I had the chance to use EtherPad as part of a job interview while it was in private beta. It was supposed to use Skype and EtherPad to get the full effect. Skype broke, but EtherPad worked great. The ease of getting code to the interviewer, and (I imagine) the ability to see the way I wrote the code were really helpful.
If you're doing a phone screen interview in the future, I highly recommend using EtherPad.
It just sits there saying "connecting..."
So does that mean no other user online, or my Javascript is broken, or my net connections is down, or they are slashdotted, or what?
This probably means there's an incompatibility with your browser/ISP/firewall combination. If you click the "reconnect" button, it will submit diagnostic info to help us debug, or you can mail support @ etherpad.com for help.
Looks pretty neat. I'm still trying to find the Emacs keybinding option...More seriously, some basic formatting options may be nice, for actual document production vs., as some others mentioned, a fancy chat system.
My first thought was that a version control repository and editing system could be built on top of this that would actually allow two people to see each others' edits simultaneously but compile only their own revisions until a commit occurred.
It seems to response quite quickly at this point - as quickly as the demo shows in the etherpad.com demo video. Those of you who tried pclark's test/toy link: try signing up and selecting a color for your editing. Pretty slick!
I'm wondering what their business model is? No ads yet. Will this just showcase their hacking abilities?
Corporate versions with security and active directory authentication.
Rich text, images, spreadsheets in a paid-for version.
Branded versions to include in your own site.
Since it generally requires at least two people who need to communicate then at least one of them is likely to be prepared to pay.It's not just an eyeballs=advert web2.0 thing.
When you want to test out Etherpad and don't already have text you want to edit, you tend to use it like chat. But even then you can do things you can't do with chat, because you can see what the other person is typing and start responding before they finish (like in a real conversation). I've suggested to the Appjets that they might want to make a variant of Etherpad aimed at chat.
That would be great. Plenty times we are required to quickly chat with someone, but we dont want to add them as IM contacts (think interviews). This would be a great solution for one time chats.
Strictly speaking, AppJet already supports Comet, but the full support that's used in EtherPad is part of the next major version of the AppJet platform. From the sound of the ITConversations interview linked above, the new platform won't be out until a bit after Enterprise EtherPad.
The simplicity argument kills the discussion for me. It can't be right that to achieve columness, one has to wade through cascades of ever more esoteric articles explaining how to hack CSS.
If you're doing a phone screen interview in the future, I highly recommend using EtherPad.