Webapp Zapproved helps you mediate group decisions, like where to have the company holiday party, or if everyone likes the new logo design. Users create proposals and then send requests to their coworkers, family, and friends. The requests appear as emails to the recipients who can approve or deny the proposal with or without commenting on it. Users don't have to sign up with Zapproved to participate in the voting process. Zapproved tracks who has approved, denied, or not responded to proposals to foster accountability among team members. Once invitees approve or deny proposals, Zapproved archive them in the original user's account for future reference. Zapproved is a free web based application.

Take a peek behind the curtain here at Lifehacker US's virtual headquarters in my recent article for Macworld magazine, The Portable Office: Work Anywhere. Longtime readers won't be surprised to find out that the Lifehacker staff are heavy Gmail, MediaWiki, Google Calendar, Campfire, and del.icio.us users.

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Google Documents rolls out two features that make collaboration easy, even amongst friends and co-workers that don't have Google accounts. Spreadsheets now have an "Anyone can edit this document without logging in" option in their share tab, turning your document into a wiki that tracks changes in real time and can email you a summary. Also, those who dig the custom input forms can now embed them on any web page, and users who don't like your choices can submit their own answers with a new option. Great tools for those who want to collect opinions and data, but don't want to spend a lot of time setting up the web pages to do so.

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Online collaboration service PalBee integrates video conferencing and whiteboard sharing so you can meet up with co-workers over the internet. PalBee supports one free hour at a time for up to five collaborators, and it can record the session as its happening for later review—the results of which can be embedded on any web page (similar to the video above). Naturally, since PalBee is web-based, it works on all platforms as long as you've got a webcam. PalBee is currently completely free to use, though pay plans are likely to emerge.

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Group scheduling web application When Is Good makes picking the best time for everyone easy as pie. Similar to previously posted Doodle, no registration is required at When Is Good: simply fill in the calendar with your proposed times for a conference call, meeting, or family reunion. Then enter your email to get an invitation message with a unique URL to your event. Send that sucker out to your invitees, who choose which times work for them. When Is Good is smart about time zones, too—your cross-country invitees will see the available times in their local time zones. Much better solution for figuring out what time works for everyone than that endless email thread.

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Twiddla, a free whiteboarding service that doesn't require sign-ups to start using, turns any web site, photo or graphic file into a canvas for marking and discussion. Winner of this year's Technical Achievement award at the SXSW festival, Twiddla isn't the only
whiteboard service, for sure, but its ease of use and quick setup and extra features—including live conference-call-style audio chat—make it a stand-out. You can check out Twiddla's features without even launching a "guest" account by trying out its live "sandbox" mode. For web workers, design types, and anyone needing to draw out or discuss an idea, it's a worthy tool to keep bookmarked.

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Google has unveiled the results of their purchase of JotSpot—the free collaboration tool you could once use to make wiki-like collaboration pages and organize your family—and while the offerings are somewhat slim at this point, it's looking like a promising addition to the Google Apps suite (both free and premium). You can set up Sites to create pages that only users with email addresses on a certain domain can use, or have your page open to edits or viewing by anyone. Each Sites account gets 10 GB of storage, and importing data and tools from other Google services, like group calendars, spreadsheets, Picasa slideshows, and the like, is pretty streamlined. Google Sites is free to use, and requires a sign-up with a non-Gmail email address.

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Organise and share your checklists online with "the wiki of checklists," sharing and collaboration webapp Checkser. Current available checklists cover self management projects, how to prepare for a vacation, required steps to close your Facebook account, what you should teach your child (and by what age), and more. Contribute to the ever-growing checklist database by starting your own list. Like nearly Wiki, a history of edits is provided as additional people help collaborate on each forever-changing project.