Online Collaboration Tools

Living a thousand miles from your co-workers presents quite a challenge for designing software. Thankfully, there has been a small explosion of very useful tools that I am using to ease the process of collaborating with my team.

Whiteboard
www.imaginationcubed.com

Flash based with all the essential tools. Begin a drawing, invite one or more friends. Updates made by any contributors are almost immediately displayed on all screens. Save your white board - even replay the drawing! Very slick.

Flowcharting
www.gliffy.com

Seems to work exactly like Visio.

Chat
www.campfirenow.com

Gives you the ability to have multiple chat rooms where the transcripts are available until you clear them. Something your team can just keep in a browser window throughout the day.