![]() I especially liked the ability to add audio comments, in the chat stream itself, or right on a document. ![]() These pages can be annotated with freehand markings, arrows, text or audio tags. Then you invite people to a chat and post text comments, audio comments or pages, either one at a time or in groups. ![]() These can be files and documents from your computer or from a service like Dropbox, photos, videos, pages from other binders, or screen grabs of all or parts of Web pages. To use Moxtra, you first create a binder and upload to it the pages you want to work on. You can only annotate and comment by text or audio. Moxtra does a good job of putting a document in front of multiple people, but unlike, say, Google Docs, it doesn’t allow collaborative composing or editing of documents. The company says it plans to simplify these things.Īlso, there is one missing feature I’d like to see in a product like this. For instance, there are multiple different ways to use audio in the product, which can be confusing, and the annotation tools have so many choices as to be a bit overwhelming. And I found some of the product’s tools daunting at first. However, in my tests, I encountered a couple of bugs (the company says these will be fixed in coming weeks). Overall, I liked Moxtra, and could really see how it could make small teams more efficient. ![]() Eventually, Moxtra intends to impose limits on these things and charge for premium accounts that exceed them, and to add new, paid features. Right now, there’s no limit on the amount of stuff you can store in Moxtra binders, or the length of a Meet session, or the number of participants. I even convened what Moxtra calls a “Meet” - a group audio conference via Moxtra during which documents (which Moxtra calls “pages”) can be displayed and annotated. In fact, I used it to conduct my research for this column, trying out its various features while chatting via text and voice with the company’s executives. I tested Moxtra on an iPhone, an iPad, and a browser on a laptop. The binders still exist, but the product was overhauled late last year to put its group chat features front and center. The product has been out for a while, and was originally based around collections of documents called “binders” that were relevant to a project. The service is cloud-based, and claims strong encryption. ![]() People participating in a chat can be on any mix of these devices. Moxtra, from a company of the same name, is a free app for iOS and Android phones and tablets, as well as a service that can be accessed from any browser. Users can even record narrated mini-presentations showing how and why they annotated documents. Text and audio comments can be entered by anyone. A family or group of friends in different locations could use it to plan a trip or event. This week, I took a look at an app named Moxtra that aims to tackle the problem through something it calls “power messaging” - a combination of group sharing and annotating of documents with text and audio chats that are built around collections of relevant documents.įor instance, a sales team could use Moxtra to collaborate on a presentation, or a study group could use it to learn from a tutor or build a report. But no one product has nailed the whole process so far, which is why millions of emails and texts are still sent daily to swap drafts of documents, comment on planning, or set up old-fashioned conference calls. It’s a worthy goal for users in business, academia and elsewhere. Lots of companies offer apps and services that aim to enhance group collaboration on projects in one way or another. ![]()
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