very useful: web based tools for editing collaboratively

No doubt the web has made collaboration easier, but its still easy to get lost in the world of email attachments. There are several web- based tools for collaborating, that take much of the confusion and "who edited what when" out of the process. Web Worker Daily, another favorite read of mine, highlighted them in a great blog post today. Here is an excerpt:

"Working on the Web means that it’s easy to reach out to collaborators - but what then? If you actually need to work on the web with other people (as opposed to just communicating with clients and suppliers via the web), you’ll need some tool support. Take the common problem of needing to jointly edit a document, for example. In the old days (say, five years ago) most of us would do this by emailing drafts back and forth, perhaps using something like Microsoft Word’s revision marks feature to indicate who did what.

But these days, you’re not limited to such primitive serial workflows. Thanks to the web, there are a batch of ways that you can edit a document together with another person - or more than one person - to quickly home in on a final draft. There are three main groups of solution to this problem, each with their own features and drawbacks.

1. Use a Collaborative Web Editor - Web services like Google Documents and Zoho Writer have document sharing built right in. On the plus side, this means a very low barrier to entry: anyone can get an account on these services easily. There’s no requirement for users to have a common operating system, either, which is useful if your collaboration needs span multiple platforms. The downside? Although you get a visual indication that another user is editing, you won’t actually see their changes until they save the document. In the worst case, this can mean simply losing your changes in a “last save wins” situation of multiple edits. Google Documents does maintain a revision history, so you can always go back and see who typed what..." (click here to read more)