Filed under: Text, Office, Productivity, Web
EtherPad: worth giving up Google Docs for?
Just pass the URL to your collaborators, and everyone is set to start editing. There are stylistic limitations, with no fancy fonts and formatting, but edits happen in real time. There's also a handy chat box in the sidebar, in case you need to discuss your changes. Where you might want to use Google Docs instead is if you're writing something long that needs to be exported to Word or another file format. EtherPad does saving -- and infinite undos for all users, which is quite handy -- but it doesn't do exporting. You'll have to plug your document's URL in to pick up where you left off.
Complaints? Not many. The aforementioned exporting would be nice, and although it's great that you can quick-start with no accounts, they should at least be an option for privacy. And, speaking of privacy, users can see each other's IP addresses in the sidebar. I'm not sure what that adds. A built-in spellchecker would also be a perk, but it's not necessary. What EtherPad has so far is quite impressive, and I hope it continues to improve, while staying fast and easy to use.
With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet.
They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tom said 12:06PM on 11-20-2008
I think you've missed the point of it - it looks to be a collabrative text pad and not meant for documents.
Reply