I find it a pain in the butt, but I have no better ideas.
Well, I have, but they rely on more than I can code and I can't see myself convincing others of their value.
I think there could do with being a much better instant messenger for small businesses - something like a cross between a wiki with a desktop client, an instant messenger, a voice messenger, a tasklist, and that program that lets several people edit a document at the same time.
A sort of project management app that is nothing at all like Microsoft Project. A kind of virtual desk that you can all jot notes on and is fast and responsive.
With a nice interface it could be a kind of intray/outbox/message passing/task management/project management system.
As you can see, it's not very well developed idea, but the pains it would address:
- Email is crummy for keeping multiple people on track. Lots of redundant forwards, tendency to large trails of messages
- Instant Messangers are fiddly to open, find someone, open a conversation, type, wait, annoying to the other person to be interrupted.
- Wikis are useful but using them in a web browser and with several people working on it, they're clunky and sluggish.
- There's no good way of asking questions and getting answers in a central way. e.g. I email Alice and ask for details of X, her reply is in my inbox, Alice emails Bob and his reply is in her inbox, Alice forwards to Eve who forwards to me, my reply is in Eve's mailbox, she forwards with comments to Alice...
If that could be centralised, a central per-project question repository...
