During an annual performance review, it’s important to be able to document your accomplishments throughout the year, especially if you work remotely. It isn’t the time to be modest about what you’ve accomplished.

Here are a few ways to ensure you can demonstrate your value to the company, whether you’re a freelancer being evaluated or a full-time, web-working employee preparing for an annual performance review.

1. Keep good records. I spend a few minutes at the end of every day to document in awork diarythe top few things that I accomplished or worked on that day. I’ve been doing this for most of my career, and it’s a great excuse to reflect on my productivity for the day, in addition to providing me with a reminder of what I worked on in any given month or year. You could also do monthly status reports, internal blog posts or use some other form of documentation. The format isn’t as important as making sure you have some kind of ongoing record of your performance.
2. Demonstrate your expertise. Everyone is an expert in something, and demonstrating your expertise is one good way to stay top of mind, especially when you work remotely some or all of the time. In my current position, I’m focused on open-source online communities, and people I work with come to me with all kinds of questions on this topic. I try to document best practices to help people find the information they need to be successful, but I also make time to sit down with people to answer questions and provide suggestions for how they can work within the open source community. People come to me for help, not just because of my job title, but because I’m willing to explain and help them work through their difficulties in a way that makes all of us more productive.
3. Learn new skills. For most of us working online, technologies change every day, and while we don’t need to jump on every hot new thing, we do need to take the time to learn new skills and techniques. If we don’t learn about new technologies, we’ll find ourselves becoming obsolete and irrelevant. You can’t perform well if you don’t have the right skills. Whether you learn these new technologies by going to classes or just jumping in and learning on the job isn’t important, but you need to set aside some time for development.
4. Brag to your manager. Yes, I know your parents probably told you not to toot your own horn and that you shouldn’t brag about your accomplishments. But you spend at least 40 hours a week (probably more) working very hard on your job, and your manager probably sees only a couple of things you do every week, especially if you work remotely. It’s your job to make sure your manager knows about all the important things you do, and the only way to make sure she knows is by telling her. Make the time to meet with her or send her a quick email when you finish something that you are proud of accomplishing.
5. Emphasize the benefits of working remotely. When working remotely, it’s also important to talk about how working remotely impacts your performance and use it to your advantage. In my case, I drive to the office two or three days a week on the days that I have a lot of meetings, and I make sure that I use that time to track people down who aren’t responding to email, and I make the most of my time in the office for in-person collaboration. On the other hand, for my days working from home, I focus on activities that require quiet and concentration, like strategic thinking, data analysis or writing projects. I’m careful to schedule my time and structure my to-do list to take advantage of each location, but I also talk about why this works with my manager, employees and coworkers to give them some insight into why I work the way I do and why it works so well for me.

The bottom line is that you manage your own performance, and you need to make sure that you are getting credit for your hard work, especially if you are working remotely.

PhotocourtesyofFlickr user Roman Pinzon-Soto

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VoxOx Brings Its All-in-One Communications App to iOS Devices: Online Collaboration«

VoxOx, an all-in-one phone, fax, instant-messaging, text-messaging, and file-sending application for desktops, is now offering an app for iOS. While the mobile app doesn’t have all the features that the desktop application has, it could be useful for those who juggle lots of communication channels.

Like its desktop cousin, the new iOS app, named VoxOx Call, attempts to bring together the features of many other products. At first glance, it looks most like Google Voice. New users can select a free U.S. number, or purchase a low-cost number in Canada (something Google Voice doesn’t offer); number porting is coming.

Surprisingly, VoxOx Call doesn’t make calls using VoIP. Instead, it’s a callback service that connects both parties using standard lines. The provider explains its decision this way:

“Most VoIP calling apps rely heavily on a user’s bandwidth, which can quickly deplete a mobile data plan or result in unreliable call quality. The VoxOx Call app utilizes the traditional telephone network to initiate a call, but does so at VoxOx’s cheap worldwide calling rates, ensuring low cost and reliability. A user simply dials a contact’s phone number, and then waits for their phone to ring with that person on the line. Instead of the call being routed as an outbound call for which a mobile carrier may charge toll fees, VoxOx turns it into an inbound call, which in most countries is toll free. This allows a mobile user to pay only pennies per minute for long-distance and international calls via VoxOx rates instead of dollars per minute through their mobile carrier.”

Whether this system makes sense for you will depend on what kind of phone and data plans you have. An interesting side-effect of this procedure, though, is that the app can be used even on iPod touches and iPads, since you can set the app to call you on any number, including non-iPhone cell phones and landlines in your vicinity.

Like Google Voice, VoxOx offers transcriptions of voice messages, and these can be viewed in the iOS app. I haven’t tested it enough to evaluate how accurate the transcriptions are; Kevin Hertz, CTO at Telcentris (the company behind VoxOx), claims 80-90 percent accuracy.

In addition to international calling, VoxOx offers worldwide SMS. VoxOx has aimed to make text conversations as seamless as possible. If the person you’re conversing with leaves their office during a chat, it’s possible to switch between, say, their IM account and SMS on their cell phone. The app also has a simple way of emailing chat transcripts.

The iOS app offers several advanced features, including the ability to record calls, transfer between devices in the middle of a conversation, and arrange conferences of up to 20 people. Users can set up call forwarding to multiple phone numbers. VoxOx Call users can also receive, view and forward incoming faxes, change outgoing caller ID on the fly. It offers push notifications, too.

VoxOx Call doesn’t have quite as many features as the desktop version, though, and while it’s possible to sign up for a VoxOx account from the mobile app, VoxOx Call is intended to work in concert with the desktop software. There are a number of functions that can’t be accessed from the iOS app; even simple things such as adding an IM account aren’t available. Also, Skype integration seems to be missing, apparently because Skype requires its own software to be running in order for other programs to access it.

On the other hand, the iOS app has something the desktop application doesn’t: integration with the device’s address book.

During my conversation with Kevin Hertz, I asked him about some of the issues thatcaused me to be skepticalabout the Mac version of the desktop app when I looked at it a few months ago. I’d been disappointed by its“un-Mac-like” appearance and poor font rendering, which made it unappealing to use. I had been surprised by its lack of connections to the Mac address book, or even a system for importing contacts. I was unhappy with its inconsistent support for such standards as oAuth and Facebook Connect. And I had also been annoyed by the tendency of VoxOx to default to an“invite your friends to use this” setting. Hertz assures me that all these issues will be addressed in updates to the desktop application.

VoxOx remains a promising, but flawed, product. The initial release of VoxOx Call for iOS will definitely appeal to those who do a lot of international calling and texting; its limited features and reliance on callbacks will make it less compelling for the rest of us.

VoxOx offers a number ofcallingandtextingplans. You may alsopay as you go. The VoxOx Call app is free (iTunes link).

Do you use VoxOx? How do you manage your mobile communications?

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