Like competing project management web apps in this space, such as Basecamp and producteev, Zcope provides the ability to manage tasks and offers an online space to share documents with your team. It’s nicely designed, but what makes Zcope stand out is that it has more complex and useful project management features than is found in many competing apps. Rather than just being able to assign tasks and due dates, for example, you can assign costs to users and track time using the app, so you can see whether your projects are proceeding to budget.

You set up Zcope so that it’s accessed via a specific subdomain, so you can set up yourcompany.zcope-engine.com to share with anyone you need to access your project management platform. Adding other users to the app is straightforward so you can share project data with all the stakeholders who might be interested. Usefully, it has privacy controls: confidential tasks and milestones can be set as “for internal use only,” which means they won’t be seen by customers or others.

One interesting feature is the ability to create project blog posts. It’s not a particularly fancy CMS, but blog posts can be linked to tasks and/or milestones, which could make for a useful collaboration tool to help keep everyone informed of progress on specific tasks and issues.

Zcope does have a few quirks. It’s a German app that’s been translated into English; some of the copy on the site reads a little strangely, and it uses commas instead of periods for the decimal mark. That quirkiness, coupled with the fact it has some  more complex project management features, could be somewhat off-putting and make the app a little tricky to figure out. However, despite this, I found it pretty easy to use (it also has a useful FAQ and documentation page). If you’re looking for a solid collaboration tool with features like costs and budget management, it’s worth checking out. Various plans are available depending on the number of users and amount of storage space required; a 30-day free trial is available.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview
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Dropbox is simple, yet rich. And it’s got more going for it than simple file transfer and cloud storage. In fact, what makes it really special is the file syncing. You can work with your Dropbox files and folders locally, right on your computer, and they’re automatically synced with the files on the website. And it will also work with the most popular mobile devices: iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry and Android.

Here are some examples of how Dropbox has come in handy for me lately:

1. I was part of a team of writers who were covering a major conference. The team leader had a lot of info to organize and share with the writers and her co-leader in advance (session plans, speaker bios, schedules, travel info, etc.). She wanted something that would be more efficient than email, save her some time, and keep her, the team, and the materials organized. I spent 10 minutes on the phone walking her through Dropbox explaining specifically how I thought it would work for her, and she was sold. One of her challenges was that some of the writers were not very tech- or web-savvy; Dropbox’s easy-to-use interface interface was essential to their adopting her system and the tool.
2. My husband and I manage translation projects. He deals with the clients, I deal with the translators. In the last two months we’ve had to manage 10 projects involving 28 translators, and that can get a little hairy. Even though our computers are networked, we have all the files we use for job tracking in a Dropbox folder. We update the files when it’s convenient, and because the files are all kept in sync we know that we’re working with the most current info. Also, when I needed to get huge PDF user manuals to translators for reference, I just created a Dropbox folder for that purpose and sent them all invites.
3. A client lost 90 Mb of files that I’d delivered months earlier and needed them urgently. He sent me a Dropbox invite and he had the files in minutes.
4. I installed Dropbox on my iPhone and another app called PlainText, which automatically creates its own folder in my Dropbox. Twice in the last couple of weeks, I’ve jotted down notes in PlainText on my iPhone while at semi-social, semi-work lunches with people. When I got home, my notes were already stored on my computer and I could follow up effortlessly.

If you want to see what else Dropbox can do, check out Scott’s How I Use Dropbox For Maximum Productivity.

A 2Gb Dropbox is free. Pro accounts offer more storage; a Pro 50 account provides 50 Gb and costs $9.99 per month, while a Pro 100 account offers 100 Gb of storage for $19.99 per month.

How do you use Dropbox?

Photo by stock.xchng user tatlin.

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Qwaq, Inc. creates virtual spaces for real work. The company’s product, Qwaq Forums, is the leading secure virtual workspace application for the enterprise, and enables collaboration in ways that weren’t possible before. Designed for enterprises and groups with distributed teams, Qwaq Forums significantly increases productivity by bringing critical resources together in virtual spaces, and allowing people to work together as if they were in the same physical location.

Can someone say “Second Life?” or any other virtual world or virtual world application already out there?

I have a 30-day trial access to Qwaq, have logged into the Welcome Forum and followed the 3 minute tutorial that explained about:

1. moving around,
2. my avatar, and
3. documents.

I’m thinking – hey, there’s nothing to it. Simple and easy is a good thing, right?

Then as I experimented with building my own office – one with a modern, warm “decor” – I began thinking that…there’s nothing to it. Basically, you can “build” a space such as a campus, a conference room (blue for boys, rose for girls?), a gallery, a modern office (cool or warm colors), a personal office and several other configurations. Breaking it down, this is how Qwaq felt to me:

1. Moving around: I can use either my keyboard or arrows to move my avatar and view around. This is basically the same set of controls for Second Life and other virtual world environments out there, so nothing revolutionary here. Moving around as a new user is just as quirky and clunky and takes time to get used to the flow.

2. My avatar: Ugly. I look like colored boxes stacked on top of each other. It is almost embarrassing how primitive the avatars in Qwaq look. I saw a promo image of a more “custom” avatar and it consists of the photo of a person’s face on the top box that represents the avatar’s head. How can you seriously interact with a business colleague when they look like a box with their photo pasted on it?

3. Documents: This may be where Qwaq has a slight leg up over Second Life and more or less of an advantage over other virtual world environments depending on their document integration tools. On Qwaq, I simply drag a document into my virtual office space, and it appears on the office wall about a minute later, either fully readable or editable, depending on the file type.

Qwaq offers true document integration in a virtual space whereas Second Life users, for example, still struggle to find the right tools to handle a PowerPoint presentation versus a collaborative document or whiteboard. They do include voice capabilities, and although I haven’t tried it, I’m venturing to guess it is much more stable than Second Life’s voice feature.

They also have a useful feature: a 3-D pointer that works similar to a real-life laser pointer so collaborators can draw attention to something.

Despite the cool pointer, I can’t help but think that Qwaq is a watered down version of the more elegant, graphically enhanced and feature rich environments of virtual worlds. Even a cartoonish world like There.com at least has avatars that appear to be people rather than cardboard boxes. And any meeting space in Second Life that is well-designed makes Qwaq’s virtual spaces look like…cardboard boxes.

If I’m going to be doing collaborative work with my clients or team members in a virtual space, I would much prefer that space to have some degree of aesthetics in addition to functionality. Otherwise, I might as well just use 2-D collaborative Web-based tools because they simply…work.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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