Kerika

Kerika is a peer-to-peer application that provides a visual context for team collaboration, with support for process templates, document management and sharing of large files. Kerika connects people across organizations, networks and locations with no up-front costs or long-term commitments.

Using Kerika is simple: download the application; lay out a project using Kerika's Idea Pages; drag-and-drop documents, Web links and pictures onto these pages; and share your projects with others simply by adding email addresses to the project’s team list. Which means your buddies don't just get the files, they get the big picture as well!

Idea Pages work like a "graphical Wiki": any team member can can move items around or delete them, attach notes, change colors and layouts, etc. You can extend parts of an Idea Page into new subprojects and reuse content or process flows across multiple projects.

The document management features are easy to use, yet powerful: you can attach notes to documents, and whenever anyone edits a shared document, this modified version is sent to everyone else on the team; Kerika takes care of all the filing for everyone's computers. And because Kerika isn't a "Web 2.0" hosted service, everyone on the team always has a complete set of project files stored locally on their computers and there is no single point of failure.

You share content and processes across multiple projects, have chat sessions with other online users and get real-time notifications of updates. If any Kerika users are offline, messages sent to them by their buddies are automatically held for them on a central storage server. And for complete privacy, Kerika lets you set up a "private server" on any machine you have, at no extra cost, so that outsiders never get to see what your team is working on!

The software is offered as a subscription service: you get a 30-day free trial, after which you can become a monthly subscriber for $9.95 or less. Academic users pay nothing!