Visual collaboration software

2018. RealtimeBoard, a visual collaboration platform for companies, raises $25M



RealtimeBoard, an effective visual collaboration tool designed for distributed teams, has secured $25 million in Series A funding. The company intends to utilize the additional investment to support its ongoing expansion efforts. This includes enhancing customer acquisition capabilities through the strengthening of sales and marketing teams, as well as fostering growth within its user community. RealtimeBoard aims to develop a comprehensive visual collaboration platform that facilitates digital whiteboarding and serves as a central hub for integrating various collaboration tools utilized by organizations. Notable companies such as Hubspot, Skyscanner, Qlik, Autodesk, Netflix, and Twitter are among RealtimeBoard's esteemed customers, with the platform boasting a user base of 2 million worldwide. The startup generates revenue by offering its software-as-a-service (SaaS) on a per-seat basis for teams or entire companies.


2015. LogMeIn acquired whiteboard app Zamurai



LogMeIn has acquired Zamurai, a popular whiteboard app for the iPad, with the intention of expanding the capabilities of its online collaboration and meeting app join.me. Although Zamurai is currently available on the app store and has received recognition in the productivity app category, its future availability may be limited. LogMeIn plans to phase out the Zamurai name and integrate its technology into new versions of join.me's apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. Moving forward, the integrated technology will be exclusively offered through join.me. Existing Zamurai users will be provided with a migration path, allowing them to seamlessly transition to join.me. In addition to its whiteboarding functionality, Zamurai was actively developing real-time visual collaboration technologies. With the entire Zamurai team joining LogMeIn, this acquisition suggests potential future enhancements for join.me.

2008. ShowDocument does simple live collaboration



If you require a convenient and efficient method to simultaneously share a document with multiple individuals, you should consider exploring ShowDocument. This platform supports various prominent file formats, such as PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and text files. It employs a user-friendly Flash-based viewer and editor to showcase the documents. Once you have uploaded a file of up to 2MB in size, you can utilize tools like a pen, highlighter, text box, and eraser to annotate it. Additionally, there is a compact chat box available for discussing any modifications, and the movement of each participant's cursor is tracked. The overall interface is remarkably intuitive; however, during our testing, we encountered a significant issue: unrestricted control over the shared document. This problem surfaced particularly when one individual was making edits and another person decided to take control and navigate to a different section. Consequently, any changes made by the initial editor were discarded, leaving minimal recourse beyond expressing frustration through the chat tool.


2008. Twiddla takes home SXSW award despite sluggish performance



Collaborative whiteboarding applications can be invaluable for geographically dispersed small groups engaged in brainstorming sessions. Allow me to introduce Twiddla, a free tool that facilitates marking up media, live websites, and organizing ideas on a virtual whiteboard. It also offers live communication capabilities through text chat and free VoIP conference calling, eliminating the need for additional plug-ins or software. This application recently received a technical achievement award at the SXSW Interactive Web Awards. Although it boasts impressive technology, my testing revealed occasional speed and local resource challenges. While its interface is user-friendly and menus are quick to respond, I encountered instances where the application was almost unusable. Nevertheless, there were also occasions where it performed exceptionally well.