Twiddla takes home SXSW award despite sluggish performance

Collaborative whiteboarding applications can be handy tools for small groups looking to do some brainstorming despite geographical displacement. Meet Twiddla, a free tool that lets you mark up media and live Web sites, or simply organize ideas together on a virtual whiteboard. It also tacks on live communication with text chat and free VoIP conference calling that doesn't require additional plug-ins or software.

The application won an award for technical achievement at last night's SXSW Interactive Web Awards. While technologically fantastic, in my testing I ran up against some noticeable speed and local resource problems. At times I found the application to be nearly unusable despite its simple interface and snappy menus. At other times it was incredibly responsive.

In any case, Twiddla's packing a lot of features that might attract users of premium paid collaborative services such as ConceptShare and Octopz who are seeking a very simple way to get feedback on Web design or photography. It could also easily replace WebEx for a large number of people who use the tool simply for its text chat and shared work space.

One of Twiddla's killer applications is the built-in screenshot tool. It will snap the current iteration of the whiteboard and save it into both your saved media folder and the meeting's history archive. For photo or Web design consulting, this gives you the option of coming back to a work space and editing content asynchronously.

I'm holding off on giving Twiddla a thumbs up for the time being. It simply didn't perform as well as I think it should to make me ditch some of the alternatives. However, I'm happy to see some little guys come up and show WebEx and others like the recently Google-acquired Marratech what can be done on the user interface side to make these tools simple and attractive.

Read Web pages at the same time with others, and make live markups to a site on the fly. You can also chat live with others either via text or VoIP conference calling.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Make iPhone the company workhorse

Get to work, iPhone. As far as HyperOffice president Farzin Arsanjani is concerned, you've spent too much time avoiding real work.

If he has his way, your days loafing around in back pockets while the other mobile devices pull their weight are over. That's why HyperOffice (review) recently announced a plan to make its suite of online collaboration tools even better on the iPhone (trial beta).

While the productivity application for rapid-growth companies has already been accessible from mobile browsers, certain functions are limited within a constrained user interface. The iPhone, with its large screen and Safari browser, makes the full Web suite available to HyperOffice account holders, especially now that some back-end iPhone optimization work on HyperOffice's side is complete.

What's the biggie? A significant part of the company's value proposition rests on giving telecommuting employees, clients, and contractors access to Microsoft Office and Microsoft Exchange Server accounts through its software, and from any device with a browser. It's Arsanjani's hopes that HyperOffice is able to bridge the gap that keeps employees from using the popular iPhone as a business device, and what keeps small companies from choosing it.

Arsanjani goes on to lay out a road map for future iterations that might make HyperOffice a more valuable iPhone tool. The next version, expected to arrive a few months after Apple releases its iPhone SDK, will improve the Web application's interface and navigation. That's good since visiting a HyperOffice account from the iPhone requires some pretty intense zooming.

Native support for iCal is planned for the Web app's final version, Arsanjani says, and will sync with the Apple software to store data directly on the iPhone. Companies' account administrators will have sole discretion over whether storing data on the iPhone is allowed.