Looks like 37 Signals had a busy weekend because they silently rolled out Writeboard on Sunday night. What is Writeboard? Well, it is the next great thing from 37 Signals. This time it is all about collaborative writing. If you have a need for yourself or others to write basic text documents that can be edited by anyone you choose and you can see all of the revisions of the said document then this is the tool for you.
Simply type in the name of the document you wish to create, a password and your e-mail address and you are presented with a blank text slate ready for you to write. Heck, dare I say encouraging you to write. Once you have typed what you wish, save that version. Any further edits are listed on the side with the time they were made and a dot indicating the amount of the edit based on it’s size.
You can also invite others via e-mail to give them access to the document so that they can view and make changes as well. All of this is kept track of in the sidebar. You can see who made the change, when it was changed and get an idea of how big the change was. Perhaps the coolest feature is the ability to compare two versions of the document, thus allowing the user to easily see ever edit that was made. All of this is of course done with the 37 Signals “less is more” sense of style and usability.
Well worth a look not only for those with a need to write collaboratively or even for a solitary writer who would like to have a central place for a document (or documents as you can create multiple Writeboards) and could use the versioning features. Yet another outstanding webapp from 37 Signals.
P.S. In case you were wondering, this post was drafted using Writeboard
Update: Here is a very detailed review of Writeboard at Solution Watch. Go check it out if mine did not fill in enough of the blanks.