POSTED: Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 1:00 am

BY: dmc-admin

By now you’re probably on LinkedIn, and you’ve found value in creating an online profile for yourself.

But have you taken LinkedIn to the next level, by scrolling down and checking out some of its “Partners?”

Wausau attorney Timothy Nuckles, of Nuckles Law Firm, did that a while ago, and discovered a great, free online collaboration tool, Huddle. He has used it to tap into the expertise of members of his existing network and made a few new connections as well.

Huddle gives you an online workspace containing project and collaboration tools. It’s hosted, so there’s no software to download. With Huddle, you can manage projects; create, edit, share and/or store files online; and have group discussions. You can make use of the “whiteboard,” or wiki, to share your ideas and comments. You can customize it. And, you can receive notifications, via your “dashboard,” e-mail and RSS.

To get started, you must register, which takes about a minute. Once you’re signed up, from your “workspace” you invite other people to join.

The next steps you take will depend on the nature of your project.

Nuckles represents buyers of commercial IT products and services. He used Huddle to assemble a group of about 30 EMR (electronic medical record) experts, whom he identified through LinkedIn. He gave them tasks within Huddle. Through several iterations, the group produced a “Buyer Questionnaire” which is at the heart of a product he’s dubbed “EMRmatch.” It’s not available to his clients yet, but will be soon.

“I could’ve never pulled this off without a tool like Huddle,” he says.

Like so many online freebies, Huddle can be upgraded to various levels for a fee. Nuckles says he used the ad-supported free version for the entire project.

Huddle offers Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to protect your username and password, using both server authentication and data encryption.

Nuckles has never had any concerns about privacy. “There are several layers of permissioning that you can set up, and it all seemed to work well and securely.”

When I spent a little time on the Huddle site, what struck me most is the wide-ranging level of support. There are tutorials, videos, Webinars and even phone numbers. And when I called the number, I got through to a real live “Huddle helper” within seconds.

Free video conferencing

If you occasionally, or always, work from home, you understand the joy of checking things off a to-do list while still in your pajamas, hair uncombed.

But haphazard personal grooming might be worth re-thinking if you start incorporating Tinychat with video into your tech repertoire.

Like many people, I find the name “chat room” off-putting. I’ve always associated chatting with mindless prattle, and in the context of the Internet, it tends to take on a racy overtone as well.

But I nonetheless urge you to get past the name and check out Tinychat. It offers free video conferences without extraneous ad-ons, and without registering. You don’t even need to give an e-mail address. It works on Windows, Mac and Linux with Firefox, IE, Safari and Chrome, and there is a version available for iPhones.

I was invited by an interviewee to use Tinychat – he e-mailed me a link to a URL that took me straight into a three-way conversation. We’d started out using Skype, but Skype cannot do video calls with more than two participants.

Tinychat worked well, by and large. At one point, one of my interviewees suddenly disappeared, and I don’t know why. But because it was near the end of the conversation I just let him go. Given this, I recommend giving Tinychat a test run before you use it for business.

Bugs aside, it’s a much more enjoyable experience to interview someone face-to-face with a Web cam than over the phone – even if it does require personal grooming. As lawyers, we all understand the value of nonverbal communication.

Like Huddle, Tinychat also offers premium services for a fee. If you want enhanced security like password protection, you need to subscribe to TinychatPro for $20 per month. I’d be very wary of using the free version when confidentiality is key. But if that’s not a concern, you can talk to up to 11 other lawyers from across the state for no charge.

One big caveat: You might want to take the lead in initiating the discussion. When you go to the Tinychat site, you can see the chat rooms in progress. The day I wrote this, “Sexy Fridays” and “icnakedpeople” were ongoing. It seems Tinychat hasn’t decided who they’re marketing their product to. But if you send your boss or the senior partner a link for the videoconference, he or she will never have to know what the other available conversations are.

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