SynchroEdit alpha trial – alex de carvalho

Following JotLive, Writely and 37signals’ Writeboard, Christopher Allen’s new SynchroEdit wiki application is the latest addition to simple and easy to use collaborative environments … with a big difference. Its multiple user, synchronous editing nature means people are creating or modifying the document at the same time. More than just document creation, the application feels like a type of group communication tool, a free-form IRC chat of sorts. It’s still simple and in early stages, but I liked it alot (Om Malik dissents).

Here’s a description, from the SynchroEdit site:

SynchroEdit is a browser-based simultaneous multiuser editor, a form of same-time, different-place groupware. It allows multiple users to edit a single web-based document at the same time, and it continuously synchronizes all changes so that users always have the same version.

SynchroEdit’s main editor is fully WYSIWYG, dynamically displaying bolds, italics, underlines, strikethroughs, with various justifications, indents and listing styles as an author inputs them. SynchroEdit also supports a simple, text-only editor for more basic documents. To clarify the multiuser experience, the editor window clearly depicts every user’s changes in a specific color and also marks where each user is currently editing with a colored flag listing the user’s name.

Via Ross, whose company SocialText sponsored and might integrate SynchroEdit in its wiki products.