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October 2, 2005

Writeboard Launches But Needs Feature Upgrades

Michael Arrington

19 comments »

Service: Writeboard
Company: part of 37signals
Launched: October 2, 2005

37signals (creators of backpack, basecamp, etc.) launched Writeboard, an application to build sharable text documents online, today (Jason Fried’s post is here).

It’s a nice collaboration tool, but recently released products such as writely and jotspot live have much richer feature sets.

Writeboard, which is free, allows a user to create a new document very quickly, password protect it, and add users who can edit the document.

Unlike competitive solutions, you must use a special markup language to format text (no wysiwyg), you cannot upload images, and there is no ajax or other functionality to move content around on the page. It is also a little buggy - comments are not showing up at all on our test page. Frankly, if it wasn’t 37signals, who generally create awesome applications, we would not be profiling it yet.

However, our guess is that they will be adding functionality quickly. We are also looking forward to the launch of Chalk.

SolutionWatch has posted a thorough review of Writeboard.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, October 2nd, 2005 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Jason Fried

    October 2nd, 2005 at 4:27 pm

    I always love it when we launch a product and the post is about how it needs more features. It tells me we’re doing the right thing ;)

  2. Michael Arrington

    October 2nd, 2005 at 6:05 pm

    Thanks for commenting, Jason. Looking forward to the inevitable upgrades.

  3. Paul D

    October 2nd, 2005 at 9:16 pm

    You know, I’ve tried every one of these collaborative Ajax apps because my wife has been looking for a way to cooperatively edit documents with a friend.

    You might say Whiteboard has fewer features than the others, but you know what? Whiteboard is the only one so far that actually works and is stable. Jotspot, for example, is impossible to use because of how fragile the save process works. It lost my wife’s edits so many times she gave up on it.

    Kudos to 37signals for yet another good, simple application.

  4. Michael Arrington

    October 2nd, 2005 at 9:28 pm

    Paul, that’s a very good point on Jotspot, although I suspect that they will get it stable quickly. I am also having some bug issues with writeboard.

    Writely is extremely stable and I recommend it.

    I also think Writeboard will get better. It needs image support and wysiwyg badly. Ajax can come later.

  5. Paul D

    October 3rd, 2005 at 12:38 am

    Writely doesn’t work in my browser (Safari), so that still leaves Whiteboard the best working app of its kind as far as I’m concerned.

    WYSIWYG is always clumsy in web-based text editors. Until 37signals can solve that, using asterisks for bold text seems to be an acceptable solution. Better image support (like image uploading) would be a big improvement, though.

  6. Peter Cooper

    October 3rd, 2005 at 1:36 am

    I seem to recall discussion on SVN some time ago about how Writeboard was going to be a ’single page’ AJAXed-to-the-hilt app. Doesn’t seem to be anymore.

    That said, it’s a very slick implementation of what it does do, and I think a lot of Web2.0 developers can learn from it. In terms of what it does, though, well, it’s not a step forward.

  7. Andri

    November 10th, 2005 at 12:00 pm

    I think what Jason and his crew at 37signals are doing is fantastic. The minimalistic approach to features and the interface design is very clever and I am a true believer in the whole concept. I still think Writeboard is missing a few things, live editing or just better support to collaborate with other users is at top of my list. Please :)

    I want Writeboard to solve the problem when student and other small groups need to write a single document. This usually involves emailing Word files back and forth, but in the end it will be left for some pore fellow to write it all up and put it together. I would like see someone solve this and make the whole collaboration part more enjoyable so every one can take part and contribute with out the painful “who should be in charge of writing” issue.

    Writeboard is a great start but not quite there yet. IMHO.

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