While it seems that task managers are everywhere these days, there's a good reason for it. Task management is all about working out a process for getting your tasks done, and there are a million different work flows. If you're not one for a regimented methodology like Getting Things Done, but need to implement a tool that allows a team to collaborate, check out Colabolo.

Unlike many collaboration tools, Colabolo is a desktop application, albeit one with roots in the web world. It's built using Adobe's increasingly popular AIR platform, which allows Colabolo to be a cross-platform tool right out of the gate.

Colabolo seems to be a hybrid of a traditional task management tool, and bug or issue tracking system. It looks like it could be easily used for the latter, but Colabolo's website seems aimed at positioning the tool as a collaboration tool for any business team, not just developers or IT people. The program takes an interesting approach to file sharing amongst team members; you can attach a file to an issue, and others on your team can download that file as long as your computer is connected to the network. This is an elegant solution for business customers that are co-located (and therefore on the same schedule), but could be problematic for teams that are geographically distant from one another.

Unlike many similar tools, Colabolo offers the ability to customize your team's work flow, and to have multiple work flows depending on what function is being tracked. So, for example, you might have a development work flow, but also an order processing workflow.

The product is currently free while in beta, but will be charging a low per-user monthly fee once the product matures enough to leave beta status.

Collaborating with a team in an online space has its challenges, Mindquarry wants to make it as simple as possible, yet keeps the productive functionality.

Mindquarry is an online space that allows for the sharing of documents, management of products, and collaboration with team members wherever they might be located. Its four main collaboration tools consist of Teams, Files, Wiki, and Tasks and it works totally in a browser window.

• Teams and team members can be analyzed and managed.
• Files can be shared and stored online, with a history of change record.
• Wiki's can be used to share information or creative ideas, think of it as a blackboard.
• Tasks can be assigned to team members, and to-do lists can be checked.

The rich text editing environment provides a space where users can work both online and offline, syncing documents when complete or back online. There are two parts to this application, the online Server, and the Client application. The Server is the collaboration hub that ties everything together and gives a strategic overview of everything that is happening. While the Client is the tool that team members use to connect them to the Server and sync up files and tasks when complete and online.



The free downloadable Mindquarry Go software is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX users. It is available in beta only for now. For a more in depth look at the software, take a look at the User Guide, or this quick video demonstration.