9 Next Generation Collaboration Apps for Sharing Images & Documents

I use ConceptShare a lot, mostly for signing off various mockups! When you are part of a team that is spread all across the globe, it’s no that easy to get feedback on a design proposal.

With CS, I can quickly upload a JPEG, the decision makers are notified and they jump on CS and comment. Then I implement the changes and upload a new concept, and so on… until the design is just right!

It basically allows us to have a meeting without having to actually meet.

I use ConceptShare, too. It’s great for mutli-page documents like brochures and catalogs. Clients can go in and point out exactly where type needs to be changed and I can even draw up rough layouts for new pages right on Conceptshare. I love the instant notification when I’ve uploaded a new layout or received a new comment. It’s just like Adrian says, you get the meeting without actually having to meet.

I’ve installed a vanilla forum on a site or two and it makes for great tracking of to-dos. We’ve also used Google docs as whiteboards for collaboration’s sake. I know those aren’t in the spirit of this apps post, but sometimes less is actually more. I’ve tried a couple of the ones mentioned and though my eyes get wide at the features, my clients or collaborators are sometimes just annoyed at having one more thing to do.

thanks Collis for this article

You’ve convinced me to start using one of those apps.

cheers

Max

I’ve used backboard and I like it, but its so much faster to e-mail people images. I can see it becoming more useful when I need to share with many people, but still I’m inclined towards forums or group e-mail.

Not checked out any of the others yet.

I don’t use public sharing apps for hosting images & documents very frequently. We have activecollab on our server and we prefer to use it for our projects.

We suggest our clients to use our system only to share document and image files with us. Its more private and safer.

Well its my personal opinion.

Roshan
Freelance Developer
http://www.instantshift.com

I’d like to be able to provide clients with a white-labeled sharing/feedback experience, mostly for site designs. Collis and fellow commenters: can you suggest something open-source or otherwise installable on a personal server? Cheers.

Great ressources !

I also know box.net. There is a free version.

Thank you for this article !

There are some really interesting sites, will properly look at them all a little bit too much to take in first thing but really great thanks

Thanks for the Finetuna mention. Its a deliberate choice of ours not to do all the bells and whistles of those other great products. Our goal is to be the TinyURL of design feedback. Just enough to get your point across. Quick and disposable so it can help while not getting in your way.

You mention it does not do web pages however with the FFextension it does allow taking screen grabs of web pages and sending them to Finetuna.

hey, you forgot http://www.getsignoff.com/
Still in beta but very promising!

Nice sites, I didn’t know about..:)

This is a great list of resources, many of which I hadn’t heard of before. One more I’d suggest is http://drop.io – it allows up to 100MB per “drop” along with adding comments via phone, email and upload – and you can password protect the files. I’ve found it very useful for collaborating on large presentations and files. Some of the ones in this list look great to try too.
Thanks,
Adam

B. Seward, try ProjectPier or phprojekt.

Roshan

Cool to know those options Colis. I wanted to know that actualy.
…but I still wonder what’s better, really, between those apps (wich co$t) and regular emails, or forum, or simple doc share, or maybe even a blog that once simplified lets you upload a post with images and videos, then collab and clients can comment below it – as we allknow.
I think you missed the one every one knows, from Basecamp family, lol

But I would really like to read more on the visitors answer – what do you guys use ?

For a while we´re using now a combination of activeCollab and ConceptShare. While we use aC for our Project planning, Whiteboards, etc, we use ConceptShare to talk about specific Designs.

As Adrian said – it allows meeting, without having a meeting.

These Apps looks great ! Thanks !

But did you know DropBox (www.getdropbox.com) ? Thats a useful apps to share files easily. I use it often to share files with my clients, my friends and my family.

DropBox is also Free and and be use on both Mac an Pc =)

I have the same question: Do you know some open-source or paid php application which I can install on my server (or on my hosting)? Some app like ConceptShare or Backboard…

…as seen on Nettuts, open source option !
http://nettuts.com/misc/organize-your-team-with-collabtive/
Looks like a great option too.

An iphone development company’s blog had a post about a free application they used with their designer in order to help with the routing process called Skitch. You’ll need to scroll a bit to see the post but it seemed like an affordable yet less fulll featured option for this sort of thing.

http://www.taptaptap.com/blog/

http://www.skitch.com/

@Dan: Here at Backboard, we recognize it’s often easy to just fire off an email to your team with your files. We made it possible to copy create@getbackboard.com on an email to your team, and we’ll create a Backboard from your email attachment–the best of both worlds.

Those of you interested in apps to install on your own server, I encourage you to take a look at the security many of these apps offer. It’s certainly more secure than email, and we spend a very large amount of time thinking about keeping documents safe and private–it is one of our major priorities at Backboard.

It’s funny because I’ve tried a heap of these things and never found one just quite right – I was looking for an AFFORDABLE solution to hosting my clients files – separate accounts – notes for concepts etc and so I just got with my programmer and we are just finishing things up – it allows me to create client and user accounts / projects – upload all file types and add notes – clients can view online or download and add reply notes – plus we can create albums and slide shows from images using lightbox – and best of all I host it – it’s central for everything and my clients love it so far.

Moral of the story, you can probably build a tailored solution for less than 6 months at one of these online services…

Wouldn’t activeCollab also work for this as you can just upload mockups? I guess it’s not too geared for mockups specifically and what not but it would still suffice if you had it correct?

We are sharing files in Wrike. Pretty convenient, by the way. I send my file to the system via email and everybody on the team can immidiately veiw/edit/comment on it.

i prefer use ImagePut http://www.vidroid.com/imageput/ for sharing my images on free hostings.

also i forget say that ImagePut http://www.vidroid.com/imageput/ i use for generate web albums based on flash or pure css like highslide.

Hey Kem, thanks for mentioning http://getsignoff.com. Its not out of beta.

Sweet and simple:
Look into http://www.zenbe.com/business for a simple but very useful online app. Very affordable ($2-8). They provide a sweet collaboration tool called, “ShareFlow.” It’s also an email aggregator and allows you to toggle conversations on/off. It also pulls documents from emails and deposits them in a page so you don’t have to search your emails for an attachment. A free personal version of this service is also available.

More powerful: (this one is mind-blowing)
Another one that is very comprehensive, but affordable, is Sosius (http://sosius.com/). It’s more than just collaboration, offering so many other features and becomes really a virtual office (w/customizable workspaces) including a calendar; a project management tool that allows you to create and assign tasks to team members (unlimited number); email aggregator; databases and CRMs; a whiteboard and a document editing tool which you can share in realtime with others; DimDim online meeting service is integrated; chat and IM built in-as it’s also a social network. Also get RSS feeds to alert you of new activity in your workspace. And all this for a whopping $0 starting level! Pricing is based on amount of disk space used, so you can start this up for free (up to 25mg) and use all of the features from the start. The next level is affordable, too, at $15. Also, it also has an API which you can brand as your own and the code is open so you can create your own applications, if there were anything left to need…

I am looking for a solution to share .psd files with my design team that is stretched all over the US. These are templates that would be adjusted to meet the individual clients needs and I would like a central repository for them to save their work to.

Does anyone know of a self-hosted option for this functionality?

I know people use activeCollab, but something specifically made for video/image collaboration, versioning and annotation would be amazing.

Any ideas?

Hi.

I highly recommend to try out RedMark, it offers an easy and great way to get feedback on mockups : http://redmarkit.com
Furthermore, the dev team is actively listening to his customers : http://redmark.uservoice.com/pages/13952-general

Right now it’s in beta phase and it’s free.
If you’re asked for an invite number, you can use mine if you want : Y16OQQ

Regards.

Interesting websites!
And I also found a nice software fans photo editing on macupdate,and it is for mac user with some cool templates and cool editing functions.
I have try out the application and make a scrapbook for father’s day gift,and It looks impressive.
http://www.icollageformac.com/mac-icollage.html#129

I’ve tried http://contentcube.com and really like it for its ease-of-use. Does a great job of getting my clients their files in an intuitive way.

Cool list of fresh apps! I see several folks commenting on image sharing. If you’re on a Mac, you might like to check out Freshlog:

http://freshlog.com

It’s like Skitch with the ability to create Basecamp Messages and Todo list items WITH screenshots and a list of other supported issue trackers, check out the screencast:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ciw_2L6lq7s

Nice list!

We released one of our own which we were using internally with clients…we’d appreciate feedback. It’s free to use, hosted at http://www.useapollo.com.

Thanks!
Joe

Don’t bother with Backboard!!!! It’s filled with bugs and problems, even the CEO was rude to me after I had complained no-one was answering my emails to them.

Don’t bother….

Dickon from Vyoopoint here just to say that we’re no longer “Coming Soon”. Check us out at http://www.vyoopoint.com

thx

I found Codoxword (http://www.codoxware.com) very useful. It allows a group of users to view and edit the same Word document simultaneously.

B.S.

Hi,
great blog. What’s the most commonly recommended tool (Web based) for the following list of requirements:
1.) Sharing and commenting output from agencies (PDF, JPEG, Word etc.)
2.) Secure platform (encrypted contents)
3.) Different permission levels
4.) Site search
5.) Browsing images (image bank)
6.) Managing articles, press releases etc.
Best regards

Great post. I’ve found this very useful as I am currently designing a tool in this space. My experience with a few tools I’ve tried is that they are quite complicated and don’t really show the design work off very well. I’m working on a project called http://designsignoff.com and attempting to keep the design presentation, review and sign-off process really lean and mean.

Jon

@dickon

It certainly does seem that there is a trend forming. Design Signoff started as an in-house with us a couple of years ago as really a slick slideshow tool. There really wasn’t anything out there that I found presented designs in that clean fashion and that also didn’t include more complex commenting tools.

It certainly does seem that alot of tools are showing up in the same space. I guess it tells us were all having them same problem

I was pondering the bigger picture of it all and I think from designers to clients to customers the standards people expect from design tools has reached a higher level than say ten years ago. When I started out I think there was much more of an us and them attitude in the industry. You are workin with a web company and we’ll weave our magic and you’ll have a website and mebbe we can tweak the colours for you but that’s about it. Where as now I think with the rise of the Internet, iPods and iPhones and all that stuff users and clients have a far better appreciation and desire for good design from products. Whether that’s a food processor or a design review tool. Think I may have gone off on one there!

Approval manager is also great for proofing along with project and workflow management. Great for way for any designer to save time. http://www.metacommunications.com/products/approval_manager

Hi,
did you have a look to their SECURITY?
Companies will not necessarily upload confidential docs (such as Press Releases) to an unknown cloud storage service.
I personally love the idea of WUALA – the client software (or if used with a browser, the Java Applet) fully encrypts locally, prior to the upload.
So NOBODY, except the doc owner can read the contents.
Of course, WUALA has a dedicated rights management system in place.
BR

I’m trying out DesignSVN (http://designsvn.com). I think they’re new, the team definitely listens to suggestions and it is actively updated often as far as I can tell. I’m on the $8 plan – if all goes well I’ll be sticking with them and maybe even upgrading.