Google is trying to get ahead of the game before Microsoft gives it a real run for its money with Office Online, coming in 2010. One way it’s doing that is by enhancing the collaborative abilities of Docs, and further integrating all of its services. Which is why Google Groups recently got an upgrade that allows for sharing of documents, calendars and sites.
What this really means is that I finally have a decent reason to use Google Groups. In the past, I think I’ve belonged to a maybe one Group, and it didn’t work out all that well. The members generally forgot it existed, and it acted more or less as a glorified mailing list. Now, though, since I already use Docs and Calendar and often want to share content from both with multiple people, Groups has matured to become a full-featured business tool. Read the rest of this entry »
Distributed creative teams face the unique challenge of having to collaborate on a product without being able to quickly and easily access files and works in progress via an on-site file server or intranet system. Emailing files to one another can get messy very quickly, and if you’re not careful, you’ll have multiple versions of the same documents in no time.
Fluxiom is a web-based digital asset management system for creative teams that offers a nice, visually rich interface and the ability to scale depending on your needs. It has a number of useful features, and there’s a free version available, so I wanted to see if it could function as a tool for helping people collaborate on a wide variety of media including text, photo, audio and video. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s been a while since I’ve actively participated in the design game, but recently, when I was doing some work for a friend, I took a look around to see if there were any new tools that would work better and more efficiently than the ones I’ve been using for ages. Because of the nature of the project, I went looking in a couple of specific areas: file-sharing and font resources. My old picks for these services were still around, but they haven’t changed much despite the passing of many intervening years, so I wanted to check out the new kids on the block.
File Sharing
Once upon a time, I used Image Shack for most of my design-related file hosting needs. That was before I had my own server space with which to play. But despite still having private server space, sometimes it’s just easier and faster to use an online file-hosting service, especially if that service is incredibly easy to use. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: design, file hosting, font, fonts, imageshack, pimpyourfont, print, sharenload, sharing, tools, web
We always like a good utility here at WWD. But we like it even better when two of our favorite utilities start working well together. That’s the case with 1Password and Dropbox: if you’re storing your passwords (and other confidential information) in 1Password, you can now use Dropbox to keep those passwords synchronized across multiple computers. Here’s how.
The first thing you need to do is install 1Password on all the computers where you want to keep the same passwords. (Yes, this only applies to OS X users at the moment – though it seems that you can at least view the password file contents on a Windows box if you know the master password). Next, you need to step up to the most recent beta version of 1Password: open Preferences, go to the Updates tab, and turn on “Include Beta versions”. Then click the “Check Now” button and upgrade your copy of 1Password to the current beta. Remember to do this on all of the computers where you’re running 1Password.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
