Etherpad Shows Google Docs How It’s Done (By AppJet)

http://etherpad.com/ep/newsyc

For the curious, I added this URL to our running web server in 5 minutes with 12 lines of JavaScript:

  function render_newsyc_get() {
    function countUsers(p) {
       return getCollab().getDocument(p).getNumConnectedUsers();
     }
     var body = BODY({style: 'padding: 20px; font-family: monospace;'});
     body.push(H3("Welcome news.ycombinator readers! ",
   	       "Join us in an EtherPad of your choosing:"));
     pads.forEach(function(p) {
       body.push(A({href: p}, p), '   ('+countUsers(p)+' users)', BR());
     });
     response.write(HTML(body));
  }

To imply that Google 'hasn't been able to do it' is kind of silly. It's more likely that they chose not to do it and/or their scaling requirements made it impractical.

It's really interesting to watch the POSTs fly by and consider the implications of out-of-order updates, breaks in the open downstream "comet" channel, interleaving potentially conflicting text from different clients. A lot of difficult tradeoffs that they seem to have made good -- or at least plausible -- decisions on.

This is a really impressive product.

http://etherpad.com/a4jtHYAoF9

Just join in and try it!

I was also thinking that instead of unnamed, you could build a list of celebrity names that are used until the user changes it (which should be pretty quick if you wind up with something like Danny Glover or Hans Blix). If not, at least you'd have a way to distinguish between people.

Oh yeah, here: http://gobby.0x539.de/trac/

I'm not sure how much this will fly.

On an unrelated note, something about Arrigton's journalism just bothers me. It's like every title has to involve some tired old cliché or unsubstantiated, conflicting statements.

Yes they have the handiness of true realtime updates (and I am not denying that isn't a huge feature) but that's hardly a unique feature (or wont be for long).

But then the rest of the UI / feature set is far too bland :( at least get some code highlighting and stuff in there.

Also in our short test earlier it didnt handle mass deletions & editing very well (if I deleted a block of text as someone was adding to it merry hell broke loose :P).

IMO a nice demo of a cool idea but badly executed enough to be no real use. Make me a real time white board and THEN I might take notice :D