As far as I can tell, Canadian blogger Dave Pollard is brilliant, eccentric and unbelievably prolific. A literary and technology geek/genius, he writes a blog for Salon called How to Save the World with essays on topics ranging from “environmental philosophy” to, well, everything you can think of. His entries are sprinkled with complex charts and beautiful photographs.
Ran across a recent entry he made on “virtual collaboration” tools. He’s created a great chart that compares blogs vs. wikis vs. email vs. mindmaps vs. videoconferencing & skype vs. whiteboards, etc. It includes comments on advantages and disadvantages of real-time (synchronous) vs. asynchronous, for example, as well as what each tool is best suited for (conversations vs. projects). But when all is said and done, in-person collaboration works best, he says.
Amen.