I know I go on and on about idea walls for your own personal use, but what about when you’re working in a group?  The solution is a wiki.  A wiki can basically be used as an electronic idea wall where you can collaborate with anyone else involved in the project.  I have a wiki that I use to collaboratively write a book with someone, a wiki to collaborate organize and develop a project, and even a wiki that I set up with some of my oldest friends to document the past people, events, and places of childhood.

You can even use a wiki for your own personal idea wall, especially if you’re someone who travels a lot. For example you could be at an airport with wireless access waiting for your flight. That would be a perfect time to brainstorm on your wiki.

What is nice about wikis is that even if you make changes you can still go back in the history and see what was there before. This has helped me out I don’t know how many times.

The wiki software I prefer is MediaWiki, which is what Wikipedia runs. Its simple to install, especially if you’re on a host that offers installation of it through a control panel. You can then make it semi secure by added a .htaccess password to the directory. If you want to make it even more secure you can purchase an SSL certificate for the domain you have it hosted on. Then you have some security logging into your wiki from a public wireless access point.  Which is good because you don’t want random people checking out your ideas.