Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: DISPLAYNOTE
"No more bottlenecks, no more wasted time, no more waiting," says Swoodle. Real time project management makes group projects less miserable.

New collaboration app a must-use for students

Group projects have never been kind to me. Many applications already exist to make life just a little bit easier, but a new app based out of Belfast, Ireland, has combined the best of what is already out there into a new, easy to use product.

Swoodle is a collaboration tool that is a cohesion of Skype, What’s App, Google Drive, Cloud-based technology and more. Connected through your smartphone, users can create a new project or access content from anywhere in the cloud and synchronize across multiple platforms so users can create, edit and collaborate in real time on projects.

I met with Kris Nixon from DisplayNote, Swoodle’s parent company, over a video chat.

I was hooked from the start. I mean it’s called Swoodle, what’s not to love about that? I asked Nixon about the name. He said the name Swoodle was not market tested or developed by a PR team as most applications are.

“Our business is about getting work done,” Nixon said. “We needed a name, so we came up with a few ideas and then voted, it took 10 minutes, it’s more important what it does than what it’s called.”

The fact that the Swoodle team focused on making a great product and not so much on the name is clear as soon as you start using it to collaborate.

The real-life uses for Swoodle are limitless. Part way through the tour I was thinking about all the ways I could use it in my own office.

Users can connect through email or through Facebook for easy registration. After signing up you are taken to Swoodle’s main page with six different options: call, chat, file, doodle, image and camera.

What makes Swoodle so special is the potential combinations of these features. In the tour of the app, Nixon was simultaneously chatting with me through video call, editing a document and using the doodle feature to highlight important information. And I could see all of this happening from my own smartphone thousands of kilometres away in real-time.

Users can lock other collaborators out of a document so they can work freely and then unlock it so others can edit afterwards. This app really is the best of all the group projects already out there. And with this addition of the video chat feature it has a leg up over Google Docs.

Just one example of the many possible uses for Swoodle, Nixon says he has a friend in Belfast who is currently tutoring a student in Australia. With the video chat and real-time collaboration functions, Nixon says Swoodle is only a few steps down from a face-to-face meeting.

“You don’t get the same level of interaction as you would in person, but it’s pretty damn close.”

Swoodle is already available on Apple and Android devices. Nixon says they hope to have the desktop version ready to go before the New Year.

Overall, Swoodle is a great application for students working on group projects. And if you don’t have any group projects you can use Swoodle’s doodle feature to play Tic Tac Toe with your friends.
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