EtherPad: Muhammad Ali of Collaborative Docs

EtherPad flexes on Google Docs:

Other "real-time" editors like Google Docs work by broadcasting an updated copy of the document to everyone every 15 seconds. This creates a noticeable lag that gets in the way of collaboration. You start editing something, only to find 10 seconds later that someone else deleted it.

Etherpad updates every copy of the document every half second. This 30x increase in speed changes the experience completely. Your edits hardly ever clash with other users'. So you work confidently instead of tentatively.

Why doesn't Google Docs update every half second like Etherpad does? Because it's really, really hard. We're fairly experienced programmers, and to make this work we had to solve problems that, as far as we know, no one had solved before.

My italics... but sheesh! Float like a butterfly, sting like a collaborative doc developer!

Ok. So what's the word? Pros and cons of Google Docs vs. EtherPad. Bring it.

More Uses of Google Docs

Reader Knaus has a cool idea for using Google Docs in class:

You can use the Google Forms (inside Google Docs). Create a form for them to fill out and it goes directly to a spreadsheet in your Google Docs. Perfect for feedback, exit slips, or quick information sharing.

Keep the Google Docs ideas coming!

Using Google Docs to Grade Student Essays Online

Reader Kax has got a great idea for grading student essays online:

I am having students use Google Documents to write their assignments and then share the document with me. I can grade them at school or at home and can type my comments right into their document.

You can also open up the Google Doc and share it with classmate partners or teams of students for peer review. Google Docs will actually track the changes each Doc member makes, so you can even grade students on the quality of their editing by going back and looking through the history of each revision on an individual contributor level (sort of like what you can do on Wikipedia when you check the history of a wiki).

Good stuff, Kax!