When can I go into the supermarket
and buy what I need with my good looks?
Allen Ginsberg - "America"
Special
issue on freebies
Supermarkets may take a while to catch up with
the trend, but the utopian market also known as the World Wide
Web is brimming with goods that are free for the taking, even
for people without Allen Ginsberg's good looks! These goods are
washed ashore by a virtual tsunami called ASP - Application Service
Providers. If you haven't heard this acronym yet, you'll hear
it repeated ad nauseam very soon. It is coming and it's big. Bigger
then Push technology and NC (Network Computer), which, by the
way, are bad as a comparison: they are both pretty much dead now,
while I'd venture to predict that the ASP movement is here to
stay.
The main idea behind ASPs makes a lot of sense, especially for
small and medium businesses, and for non-profits: instead of paying
big bucks for hardware, software, and manpower in order to maintain
a set of needed collaboration tools, one can simply "rent" the
tools hosted remotely by an ASP - paying only for their use, without
the headaches of support, maintenance, upgrades, etc. It is an
idea whose time has clearly come, and so it is generating quite
a bit of heat, with new, creative solutions popping up like popcorn,
and with many companies already vying for the short attention
span of potential customers. Hence the proliferation of free tools
and services offered in the hope that they will compel the users
to pay for their premium versions. The funny thing is, that these
free versions are often so darn good and the premium services
so expensive, that one can only wonder how they can ever compel
people to switch...
Below is a handful of magnificent freebies, divided into categories
corresponding to those in my database of groupware tools, each
with a list of features you get just for registering. What a time
to be alive! :-)
Document
sharing:
Are you in a small team, whose members exchange
files frequently or work together on common documents? Do you
have files that you'd like to keep handy without carrying floppies
and/or laptop around? In either case, consider
DocSpace.
- With DocSpace
you get:
- 25 MB of file storage
- Secure sending of files
- File check-in/check-out
- Version control for documents
- Personal address book
- Ability to create teams easily
- Security via 256-bit encryption
Virtual
office:
Do you have a need for a Web office, where visitors
could find information about you and/or your business? take a
look at your schedule? pick up files you left for them or leave
files for you to pick up? page you instantly for an urgent chat?
Consider
WebEx Office or
iNiku.
- With WebEx
Office you get:
- Personal profile (electronic business card)
- Template-based, customizable, personal (or project) Web
site
- Project folders for file storage and exchange
- Shared calendar
- Scheduling of WebEx meetings
- Private discussion board
- Instant messaging
- Personal address book
- User directory
- List of favorite links
- With iNiku
you get:
- Personal profile (electronic business card)
- Project folders with 50 MB of disk space for file storage
and exchange
- Document check-in/check-out
- To-do lists and alerts
- Templates for many common documents (in MS Word format),
e.g. New Project Proposal
- Integrated e-mail account with support for file attachments
and filters
- Access to external POP account
- Instant messaging
- Personal address book
- User directory
- Technology news
Virtual
classroom
Whether you want to supplement your existing course
with online discussions and quizzes, quickly post learning materials
on the Web, or move your course entirely online,
Blackboard.com
may be just your ticket. Running on the powerful CourseInfo server
and built to Educause IMS specifications, this fully browser-based
environment offers a comprehensive blend of synchronous and asynchronous
features for effective online teaching and learning.
- With Blackboard.com
you get:
- Easy creation of content and posting of self-study materials
- Threaded discussions
- Integrated messaging system
- Textual chat
- Interactive whiteboard
- Assessment tools and gradebook
- File exchange
- Collaborative teams
Conferencing
Online conferencing tools have come such a long
way since chat rooms that one wonders why is anybody still willing
to fly halfway around the world just to sit around a table and
talk or listen to a presentation? All the more that powerful,
real-time communication capabilities are no longer confined to
software suites costing $12,000 and up just for starters, but
are now available in exchange for filling in a short registration
form.
MyPlaceWare,
WebEx Meeting, and
NetMeeting
are the best examples of tools in this category. True, some require
the use of phone conferencing for the audio portion, and most
will run properly only on Windows machines, but both limitations
will likely disappear soon, as IP audio technology matures, and
new Java modules replace the need for OS-specific clients.
- With MyPlaceWare
you get:
- Scheduling of online meetings for up to 4 participants
- E-mail announcements sent to attendees
- Whiteboard
- Textual chat
- Slide show presentations (with Powerpoint slides)
- Collaborative Web browsing
- Screen sharing for live application demos
- Ad-hoc screen snapshots
- Annotation tools
- Audience polling
- With WebEx Meeting
you get:
- Scheduling of online meetings for up to 6 participants
- E-mail announcements sent to attendees
- Real-time video
- Whiteboard
- Textual chat
- Slide show presentations (with Powerpoint slides)
- Collaborative document viewing
- Collaborative Web browsing
- Annotation tools
- With NetMeeting
you get:
- Real-time audio and video communication
- Whiteboard
- Textual chat
- File transfer
- Real-time application sharing
- Collaborative Web browsing
E-Mail
E-mail is as ubiquitous these days as credit cards,
so you can have dozens of free e-mail accounts on various portals,
all accessible via Web browsers. Most will also pull up your mail
from an existing POP account. But how many will give you browser
access to your IMAP account, such that you'll feel as if accessing
it with a full-fledged client? And how many will read you your
e-mail via a telephone? Most importantly, how many will bother
to offer you a secure connection?
MailandNews.com will
do all that.
- With MailandNews.com
you get:
- Access to any of your existing e-mail accounts via a
Web browser
- Support for POP3, IMAP4, and SMTP mail protocols. (The
Web interface acts almost as a full-fledged client, allowing
users to: create folders, delete messages, send new
messages and replies, maintain address books, sort mail,
etc.)
- Text-to-voice access to e-mail via touch-tone phones
and a toll-free number (the system will read your e-mail
to you)
- Choice of regular or secure access
Scheduling:
Anyone, who has ever sent countless e-mails trying
to help a small group of busy people find time for a meeting,
will bless the hearts of those, who created
TimeDance -
a very useful tool that will take the task of determining out
who is available when off your hands.
- With TimeDance
you get:
- Scheduling of events
- Collecting and summarizing information on invitees' availability
- E-mail invitations to events
- Address book
- Import/export to/from popular PIMs
- Support for vCalendar standard for drag-and-drop transfer
of events
- Automatic e-mail reminders
- Bulletin board
- Group setup
There is more. Much more. For fear of making this issue of ACT
Spotlight unbearably long, I am omitting such interesting, useful,
and, of course, free tools as the
VNC, reviewed in detail
in
No. 8, or
StarOffice
from Sun, a personal productivity suite similar to, and compatible
with, Microsoft Office. Great as they may be, those tools
are on or beyond the borderline separating online collaboration
technologies from the rest of the software jungle out there. In
view of that fact I hope that my omissions will be forgiven.
©1999 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology
