Playing with Technology

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ~Arthur C. Clarke

Interesting Web based software

TechCruch had a story today about Y Combinator (an interesting venture capital firm) and some of the software starting to come out of these ventures. Two applications caught my eye in the list: writewith and Snipshot. writewith is a collabrotive writing application similar in nature to Google Documents. I have been looking at these kinds of applications as I am involved in more and more ad-hoc committees where we are drafting some policy. I don’t really feel it is productive to e-mail revisions around endlessly and see an application like writewith as a natural tool for such work. Snipshot was interesting because I just think it is cool to edit my photos without the need for big bulky software. Don’t get me wrong; I love to fire up Photoshop but sometimes you don’t need the bolt cutters. Check them out when you have time.


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2 responses to “Interesting Web based software”

  1. Bryan Alexander Avatar

    What do you see as the advantages of Writewith over wikis?

  2. Jon Breitenbucher Avatar

    So far the advantage of sites like writewith and Google Docs over the wikis I have used lies in the way text is entered. Google Docs and writewith seem to emulate the Microsoft Office model with buttons for common tasks. All of the wikis I have used have used a markup of some form. Now in truth Google Docs and writewith are wikis but not what one would think of as traditional ones.

    Also, the way permissions are handled for edits seem to be different. The traditional wikis I have used have not been able to restrict edits to a single person other than the author. Google Docs lets you limit edits to just those you invite. I’m sure there are more traditional wikis that have this feature and I just haven’t used them.