The concept that “two minds are better than one” has been around for a long time. The basic idea is that when two or more people work together or collaborate on a particular task, they produce a better result than what any one of them would have been able to produce individually. With the emerging popularity of web 2.0 applications, the way that collaboration can occur is changing.
Tim O’Reilly explains the process of harnessing collective intelligence as the process of having users generate the content. This web 2.0 pattern has been implemented by many different applications. Some applications, such as Wikipedia, are public applications, which can be used by anyone able to access the Internet. Others applications are designed to assist small groups of users to collaborate together, and they restrict access to authorised users only.
Gone are the days where the most effective method for working collectively on a document was through the exchange of emails between members of a project team. Under that system everyone was required to make their changes to the document and then email the modified document to the other team members. The difficulty that situation creates is that there are many different versions of the document and it can be a time consuming task to draw all the contributions together. It would be easier to have all group members access a single version of the document, make their changes, and save them for the next person. This process of harnessing the collective intelligence is the focus of many web 2.0 applications. Some of these applications even allow multiple people to work on the one document simultaneously.
While there are now many applications providing this service, Google docs being one of the most common, I have chosen to analyse Ubidesk because it has specific features which distinguish it from other collaboration services. The basis of this service is to reward users with the tools they need, in this case, the ability for multiple users to work on a single document at a time. Ubidesk goes beyond this basic service and offers several other features targeted at business project teams.
The time line feature offered in Ubidesk is a great tool. It enables project teams to break their project down into milestones. Further, dates can be set for these milestones, which provide the project team a visual illustration of whether they are on target to have the project completed on time. When a project team works together on multiple projects, they often have different roles for each project. Ubidesk accommodates this by allowing the security settings for the project members to be set differently for each project.
This is just two of the extra features Ubidesk offers. They list 10 extra features on their website. These features demonstrate how Ubidesk has extended its functionality to provide for an improved collaboration experience.
References
O’reilly Radar, Harnessing Collective Intelligence - Posted 10 November 2006
Wikipedia
Google Docs
Ubidesk
About Me
- Dean
- Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
- I am a full time computer consultant for a small firm, focusing on the small to medium business sector. I am also a student completing a Double Degree in Business and an Information Technology at Queensland University of Technology. This has created a hectic schedule and, as a result I am always busy working on something.
I do however have interests that are outside of work and University, including active involvement in the scouting movement and regular games of indoor soccer at Brisbane City Indoor Sports. My passion however, has always been in computing. This is shown by my active participation in the computer club at high school. I joined the school computer club in grade eight and continued right through to grade twelve. I was also a member of the computer club executive from grade ten.
I intend to use this blog to discuss a variety web 2.0 applications and how they relate to the web 2.0 patterns. I encourage you to read my posts and make comments below.
Seems like a good service.
ReplyDelete