
Smart Notebooks: Building a Better Shared Document - rkda
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1947703258/smart-notebooks-keeping-on-the-same-page-across-th
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qq66
LiveLoop (<http://getliveloop.com>) is a PowerPoint plugin that delivers most
of the benefits described here (real-time, supports offline, and arbitrarily
shareable), with the benefit of working from directly within Microsoft Office.
Any number of collaborators can see each other's edits in true keystroke-by-
keystroke real-time.

Anyone who signs up from this comment and sends me a feedback email at
amal@getliveloop.com gets 2 free years of service.

Disclaimer: CEO of LiveLoop.

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ralfn
Microsoft Office is inherently collaboration unfriendly. It adds platform
incompatibilities on top of inertia (which is likely the biggest obstacle).

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bungle
I'm not sure about totally new document format. But I would like to see
something new in file collaboration. A system that is distributed, and
standardized (a new protocol for file collaboration, something like http but
for binary blobs, p2p is a nice start but something that works better for
enterprise collaboration).

Cloud services in this space are nice but they are all centrally managed. And
collaboration between different centralized systems doesn't work (say between
SharePoint, and Google Drive).

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mfidelman
We're trying to use a standardized document format. Building on Atom. Should
be able to read serialized format in any blog reader. Microformats will be
used to add structure, and JavaScript library will take feed, order elements,
and select versions for presentation. Add a little CSS for additional
presentation elements (e.g., of an action item list).

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bungle
I know that. But if you want this to work on broader scale the system needs to
support all the files regardless of their format. I'm not saying that what you
are proposing is useless, it is just a more vertical solution for a specific
needs. Not a general solution for file collaboration problems.

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eitally
I don't understand why this would have more traction than something either
fully-cloud with a central "server" like Google Drive/Docs or Office Live 365
(or even something much simpler like Evernote), or something that's a plugin
to MS Office (like the Live bits or Google's Cloud Connect).

In other words, who wants this and for what purpose?

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mfidelman
Two reasons: 1\. a lot of us like having our own local copies of things (the
same rational as Git, when talking a version control system). 2\. a lot of use
cases REQUIRE a local copy, to support disconnected operations (working on
airplanes, working in remote areas with poor connectivity)

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rthprog
Google Drive keeps local copies of things that can be modified offline.

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alexangelini
The quality of the introduction video was so poor, I could not even finish
watching it. I think the top video is the most important part of any
Kickstarter campaign. A properly produced video shows me just how committed
the team is, whereas a poorly produced video stops me from contributing
immediately.

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mfidelman
I wish I were a better video producer. Unfortunately, that started to suck up
way to much time, and it seemed better to launch. (It's the old argument - do
you put time into fancy PowerPoint slides, or into the project itself.)

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nyrulez
Google Docs supports offline duh. What's the point of this ?

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mfidelman
If you want to trust everything to Google, and you have reasonable
connectivity to Google. Works for a lot of cases, but for things like
emergency response and military operations (key targets for the work), one is
often working with low-bandwidth, intermittent, mesh networks - choice is set
up your own server, or go with a P2P approach, as we are. Also, Google Docs
doesn't really do much for version control or allow any kind of process to be
added. Now GitHub or Fossil might be better comparisons, but those are
oriented toward software development rather than more general purpose document
management.

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rthprog
"Also, Google Docs doesn't really do much for version control"

Why would anyone need something beyond Google's 'See revision history' tool?
Sure, you're missing some features software engineers are used to, but I'm not
understanding why people would need this.

