Collaboration

I need to get out more. I'm getting my high tech news from a site devoted to the SCO & IBM law suit. Groklaw is a fascinating read. So what has that got to do with collaboration?

Getting documents and court filings posted as text is a group effort. In this post they also discuss the tools they used to edit the OCR created text file. They used a Google tool called Writely.

Writely is a free application (in beta test I think) that lets you edit a document via a web browser. It allows you to upload and download documents. And, multiple people can view and/or edit the document simultaneously. (Multiple people editing can work, but you need to coordinate your efforts.)

I can visualize multiple people writing sections of a final report, for example. And, we don't have to send the file around or merge it at the last minute.

This paradigm also means I wouldn't have to carry diskettes or a jump drive. I can reach it from any computer, and download it, if that's what is needed.

I've only begun to play around with an existing document, that I uploaded. The interface is similar to some of the text note capability in MindManager. I can't begin to say how well it would work for a complex document with footnotes and an index.

There is a similar application called Google Spreadsheets that allows a spreadsheet to be shared.