I always like new collaboration tools. They didn't exist awhile back and it was difficult at times to share ideas. I think anything to anhance that is a good thing. The fact that they are so cheap is also a plus!
@Greg: You raise a good point about the applicability given the bandwidth issue and I'm not sure exactly how that would be impacted. However, I don't think that Sunglass is designed such that big numbers of users are working with files (meaning viewing, marking up, etc) simultaneously. More like a small design team or groups of people--not huge design reviews.
@Jack: I do think more and more companies are leveraging cloud-based tools to do more than just mess around and experiment (your reference to play ground). Cloud platforms are becoming instrumental in how dispersed companies (large ones and small ones) are communicating and sharing information. I don't see that changing any time soon.
I think the future of design is going the way of "virtual collaboration". This technology looks like one more step in this direction.
My initial question is bandwidth. In the article, it looks like this new technology is useful. However, as multiple users start to simultaneously work in the same projectspace, how does bandwidth limitations come into play? At a certain point, does this become painfully slow?
The question is - does anyone actually use GoogleDocs for much more than a playground? I've only used it to take a quick look at an email attachment rather than downloading the file and opening in one of my "regular" programs. Additionally, I don't know of any company that I have dealt with that would allow development work with that type of app.
More and more companies are starting to use cloud-based collaboration and file sharing platforms like a GoogleDocs and Dropbox and there isn't much concern that security issues haven't been properly addressed. The problem with a large company simply relying on their intranet is when they are trying to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers who are outside of the internal controls of the network. The intranet platforms don't have the same flexibility to allow those folks to take part in the collaboration.
"Google Docs for 3D objects" sounds like an interesting idea and a worthy one, assuming it catches on with design engineers. I'd guess that the initial target, individual developers, makes the most sense as the continuing target. Wouldn't a large company with its own intranet want to keep their code under lock and key, metaphorically speaking?
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