Poetica: Free Collaborative Document editing

Now there’s Poetica. It’s really nice.

Created by a team of programmers and designers, Anna Maybank, Blaine Cook, and James Weiner, the program is surprisingly elegant… at first. You type into a blank window (or you import files) and then share the documents with friends via email or a public link. Friends come in and edit your document using standard editing marks familiar to those who grew up in the 20th century. The screen becomes overrun by comments, arrows, and text changes You can then edit, accept, or reject changes. Because it’s free and web-based you don’t have to give away much of your privacy or money (looking at you, Google Docs and Word) and the whimsical editing tools are more geared to commenting on text than simply changing it.