Collaborate, Share, Revise with Writeboard
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I came across Writeboard last year and filed it away until now. It’s a very simple interface and it is simple to sign up. Just provide an email address, password and the name of your first whiteboard and you can get started right away.
This tool is your very basic text editor. I chose to import text from a document on my computer and it imported into plain text. There is simple formatting you can do with odd symbols (like a * for bold). Don’t expect to do anything very fancy here. I did see when I saved my whiteboard it showed up in rich text with the formatting I did appearing.
Once you have your document ready for someone to review, simply click on the share butto
n and type in the email address(es), and they will get a link and your password to the document. Your collaborator can then add to, or make any revisions to the document. When finished, they click ‘save’ and instantly you’ll see on the right side the list of people who have worked on the document in chronological order. A nice feature is the ‘quick compare’ where you can check two versions and easily scan changes made.
Pros
- Any technophobe should be able to easily use this web tool
- Free and easy to sign up and get started
- Easily roll back to a previous version of your document
- Accessible from any computer that can get on the web
- Subscribe via RSSs feed to your document’s changes/revisions
Cons
- Limited to typing or importing text. Can’t upload .doc, .ppt, files
- Formatting of your document is limited
- If you have multiple writeboards, they are not all kept together and each one will require its own password
- You can bookmark your writeboard, since they are all stored on the web. If you don’t then you’ll have to log into writeboard and have them send you a link each time you want to go back to one of your documents
This free service is from 37 Signals, a web-based app developer. Their other offerings include Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack and Campfire.
Writeboard is a nice little app if your needs are few and simple. For more robust collaboration, I like the free collaboration and storage tools from Microsoft Small Business Live and Airset much better.
