@Dewde (and Dewde.com) passed this to me a day or so ago and I took one look at it and instantly thought I was ported back to the late 90′s of web dev.
Retro, I thought.
Digging a bit deeper I found a gem, and I’d challenge you to do the same.
EtherPad is a simple idea done well. It let’s you instantly (and yes, instantly) create a shared workspace and textual document that can be shared and edited by you and others in absolute real time.
You really have to just take it for a dry run (and try using the ChurchCrunch’s EtherPad Demo Pit!) and then begin to imagine the possibilities.
You could use it for your ministry team’s brainstorming sessions, live blog or collaboratively use it to live blog events and or ministry events, use it as a base of operation for small (or large) projects… ah, the sky is the limit here folks.
And the best thing about it is that the entry bar into user adoption is extremely low. Mind-numbingly obvious on what it’s used for and super simple to share, it makes Google Docs look almost too feature-heavy. Perhaps that’s why it was built by some ex-googlers…?
Hmm.
Take it for a spin and let me know what you think. Some other great reviews from TechCrunch and RRW.
I used this about two or three weeks ago. It seemed very cool. I think it will serve as a great tool for a smaller groups with agreed-upon constraints. When I tested it out with a group of people they were using it as a live chat platform. The potential problem users could encounter using this is that anything you write is too easily deleted. As the group size increases, you risk the potential of people (probably in the fray) going against the group goals.
It is maybe akin to using small-group discussion versus having one person speak. A small-group discussion is good when there is a small group; however, as the group increases there are almost too many cooks in the kitchen, which works to the detriment of the "common good."
agreed. good stuff for particular uses… but, not a good catch-all service.
I am not sure. Google wave was a bit much for me when people were editing their own text in real time. To have us work on the same text, might set off exponential confusion.
pahhhhahaha, Feb 2008 – love these random posts.
maybe Google should buy this out. Did they?