Working together to achieve mutual objectives

If teams and invidiuals can learn things which will allow them to save time and/or work more productivly then this is a positive and should be welcomed.

The internet has braught together many poeple in ways that have never occured before and when it comes to learning skills and working together, new methods are being developed all the time. A good example is ‘Open Source’ development:

“The open source model includes the concept of concurrent yet different agendas and differing approaches in production, in contrast with more centralized models of development such as those typically used in commercial software companies.[2] A main principle and practice of open source software development is peer production by bartering and collaboration, with the end-product, source-material, “blueprints” and documentation available at no cost to the public.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source

Some very competative free alternatives have now been developed using the Open Source model;

• Wikipedia The free online encylopedia is ran on Open Source software and its content has been generated by internet users. Wikipedia is an excellent example of UGC (user generated content) and is ran on the MediaWiki opensource platform which is available for anyone to download and use.
• OpenOffice.org Offers a free alternative to the Microsoft office suite which has become very simular in function and easy to use.
• VLC A free video and music player that is simple and easy to use, it also plays nearly any format of media files.
• Firefox has become a very popular internet browser, favored by many due to the support of many helpful addons.
• Linux has been a very stable alternative to using Windows and when it comes to Server environments, it’s rock solid.

All of the previous examples demonstrate how people can work together and can achieve great results, results which some organisations spend massive amounts of money and time to create the same outcome. None of the above could have been easily developed by individuals or small teams, its working together that makes great things happen. So to aid with working together I have included the following free tools:

• Moodle Moodle is similar to a learning management system and has continued to evolve since 1999, it has been translated into 82 different languages and has had major improvements in accessibility and display flexibility developed.
  Not having to pay license fees or to limit growth, an institution can add as many Moodle servers as needed. The Open University of the UK is currently building a Moodle installation for their 200,000 users.The development of Moodle continues as a free software project supported by a team of programmers and an international user community, drawing upon contributions posted to the online Moodle Community website that encourages debate and invites criticism. Users can freely distribute and modify the software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

  If your interested in Moodle and wish to do some further reading, I would reconmend the book: “Moodle 1.9 for Design and Technology“.

• Google Docs Work colaborativly by sharing spreadsheets, documents and many other file formats. Google docs is free for upto 1gig of storage.
• Logmein.com is a tool that easily allows people to remotly access a PC, the advantage over other tools such as VNC is that you do not need any form of aditional software to easily share access with others. Logmein has a Free and a Pro version, although I have found the free versions provides all that I need.
• Skype has been around for ages, its a multifunctioning communication tool that can even send text messages. I use it for video confencing and sending texts when at my PC. It’s much easier to write texts on a keyboard and its also very cheap, you can apply the same type of phone packages as you would with a normal land line to gain free calls to landlines in various countries. However I get the feeling many ISPs disturb skype traffic so it is reconmended to encrypt your internet access via a third party.
• DropBox is a very easy to use tool to share files with people, it has downloadable software to install on your PC so folders are automatically transfered to everyone who has been granted access.

I hope that you find these suggestions useful and consider new ways to work more productivly with your collegues and clients.

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