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PBworks Announces Real-Time and Voice Collaboration

PBworks (http://pbworks.com), a provider of hosted collaboration solutions for business and education, announced its upcoming Real-Time Collaboration Update, including true Voice Collaboration. Geographically distributed teams will be able to work together on writing content, creating meeting notes in real time, working together during impromptu conference calls, and enjoying other interactive features that previously required a face-to-face meeting.

PBworks is making real-time collaboration a natural extension of its existing tools. When a user needs to connect with one or more colleagues to gather feedback, he or she simply calls them to the relevant wiki page using the built-in instant messaging; available users can see edits being made in real-time and chat about them. When a telephone conversation is necessary, available users can be added to an ad hoc conference call with a single click that initiates an outbound call to the user's regular telephone.

IM Collaboration allows users to see who else in their organization is actively using PBworks at that moment; it enables them to send those people instant messages from within the product. In addition, users can summon others to the workspace page they're working on if they'd like input using the "send a link" function built into the IM system.

Live Editing will eliminate the need to use other web conferencing services to share a PBworks editing session. Whenever a user is editing a workspace page, other users viewing that page see the edits appear in real-time. Live Notifications alerts users to activity within their organization in real time rather than requiring them to await an email notification.

IM Collaboration, Live Notifications, and Live Editing will be available to Project and Legal Edition customers on Nov. 17. There is no charge for this upgrade. Voice Collaboration will be available in early 2010. PBworks is a trademark of PBwiki, Inc.

Source: PBworks