JotSpot Live
I’ve been working on a project at JotSpot that is so incredibly cool, I get excited every time I think about it. It’s called JotSpot Live.
JotSpot Live is a real-time wiki interface that allows multiple users to edit the same page at the same time. Calling it “SubEthaEdit for the web” is an oversimplification, but that’s probably the quickest way to wrap your head around the concept. Unlike SubEthaEdit, JotSpot Live doesn’t require any special client software: it’s a web application that runs in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari, using nothing but HTML, script, and CSS.
In the past few months JotSpot Live has gone from “could that possibly work?” idea to hackathon project to working prototype. At Gnomedex two weeks ago we did our first public alpha test, and it went very well. For Adam Curry’s keynote, the last talk of Gnomedex, we had around 15 people (some of whom weren’t physically at the conference) taking notes together on a shared Wiki page. It was a thrill to see the JotSpot Live in action, with people showing up in the user list as they came to the page, and the page contents changing in real time as people made edits.
At this point our focus is moving from the design of the system to the design of the interface. We’ve proved that real-time collaborative web editing is possible. Now we want to deliver a great user experience. I’d like to recruit some more alpha testers to try out our (still rough) interface and provide feedback as we refine our UI and get ready for release. If you’re interested, leave a comment or send me an email, and I’ll set you up.
