Web Work

Like any small company, ours has tried to keep travel costs under control by leveraging online meetings and collaboration tools. Here's a quick list of some of the solutions that deserve your attention:

Roll Call, an ILD company, offers low cost web and audio conferencing with a full range of features for beginners and advanced webinar gurus. I love it because we get a full service solution without a monthly fee per user. I just send out my bridge and login info, and I'm only charged for the time that I use. The webinar service is top notch and makes it easy for me to work with vendors, customers, remote workers and satellite offices. I can present slides, push content, share my desktop, and give control to other users at the click of the mouse. Systems are so user friendly that I delivered my first presentation with 30 minutes of getting my account.

Basecamp, from 37 Signals, offers some of the coolest project management and collaboration tools available as an web service. I log in, create a portal, add users, and we are off. With Basecamp, I can create milestones, build to do lists, create and assign tasks, collaborate on designs and copy, posts messages, files and lists, track time and progress, and link users anywhere with a web connection. Best of all, for $49 a month, I can have up to 15 projects and unlimited users.

This company has quickly become indispensable to me, and I'm considering their other solutions as well. They have a personal organizer called Backpack, a full featured CRM called Highrise, as well as chat, called Campfire. Each site has simple videos to coach you through how to set up the service. In reality, it's so user friendly that you'll be up and running in minutes. And the company blog is worthwhile reading anytime. It's a real glimpse into the creative people applying interesting design ideas to the Web 2.0+ world. Check them out.

Anyone worried about IM at the office should sit back, take a deep breath and pop a Valium. IM is here to stay, so find a way to leverage it for your business. My biggest gripe about IM is trying to keep track of the different IM accounts and services that I have. Enter Trillian, a cool app that manages accounts for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, and pulls together all of your contacts, IMs and webmail alerts. With Trillian running, I can IM with groups across all of my accounts in one interface, instead of being logged into two or three services. Best of all, it avoids the system crashes that AOL IM used to cause on my system. No spam, no garbage, just easy instant messaging. It's free and easy to install. I require it for my support teams so that everyone can keep in touch regardless of where they work. Get started with Trillian today.