Realtime Collaborative Text Editing

May 10, 2010 12:14 AM

MeetingWords is an online collaborative text editor.

"... text is saved on the web, and more than one person can edit the same document at the same time. Everybody's changes are instantly reflected on all screens. Work together on meeting notes, brainstorming sessions, homework, team programming and more!"

posted by mhjb (17 comments total)

Not 100% sold on the usefulness of this but it's an interesting concept nonetheless.
posted by mhjb at 12:14 AM on May 10, 2010

So I'll probably be the first of many to say this, but how exactly is this different/better than Google Docs? Other than the whole plain text thing...

Somewhat interesting, given that their FAQ says that some of the engineers involved in the project ended up working for Google (making the engine may not be contributing directly to this project, but still).
posted by Arandia at 1:04 AM on May 10, 2010

I didn't realize it was supposed to be a serious/useful program... I thought it was just for fun. Kind of like those games where you can draw with everyone else online.
posted by biochemist at 1:49 AM on May 10, 2010

Bonquissimo: so long, and thanks for all the fish, elephants, radishes, and nucleotides.
posted by cmyk at 2:10 AM on May 10, 2010

This is just an installation of Etherpad, right?

We've been using this for technical phone screens for ages - it's nice to get people to write code right in front of you.
posted by bryn at 2:27 AM on May 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Everybody laughed at collaborative text editors until a committee became the next Shakespeare.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:05 AM on May 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Our efforts at fixing Treaty of Westphalia broke it.

These Etherpads are nice as back channels for seminars, meetings etc. Having an url that is possible to write on whiteboard or to say on phone is a big plus.
posted by Free word order! at 3:15 AM on May 10, 2010

I much prefer the protocol approach taken by google wave.
posted by jeffburdges at 3:58 AM on May 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

Hmm. Collaborative poetry?
posted by pracowity at 4:16 AM on May 10, 2010

This will be huge! Just like Google Wave.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 4:35 AM on May 10, 2010

Based on a few minutes of perusing, this appears to be the text version of drawing dicks all over everything, only with super-meta references to The Shining.
posted by Clamwacker at 4:53 AM on May 10, 2010

I was thinking this was going to be the next generation of Etherpad, but it is in fact an Etherpad installation (they released their source before being bought and shut down by google). I'm currently looking at my university's student-run installation (but not linking, because it's probably Not Ready For Primetime Yet); it's a great tool for academic collaboration, taking notes at meetings, running student groups, etc etc. Way better than GoogleDocs for that purpose, IMO, largely because (a) it has a chat function built in, (b) you can see who edited which part, and (c) Metafilter and the Treaty of Westphalia notwithstanding, it's quite a bit more responsive and scalable.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:27 AM on May 10, 2010

Could we use it write collaborative comments in MetaFilter?
posted by pracowity at 6:31 AM on May 10, 2010

Once upon a time on Metafilter ...
posted by The Whelk at 7:36 AM on May 10, 2010

Once upon a time on Metafilter ...

Some exciting collaborative comments being crafted as you read this!
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:57 AM on May 10, 2010

Some exciting collaborative comments farts being crafted poop as you read booger this!
posted by The Whelk at 8:01 AM on May 10, 2010

That time slider function is pretty cool.
posted by storybored at 8:03 AM on May 10, 2010