One of my “must reads” every day is the Lifehacker site. It is a tremendous resource for new software and services and for keeping up to date with what is going on in the wider web world. One of the regular features is where they ask readers to nominate their favourite “package” in themes like anti-virus, firewalls, note-taking etc. The latest request is for favourite collaboration packages and I must confess this time round some of the suggestions have been pretty bizarre!.
One of the five choices was Basecamp which I’ll be generous and say is a reasonable choice but in my mind it is more project management than collaboration tool along with the likes of Wizehive and Deskaway.
Also there is Google Wave. Now I can see the potential of Google Wave but it is a far cry from being ready for prime time collaboration. In fact I’d go as far as to say that at this point in time MSN Messenger is probably a more rounded collaboration tool!
Another surprise entry is Microsoft’s SharePoint, something I consider to be one of the most ghastly and unintuitive forum-based software services I have ever had the misfortune to use. I can see why enterprise and corporate entities use it – because it is from Microsoft and the IT departments only support MS products but quite frankly they’d be better off with Invision Powerboard or something similar! Go on you IT types, break out of your comfort zone.
If anything gets the “my old cockney grandfather’s stating the bleedin’ obvious” award it is the inclusion of email as a collaboration tool. Communication tool, certainly; collaboration tool, nah!Nuff said.
The only suggestion on the shortlist that makes any real sense to me is Google Docs which is a great tool if you are working with others but no mention of Zoho which has the same collaboration potential.
What would your collaboration tools recommendations be?
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