"Do the work, share the work, and talk about the work all in one place.
Evernote’s newest feature, Work Chat, connects you with colleagues
to achieve your best."

To me, this shows they do not really know what their users are doing.
Or that I am not a representative user :-)

Dr Andus wrote:

Ken wrote:
>Have you looked at alternatives like Crashplan?

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm aware that there are probably some better
services out there, but that brings me to another problem with cloud
services. Once you're heavily invested into one, it's not that easy to
switch... I'd need a week (that I currently haven't got) to re-upload
masses of data that would hog the bandwidth and CPU during that time...
Just can't afford to lose that sort of time just now. But when vacation
time comes, then again I don't feel like spending my precious free time
on it... You see the catch 22?

Crashplan will allow you to "seed" your account by sending you a hard drive. There is a fee involved, but for those with slow connections, or limited bandwidth, it may be a worthwhile investment. Here is a link that describes the service: http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Backup/Seeded_Backup .

--Ken

Dr Andus wrote:

I'm wondering if I'm just in a totally wrong demographic or profession,
but I don't get this overwhelming focus on constant sharing and
collaboration. It's nice to be able to do it when you need it, but does
that mean that every single app needs live collaboration and sharing? Is
everybody out there really constantly chatting and sharing while
working?

Anyway, it just feels like a lot of development time and energy is going
into these collaborative and sharing features, when that sort of thing
could be achieved at the OS level or by some specialist (screen-sharing,
teleconferencing) tool, rather than having to build that into every
single app...

Unless it's just a ploy to use the power of social networking (i.e. peer
pressure) to force the product on one's colleagues... OK, rant over...

While I share your frustration, and am no fan of social media, I can understand the appeal of a robust program that allows collaboration and document sharing. Email is one of my primary tools at work, but sometimes when multiple parties are involved in a negotiation or discussion of multiple documents, email tends to fall apart for tracking discussion and document comments or suggestions.

Many of these programs, like Trello, Asana, etc. are great tools for their specific purpose, but it would be best if one or two comprehensive and robust programs could carry the load and become industry standards like MS Office (love it or hate it). I work with many parties outside of my office, and even Word is not necessarily a standard, as documents are often shipped as PDF files, or worse scans. I had hopes that Google Wave would mature, but it seemed more like a technology showcase than a product. Quip, which MadaboutDana (Bill?) mentioned in an earlier post, seems like they understand the concept, but it still seems a bit immature. I hate to say it, but I wish Microsoft could invent such a product that incorporated Word, Excel and possibly One Note documents in some collaborative environment so everybody involved in a project or discrete activity could all work off the "same page" in one threaded discussion. I am getting tired to piecing together email messages from multiple parties.

I know this software does not appeal to everybody, but collaboration and threaded discussions do have their place beyond forums and social media.

--Ken

The classic collaborative environment is what we're doing right here -- a threaded forum. A lot of the new collaborative thingies are riffs on that theme.

As Ken mentioned -- my work involves a lot of email shuffling of briefs and drafts. Most of the time my colleagues and I are never in the same locale and all work is by mail or voice calls. When a meeting is involved our tool of choice is join.me where one of us "drives" the document and the rest of us discuss it while watching the driver make the changes.

I think it is the virtual, distributed nature of today's workplace that drives a lot of the interest in collaboration tools.

We also use Lync, which is a private IM service for people on the same network, and Chatter which is a private twitter-like service for longer messages and document sharing.

We also work as a distributed team. Using four platforms: Skype (for IM), Soonr (for synchronising files between all members of the team), Kerio Workspace (run as an intranet on an in-house server, but with external access) and FileMaker Pro (for our admin database, hosted by a third-party specialist, accessed over the web).

I've used Quip and like it, but agree with Paul that it's rather immature. I've also used Slack and think it's amazing (I can see why it's become so popular so rapidly), but am reluctant to move over when all our team members are quite happy with Skype.

Not that Skype is perfect. In some respects it's amazingly bad. But as an instant communications tool it works pretty well.

I'm not sure I'd want an all-singing all-dancing tool (mind you, Paul, it's worth mentioning that OneNote does more or less what you're looking for, provided you're comfy with embedding Word/Excel documents in OneNote notes). Reason is, I quite like to be able to "componentise" functions so I can disable them when I'm not using them. A single, mammoth app (like DEVONthink Pro) can take up a lot of system resources (which is why I also use EagleFiler and then transfer the captured data to DEVONthink).

Just my tuppenny ha'penny,
Bill

The 2014 BBC Reith Lectures (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/6F2X8TpsxrJpnsq82hggHW/dr-atul-gawande-2014-reith-lectures touch on the themes of teamwork and collaboration. I suspect that a growing number of occupations which once were solitary, or if carried out in groups were at least "heroic", are discovering that the increasing complexity of what needs to be done means that collaboration is essential - and the activity can succeed or fail depending on the viability of the collaborative methods. As a result, those methods are becoming central to success. (That's not to say that I endorse Evernote's new feature!)

I've experimented with the Evernote chat feature (chatting with myself in the guise of different email address). I don't get it. It's not "collaborative" -- you send someone a link to a document with a tiny note. They read the document and send you comments. Nothing happens simultaneously, in fact it is quite slow compared to many of the products others have mentioned here.

Plus everyone has to register with Evernote with all the dreck that brings with it. (Yes, I realize the point for Evernote is that it drives adoption and Premium fees.)

Ken wrote:

Crashplan will allow you to "seed" your account by sending you a hard
drive. There is a fee involved, but for those with slow connections, or
limited bandwidth, it may be a worthwhile investment. Here is a link
that describes the service:
http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Backup/Seeded_Backup .

Thanks Ken, that sounds promising, I'll look into that.