Web Apps for Product Development:

This podcast covers a few web applications that I use a lot to keep my team synced as well as add a centralized place to collaborate.  Topics covered:

- Bubbl.us - Mind mapping and flow charting

- Campfire - Group-based chat rooms

- Backpack - Project organization

- Google Wave - Bringing 3D into Wave with 3dvia

Over the past month I have been busy migrating our company over to Google Apps from using Microsoft Exchange and other locally managed server products.  In this transition I have been thinking a lot about using the cloud more and realized how many applications I use on a regular basis that have helped in keeping my teams synced.  Out of all the services I have signed up for, there are usually a handful that end up becoming a part of my daily routine so I though I would share.

All of the web-based apps I talk about are used by me everyday (or had up untill my switch to Google Apps where I consolidated a bit) mainly because they offer a cloud-based place to collaborate with collegues and customers.  In an effort to keep the show from going an hour, I picked 4 that I really enjoy for their functionality and, better yet, their "free" pricetag.  Two of the apps do have pay versions (Backpack has only paid options now, but didn't when I started) but all are free or can be tried for free.

My Google Wave pick was mainly added for the growing curiosity of how it can be used by 3D CAD and I was able to use 3dvia's embed options to embed their content into an HTML gadget in Wave and viewed using the 3dvia Player browser plug-in.  This allows 3D models to be uploaded directly from SolidWorks to 3dvia.com and easily embedded into Google Wave for collaboration.  This process gets a viewer into the Google Wave interface but will be much more useful when the model can be marked up and measured by multiple collaborators.  I hope to see CAD companies create viewer gadgets that will work with Wave to kick-start a true 3D collaborative environment in Google Wave.  ~Lou

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