Collaboration between distributed users online is widely recognized as one of the key next steps in software development. The products available for collaboration are becoming increasingly light weight, powerful and easy to use. Two companies that we’ve found entering into this market with compelling, but markedly different, products are ConceptShare and Thinkature.
Both products let users create shared visual workspaces that can be marked up and chatted in. If you are a visual designer, someone planning events or otherwise looking to stop emailing or faxing visual objects back and forth – one of these two services might be just what you are looking for. Thinkature is simpler, free and available now. ConceptShare is more powerful, subscription based and due to come to market in a few weeks.
Adobe, Microsoft and other large companies offer collaboration tools, but these two small companies provide something faster, simpler and less expensive. Tools like Conceptshare and Thinkature serve a different purpose than systems like WebEx because they allow for both synchronous and asynchronous collaboration. Since they are entirely browser based, they should also work cross platform.
ConceptShare
ConceptShare did a demo at TechCrunch Party #7 and is now nearly ready for launch. People who have requested beta accounts will be given access next week and the product will be available commercially in about two weeks. It’s a very impressive tool aimed primarily at visual designers.
The product is built in Flash and the three person company has taken about half a million dollars from a local angel investor.
Conceptshare workspaces can include multiple concept pages, comments appear in individual threads that can be clicked through one at a time so they don’t become overwhelming, images can be drawn on and zoomed into. Screen captures can be imported by simply providing a URL. All the modules of the workspace can be resized by dragging their borders; so if I want to see the last 15 lines of chat instead of having the image being discussed taking up the bulk of my screen I can easily make that change.
Prices haven’t been absolutely determined yet, but a single workspace with up to 5MB of storage will likely be free, there will be a number of intermediary offerings and enterprise subscriptions will start at $200 per month. High end subscriptions will include the ability to fully brand your workspaces.
Another feature that Conceptshare is offering is an expert directory. In time the company hopes that topical experts will offer their design consulting services for a fee inside the system. I’m a little skeptical of how viable this will be, but visual designers may be among the most viable markets for online one time paid consulting.
Conceptshare is very pleasing to use, but it’s usefulness is largely limited to visual design. It’s clearly the most powerful of these two services, but if you’re looking for something free, fast and simple then Conceptshare may not be what you’re looking for. The following is a demonstration video from the Conceptshare team.
Thinkature
Thinkature is a YCombinator startup started by two recent Olin College graduates. They’ve probably taken 10% as much funding as Conceptshare. The Thinkature product is free and available now. The company formally launched in October.
Rather than Conceptshare’s Flash interface, Thinkature is built entirely of HTML and Javascript and uses a persistent http connection for synchronous communication. You can place images and text in the workspaces, connect boxes and chat in real time. Only the most recent chat messages are visible unless you click a tab to pop up a box with the full chat history.
Thinkature works best for communicating thought processes visually. You can resize images but you cannot zoom as you can in Conceptshare. The company’s business model wasn’t something they were willing to discuss with me, but they said that they were looking beyond the subscription and storage model. Thinkature’s target users are anyone who appreciates wikis, the company told me. Education and product design are among the different uses they have seen so far.
If you’re looking for a fast and free way to collaborate around a design proccess, Thinkature may serve you well.
I think it’s interesting that the market for collaboration software is large enough that both of these companies will probably be able to find more than enough users. They’ve taken very different approaches to building similar products; but those products will likely appeal to very different users.
Other products to look at in this space include GE’s Imagination Cubed and Vyew.
Now if one of these guys finds a way to bend the space time continuum so you can communicate with your offshore programmers without staying up till 3:00AM. Cha-ching!
Me!
Why would one just use application or desktop sharing from an app. like MixMeeting.com or WebEx?
Well, this is very interesting. Concpt Share could have been very useful when I was in school for digital media arts and electronic design. Thinkature is also pretty nice.
I’m definialty want to investigate these 2 places more.
ConceptShare would also work well with Architecture too.
Bob, these are simpler, easier, cheaper, asynchronous as well as synchronous and they work on any computer with a browser.
Bob
“Why would one just use application or desktop sharing from an app. like MixMeeting.com or WebEx? ”
Those mean you have to have a meeting an other people would have to meet at let’s say 2pm…For little things people don’t meet like that….You send an email of a new web design..people get their email when then get check it. ConceptShare works the same way, come in when you get it a chance and leave your review, comment or markup and get out.
PhilWil …..
Actually you have read our minds and one of the things that we were trying to hold back was the fact that we will allow engineers, architects and product designers bring in DWG files ……
We are currently testing that right now with a couple of engineering firms and should have that ready to go very shortly!
I figure the segment on the house tipped us off to that.
cheers
Scott
From our perspective (I work for Thinkature), we believe building a multi-user experience from the ground up can lead to much more powerful collaboration tools. WebEx, NetMeeting, and applications like that shoe-horn multiple users into what is still fundamentally a single user metaphor. That’s just not going to work in the future.
thinkature is cool. I don’t see how they’re going to make money; which is sad, but why pay, and advertising wouldn’t seem to work either…
as for the guy who works at thinkature, ummm…the groundswell stuff is good for social type stuff…but your company’s market is clearly business oriented. The problem is getting large companies to sign on…their like: 1) why do we need this, and 2) who is going to use it…most collab/working together from different offices has been solved…and most people/companies prefere onsite interaction…its why we still have offices; eventhough we really don’t need them.
my suggestion, cause i’d like to see your company succeed, is…find another market for the technology…
btw Marshall, are you aware that under the t&c in GooTube you may only use the embeddable player for personal, non-commercial purposes ?
just thought you may wanna know.
Thanks TC fan, hadn’t even thought about it. That does make a demo vid on youtube look more like a bad one than a good one, huh?
Not a bad idea, though I’m not a visual designer so I don’t see much use for it personally. Collaboration is nice and advanced tools for it are great, but they have to overcome the ease and presence of email.
as long as no one re-sells the use of the video, youtube is fine…thats all they mean by commercial use.
btw: this looks like an dream for agencies and software firms
ciao!
“ease and presence of email”??? presence yes, but from my experience, email has been choked to death with spam and simple overuse. as someone who loves.needs to think visually, and is also perennially broke, I’ll be checking out Thinkature.
Now if I only had someone to collaborate with . . .
None of these are replacing my copy of MindManager…
Marshall,
I am Narain, CEO for a startup in India called 360 Degree Interactive. I congratulate both the teams for the work. In the same space, we are launching our product called TracBac.The visual collaboration space, we approach the problem from a different perspective. Our initial research with designers, advertising agencies among others reveals that there is a lot more collaboration needed beyond sharing with the clients. We consider this from a Creator -Client workspace, and like email, with an account in TracBac enables you to collaborate powerfully on either side of the table.
With due credits to Daoist comment, ours won’t spam the servers
TracBac provides an end-to-end collaboration mechanism for visual collaboration, which goes beyond design sharing. We have some interesting things up on our sleeves. TracBac is ready for launch by the 4th week of November. Presently, we are calling invites for the launch. Check out http://www.tracbac.com [Its just a one page site for now!]
In what sense does Thinkature use a ‘persisent http’ connection for synchronous communication? Do you mean like http 1.1’s persistent connection or is this actually something unique?
J – its probably using comet
I love how people
Where is Thinkature located?
@kat
We’re based in Cambridge, MA.
Good untill the next one comes along.
Another similar but simple version designed by web designers for internal usage is
http://www.draw...e.com/index.php
it works and is open for use. built in flash and is very light weight.
bit raw, but core functionality is there.
send your comments and i’ll build it and improve it