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By Chris Meadows

A couple of weeks ago, I covered the Google purchase, shutdown, and subsequent reopening of EtherPad. A couple of days ago, Google released the source.

Now there are at least five new public-access EtherPad servers operating in the wild, including one run by the Pirate Party of Sweden and one hosted by commercial collaboration wiki company PBWorks. I have written a brief guide to collaborative writing with EtherPad; it can be found here.

Google purchased EtherPad’s developer to add its staff to the Google Wave development team. I covered Google Wave back in October, and have since had the chance to try it out.

Some feel that Wave shows great potential for changing the nature of collaboration on the Internet. I have not been as impressed with what I have seen so far. The interface leaves much to be desired, and I have a hard time imagining what it might be useful for.

But certainly Google adding the experienced EtherPad developers to the team is a good sign things will be improving.

For those who would like to see for themselves what the fuss is about, I have 25 Google Wave invitations available. If you would like one, give me your email address. (If you’d rather not leave it in a comment, click my by-line and use one of the contact methods there.)

And once you’ve tried it, let us know what you think, especially if you have any ideas for a TeleRead-related use for it. (Or, for that matter, EtherPad.)

 
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