Editing documents in collaboration with someone else used to be a pain before the Internet and modern word processors only made the pain a little easier to handle.
We writers thought we had it easy when word processors and the Internet came in – Write up a draft, zip it up and email the document (or even better, use instant messaging), get the changes (highlighted in red), edit some more and voila ! You’re done.
And now we have this great service, ShowDocument, which promises to make document collaboration even simpler. All it requires is a web browser, which all of us already have.
To get started, register for a free account. Although, you can use ShowDocument once without registering, to make use of the service an unlimited number of times, you have to register.
Now, click on the “Shared Document” image/link on the home page and upload the document that you wish to collaborate on.
The document will be uploaded to ShowDocument’s servers and you’ll be presented with a window, which will give you a couple of different options using which you can start working on the document with your friends.
I prefer sending my friends the direct link but you can use any of the three options provided.
Regardless of the option you used, you and your friend should now be staring at the same document in a full screen window. ShowDocument is now ready for all the collaboration that you can throw at it.
The document view is real-time which means that you’ll be able to see the changes as they’re being made. Now, if that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is.
The only gripe I have with the service is the small set of tools that it provides for annotation. Plus the fact that the documents that are being worked on can only be saved back in PDF form, regardless of the format the original document was uploaded in.
So once you have your changes approved with your team, you’ll have to edit the main document again with all the suggestions that were made.
In spite of the above limitation, ShowDocument is an excellent tool for annotations and beats Google Docs in the real-time department.
Other than the above gripes, I have absolutely no complaints with ShowDocument. It is a great tool for document collaboration and I’m glad I found it.
Are there any other real-time online collaboration tools that you guys use ? Let me know in the comments.
Programmer, blogger and a geek making a living shifting bits around the Internet. Sharninder is the owner of Geeky Ninja
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