InqBlot » Resources

Google inhales EtherPad

eric — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:56:32 +0000

Matt pointed me to AppJet’s announcement that they’ve been acquired by Google. (AppJet is the developer of EtherPad, a fabulous web-based collaborative editor.)

We are happy to announce that AppJet Inc. has been acquired by Google. The EtherPad team will continue its work on realtime collaboration by joining the Google Wave team.

Congratulations to the AppJet team. EtherPad is great; seeing similar functionality in Wave will probably also be great. What may be frustrating is if there’s a doughnut hole of no service from the point at which EtherPad shuts down…

The EtherPad site will stay online through March 2010 with some restrictions.

If you are a user of the Free Edition or Professional Edition, you can continue to use and edit your existing pads until March 31, 2010. No new free public pads may be created. Your pads will no longer be accessible after March 31, 2010, at which time your pads and any associated personally identifiable information will be deleted.

We have added a feature to the Professional Edition that allows you to export all of your pads as one ZIP file archive. You can find a link to the zip archive at the bottom of the pad list after signing in to your Professional Edition account.

…and whenever it is that similar functionality emerges in Wave. In the meantime, EtherPad users take note and save your pad data locally. (You were doing that already, right? Or did you trust a free service with your data?)

Then again, falling back on SubEthaEdit is not that shabby.

Update: There are plans to open source EtherPad and maintain service until it is open sourced.

On HTML5

eric — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:07:41 +0000

If you read the latest news, it would seem that HTML5 is most notable for killing off XHTML2 (to accompanying sturm und drang) and backing off on codec specifications for use with the new tag. Practically, since HTML5 is now the de facto road map forward for web developers, it may be of more interest to folks to browse the HTML5 spec or scan ALA’s HTML5 preview article from a few months back. There are some nice things in there.

It’s also worth mentioning: Video for Everybody!, a nice two-codec solution to implementing the tag.

EdWeek’s blog corral

eric — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:04:38 +0000

I was not aware of all the blogs that EdWeek is running. Some of my favorites:

Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, blogging together. On the heels of Ravitch’s piece slamming NCLB, this could attract some interesting discussion.
A Digital Education group blog.
A Curriculum Matters group blog.
A blog for Debra Viadero, one of my favorite education journalists. I think she does a really good job communicating research findings to a wider audience.

Note that EdWeek charges for access to most articles, but at the moment everything is accessible if you register (free). Hopefully the blogs continue to live outside the paywall.