Flocking to Collaborate

A press release landing in my in-box today from the award-winning learning technologies developer, Harbinger Knowledge Products, promoting a beta version of their FlockPod discussion forum tool.

You can take a short demo which looks good - seemed easy to use - and you can sign up for the beta version of the product, for free.  The "pod" in the product title refers to the shape of the tool and the fact that it "floats" on the page.  The pricing for the first formal release hasn't been communicated yet.  I liked the look of the tool and the fact that it appears so easy to deploy.  Up to now, I've only really seen solutions that have to be hard-coded into a webpage, using programming code such as phpBB.  Now all you need to do is insert a tiny bit of code they supply that creates the launch icon.

The current version allows you to post and rate comments, as well as compare maybe contrasting viewpoints side-by-side.  Future releases promise additional features such as polling.  The way the tool hovers over the webpage means it'll be easy to create discussions and debates about content that you've posted on a website, or just simply to provide a forum on a programme's homepage.