Web Worker Daily

At the Enterprise 2.0 conference today in San Francisco, PBworks (formerly PBwiki, see our previous coverage here) announced that it is adding built-in, real-time collaboration tools to its wiki software. The new suite of tools will include in-app IM, Live Notifications of changes to an organization’s workspaces, Live Editing of documents, and Voice Collaboration.

The planned changes should make collaboration using PBworks much easier and faster, with less need to rely on external services. For example, imagine that you’re working on a document and you’d like some input from your team. You could use the built-in IM tool to see who’s online, direct them to the page, start a Live Editing session (which lets them see any changes you make to the document in real time), and even set up an ad hoc conference call using the Voice Collaboration component.

IM Collaboration, Live Notifications, and Live Editing will be available for free to customers with Project Edition and Legal Edition plans beginning Nov. 17, while the Voice Collaboration component should be available in early 2010 (pricing hasn’t been set yet).

Would you use built-in voice chat/conference calling if it was added to your favorite collaboration suite, or would you continue to use an external conference calling app, like WebEx?

PBworks (formerly PBwiki) today introduced PBworks Project Edition, a modified version of the collaborative wiki software that incorporates some project management features.

Simple project management functionality, like workflow management, task assignment and milestones, is built right into the tool, so there’s no need to use a separate app like Basecamp to handle simple project management. This makes PBworks an attractive option for teams looking for a tool for collaborative project tasks, like document authoring, requirements gathering or design review. Task management is kept together with the actual task itself, which makes a lot of sense.

This idea of providing task and project management functionality in apps that are used for the tasks seems to be gaining popularity; we recently saw Box.net add task management features to its file-sharing service, for example. Including task management functionality within an app should help many teams handle project management tasks themselves, reducing the need to have a designated project manager on simpler project. (PBworks calls this “organic project management.”)

PBworks Project Edition costs $20 per user per month, with “guest” licenses (for clients and contractors on a particular project) available for free.

Have you tried PBworks Project Edition? Let us know what you think in the comments.