The key to our placeless office: Web applications that let us chat, collaborate, and do all the other things that regular, in-the-same-place work teams do, and that let us do it from our home offices, hotel rooms, and Internet cafes.

Even if you go to an office every day, where the conference rooms have actual walls, at some point you might work from a placeless office, too. Maybe you telecommute one day a week, or head out on the road for a couple of weeks of business travel, or collaborate with an overseas consultant for a month. Here are a few tools--the ones we use every day--to help you set up shop.

Chat: Campfire

Campfire is a dead-simple group-chat Web application, like a cross between an instant messenger and a bulletin board. It doesn't require invitations, and there's no need to figure out who uses Apple's iChat and who uses Adium.

Campfire creates a private "room" where you and your coworkers can breeze in and out anytime to ask questions, post updates, or just keep up with water-cooler topics. We used to schedule weekly meetings in Campfire, but lately we've found it works better as an always-open virtual space.

My coworkers and I hang around there most of the day while we work. Keeping things unstructured and unscheduled leaves room for us to chat about anything--from what we did over the weekend, to specific issues that crop up while we work. Since our East Coast writer starts earlier than everyone else, we West Coasters catch his posts in Campfire after we wake up and log on. More than any other Web application on this list, Campfire offers a strong sense of working in the same space with your team, even if you're physically spread out across the country.

E-mail: Gmail

Because we can't just drop by each other's cubicles to talk, we rely on e-mail to stay in touch. And because we generate such a massive quantity of e-mail, we use Gmail to keep it under control.

For example, we get dozens of messages from readers every day. If one of us responds to a reader's message, he or she copies everyone else on the response. Gmail's threaded view makes it clear who said what. Because our e-mail address is published on the Web site, we also need a full-strength spam filter. Gmail supplies a good one that yields only occasional false positives.

Because Gmail supports IMAP, you can check your mail in Apple's Mail (or any other IMAP-compliant client) or on your iPhone, as well as in your browser. It offers custom domain addresses (such as gina@lifehacker.com) for free, so you get your own address without having to maintain a mail server.

Group Calendar: Google Calendar

Because we aren't on a single network, we can't use regular shared-calendar tools. So we rely on Google Calendar for group scheduling.

We share a team calendar to keep up with travel and vacation days, upcoming events, and any other scheduled happenings. We create multiple, separate calendars (such as "Marketing schedule" and "Code deployment"), and then set custom sharing preferences so only certain coworkers can view and edit them. Google Calendar can also send event reminders via e-mail, text message, or instant messenger.

Collaboration: Google Docs

If you share and collaborate on word processing documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, Google Docs could be the perfect office suite for you.

At Lifehacker.com, guest editors submit article drafts through Google Docs, which makes keeping on top of revisions easy. The boss and I share a Google spreadsheet to track and allocate the Web site's quarterly budget. I revise and share slides before presentations.

With Google Docs, you can