Pelotonics describes itself as a group collaboration system built with "an eye toward adding certain intuitive pieces of functionality that Basecamp did not and would not launch." We wrote about the company once before, when it integrated popular note taking service Evernote into its software.

It's exciting to ponder what Pelotonics plus Trapani will come up with. When it comes to web based productivity, Trapani literally wrote the book on it. She now writes regularly at a personal blog called Smarterware.

For the sake of disclosure, and because it's interesting, I should note that Pelotonics is a past client of my consulting practice (I have no ongoing financial interest in the company). One of the first things I advised Pelotonics' Troy Malone to do was reach out to Gina Trapani - it was easy advice to give as their work couldn't be more related, both live in San Diego and Gina is among the nicest people in the industry. For the firmly un-opportunistic author to join the company is a real surprise, though.

Anyone interested in the future of workplace collaboration will now be all the more well served by keeping an eye on Pelotonics.

After a document has been uploaded, users can easily set different security settings, and decide if a document will be available for printing or download. Backboard allows its users to decide if they want a document to be available only to invited reviewers, or if the documents Backboard page should be secured with a password. The document can also just be hidden behind a 'secret' URL.

Where Backboard stands out, though, is in how easy the application makes it to leave feedback. Reviewers can simply use a virtual pen to mark a document up in Backboard's excellent document viewer, or, in a text document, they can highlight parts of the text, and a form for leaving comments will automatically pop up (this feature feels a bit similar to Word 2007). Thanks to this stripped-down but powerful user interface, even an inexperienced user should be able to open a document and start reviewing it within minutes.

Comments appear in real-time in a sidebar on the right. To enable these real-time comments, Backboard has partnered with Orbited.

Another feature that makes Backboard stand out is its close integration with Microsoft Office 2007 and Apple's iWork productivity apps. After installing the respective plugins, Backboard users can easily upload documents to the service from within their productivity apps.

Pricing Plans

Backboard features an interesting pricing model. Unlike some of its competitors, all pricing tiers feature unlimited document storage, but the tiers are differentiated by the maximum file size of these documents, number of users on the account, and security features. The free version, for example, is limited to documents smaller than 5 MB (which should still be enough for all but the most complex documents) and doesn't feature a secure SSL connection. Users who use the free account also won't be able to restrict access to a document to specific users. Paid plans start at $6 a month for one user and $25 for teams of up to five members.

Backboard also features a special 'proofing' plan for freelancers who do client-facing work, which allows users to add their own branding and a custom URL. This plan starts at $10 for one user.

Feedback Made Easy

We have seen a lot of interesting collaborative feedback products that are quite similar to Backboard, but a lot of them are geared more towards freelancers. Backboard is definitely a great tool for this group of users as well, but at the same time, it is also geared towards groups in the enterprise. In many ways, it is this degree of flexibility that makes this tool so powerful. While the company isn't necessarily marketing its tool this way, Backboard could also be a great tool for giving feedback in a school or college setting, where students often write multiple drafts and teachers spend a lot of their time marking up papers.

Thanks to its focus on security, Backboard will surely be attractive to security-conscious businesses as well, and the company will also happily work with its enterprise customers to implement solutions that comply with HIPPA and other industry-specific regulations.

Overall, Backboard turned out to be one of the most flexible and easy to use tools of its kind, and if you are looking for a better solution for gathering feedback and getting approval for documents, it is most definitely worth a try.

Group collaboration startup Pelotonics has turned Evernote into an easy way to load photos, voice messages, notes and other media into your project management system, including from a mobile device.

When we first reviewed Evernote, we said it didn't live up to its incredible promise. Despite our concerns, scores of other people love the powerful note taking system. Check out these usecase videos below to see what Pelotonics has done with it.

Does that look like something you might use? We suspect that for many people it may be. Here at ReadWriteWeb we try to use Basecamp as much as we can, though we regularly come back to simpler tools like email and IM. For organizations looking for more heavyweight web-based collaboration tools, this Pelotonics/Evernote combo might work great.

Now we're even more excited to see what else developers can do with the well-built Evernote API.

Disclosure: The author had a past consulting relationship with Pelotonics but has no ongoing financial interest in the company. We just wrote about this because it looks awesome.

Developers can build their own apps for free or for sale and Zoho allows them to keep 100% of the revenue from app sales. Are these apps for real? It's hard to say. We really like the idea, but Zoho is a complicated company.

As can be imagined, there's a wide range of quality in the apps in the marketplace today. In its announcement Zoho says that more than 100,000 apps have been created with its Zoho Creator database program, but it appears that only about 300 of those are included in the marketplace at launch.

It's hard to know how to find the best apps, to know which ones are effectively duplicates and we expect those issues to continue as developers flock to the platform. It's one thing to rustle through scores of sheep kissing apps on Facebook, or shiny GPS baubles in the iPhone platform - it's another to try and find apps in an office marketplace to run your business on.

Some of the app demos were loading only intermittently during our evaluation and that's not a good sign for something users are going to do business with.

Some, like HelpDesk, look strikingly robust. Others, like the very similar Issue Tracker, look downright insufficient - Issue Tracker's bug tracking app doesn't offer reporting as far as we could tell, for example.

Most of the apps in the marketplace right now are free. The variety of apps available is interesting; one called Camp Registration facilitates registration for events, includes an hour of customization and costs $150. That app can be embedded on any other website. This and all the apps in the marketplace offer a demonstration you can view before installing.

To some degree your trust in Zoho marketplace apps will likely begin as a matter of faith. Readers here presumably are willing to put some amount of trust in online apps in general. There's probably a little more skepticism about Zoho apps in particular. Zoho marketplace apps, developed by people outside the company all together, will be an even further leap of faith. Whether you can make that leap will depend in part on where you started regarding online apps in the first place.

Zoho Apps in General

Google's online office apps were expected to change the world, and by some limited accounts they've begun to. Many people, though, find Google Apps too lightweight and infrequently updated.

Zoho's office suite has faced criticism about being too lightweight but no one can say they are too infrequently updated. A July report from analyst firm the 451 Group reported that Zoho was slowing down on new product roll out and would be focusing on improvement of existing apps. That prediction appears now to be incorrect, but the rest of 451's analysis of Zoho is very useful. "At present, there's still something of a work-in-progress feel about Zoho, with some key functionalities still to come," report authors China Martens and Anne Nielsen wrote.

Ask any major CRM vendor who they're keeping an eye on in their rearview mirror, and Zoho will be among the first players they name. That's pretty impressive for a vendor that has largely relied on word of mouth and user experimentation to gain notice...The company is already well positioned to address the increasing app pricing and integration pressures from customers and has made some initial strides in establishing channel sales.

According to another report from analyst firm Yankee Group though, Zoho already offers a better enterprise collaboration suite than Google. That report tracks 16 collaboration suites head to head, further comparison results still pending.

Zoho tells a good story and is certainly an exciting company to watch, but sometimes the story gets a little more oomph than it deserves. Oliver Marks at ZDNet, for example, wrote this week that a story floating around the blogosphere that General Electric dropped Google Apps in favor of Zoho was not in fact true. Marks reports that GE is still evaluating both services and hasn't made a decision yet about either.

Conclusion: These Apps Will Work for Many People, But Not All

We love platforms, good ones are fascinating in their fecundity even if they are complicated for providers and participants. Zoho does have a lot of momentum in the small business world, so we expect there to be a lot of international developer interest. Will customers come to Zoho and stay? The price and selection are hard to beat so the company will likely win customers for whom those are primary concerns. Would-be customers who prioritize robustness may have a more mixed experience, depending on the apps they select from the marketplace.

Update:After 45 minutes of downtime, Google Docs appears to be back up.

To be fair it appears that Google Docs has only gone down longer than a few minutes a few times since the service launched. The service is generally very reliable, the collaboration features are useful and it's free for consumer use. If those few service outages cost your company a substantial amount of money or inconvenience, that may be too much down time though.

On the other hand, maybe serious business never had any place on Google Docs in the first place. What do you think?

We appreciate your input; this is an important question and reading your replies will give us something to do while we wait for access to our docs to return. We probably should have enabled Google Gears.

New York based technology and consulting firm Arc90 introduced its first publicly available product today: Kindling. Arc90 describes Kindling as an "idea management and collaboration tool for small groups and companies." A more straightforward way to describe it would be as a version of Digg or reddit for small groups. Unlike those sites, however, Kindling focuses purely on voting on original ideas, not news stories.

Kindling puts an interesting twists on its voting scheme. Users only get 10 votes to give away at any given time and they can distribute those freely among different ideas.

Kindling is split into three main sections: voting, submitting ideas, and 'making it happen.'

The voting and commenting on new ideas is about as simple as it can get, with the exception of the 10 vote constraint. Arc90 says the limited amount of votes is meant to make users more picky about what to vote for, ultimately making every vote more meaningful. While users can always take votes away from a project themselves, once an idea is approved or rejected, all votes are returned to the user to replenish their supply.

The 'make it happen' section of the site displays the status of all the different ideas that have been submitted, but it also allows users to take charge of an idea by assigning it to themselves.

Kindling's user interface is simple and elegant. The minimalist design philosophy of the voting process extends to the rest of the application. The submission form, for example, is about as stripped down as possible.

Democracy at Work

Kindling is taking an interesting approach to small group collaboration. While it is not trying to be a complete project management application like Zoho Projects or Basecamp, and far less complex in its execution than its direct competitor IdeaScale (we wrote about them here), I could see it work very well in a small organization or even an informal group. For the voting system to work well, Arc90 recommends to have at least six members in a group - but there doesn't seem to be an upper limit.

Beta Invites

During the beta period, Kindling is going to be free, after that, beta testers will get reduced pricing for a year once the paid version launches.

Update: We have now given out all of our invites. If you would still like to get one, you can sign up for one on the Kindling homepage.

We have 50 invites for Kindling to give away. Just leave a comment below and we will get back to you ASAP. Note: if you use OpenID to comment, we can not see your email address.

Written by Ebrahim Ezzy and edited by Richard MacManus.

The term groupware refers to applications that facilitate real-time communication, coordination and collaboration amongst groups of people. A number of startups are working hard to develop the nascent groupware market, so in this post we identify some of those startups and provide an overview of where the market is heading. 

What is Groupware?

Groupware has existed (in various forms) since the invention of email. What is new now is the way that groupware is available on every web-enabled PC - through desktop clients such as Groove, Colligo, SocialText (Enterprise Edition) or web-based suites like Joyent, Zimbra, Atlassian, Goowy (Enterprise), and many others.

Current groupware offerings combine personal and group work management. They provide personal project execution and work management tools - including chat systems, meeting schedulers, messaging, conferencing, whiteboards, etc. What all these things have in common is that they facilitate groups working together.

Social Groupware

As a recent poll suggested, 70% of you prefer niche social networks connectable via a meta social network, over a giant centralized social network with thousands of members. We're calling the former Social Groupware and the latter Social Networks.

Social groupware products allow the creation of remotely hosted user-groups, special-interest groups - or any other group of like-minded people who share similar passions, interests and goals. 

CommonGate is a relatively new social groupware that allows creation of communal weblogs - or "theme-based communities" as they refer to them. Here is an example of a community for web 2.0.

SixApart's Vox launched recently - it is a personal blogging service with privacy controls, so that family and friends only can view the content. It also has hooks into some popular web services, such as Flickr, Photobucket and YouTube.

Enterprise Groupware

Enterprise groupware enables more effective interaction with networked information systems. Groupware products are becoming increasingly important in the marketplace because:

• They help businesses to work more efficiently with improved use of resources.
• They permit better coordination of activities by reducing/eliminating time and space barriers, and speeding business processes.  
• There is an organizational movement from personal computing to work-group or team-based collaboration, with the idea that it'll improve productivity.

Groupware and collaboration tools help businesses a lot - and what's more they have never been so cheaply available.

Examples include Atlassian, SocialText, Groove, Colligo, TeamDirection, Joyent, TeamSpace, Zimbra, ZohoX. We will review these in detail in a separate post.

Virtual Teams and Groupware

Many service professionals believe and rely on the common adage that "50% of success is just showing up" - not considering the future virtual workplace in mind. However, these days, letting information workers not show up is becoming a key ingredient to competitive success.

Everything of the Web 2.0 era can be traced to the advances brought about by collaborating teams of distributed participants, whose primary mode of interaction was virtual. 

Smart employers know they have a far better chance of hiring the best talents if they don't expect all of them to be located in the same place. For example 37signals, the popular web 2.0 company that developed winners like Basecamp and Backpack, spreads out over 4 cities and 8 time zones. From Provo Utah to Copenhagen Denmark. In this 24x7 world, geographically dispersed virtual teams like those at 37signals are at an advantage.

Groupware makes it possible for these virtual teams to keep precise track of project status, maintain complete communications records, monitor deadlines and outstanding problems that need attention, and manage tasks that must be completed in certain sequences, etc. 

As a result of groupware, virtual teams are quicker, smarter and often more productive than conventional teams working in a typical workplace. 

Communication tools

A major portion of work in any business is tied to communications of different types. Taking advantage of enterprise groupware technologies for communications, businesses can drastically improve on productivity, efficiency and ultimately profitability. Let's quickly review some of these technologies:

Email; has been the principal form of communication and a strong driver of productivity and efficiency for most businesses. Enterprise Groupware takes email to the next level by providing structured email communication, that automates and improves business processes and increases workflow productivity.

Chat; once considered taboo in the workplace, is now the standard form of communication after email. It enables faster responses, quicker problem resolutions and effective team management.

Weblog; enables businesses and entrepreneurs to share information instantly and frequently - and reach out to their customers in a more casual manner. Weblogs are also effective in educating potential customers and engaging them in two-way conversations around related topics.  

Conferencing; allows individuals to communicate and create virtual learning or meeting environments online, instantaneously with anyone - anywhere, at anytime. Most services enable participants to share documents, applications, web sites or even presentations with others.

Collaboration tools

People working alongside one another as in a typical workplace - learning and interacting with each other in order to get smarter - is not collaboration. It can just result in blind-leading-the-blind. Collaboration requires goals and is maximally effective when it results in the creation of a communal mind. The possibilities of innovation, efficiency, and productivity are endless only when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Collaborative groupware applications are designed to streamline project management and workflow systems; and allow collaboration on processes like inventory management, customer service, project and task management. This collaborative environment enables virtual teams to plan, organize, innovate and drive projects to completion in a timely fashion.

Workflow systems; most sophisticated Content Management Systems have workflow, which manages "how tasks are structured and who performs them, what their relative order is, how they are synchronized, how information flows to support the tasks and how tasks are being tracked."

Office Suites; bundles up various office applications - increasingly as a web-based suite.

Project & task management; helps establish clear and explicit expectations - along with establishing goals, timetables and methods - for monitoring progress.

Personal & shared calendars; helps team members keep track of tasks, appointments, deadlines, plan and schedule initiatives; and since they aren’t hand-written, there’s less room for misinterpretation.

Future outlook

Having evolved over the past several decades, the time is ripe for groupware. The potential of groupware applications to greatly enhance efficiencies in personal and business operations is driving widespread interest in them.

What's more it will continue to evolve as time progresses - and new and different demands are made on applications being used within the realms of group interaction.

Conclusion

Overall, groupware has changed the way people communicate and the way business is conducted.

It has facilitated the creation, management and sharing of information though various channels of communication. This communication and collaboration when applied, sums up to a highly productive and shared environment which accelerates productivity. It also facilitates easier management of files, documents, and data in general.

Groupware will always remain only as strong as the abilities of the people who use it. But when groupware is successful, the benefits accrued are dramatic.