Etherpad

Sput · Sat 04 Apr, 2009 23.20

Just been sent this by a friend. Basically it's a multi-user real-time version of notepad. You hit "new pad" and send whoever the URL of it, and you can both edit it simultaneously. Very handy for collaboration.

Here's one now! http://etherpad.com/Q2gAWUGS3b43s

cdd · Sun 05 Apr, 2009 01.54

Cool but what's the difference between it and Google Docs?

lukey · Sun 05 Apr, 2009 01.59

Presumably the fact that it's so completely ad-hoc - after all functionally it's not even almost on par with Google Docs - but for so many things that just won't matter.

cdd · Sun 05 Apr, 2009 02.03

Well there's already one advantage from my happy testing which is that it doesn't seem to get annoying edit conflict popups.

cdd · Sun 05 Apr, 2009 20.25

I've started using this as a sort of notes-to-my-self thingy, I made an easy to remember forwarding address on my webspace that takes me straight to the etherpad.

cdd · Sun 28 Feb, 2010 18.28

What the hell, this service is closing next month and will become part of Google Wave or some such.

Cue all the reasons I fucking hate google docs to begin with. Presumably this will be the end of "here's a link - just start editing with me" and the start of "make a google account, make a wave account, share this document, piss about, and find it doesn't work properly anyway".

What stupidly annoying news.