Hackpad lets you collaborate, instantly
Too many times when a new collaboration software comes out, it comes with a learning curve. Learning to upload, share, store, and search can take time, but Hackpad has significantly changed the learning curve. It allows you to collaborate easily, in real-time. There is a preview on the site so you can see how it works before you sign up. When you sign up, you can use Facebook, Google+, or your email address. After sign up, you will see an overview on how to use Hackpad.
Then you can create your “workspace.” This is the place where you and your teammates can share knowledge and collaborate. Each workspace has its own collections and pads. You can take collaborative notes, share data and files, and use comments to share your thoughts in real-time or asynchronously.
Every contribution is marked with the author’s name in a colored tab on the left-side, so ideas are never lost in editorial transitions. It functions a bit like virtual sticky notes, but better.
Hackpad gives you the ability to break projects into subtasks, assign them to team members and append tags to create releases and milestones. Monitor your progress using to-do lists. Use Dropbox integration to share files of any size, from screenshots to massive datasets and access it anywhere. The collaboration feature also allows you to invite users to your “pads” and edit documents in real time. You may notice a very slight lag when another user is editing the same pad, but it is trivial
And a dash of syntax highlighting
If you are working on code of some sort, Hackpad offers syntax highlighting for HTML, JavaScript, SQL, Java, CoffeeScript, and a number of other languages and markup syntaxes. You can also notify people by email from your Pad by using the @username syntax. And add to-do lists with “[ ].”
Hackpad also offers granular permissions so you can invite a single friend, dozens of teammates, or thousands of followers. If you want to collaborate on an on-going project, you can embed a Pad on your website to open discussion, while maintaining precise control with moderation and historical reversion capability.
While this may sound complicated, after using it just once, it becomes easy to navigate. Plus, if you are using it for basic collaboration, or just brainstorming, you can get information in real-time. Your content lives in the cloud, but is accessible everywhere, even offline, by mobile devices, desktops, and tablets. There is also an iPhone app in the App Store.
