Online collaboration tools.

April 19, 2009 7:13 AM

Please help me identify online collaboration tools that might be appropriate for a national (USA) organization of (mostly) state agency staff.

I am communications committee chair for the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC). We are an organization of state-level GIS coordinators. I'm looking for online collaboration tools to facilitate group discussions of policy, large-group communication, and development of documents and web-published information. Preferably open-source or low-cost. Go....

posted by mmahaffie to technology (2 comments total)

Google Apps?
posted by odinsdream at 7:54 AM on April 19

Google Apps is definitely a strong contender, and it's free if you have less than 50 users. Google Docs (which comes with Apps) has some nice features that make real-time collaboration easy. Zoho and Adobe have some awesome free products in this space too.

Another option is Basecamp, which is nicely designed and really easy to use. I personally stopped using them because they cost money, but I can assure you it's worth the price.

If you're sharing small files, another good free option is Drop.io. This is a nice option because each project (or "drop") has a free inbound fax number to send documents to, a telephone number to leave voice messages, an email address to send notes and files, document uploading, and (the just-released) real-time chat.

Drop.io is my favorite option right now. I usually just create a new drop for each project and if it stays under 100mb it's free. Plus, the $20 monthly upgrade is a pretty good deal for the additional features you get (branding, 25 drops, 20gb of space, etc).

Also, I've never used them before, but it seems like Vyew offers a nice free collaboration interface too.
posted by psiph at 8:55 AM on April 19