Sunday 6 February 2011

Sharing and collaborating materials web 2.1?

For team working Box.net proposes a useful feature.

As web 2.0 moves increasingly into socialising the web it's becoming easier to work on projects with friends, collagues and team mates remotely.  Dropbox is a very popular service, (well worth exploring if you haven't already) and it offers a shared folder.  This makes it possible to place a file into a shared web based folder, or if the app is installed on the collaborator's computer, onto their hard drive.  But there are some additional features that are needed to support comment and communication alongside file sharing.

Box.net

With a recent upgraded version of their service Box.net have some way to answer these issues.  Like Drop Box there is a free version as well as a premium service.  My comments all relate to the free service.  It comes with 5 gigs of storage.

I recently suggested using the service to a team of students who are managing the pre-production on a film project.  They have all had to set up accounts and provide an email address.  Any of the team can then place/view/download material from the shared folder.  Some files can be viewed in directly in the browser.  It supports common types of file formats like Word, Excel etc.  Each file can have notes and threaded comments attached to it.  People can easily be invited to join the 'sharing'.  It's also possible to do a group email to all collaborators.

When you log in to your Box.net account you are presented with a list of things that have been updated.  However it's not necessary to actually log in to Box.net see what's going on.  Each shared folder creates an RSS feed.  So all activity can easily be seen using a Feed Reader.  I use Google's reader and the excellent 'Reeder' (sic) on the iPhone. (£)

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