Multinational CMS vendors are tacking hard in the other direction - they use the word collaboration (and its derivatives) in a strictly top-down sense. Their push is to target their software to CEO's, Corporate honchos and Legal bigwigs. Collaboration is seen as something to be driven by management - a software solution to roll out to the users.

"OK everybody, here are the tools. Now, er, collaborate! What are you waiting for?" [pokes a user with a stick]

It's no coincidence that the phrase "lockdown" was deployed more than once in today's discussion - referring to IT's ability to force people to use the software. Lockdown is something that IT departments all over the world love, because it gives them as much control as possible over users.

But people hate being controlled...

My own preference is for bottom-up information management software, using weblogs and other pieces in the social software jigsaw. It gives control back to the people who have to use the tools. However I don't blame multinational CMS vendors for targeting the management layer of corporations and organizations. After all, that's where the money is handed out.

It's up to corporations and organizations to trust their staff to make decisions and create content. Unfortunately the kind of top-down Content and Document Management tools hawked by multinational vendors mirrors the management style at a lot of companies. How collaborative is that? Not very.

Below is a list of such apps - and it is a fairly wide-ranging list, and open to contention about what exactly is an "online collaboration platform". I've included the main Web Office suite players, as well as project mgmt apps and some wiki platforms. And I'm bound to have missed a couple of obvious apps (do me a favor and yell out which obvious apps I forgot to include, asap, in the comments!).

The poll is also multiple-choice, as I know a lot of people will use more than one of these apps (I know I do). So please participate in the poll and let's see which online collaboration platforms are the most popular.

Collaborators can be given either "Viewer" or "Editor" rights the folder, a setting you select before sending the invite. After the invitation is sent, those users will then see the same folder appear in their accounts. Every time a new file is added to the folder, all subscribed users are alerted either via email or in the "Updates" section of their Box.net homepage.

Along with collaboration, Box.net is also releasing Version History for any file on Box for users with a premium account. With Version History, any file that you or the collaborators edit will now have a complete record of versions, which is great for un-doing changes, recovering deleted content, and rolling back to previous versions.

The killer feature of the collaboration offering is that it's fully compatibility with Box.net's OpenBox services. With this functionality, collaborators can choose to edit documents online, like they can with Google Docs, but users can choose to use either Zoho or thinkfree to do so. Where Box.net trumps Google Docs is in the fact that Box.net collaborators can also edit photos online with Picnik or Snipshot. Once the edits are finished, Box.net makes it easy to then publish files online to any of the OpenBox services. The full list of these partnered web services includes: Autodesk Freewheel, blog posting (to Wordpress, LiveJournal, or Blogger), Echosign, eFax, facebook, Myxer, picnik, Scribd, Snipshot, thinkfree, twitter, Zazzle, and Zoho.

Although the collaboration feature makes Box.net a worthy adversary in the realm of online document sharing and editing, the Google Docs solution is still a more robust offering overall as it also includes business-oriented features like email, calendaring, IM, web page creation, and administration features.

The Box.net collaboration beta is available now to all members and everyone can participate in as many folders as they are invited to. However, free account holders can only create up to three collaboration folders.

Highlights from Defrag this year will include a discussion about Strategic Intuition, a presentation from Esther Dyson called 'The Quantification of Everything', a discussion about whether collaboration is changing how we consume and interact with analysis, and much more.

• Enterprise 2.0
• Online Collaboration
• The Implicit Web
• Collective Intelligence
• The Semantic Web
• Mash-ups
• Social Networking in the Enterprise
• Next-level Discovery

Highlights from Defrag this year will include a discussion about Strategic Intuition, a presentation from Esther Dyson called 'The Quantification of Everything', a discussion about whether collaboration is changing how we consume and interact with analysis, and much more.

• Enterprise 2.0
• Online Collaboration
• The Implicit Web
• Collective Intelligence
• The Semantic Web
• Mash-ups
• Social Networking in the Enterprise
• Next-level Discovery

There's still time to cast your vote; and remember that the poll is multiple-choice.

• Enterprise 2.0
• Online Collaboration
• The Implicit Web
• Collective Intelligence
• The Semantic Web
• Mash-ups
• Social Networking in the Enterprise
• Next-level Discovery

You can register for Defrag here. Entering the code "rww1" will get RWW readers $200 off of the early bird price.

While we love Basecamp and use it daily here at ReadWriteWeb, the idea of embedding this type of software into a page using only a few lines of code is appealing. Easy to use, you just point to the domain you want it to live on, create a username, password and voila - ProjectThingy spits out the code for you to cut and paste to your site.

Projects

• Name and mission statement
• Status: none, in progress, problem, complete
• Due date
• Milestones with dates and status indicators
• Project members from your user pool

Work items

• Discussion threads with assignments
• Limited client access
• Work items
• Name and description
• Status: none, in progress, problem, complete
• Assign to any project member
• Attach links and files (up to 1GB per file)
• Add link and file revisions
• Clients only see latest revision when assigned

Messages

• Project and work item message threads
• Optionally assign to any project member with status: none, in progress, problem, complete
• Clients only see messages when assigned

User pool

• Unlimited number of users
• User permissions: no access, client, team, administrator

Pricing

There are four levels of pricing and you can cancel your subscription at any time. ProjectThingy will keep your data for six months after you cancel, making it easier for you to return if you change your mind later on.

• Free: 1 Active Project, 50MB Storage
• Small: $19 P/M: 10 Active Projects, 6GB Storage
• Medium: $39 P/M: 30 Active Projects, 20GB Storage
• Large: $139 P/M: Unlimited Projects, 100GB Storage

Using Amazon Web Services for scalability and reliability, ProjectThingy runs on EC2 with a MySQL database with data storage on Elastic Block Storage and files in Simple Storage Service buckets.

The team behind the project Chris and Utka Ritke have created five short videos if you want to learn more or check out their FAQ page.

Further, says the feisty startup, while Google can only produce "an unnamed telco" as its first enterprise customer, Zimbra boasts Comcast (the largest ISP in the US) and Embarq (formerly Sprint LLC) as customers. Other Zimbra customers include Raytheon, H&R Block, and Century 21 - who use Zimbra for messaging, document sharing, and enterprise collaboration.

So Google is taking it from all sides currently - from arch-rival Microsoft, and Web Office startups. It shows just how much of a threat Google is in office software.

One feature the team purposely left out of the editor for now is an in-page chat. Given how many users already us IM or IRC already, this wasn't a priority for the team, though this might come in a later version.

Try It

If you want to give Bespin's collaboration a quick spin, here are some instructions courtesy of Bespin developer Joe Walker:

• Sign up or login to Bespin.
• Press CTRL+J/CMD+J to open the command line.
• Type 'follow joewalker' to get someone to share files with. Joe shared a project called pubproj globally.
• Type 'project list'. You should see joewalker+pubproj in your list of projects.
  Type 'set collaborate on' to turn on shared editing.
• Open a shared file by typing 'open /joewalker+pubproj/example.txt'.
• You should then be in a collaborative editing session with the rest of the Internet.
• Click on the collaboration icon (2 people) in the top right hand corner to show you who's editing with you.

For more details about Bespin itself, have a look at our earlier coverage.

What's even better is that you can click on the notification in the Activity Stream to see all the relevant details. If the item was an image, for example, you can preview it or download the original. For blog posts and wiki pages, you can click to read the item that was updated. Plus, you can download any files that have been added straight from the Activity Stream to your desktop.

However, the cyn.in desktop client isn't just about automated notifications - it allows for those personal updates, too. But this is the enterprise, mind you, so we're not calling them "tweets" here - they are "status updates" instead. Guided by the prompt "What are you doing?" anyone can quickly set their status update which is then sent into the Activity Stream to update everyone else.

Taking a page from Jaiku's book, the client also includes a threaded discussions feature. Any item in the stream can be commented on whether it's an automated update or a personal status update. The replies can be viewed in a pop-up sidebar to the right of the original Activity Stream, just as with photos, wikis, and blog updates. Like FriendFeed, when someone comments on an item, that item bubbles up to the top so everyone is immediately alerted.

As any Twitter user could tell you, no microblogging product would be complete without search, and cyn.in is no exception. When you need to find something that had been posted before and has since fallen off the page, you can enter in a query straight into the desktop client itself. The results returned are ranked for you according to the percentage match and you can scroll through them just as you can with the Activity Stream.

The cyn.in client is beautiful implementation of how microblogging could (and perhaps should) work for businesses, but it's the client's integration with the cyn.in team collaboration suite that makes it so worthwhile. Of course, the decision to move away from your company's current collaboration suite is not one to be made lightly, so you should review the suite's features before deciding if it's right for you.

Other enterprise microblogging clients include Yammer, Present.ly, and Status, but none offer an integrated collaboration suite, too. Cyn.in is open source, but it can also be purchased as a hosted service or as an enterprise appliance.

One of the players, SugarSync (RWW review here), today announced a development that further blurs the lines between synchronisation and collaboration services. With SugarSync's new functionality users can send any file from their desktop, web or mobile SugarSync application, regardless of the size of the file or number of recipients.

Once recipients have started downloading the files, the sender receives a notification advising them of the fact. SugarSync also time limits the email to 1 day to further enhance security.

Why this changes the synchronisation game

Previously synchronisation services were primarily about multiple device access and backup. LiveMesh has promised collaboration but this has been Windows-centric. SugarSync solution is cross-platform and as such heralds something of a game-change.

SugarSync in action

I've been using SugarSync for around six months now to back-up and sync files between multiple machines and the web. My experience has been exactly what one would hope for with a service like this - seamless and silent. SugarSync works in the background and keeps everything beautifully up to date. Every now and then I find myself taking a peek to make sure that the product has done what it's meant to and, as yet, I haven't been let down.

The changes rolled out today give SugarSync a point of difference over some of the other sync providers, while taking a large step into the domain of the collaboration solution providers.

A guest post by Ben Kepes of diversity.net.nz, a blog that focuses on SaaS, cloud-computing and Web 2.0 for the real world

• Task Management: LiquidPlanner's workspace allows you to easily organize and prioritize your tasks. The workspace has two distinct task list views to allow you to view, schedule, and update your work by function or by timeline. Drag-and-drop prioritization lets you change the order of your scheduled tasks as priorities shift. Team members can create folders, subfolders to organize the data at hand so details at any level of a task can be viewed. Global priorities for your entire team or organization can also be managed in this workspace.


• Project Scheduling: LiquidPlanner features a Probabilistic Scheduling engine that uses statistical math, ranged estimates, automatic tracking, and more to create realistic timelines and schedules. Best-and-worst case scenario estimation can help create a more accurate view of timelines. An automatic tracking feature tracks the expected progress on scheduled tasks, so the project schedule stays alive and up-to-date, even when team members don't update it themselves on a regular basis. A promise date alerting feature will let you know when project or task-level commitments are due.


• Collaboration: The dynamic, shared project environment offered by LiquidPlanner allows for collaboration, no matter what size your team is or where they are located. You can invite as many people to the project workspace as needed, even if they are outside your organization. A wiki-like commenting feature lets everyone keep a record of the dialogue about a task or project. Each item has its own comment page, where everyone in the space can communicate. Documents and links can be uploaded and shared with team members to let everyone communicate efficiently.

Liquid Planner is free during its beta period, which is occurring now. Afterwards, it will remain free for a single users, but teams of two or more will need to pay a monthly subscription fee.

As with most Semantic Web apps, it's a little difficult to describe what Swirrl is. On its homepage Swirrl is said to be "like a wiki, but better." The further explanation is that it's a web application that "allows your team to store, share, edit and analyze information." Basically its a data collaboration app. The main feature of Swirrl is a wiki interface, for editing web pages. But it also has spreadsheet and database functionality too.

Swirrl is focused on business use, rather than consumer use. The business model for Swirrl is premium accounts, from $24 to $198 per month. There is however a free version, which we played with to find out what Swirrl does.

Company rep Bill Roberts explained the purpose of Swirrl:

"We're aiming to lower the bar for efficient sharing and re-use of information in an organisation, to try to find the middle ground between individuals with their own copies of spreadsheets (easy, but poor for collaboration) and complex database systems (good collaboration, but big investment needed and can be inflexible in the face of change)."

Roberts went on to outline how Swirrl is using RDF to achieve this type of "middle ground" business collaboration:

"...we were looking for a lightweight flexible way to put some sort of a data model behind a collection of information, so it can be exchanged and combined in meaningful ways. After some early prototypes using a variety of approaches, we settled on RDF."

According to Roberts, using RDF "behind the scenes" was the best way for Swirrl to enable data collaboration inside and outside an organization. "Our main aim is to improve collaboration amongst a group of colleagues", said Roberts, "but of course exchanging information with the 'outside world' is important, and therefore it makes sense to use a standard way of representing data and it's structure."

Initial Tests

In our tests, it was difficult to use Swirrl. The idea is that users will be entering semantic mark-up, without necessarily knowing they're doing it. The presence of RDF can be glimpsed in the user interface, with references to 'Statements', 'Things', 'Properties', 'Types'. However the problem for ordinary users of this app is that those aren't necessarily intuitive concepts, when using a Web UI with text fields for input. We also tried uploading a couple of spreadsheets, but got errors such as "The file was improperly formatted" that had no further explanation. This may be because the app is so new that there are a few bugs around.

To be fair, using Swirrl becomes clearer when you view the help files. So we can imagine that with a bit of training, business users would get used to the system. When they do, users may start to appreciate the concept of entering semantic meaning into a spreadsheet-like application. Provided they can get past what looks to be a relatively steep learning curve. For businesses, the potential value is in linking this data with external data sets in the future.

We think it's too early to judge how good Swirrl is, but it's definitely worth highlighting to our readers as an example of a commercial RDF Semantic Web app. They do exist! Let us know in the comments what you think of Swirrl, and whether you can see it being used in a business setting.

Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester Research, stated that despite there being a lot of buzz about the consumer market for web 2.0 applications, "the greatest opportunity today for vendors is in the business-to-business collaboration space".

For the technologies that Forrester is most bullish on, social networking and wikis, the report stated that the "cultural resistance" to social networks will "eventually break, allowing workers to connect with like-minded colleagues and enabling a collaboration channel that previously didn't exist in the enterprise." On wikis, Forrester noted that users have already reported success with wiki projects and it expects this to grow even more. Wikis are most successful, said Forrester, when sponsored by business leaders and connected to business processes.

Forrester estimated in April that the enterprise 2.0 market will hit $4.6 billion by 2013. They also predicted in October that enterprise 2.0 apps will fall dramatically in price. So while the overall value of enterprise web applications will increase, the amount vendors charge for them is expected to decline over time.