This is what EtherPad was based on. The only problem is that it only works on OS X. I remember using it to take notes with a bunch of other people at the first couple Startup School events. I haven't really ever used it since, but I can say that it held up extremely well even with a dozen people typing as fast as they could all at once.

it's true that this might not be strictly necessary. i could buy 7 etha edits a month or pay rent....and since i only need 1 etha edit forever, it's orders of magnitude less expensive compared to rent.

still, the numbers just tell me why it might be ok to make the purchase. if i threw away 1/7th of rent every month that would add up to a non-trivial amount. so, yeah, it better be worth it.

UPDATE: I take it all back. This product is junk. Only one person can edit the entire document at once. If someone is typing, it literally locks the entire screen. This is worse than Google Docs.

The goggle wave everyone type at once stuff is like reverb in the 80's if you ask me. Too much.

Particularly when you are dealing with multiple tabs. What I want to do when I'm asking a buddy to take a look at or help me with code is see what he or she is doing.

The tool really wasn't designed to compete with/replace Etherpad. It was designed to make our lives as developers a little easier. I think Etherpad is awesome. I've used a ton for google docs type stuff, but never really thought of it as code editor.

Why would you ignore that and try to carve a small niche for yourself for code reviews when the whole pie is right there for the taking?!

This will probably be the biggest opportunity your company will ever have in terms of user acquisition.

The next direction for Squad is better project handling via a tree file browser, SFTP, version control hooks, etc. not adding formating buttons or making shares embedable. I think Squad and EtherPad were diverging like say Dreamweaver and Word. That's not to say we wouldn't like to capitalize on both the Dreamweaver and Word markets. :)

Here is my suggestion, I say you (or someone else passionate about this) go over to http://sproutbox.com/apply and fill out an app for recreating something like EtherPad. If you're selected, you'd be working with the same team that built Squad. We'd donate a big chunk of real-time editing code and you'd have something up around the time EtherPad shuts down. Win Win.

But hurry, apps close tomorrow at 11:59pm.

Etherpad is more popular than email in my office. I etherpad stuff, tag it with firefox bookmark tags and share it around. When this was announced, there was a literal, biblical gnashing of teeth.

Etherpad guys, I'm happy you're exiting with style but I will miss you badly. And if I could pay you instead of missing you, that'd be peachy.

As for the command line: I really wish TextMate had a command line. I truly think the command line is going to be one of Bespin's fantastic features (though I'll agree with anyone that it is not a replacement for other nice bits of UI).

(ObDisclaimer: I'm on the Bespin team.)

(I am on the Bespin team.)

Another Google acquisition that hasn't seen the light yet.

Hopefully one of their former customers will leak it to the world.

This is one more problem with the cloud computing era.

In the 90's, you could continue to use a product even after it was discontinued. I remember reading that Steve Wozniack is still an Eudora mail user. The last time I heard about Eudora was maybe 15 years ago. You can't say the same about the last startup product.

/notajoke

Try, e.g.,

http://www.yourworldoftext.com/byebyeetherpad

Edit: Here is a screencast of it in action: http://www.amyeditor.com/screencasts/collaboration1.mov

The recently added Folders feature is killer, and my Google Docs "list view" has started to become like an Inbox for me in the beginning of my day, as it neatly displays newly edited, and newly added docs.

Once you use a real-time collaborative editor like EtherPad, you can never go back to something like Docs, it's too primitive.

In any case, I'll be following this thread. Tools aside, i think the topic is one of the most transformative things going on.

Cheers.

The Url is: www.beweevee.com

It is almost a perfect clone of EtherPad, but it's written in Silverlight. Therefore, it's painfully slow, takes forever to load, and doesn't act like a standard Mac OS X text editor (ctrl-t to twiddle characters, for example, or ctrl-d for fwd delete.)

I am so desperate, I may have to bite the bullet and use this in the meantime though.

By default, Wave creates new "boxes" for everything, or lets you reply to other boxes. These boxes cannot be rearranged, only deleted, or have the contents changed.

I don't give a crap about these boxes, I just want to edit a single document like EtherPad. To achieve this in Wave, have to arbitrarily agree on which box you want to make the "main" box. You then need to click the little tab on this box and choose "edit box" every single time you want to make a change to it.

You also can't track who has made what change in the same box. Also, your cursor turns into a long string (your name) that shifts everything around in an annoying manner.

It is sort of a cross between EtherPad, a chat client, and a wiki. I just want a text editor.

For reference: here is what an embedded Wave looks like: http://smarterware.org/my-favorite-google-wave-bots