As reported by Australian news outlet ITNews, Wave has multiple levels of security which are designed to prevent email spoofing. Spoofing, meaning when you receive an email that claims to be from either a person or company you know but is actually from someone else - a hacker in most cases.

D'alesandre says the Wave protocol is more secure because it includes something he jokingly refers to as "crypto fairy dust." That's obviously meant to be a simple and fun way to explain the security complexities built into Wave which involve detailed authentication mechanisms to keep users safe from malicious attacks. In Wave, every bit of info you receive from another Wave user has already been authenticated as to its origin so you can be assured that they are who they say they are.

"You know you are getting the Wave from the person that is sending it to you and it has not changed mid-stream. This is a very big problem in current communication technologies - data can be changed mid stream and you will never know," said D'alesandre.

HTTPS Enabled by Default

For an additional layer of security, all Wave traffic is by default encrypted via HTTPS, a protocol for secure communications. That represents a big change in Google's standard policy regarding use of this protocol. It wasn't until July of 2008 that Gmail users were even given the option to encrypt messages using SSL and to enable it, you had to go into your settings and make a change - something that most mainstream users would never have bothered with. By the end of 2008, Google was only offering SSL as a feature in its other Google Apps programs if users were on either the Premier or Education editions. That meant that for non-paying consumer users, Google Docs, Calendar and other online offerings were only available via unencrypted HTTP sessions.

Today, little has changed. Still, only users of Premier and Education Editions have access to SSL and it's not switched on by default. The protocol is now available for Gmail, Chat, Calendar, Docs and Sites but not the Start page, Google Video or the Google Talk desktop client. Consumers using free Google apps like Docs still don't have SSL unless they type it in the address bar manually.

D'alesandre admitted that switching on encryption in Wave slows down the service a little (which probably explains the company's hesitance to switch it on in other products, too), but they ultimately decided that the security it provides was worth it.

Whitelisting Kills the Noise

A third security feature of sorts coming to Wave in the future is the ability to do "whitelisting." Wave users will be able to select which people they want to collaborate with and place them on a whitelist of approved persons. Only those who are on the list will be able to contact you via Wave and everyone else will be ignored.

That feature should certainly help to address the concerns certain folks have about Wave's "noise level," to some, an overwhelming amount of activity that led them to call out Wave as a distraction and a time-waster instead of the futuristic productivity product it intends to be. By allowing those who can't seem to embrace Wave's cacophony the ability to limit their collaborators, Wave could transfer from noisy attention killer to useful tool in an instant.

Of the three features, the first two are already in place. No date was given on the whitelisting feature, only that it will be "coming soon."

Mark Up Design and Code

Using the app couldn't be much easier. In the visual part of the app, you can add callouts to any part of the page. Once these are saved to Notable's web service, other team members can see these callouts, add their own, or discuss the design in a comments section underneath the screenshot. The code editor, which is somewhat reminiscent of a simpler version of Firebug, also allows you to quickly annotate any part of a website's HTML, CSS, or JavaScript code.

Once a screenshot is saved and uploaded to the site, it can be shared by email, through a private or public URL, and embedded into any other web page. Users can also download a PDF version of the screenshot and annotations. Of course, users can also continue to add more annotations after the screenshot has been uploaded.

While the Firefox plugin represents the easiest and fastest way to use Notable, you can also simply upload any image (a design mock-up, for example) to the service or use a bookmarklet which also works in IE7 and Safari.

iPhone

The iPhone version of Notable is limited to uploading screenshots to Notable, but while it doesn't do much more than that, it makes for a good companion piece to the web service and should come in useful for designers of iPhone apps and mobile websites.

Pricing

The free version of Notable allows users to create one workspace and collaborate with up to three users and store up to 3GB of data. For $24/month, Notable users can work with up to 5 users and create an unlimited number of workspaces. The service also offers accounts for groups with up to 10, 25 or 50 users. The paid accounts also come with additional security features.

Verdict

Like many of the best apps we have recently seen, Notable was developed internally because none of the available apps really fulfilled the requirements the ZURB team had. The service works without any hiccups, is easy to use, and clearly focused on giving a specific set of users the right tools to get the job done without being encumbered by lots of extra bells and whistles.

During our test this afternoon, we also got to chat with Jens and Lars Rasmussen, who gave the first official demo last week. They stressed that the team is currently fully focused on getting the developer preview for third-party developers right, so everything we say here about the UI is still in flux and will definitely change before the final release.

Chances are that you have already seen some screenshots or seen the demo on YouTube (more than 1.5 million people have seen it already), but here is a short video of what a wave looks like in action.

What is Wave?

One thing we immediately noticed is that it takes a little bit to get used to how Wave works. The first thing new users will probably notice is that Wave always shows you exactly what your contacts are typing in real-time (if you ever used the talk command in UNIX, you know what this feels like). Even when adding a map, you can see how someone scrolls around it to mark a spot, for example. After using it for a while, we have come to think as Wave as real-time email with a big dose of IM built-in, but even this only just describes a small part of what Wave can do.

Giving it a Spin

As you have probably seen in the videos and screenshots, Wave features a sidebar on the left and two large columns on the right. Overall, the look (but not the functionality) is somewhat reminiscent of the layout you would expect from an email client or a three-pane feed reader.

The sidebar features the functions for navigation, as well as your contacts. The larger column on the left is basically your inbox. By default, this column shows recently active conversations, or, depending on what you want to look at, a history of archived waves, waves marked as spam (there is, of course, no spam on Wave yet), or all the waves initiated by you.

The most interesting column, though, is the one on the right, because this is where you type your messages. Here, you can initiate new messages and waves, but you can also easily respond to messages, add new contacts to a wave, and send private messages to select users. One nice feature is that you can pick a specific word or phrase and respond to that, instead of the whole message.

Doing the Wave

As you are typing a message, a number of new icons appear at the top of the column. Currently, the most interesting one here is the Google widget, which allows you to very easily search Google and add a link to the wave. You can also search YouTube and Google Images and embed videos and pictures with just one click. The Wave team will surely expand these offerings (there is already a link to search Google Books, though it is currently not active, yet). Another option here is to embed a map that you can extend by setting place markers and drawing lines.

To add a picture or any other kind of file to a wave, you just have to drag and drop it onto a wave from your desktop. Wave also features a nice, lightbox-style photo viewer that allows you to browse through all the images in a wave.

In the long term, all of these functions will be expanded by third-party developers who will probably come up with exciting new ways to make use of Wave. Given that the open APIs will allow developers to take Wave into new directions, and also implement its functionality in other places, we are very excited to hear that the team will open up Wave to more developers later this week.

According to the Rasmussen brothers, only a small number of third-party developers have access to Google Wave at this point. However, by the end of the week, this number should go up to almost 2000 - and judging from what we have heard and read, there is a lot of interest in the developer community and we will definitely see a lot of activity in this area in the next few months.

Not just Real-Time Chat

It should also be noted that the real-time chat is really only one aspect of Wave. There is no reason why the chat couldn't be used as an internal micro-blogging tool, for example. As Jens Rasmussen pointed out to us, it is this mix of uses in different scenarios that may be the most exciting aspect of Wave. While the real-time aspects of Wave are currently at the forefront of what people have been excited about, there is no reason why users couldn't use it as a replacement for regular email as well - or why they couldn't switch from one mode to another at will.

A Few More Thoughts

• Presence will be indicated by a green dot on users' avatars - very much like IM.
• One thing that got to us was that hitting the Enter key will just give you a new line, but to finish a message, you have to hit Shift+Enter, which takes a bit of getting used to.
• At this point, long waves with a lot of concurrent users can get a bit confusing. While the messages are timestamped, it would be great if there were some stronger visual clues as to which messages are new. You can easily get to new messages by hitting the space bar, but even then, sometimes it is still a bit hard to see what messages you are actually looking at.
• Unlike Gmail, Wave actually features traditional folders and you can filter out messages by keywords. In addition, you can also tag waves.
• It would be nice if you could turn the real-time aspect of Wave off and only have your messages appear in a Wave after it was completed.
• The playback function that was prominently featured in the demo last week is interesting, but we are not sure how useful it will be in daily use.
• Currently, the automatic spell-checker on Wave is offline, so we couldn't test it, but we'll update this post once it works again.
• We tested Wave in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer - as expected, it didn't work in IE but worked perfectly fine in all the other browsers.

Will Wave Revolutionize EMail?

The big question on everybody's mind, though, is if Google and the Wave team can hold true to their promise of 'reinventing email for the 21st century.' What we have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg, but we can already envision how this could replace our internal chat room here at RWW, and how it could revolutionize the way employees in a company communicate. Wave definitely takes some getting used to, but once you get into the flow of things, regular email suddenly feels stale and slow.

Like any great tool, Wave gives its users a lot of flexibility and never gets in your way. If you want a Wave to look more like a document instead of a conversation, Wave will work just as well as when you just want to use it as a chat room.

It's still too early to argue about whether Wave can or will ever replace email (it's only a developer preview at this point after all). However, after using it for a while we were already wishing that we could add more of our contacts to our list so that it could become our default messaging system. Until then, though, we are back to Gmail and IM.

Users will be able to create 'waves,' and add documents and collaborators to it. The system will feature concurrent rich-text editing, as well as email and IM-like messaging functions. Lars Rasmussen, one of the co-founders and lead engineers behind this project, especially stressed the real-time nature of Wave, where edits to a wave, be they new messages or edits in a document, appear immediately on the screens of all participants.

From what we have seen, Wave combines aspects of productivity tools, social networks, and micro-blogging. One of the most interesting features is that every change to a wave is captured and users can 'replay' how the specific wave developed over time. Wave will allow users to send private and public messages, and Google is heavily relying on HTML5 to make the product work well in modern browsers. We will have a more detailed look at all the features of Wave once we get access to the product itself.

Developers, Developers, Developers

Google is also making a set of APIs available to developers today. These APIs should give developers the ability to enhance Wave by building extensions for the core product, but also to embed Wave's features on other sites to make them more collaborative. One extension Google offers today, for those lucky enough to have access to Wave already, is a Twitter extension, and Google will also offer the ability to integrate OpenSocial gadgets into Wave.

Interestingly, Google is taking a very open approach with this new product. Not only will it give developers access to Wave's APIs, but the team also plans to open-source the protocols at the core of Wave, which really points at the greater ambition of the Wave team to see Wave and its protocols replace at least some of today's standard communications systems.

After a document has been uploaded, users can easily set different security settings, and decide if a document will be available for printing or download. Backboard allows its users to decide if they want a document to be available only to invited reviewers, or if the documents Backboard page should be secured with a password. The document can also just be hidden behind a 'secret' URL.

Where Backboard stands out, though, is in how easy the application makes it to leave feedback. Reviewers can simply use a virtual pen to mark a document up in Backboard's excellent document viewer, or, in a text document, they can highlight parts of the text, and a form for leaving comments will automatically pop up (this feature feels a bit similar to Word 2007). Thanks to this stripped-down but powerful user interface, even an inexperienced user should be able to open a document and start reviewing it within minutes.

Comments appear in real-time in a sidebar on the right. To enable these real-time comments, Backboard has partnered with Orbited.

Another feature that makes Backboard stand out is its close integration with Microsoft Office 2007 and Apple's iWork productivity apps. After installing the respective plugins, Backboard users can easily upload documents to the service from within their productivity apps.

Pricing Plans

Backboard features an interesting pricing model. Unlike some of its competitors, all pricing tiers feature unlimited document storage, but the tiers are differentiated by the maximum file size of these documents, number of users on the account, and security features. The free version, for example, is limited to documents smaller than 5 MB (which should still be enough for all but the most complex documents) and doesn't feature a secure SSL connection. Users who use the free account also won't be able to restrict access to a document to specific users. Paid plans start at $6 a month for one user and $25 for teams of up to five members.

Backboard also features a special 'proofing' plan for freelancers who do client-facing work, which allows users to add their own branding and a custom URL. This plan starts at $10 for one user.

Feedback Made Easy

We have seen a lot of interesting collaborative feedback products that are quite similar to Backboard, but a lot of them are geared more towards freelancers. Backboard is definitely a great tool for this group of users as well, but at the same time, it is also geared towards groups in the enterprise. In many ways, it is this degree of flexibility that makes this tool so powerful. While the company isn't necessarily marketing its tool this way, Backboard could also be a great tool for giving feedback in a school or college setting, where students often write multiple drafts and teachers spend a lot of their time marking up papers.

Thanks to its focus on security, Backboard will surely be attractive to security-conscious businesses as well, and the company will also happily work with its enterprise customers to implement solutions that comply with HIPPA and other industry-specific regulations.

Overall, Backboard turned out to be one of the most flexible and easy to use tools of its kind, and if you are looking for a better solution for gathering feedback and getting approval for documents, it is most definitely worth a try.

The new Zoho Chat 2.0 is no dumbed-down client. It offers most of the features that you have come to expect from your IM desktop applications. You can send files, record your chat history, customize your theme, and more - just like regular IM apps allow. It does a few cool tricks, too. For example, you can type in a new event in the chat bar at the bottom of Zoho Calendar to create a new appointment on the fly. In Zoho Meeting, you can launch desktop sharing with others from within the IM application. (Windows only for now.)

The chat tool is also able to send you notifications from activities that take place within Zoho itself, including document sharing notifications, unread chat messages and more - definitely a handy feature. Future releases for chat include plans to introduce even more IM networks, most notably Skype.

This release represents a major upgrade of the chat application in Zoho. Current Zoho users can try Chat 2.0 here as of today: chat.zoho.com.

• TextFlow is still an AIR application. If you were a TextFlow user before, nothing critical has changed in this regard. Most of TextFlow's competitors are online-only.
• Although you can invite people to edit a document online, they basically get their own view of the document. Once they are finished editing, they would click share to push those changes back to the master document. In other words, this isn't live collaboration.
• Collaborators that you send an email invite to will be able to work on a web-based version of TextFlow that just supports editing the current document.

Going back through the TextFlow blog, it appears that they have addressed our initial complaint of only being able to successfully edit limited document length files, as well as a number of Microsoft Word document compatibility fixes among other changes.

Overall, we think TextFlow is moving in the right direction, and sticking with a workflow idea that works really well with certain people's method of collaborating on documents. TextFlow comes in a business edition at $99 per user/year and a free personal edition.

KonoLive's focus is on sharing to-do lists with a small group of friends or colleagues. Adding tasks and sharing your lists with other users is very easy and KonoLive offers everything from basic functions like establishing due dates to a live chat feature to discuss a certain item. KonoLive also integrates nicely with Google Docs and Box.net. Your lists are cached on your own machine, but also stored on KonoLive's servers. Sadly, though, you can't access your lists directly from KonoLive's web site.

One thing we don't like about KonoLive is that it automatically creates a new Box.net account for you. While we are big fans of Box.net, KonoLive does not inform you about this until you suddenly get a welcome message from Box.net. Also, the KonoLive window can not be resized, and the application seems a bit sluggish at times and does take up an inordinate amount of memory.

Tasck

In many ways, Tasck is the complete opposite of KonoLive. It has a minimalist AJAX user interface that allows you to perform a total of three actions: add tasks, delete tasks, and mark them as done. To mark a task as important, you simply capitalize the first letter.

Besides that, there really isn't much else to do - which might be a good thing, because the service lets you focus on your to-do list without getting in your way. However, it would be nice if you could re-order your tasks or edit them afterwards.

Earlier, Borders Australia and Random House held a contest to find twenty-eight writers who would be able to write the bulk of the book. The chapters they produce will need to be less than 750 words so, obviously, this book will be a little lighter than Patterson's other novels.

Once complete, Airborne will be released electronically, one chapter at a time, starting on March 20th. Later, a print edition will be published, but only as a prize of sorts for the participants in the competition - it will not be mass produced.

Collaborative Writing is So Very Web 2.0

The roots of the collaborative writing movement can be found in many web startups, including those like Novlet, Potrayl, Ficlets, Unblokt, Protagonize, and others we profiled here. A popular activity for creative writers, these communities offer various takes on how a co-written story should be developed, some focused more on "choose your own adventure"-style stories while others focus more on linear narratives.

Although the James Patterson novel is more of a marketing campaign than anything else - and, in this case, the "crowd" is actually a hand-picked selection of aspiring writers - it's still interesting to see such a widely-read writer embracing the co-writing trend. While those passionate about the subject may say this particular effort doesn't qualify since it isn't truly written by "the crowd," it's events like this that take the general idea behind the trend and cross it over to where it can make a mark on the minds of the mainstream.

What remains to be seen at this point is whether a crowdsourced, co-written novel can actually be any good.

Those interested in following the progress of AirBorne can do so on Facebook, Twitter, and via RSS.

DocVerse currently consists of a 1 MB Office 2007 plug-in that gives Microsoft's desktop software new collaboration and synchronization abilities. Once installed, every time you hit the "save" button in Office, a web version stored online is automatically updated, too. The web version also comes with a link you can share.

If that part sounds a lot like what's already available in Microsoft's Live Workspace, that's because it is. Like DocVerse, Live Workspace users can also install a plugin into Office that keeps files between computer and web in sync.

However, the key difference between DocVerse and any of Microsoft's current offerings is the service's online collaboration abilities. With DocVerse, a group editing feature lets multiple users edit one copy of the same document without having to check it out, then check it back in.

To begin using the software, you can share a document with others using either the URL provided or by entering in the email addresses of those you want to share with. As changes are made, they're synced back to the online version of the document. The DocVerse software then uses a confliction resolution system to deal with any potential conflicts between the updates. As the edits continue, DocVerse automatically creates new versions of the document while saving the older versions in case you need to revert back.

DocVerse users will also see their changes categorized in an in-file "News Feed" which appears in the sidebar of any open document. For users without Office, feedback can be given about the shared files straight from their web browser.

At launch time, the plug-in works with Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 only, but support for Word and Excel 2007 will roll out later this spring as will support for Office 2003. DocVerse is Windows-only.

Some Questions

Microsoft announced the upcoming Microsoft Office Web applications at their Professional Developers Conference in October. With these web applications, due in the next version of Office (Office 14), users will be able to create, edit, and collaborate on Office documents through the browser (IE, Firefox, or Safari). Despite some initial rumors, Office Web Applications will not require Silverlight to run and they'll even  work on the iPhone via the Safari browser.

That obviously made us wonder - how will DocVerse compete with Microsoft's own offering? Says DocVerse CEO Shan Shina, the key will be backward compatibility. Where the official Microsoft Office Web Applications will focus only on the latest and greatest version of Office (he presumes - no one really knows), DocVerse will aim to be compatible with Office 2003, 2007, and the upcoming Office 14. Given that 35-40 percent of the market still runs Office 2003 and 15-20 percent runs 2007, he imagines it will be a while before everyone upgrades to Office 14 - web apps or not.

While capitalizing on the "good enough" trend, the company will also focus on how they can best complement the newer Office 14 when it becomes available. In other words, no matter what Microsoft throws out there, DocVerse plans to provide the missing features.

Try it! (Invites)

To learn more about how DocVerse works, Web Worker Daily has a great hands-on review. Our readers can try DocVerse for themselves by clicking here: http://www.docverse.com?ic=RWW. There are only 200 invites available, so that link is first come, first serve.

Disclosure: Sarah Perez also writes for Microsoft's Channel 10.

The Nota web site offers up some examples of how their tool can be used, including a study notebook for school which could incorporate Wikipedia articles and photos; an online scrapbook, where you organize your online photos into a collage; or even a greeting card, where you and several friends can all collaboratively sign it, leaving messages for the recipient. They even recommend several ways in which Nota can be used for educational presentations, like class projects. Nota is especially useful for that as notebooks can be worked on by as many as 50 users.

Getting started with the service is simple, too. You just sign up for an account and click the "Create New Notebook" button. You can then give your notebook a title and set it as public or private. Just be careful when selecting that last option because there doesn't appear to be a way to go back and change it later.

When adding web content, it's easy to search by keyword or you can enter an account name in order to grab specific photos from sites like flickr, Facebook, or Picasa. Unfortunately, you don't have the option to do the same with YouTube - you have to search for the videos instead. When you find the content you're looking for, one click lets you add it to the page where it can be dragged around, resized, rotated, etc.

When you're finished with your creation, click the "Share" tab and you can post the page to Facebook, Blogger, or LiveJournal or you can grab the embed code to post it anywhere else on the web.

Over the years, we've seen a lot of tools that promise easy web page creation, but Nota is one that really delivers. It really is as easy to use as they say it is and that makes it fun to goof around with, we have to admit. Although we might be a bit older than the intended demographic for the product, it's easy to imagine how younger kids and teens would really get a kick out of using Nota for customizing their online profiles or for working on school projects.

Nota has been in private beta for several months now, but the veil just lifted yesterday. The service is now a public beta, which means anyone can try it.

While we love Basecamp and use it daily here at ReadWriteWeb, the idea of embedding this type of software into a page using only a few lines of code is appealing. Easy to use, you just point to the domain you want it to live on, create a username, password and voila - ProjectThingy spits out the code for you to cut and paste to your site.

Projects

• Name and mission statement
• Status: none, in progress, problem, complete
• Due date
• Milestones with dates and status indicators
• Project members from your user pool

Work items

• Discussion threads with assignments
• Limited client access
• Work items
• Name and description
• Status: none, in progress, problem, complete
• Assign to any project member
• Attach links and files (up to 1GB per file)
• Add link and file revisions
• Clients only see latest revision when assigned

Messages

• Project and work item message threads
• Optionally assign to any project member with status: none, in progress, problem, complete
• Clients only see messages when assigned

User pool

• Unlimited number of users
• User permissions: no access, client, team, administrator

Pricing

There are four levels of pricing and you can cancel your subscription at any time. ProjectThingy will keep your data for six months after you cancel, making it easier for you to return if you change your mind later on.

• Free: 1 Active Project, 50MB Storage
• Small: $19 P/M: 10 Active Projects, 6GB Storage
• Medium: $39 P/M: 30 Active Projects, 20GB Storage
• Large: $139 P/M: Unlimited Projects, 100GB Storage

Using Amazon Web Services for scalability and reliability, ProjectThingy runs on EC2 with a MySQL database with data storage on Elastic Block Storage and files in Simple Storage Service buckets.

The team behind the project Chris and Utka Ritke have created five short videos if you want to learn more or check out their FAQ page.

EtherPad acknowledges that Google Docs already allows for a similar kind of collaboration, but compared to EtherPad, Google Docs is clunky and slow when you just want to collaborate on a simple text document.

EtherPad would be a great tool if you want to keep collaborative notes during a conference call or meeting, but you could also use it to draft or edit text for a press release or email collaboratively.

No Sign-Up

EtherPad, for example, doesn't require you to sign-up before you start working on your document. You can also just share your workspace's URL with your co-workers and they, too, don't have to sign up. Indeed, you can't even sign up for the service, which may become a bit of a problem if you want to go back to a document you worked on earlier but don't remember the randomly assigned URL.

Google Docs requires you to send an email invitation to all your collaborators, and updates to documents don't appear in real-time.

Features

EtherPad also has a versioning system that allows you, or anybody else with access to your workspace, to save the document at any time.

Developers who want to share code might also find this a useful tool, as it can highlight JavaScript syntax. Looking at EtherPad's heritage, it becomes clear why the developers added this feature. The service was developed by AppJet, an online web programming platform, and is basically a showcase for the next version of AppJet's tools, but was mainly created because the developers at AppJet were looking for a tool that had EtherPad's functionality but weren't able to find one.

Verdict

As is often the case, the most useful tools are those that have a relatively restricted feature set but allow users the freedom to use them as they see fit. EtherPad is one of these services and it will probably become a standard tool for us very soon.

You can find a screencast of the product here, but given that you don't have to sign up for it, you may just as well try it out for yourself (or join this workspace we already created).

What's even better is that you can click on the notification in the Activity Stream to see all the relevant details. If the item was an image, for example, you can preview it or download the original. For blog posts and wiki pages, you can click to read the item that was updated. Plus, you can download any files that have been added straight from the Activity Stream to your desktop.

However, the cyn.in desktop client isn't just about automated notifications - it allows for those personal updates, too. But this is the enterprise, mind you, so we're not calling them "tweets" here - they are "status updates" instead. Guided by the prompt "What are you doing?" anyone can quickly set their status update which is then sent into the Activity Stream to update everyone else.

Taking a page from Jaiku's book, the client also includes a threaded discussions feature. Any item in the stream can be commented on whether it's an automated update or a personal status update. The replies can be viewed in a pop-up sidebar to the right of the original Activity Stream, just as with photos, wikis, and blog updates. Like FriendFeed, when someone comments on an item, that item bubbles up to the top so everyone is immediately alerted.

As any Twitter user could tell you, no microblogging product would be complete without search, and cyn.in is no exception. When you need to find something that had been posted before and has since fallen off the page, you can enter in a query straight into the desktop client itself. The results returned are ranked for you according to the percentage match and you can scroll through them just as you can with the Activity Stream.

The cyn.in client is beautiful implementation of how microblogging could (and perhaps should) work for businesses, but it's the client's integration with the cyn.in team collaboration suite that makes it so worthwhile. Of course, the decision to move away from your company's current collaboration suite is not one to be made lightly, so you should review the suite's features before deciding if it's right for you.

Other enterprise microblogging clients include Yammer, Present.ly, and Status, but none offer an integrated collaboration suite, too. Cyn.in is open source, but it can also be purchased as a hosted service or as an enterprise appliance.

The best way to understand TextFlow's feature set and interface is to try out one of the Flash demos on the company's website.

Elegant, but With Severe Limitations

Sadly, TextFlow's usefulness is restricted by a number of severe limitations. It can, for example, only handle files of less than 10 pages. TextFlow also can't handle images or charts and tables, which, depending on the type of documents you need to edit, might be a show-stopper. Up to seven editors can submit documents, which should be enough in most circumstances, but might be too restrictive for some.

According to TextFlow, a lot of its alpha users were in big corporations and law firms, and it is easy to see why these users would like TextFlow. We can also see how this would be a useful tool for students who want to work on a group project. TextFlow's current limitations, however, will leave a lot of users wanting for more.

In the future, TextFlow might switch from being an Adobe AIR application to a pure online model that will have fewer restriction, but if you often need to collaboratively edit relatively short and simple text documents, TextFlow is definitely a product that is worth a try.