Archive for collaborate
Collaborate, Share, Revise with Writeboard
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I came across Writeboard last year and filed it away until now. It’s a very simple interface and it is simple to sign up. Just provide an email address, password and the name of your first whiteboard and you can get started right away.
This tool is your very basic text editor. I chose to import text from a document on my computer and it imported into plain text. There is simple formatting you can do with odd symbols (like a * for bold). Don’t expect to do anything very fancy here. I did see when I saved my whiteboard it showed up in rich text with the formatting I did appearing.
Once you have your document ready for someone to review, simply click on the share butto
n and type in the email address(es), and they will get a link and your password to the document. Your collaborator can then add to, or make any revisions to the document. When finished, they click ‘save’ and instantly you’ll see on the right side the list of people who have worked on the document in chronological order. A nice feature is the ‘quick compare’ where you can check two versions and easily scan changes made.
Pros
- Any technophobe should be able to easily use this web tool
- Free and easy to sign up and get started
- Easily roll back to a previous version of your document
- Accessible from any computer that can get on the web
- Subscribe via RSSs feed to your document’s changes/revisions
Cons
- Limited to typing or importing text. Can’t upload .doc, .ppt, files
- Formatting of your document is limited
- If you have multiple writeboards, they are not all kept together and each one will require its own password
- You can bookmark your writeboard, since they are all stored on the web. If you don’t then you’ll have to log into writeboard and have them send you a link each time you want to go back to one of your documents
This free service is from 37 Signals, a web-based app developer. Their other offerings include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire.
Writeboard is a nice little app if your needs are few and simple. For more robust collaboration, I like the free collaboration and storage tools from Microsoft Small Business Live and Airset much better.
How I Moved A Client from Outlook email to Gmail–and did it remotely
Posted by: | CommentsLast week, I blogged about moving my email to Gmail with the intent to do this follow-up on how I did the same for a client of mine. This client lives in her Outlook email and travels frequently. Earlier this year she went from a Blackberry to iPhone. She loves her iPhone. She expressed her need for me to have access to her email and schedule. In addition to viewing her mail and calendar, she wanted me to be able to file, send and respond to emails from her mailbox. With a friend’s very expert assistance, we set up an exchange/imap account with her ISP that allowed me to do this from within my Outlook client.
Now if she had a reliable ISP, we’d still be using it, but problems developed and I removed the exchange/imap feature from her Outlook. When exchange/imap went away, so did all the nicely organized email folders that were on her iPhone. This decreased her productivity since she couldn’t file her many incoming messages. Who likes to lose features as we travel down the tech highway!
Enter Gmail and it’s highly touted IMAP features. I discussed with my client this option and how I’d be able to once again have complete access to her email and calendar and that she would again have all the folders available to her on her iPhone. She wanted me to go for it. So I first wanted to try it out on one of the family’s email accounts. Then I did it with my Outlook account (detailed in last week’s blog). Success!
I use the free and very useful Logmein to access my client’s computer remotely. I posted about this program a year ago. It’s been one of the most useful tools in my arsenal. I chose a convenient time to first back up her email and then did the set up by following the instructions from the great How-To-Geek. After adding the Gmail account from within Outlook, most of the tweaking could be done from within the web interface. I moved all of her Outlook folders (one at a time), down to her Gmail and got them organized as they were before (for the most part). There were a few odd error messages here and there. For example, one said I couldn’t move a particular folder, but then it would be there all the same. Gmail provided very easy instructions for getting Gmail onto the iPhone.
Everything has been working for the last couple of weeks. We are still working out a few kinks here and there. One irritant has been that Outlook 2007 is slow to sync all the folders and mail that are in the Google folders. It’s really been slowing her system down. I’ve been looking around for some tweaks for this and think this from Digital Inspiration may work.
So, would I do again for another client- you betcha! Of course, you have to have a client who has trust in you, a good sense of humor and a bit adventurous. The unexpected can happen, but with the proper preparation, having a back-up and restore plan of what you’re about to change and choosing a time that doesn’t impact business critical tasks, you too, can do it.
