Web Worker Daily

3 Ways to Edit Documents Collaboratively

Posted: 01 Sep 2008 01:00 PM CDT

Working on the Web means that it’s easy to reach out to collaborators - but what then? If you actually need to work on the web with other people (as opposed to just communicating with clients and suppliers via the web), you’ll need some tool support. Take the common problem of needing to jointly edit a document, for example. In the old days (say, five years ago) most of us would do this by emailing drafts back and forth, perhaps using something like Microsoft Word’s revision marks feature to indicate who did what.

But these days, you’re not limited to such primitive serial workflows. Thanks to the web, there are a batch of ways that you can edit a document together with another person - or more than one person - to quickly home in on a final draft. There are three main groups of solution to this problem, each with their own features and drawbacks.

1. Use a Collaborative Web Editor - Web services like Google Documents and Zoho Writer have document sharing built right in. On the plus side, this means a very low barrier to entry: anyone can get an account on these services easily. There’s no requirement for users to have a common operating system, either, which is useful if your collaboration needs span multiple platforms. The downside? Although you get a visual indication that another user is editing, you won’t actually see their changes until they save the document. In the worst case, this can mean simply losing your changes in a “last save wins” situation of multiple edits. Google Documents does maintain a revision history, so you can always go back and see who typed what.

2. Use a Wiki - There are any number of places you can quickly spin up a free wiki, including PBWiki, Nuospace, and Wikidot. Advantages: easy to set up, easy to invite more people to, and you generally get the ability to track revisions and see who contributed what to the document. Disadvantages: depending on the backend you choose, you may have problems with controlling access to your document, and the editing experience may be tough for non-technical users. Also, it can be hard to convert a wiki page into something that looks good in print or elsewhere. Plus you’ll still have the problem of battling edits if two people are trying to work on the document at the same time.

3. Use a Collaborative Editor. For the best possible collaborative editing, I’ve found it necessary to turn away from the web and to client-side software. Packages that implement collaborative editing include SubEthaEdit and Coda on OS X, Gobby and ACE for cross-platform use, and the Microsoft Word add-in CoWord (Windows only). These packages aim to enable a completely common editing session, where you can see what multiple people are doing at the same time. Especially if you’re trying to collaborate on a complex document (or source code), this is head and shoulders above the “wait for a save” workflow of web editors and wikis. But on the downside, you end up tied to client-side software and particular platforms, and these packages are complex enough that they don’t always work perfectly.

If you work on documents collaboratively with other people, what’s your solution? What features do you wish you had?

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Google Chrome is Coming

Posted: 01 Sep 2008 11:00 AM CDT

There have been persistent - and reasonably credible - rumors that Google was going to release its own browser. Now, thanks to Google Blogoscoped, we have some additional evidence: a 38-page comic book sent out by Google to announce the Google Chrome project.

The comic runs through a bunch of interesting features: process-isolated tabs, a new Javascript engine tuned for large, complex applications (like, oh, GMail), UI innovations, an “Omnibox” that resembles Firefox’s “Awesome bar”, and more. The new browser is supposedly built on top of the Webkit rendering engine. Although this could be a (very elaborate) hoax, I’m inclined to believe it’s for real: the URL for Google Chrome is returning a custom 404 page, rather than the one Google uses for random words. I’m sure I won’t be the only web worker hoping to see a release here sooner rather than later.

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Navigaya: The Strangest Browser

Posted: 01 Sep 2008 10:00 AM CDT

There are a lot of browsers out there beyond the few that most people code for. The most recent one I’ve run into is Navigaya, which might better be described as a Flash-based browser experience for those addicted to sensory assault. When you visit the Navigaya site (use full-screen for hte best experience), it starts playing music videos from a customizable playlist as wallpaper. In front of that, you can run a search (and see results from multiple engines at one) or browse the web.

While all that’s going on, you can explore the various menus and shortcuts that Navigaya has to chunks of web. These are customizable with your own links too, but the starting set is a good portal to many common sites, categorized into areas like “maps” or “fashion”. Their Category menu gives you browsable news from many sources at once, with headlines and videos as well. All in all, it’s a surprisingly engaging way to explore the web, though I don’t know that I’d try to use it when I wanted to get serious work done.

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Hurricane Gustav: T-Mobile Opens WiFi Network in Gulf Coast

Posted: 31 Aug 2008 11:12 PM CDT

One of the unsung heroes of the Hurricane Katrina disaster zone was occasional OStatic contributor, Aaron Huslage. Aaron drove from Portland to New Orleans, carting a truckful of telephony equipment, a big heart and a can-do attitude that, in less than a week, brought a rudimentary, improvised telephony network to twelve thousand displaced residents of the city. Six volunteers assembled a makeshift infrastructure, atop cell towers, water towers, powerhouses and other tall structures, using a Wimax backhaul and a 900Mhz Trango wireless link to connect civilian shelters - stretching wirelessly from Gulfport to affected areas over a range of around fifteen miles (Gulfport-Mississippi Power Tower-Waveland-Stennis-Port Bienville).

Aaron later shared his experiences with the audience of O’Reilly’s inaugural Emerging Telephony conference in early 2006; appealing to industry experts to contribute knowledge, technology and readiness for future disasters (download Aaron’s Katrina Network Relief Case Study here).

It seems that T-Mobile has heeded the nature of Aaron’s call, and as Hurricane Gustav bears down on the city in the coming hours - a potential redux of the 2006 disasater - has opened its wifi networks for all to use, helping residents stay connected in a time of emergency.

In the areas around the potential disaster zone - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, the Gulf Coast of Texas and Houston - T-Mobile will be ensuring its HotSpot locations are freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

Of course, communication is limited to those with laptops and other wi-fi devices and indeed those within proximity of T-Mobile’s coverage, generously prolific in retail locations such as Starbucks, Borders, Kinko’s and various hotel chains.

Though appears to be a great example of corporate generosity in a time of crisis…I can’t help but think that opening wifi hotspots is unlikely to impact greatly the availability of telephony in a disaster area. Perhaps T-Mobile would be performing a much more valuable civic service by providing free mobile telephony for those in deeply affected areas.

One of the guiding factors of Aaron’s work in the Katrina zone was to utilise standard PSTN phones so survivors had access to technology that was universally accessible. The service provided sixty-thousand voice minutes to twenty-four shelters, churches and homes. Perhaps we should question what, if any, real benefit T-Mobile will be providing… Sciponius ably demonstrated how simple telephony, messaging and mobilty lashed together quickly, could result in a live disaster map unrivalled even by Federal resources.

Read T-Mobile’s press release and coverage from Web Worker Daily’s sister blog, jkOnTheRun.

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