Since my last post (in addition to working on a book for my other job) I've been hammering away on deployments of Zimbra. After quite a bit of testing I decided I liked it enough to deploy the Network Edition (paid) at work for a small workgroup, and at the open source edition at home for my family. One thing that didn't become apparent until I actually started working on these servers in production was that the default spam settings were a little weak. Fortunately there was additional documentation on the Zimbra wiki, as well as user contributions in the forums and on the wiki. I've found that there are a few rough spots (e.g. switching from http only mode to https mode broke smtp authentication). But the forums are active (although occasionally contentious) and help abounds. The open source edition is quite comprehensive, and other than lacking syncing, rendering of attachments in html (which is actually quite handy on the road), mobile capabilities and some scaling capabilities, it matches the paid version quite closely.
I've also been putting ActiveCollab through its paces on one of our projects and users have been pleased.
While I haven't had the chance to do some of my comprehensive evaluations on Wikis and Collanos (next on my to do), I have had a chance to tinker with some hosted tools that have been receiving a fair bit of press. Here are some quick overviews of a few of those tools.
Wetpaint
I am definitely in the market for a more usable wiki. I'm not sure why there is this anti-WYSIWYG bias in the wiki community, but it seems to be there. However, with wikis headed for the enterprise (for example see the Lotusphere announcements from last week) I think they're going to have to become a lot more user friendly. Wetpaint has to be at the top of the user friendly list. Wetpaint is a wiki designed for individuals, workgroups and small clubs/organizations. It is simple and slick. It is very Web 2.0, but it wears it well. At its heart is a simple ability to create and edit pages.
The edit this page link is always right there and brings up a simple ajaxy editing toolbar. That in and of itself is a reason to think about using wetpaint. But it gets a lot of other things right too. Adding a new page is done by... hitting the "add new page" button. And when you add that page it appears in a navigation menu so that you don't lose it. To link to that page you can easily find it using the link tool in the editing toolbar. This is the way wikis should work.
It does go a little overboard with the use of widgets, but I can imagine that these will evolve and could prove to be quite useful.
Wetpaint also easily facilitates sharing and commenting with others. You can choose to keep your wiki public or private, and weetpaint is free and ad supported. I have not found any ads to be obtrusive, in fact on my sites I haven't seen them at all. Wetpaint seems hard to beat, but I'll be trying to check out DekiWiki soon.
Koral
Koral is another Web 2.0 site. Its mission is sharing of documents, and again it does it simply and well in Web 2.0 style.
It is a well laid out site for uploading and sharing documents. You upload and publish content that you share with groups of people divided up into different workspaces. The interface makes it easy to get documents online, choose with whom you want to share them, and keep it all organized. Its one flaw may be that it is solely document focused. This likely means it would have to be used as one tool among many. This isn't necessarily bad, it means that there isn't a lot of feature creep or confusion about how to do thousands of different things. Perhaps it could be paired well with Wrike (see below). Right now Koral is hosted and free.
Wrike
I have to laugh just a bit every time I look at the Wrike page. Not because it isn't a good tool, but because it buys in a bit too much to the Web 2.0 thing. If you've read some of the sites spoofing Web 2.0 they'll tell you what you really need to do to be Web 2.0 is use certain colors, use particular fonts, make sure your logo has a reflection, and be sure to label it "beta". Well Wrike complies with all of these.
But beyond that it seems like the start of an interesting product. Wrike is a project management tool focused on tasks. Users create tasks and assign and notify others about these tasks. These tasks can be managed via a combination of web interface and the user's own email. The latter is what makes Wrike unique. It facilitates emailing in of information as well as notification out about tasks. Once tasks are initiated users can add documents, comments and updates to them in a relatively easy fashion. I have to admit that I haven't tried Wrike first hand, as the couple of times that I tried to create an account, it has been "down". Presumably they're in rapid update mode, and I will give it a whirl when they let me (or when it is out of beta). Right now Wrike is free.
I've also been putting ActiveCollab through its paces on one of our projects and users have been pleased.
While I haven't had the chance to do some of my comprehensive evaluations on Wikis and Collanos (next on my to do), I have had a chance to tinker with some hosted tools that have been receiving a fair bit of press. Here are some quick overviews of a few of those tools.
Wetpaint
I am definitely in the market for a more usable wiki. I'm not sure why there is this anti-WYSIWYG bias in the wiki community, but it seems to be there. However, with wikis headed for the enterprise (for example see the Lotusphere announcements from last week) I think they're going to have to become a lot more user friendly. Wetpaint has to be at the top of the user friendly list. Wetpaint is a wiki designed for individuals, workgroups and small clubs/organizations. It is simple and slick. It is very Web 2.0, but it wears it well. At its heart is a simple ability to create and edit pages.
The edit this page link is always right there and brings up a simple ajaxy editing toolbar. That in and of itself is a reason to think about using wetpaint. But it gets a lot of other things right too. Adding a new page is done by... hitting the "add new page" button. And when you add that page it appears in a navigation menu so that you don't lose it. To link to that page you can easily find it using the link tool in the editing toolbar. This is the way wikis should work.
It does go a little overboard with the use of widgets, but I can imagine that these will evolve and could prove to be quite useful.
Wetpaint also easily facilitates sharing and commenting with others. You can choose to keep your wiki public or private, and weetpaint is free and ad supported. I have not found any ads to be obtrusive, in fact on my sites I haven't seen them at all. Wetpaint seems hard to beat, but I'll be trying to check out DekiWiki soon.
Koral
Koral is another Web 2.0 site. Its mission is sharing of documents, and again it does it simply and well in Web 2.0 style.
It is a well laid out site for uploading and sharing documents. You upload and publish content that you share with groups of people divided up into different workspaces. The interface makes it easy to get documents online, choose with whom you want to share them, and keep it all organized. Its one flaw may be that it is solely document focused. This likely means it would have to be used as one tool among many. This isn't necessarily bad, it means that there isn't a lot of feature creep or confusion about how to do thousands of different things. Perhaps it could be paired well with Wrike (see below). Right now Koral is hosted and free.
Wrike
I have to laugh just a bit every time I look at the Wrike page. Not because it isn't a good tool, but because it buys in a bit too much to the Web 2.0 thing. If you've read some of the sites spoofing Web 2.0 they'll tell you what you really need to do to be Web 2.0 is use certain colors, use particular fonts, make sure your logo has a reflection, and be sure to label it "beta". Well Wrike complies with all of these.
But beyond that it seems like the start of an interesting product. Wrike is a project management tool focused on tasks. Users create tasks and assign and notify others about these tasks. These tasks can be managed via a combination of web interface and the user's own email. The latter is what makes Wrike unique. It facilitates emailing in of information as well as notification out about tasks. Once tasks are initiated users can add documents, comments and updates to them in a relatively easy fashion. I have to admit that I haven't tried Wrike first hand, as the couple of times that I tried to create an account, it has been "down". Presumably they're in rapid update mode, and I will give it a whirl when they let me (or when it is out of beta). Right now Wrike is free.
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