Diagramly: A Free Online Tool for Creating Diagrams and Charts

Diagramly: A Free Online Tool for Creating Diagrams and Charts: "

Looking for a tool to create diagrams, mind maps and flow charts? Diagramly is a capable online diagramming tool, and while it’s not quite as powerful as desktop apps like Microsoft Visio, it’s free and can produce fairly complex diagrams and charts — an impressive feat for a web app built entirely in HTML and JavaScript.

You don’t need to create an account or login to get started: just head to the Diagramly site. The bulk of the screen is taken up by a blank grid, where you’ll create your diagram. Along the left-hand side of the screen are palettes of shapes (rectangles, circles, connecting lines, arrows, etc.), BPM flowchart symbols, and clip art — to use these you just drag and drop them onto your grid, and then preposition and scale as required. At the top of the screen you’ll find tools for adjusting things like zoom level, text size, gradients and fills, and line color. There are also undo/redo, copy/paste and file open/save buttons at the top-left.

Once you’re happy with your diagram, you can save it locally (either in Diagramly’s native XML format, or as a PNG, JPG or SVG file). Unfortunately, there’s no option to save your diagram to the cloud, and you can’t collaborate in real-time with other Diagramly users, which would have been nice features to see. Cleverly, you can open Visio files using the app; if nothing else, Diagramly could prove handy for those times that people send you a Visio file and you don’t have it installed.

If you’ve used a desktop diagramming app like Visio, Diagramly will probably feel familiar. It does have some quirks that take a little getting used to: Some of the icons in the left-hand sidebar don’t really match the shapes produced, for example. However, while it’s not quite as polished as commercial desktop diagramming apps, it’s free, and with a little patience it’s capable of producing pretty decent results.

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Is Email’s Reign Coming to an End?

Is Email’s Reign Coming to an End?: "

Two years ago, I wrote an article for GigaOM Pro entitled Email: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated (subscription required), in which I explained why email is such a useful tool and why I thought it was unlikely to be replaced as the primary business communications medium any time soon. In the time since then, however, we’ve seen a wave of newer cloud-based communications and collaboration products taking the enterprise by storm. Could email be overtaken by these?

While it’s been widely reported that teens no longer use email, it seems that attitudes to email are changing in workplace, too. According to a new GigaOM Pro report, The Future of Workplaces (subscription required), which surveyed 1,000 decision makers and end-users about the ways that workplaces are changing, workers don’t necessarily believe email will continue to be such a critical tool in the future:

Key Technologies: Future Use

The report’s authors highlight the fact that, while the respondents believed they would newer technologies like VoIP and videoconferencing increasingly in the future, the more traditional tools like email and the office landline showed a noticeable downward trend.

These findings shouldn’t be surprising; having a greater range of useful (and relatively inexpensive) communications tools at our disposal means we can pick the best tools for a given job, which should make our communications more effective. The availability of tools like Dropbox and box.net, for example, has greatly simplified the process of sharing files with others, and should mean fewer people trying to send large files as email attachments. And for internal office communications, social business tools like Yammer and Chatter make for easier conversation than can be had over email distribution lists. However, even though we now have a greater range of useful tools to call upon, I think email will continue to play a vital role in our business communications for the foreseeable future. It has advantages — such as being simple, asynchronous and virtually universal — that aren’t all shared by its newer competitors. Don’t expect to see it going the way of the dodo just yet.

For more insight on the way that our workplaces are changing, check out the full report over on GigaOM Pro (subscription required).

Image Source: GigaOM Pro

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Email: The Reports of My Death are Greatly Exaggerated
• The Future of Workplaces
• The Future of Work Platforms: An Overview

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