6 ms·
Hackpad
- guynamedloren 13y agoThis looks neat. The comparison has been made to Google Docs, and obviously it's similar, but I can't help but feel it's almost identical. What are the differences?
- kofman 13y agoThere are a number of differences (attribution, the way the stream shows you edit diffs from your team members, the way content such as code and media is handled, the way email integration works, etc). But fundamentally it is a difference of design intent. Hackpad is not a replacement for a word processor. It is not designed for cosmetically designing papers or reports. Hackpad has been designed from the ground up for collaboration on ideas and for living documents (which evolve over time). It's in use in a number of leading tech companies (airbnb, stripe, upworthy) as well as on the open web.
- JamesBaxter 13y agoI wonder if this is what Google Wave would have ended up like
- quaunaut 13y agoIt's what I wanted to use it for. That, and basic communication. I just think Google bungled the beta process, trying to treat it like GMail when the same beta model isn't gonna work for anything but e-mail or XMPP. However, I'm definitely going to recommend this product to my team, as right now we're using Github wikis, which is fine for us developers, but for real business use(as in, the rest of the team), this could be just so much better.
- Hackpad_Julia 13y agoWe're excited to hear you're going to recommend Hackpad for your team! I'd be happy to set you up with your own private Pro Site, three months of free service, as well as a private orientation and platform training. Email me at julia@hackpad.com to set up some time.
- obilgic 13y agoGoogle Wave was nothing more than over-engineered email-like wiki. disclaimer: I love Google Wave
- mbubb 13y agoExactly what I thought about. I enjoyed Google Wave when it came out. EtherPad was really cool as well - its functionality has been absorbed in Google Docs and elsewhere. Today a key devops workflow I see on a daily basis is team-based HipChat rooms with deploy / alert notifictions and links to GoogleDocs, especially spreadsheets. Which somewhat duplicates Goggle Wave - at least how I remember it.
- cwilson 13y agoCame here to say this. I used Google Wave every single day for team collaboration like this, and it was awesome. I was really sad when it went away.
- Bjartr 13y agoThere's no reason they couldn't implement the wave spec in this right?
- kunle 13y agoThe Hackpad team are serious hustlers. I use it all the time as well and love what they've built.
- waterlion 13y agoWhat do you mean by 'hustlers'? The only meaning I know for that word is 'people who commit fraud'.
- pezh0re 13y agoI believe he's referring to the more sports-centric definition - people who work hard and fast to get things done.
- kunle 13y agoI meant it in the most positive way possible: "an aggressively enterprising person; a go-getter." Hope this helps.
- pavel_lishin 13y agoThe term seems to have been re-defined in the past year, at least in our community.
- prawn 13y agoIn basketball, a hustling player is the guy who goes the extra distance, works particularly hard and gets by as much on effort as on skill. The guy who throws himself to the ground after the ball if that's what it takes.
- mbubb 13y agoThis is really cool - I signed up and enjoy it. However - I end up using the google doc spreadsheet more than the doc to informally sketch up projects and share information. It would be great to have that option.
- deepGem 13y agoI think HN traffic has killed the servers. Getting a 500.
- jedahan 13y agoThe school for poetic computation (http://sfpc.io http://sfpc.io) is using hackpad to document our work. Its lightweight enough that people actually use it and the search is good. I also really like the fact that recently edited pads go up top, with a highlight of what was edited - makes it easy to see who is doing what. http://sfpc.hackpad.com http://sfpc.hackpad.com
- skizm 13y agoI think Hackpad is being hugged to death by HN. Anyone else getting 500 errors?
- leokun 13y agoAccording to their Twitter it should be back now. Works for me, but I did see 500's earlier.
- natch 13y agoLooks cool but as soon as I loaded the hackpad document (not the blog post) my computer's fan started going crazy, not a great sign.
- macNchz 13y agoI was unable to scroll the hackpad document as it was busy thrashing my cpu, then it popped an 'Unresponsive script' error in my browser. Not impressive.
- nonchalance 13y agoHow much has FW and co invested in Hackpad?
- ludicast 13y agoI don't believe he has (yet). He is really good about posting disclaimers when he recommends something he has invested in. He has been posting links to hackpads for a while and I noted the marked absence of any disclaimers.
- fredwilson 13y agoneither me, my wife, or USV has an investment in Hackpad. i always try to disclose such things and mostly do that. when i fail to, my comment community lets me know so i can fix it
- nonchalance 13y ago(somewhat controversial opinion) I would have rather heard you say that you do have an investment in Hackpad. Why don't you consider making an investment, especially if it brings value to you and USV? As for conflicts of interest, I prefer to assume everyone has a conflict :) I follow ZH here: http://www.zerohedge.com/node/13972 http://www.zerohedge.com/node/13972 > The reality is, critical readers should read analytic posts and the rest of [the internet] with the blanket assumption that the author is totally "conflicted." ... This turns the conversation to the content, and away from the author, the author's biography and the contents of their IRA account / blind trust. This (the content) is, of course, where the focus should be.
- qznc 13y agoUsing its Etherpad sister for online meetings. Should try Hackpad next time. http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/meeting.html http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/meeting.html
- mmahemoff 13y ago"I love Hackpad. And it's strange because most of what Hackpad does, Google Docs does. And I really like Google Docs." Google Docs has never felt webby to me. It feels like a big Flash or ActiveX component, as it's mostly aiming to emulate 1990s desktop software, with menu-bar and all. So it carries considerable UI baggage and is not a clean web app with a DOM that could be effectively inspected or manipulated. For real-time collaboration, I much prefer Etherpad-type tools as they're lightweight. For private one-off docs, I find secret Gists much simpler to deal with.
- aray 13y agoWhat other Etherpad-type tools would you recommend? For dealing with less-tech-literate people, Google Docs is nice because they instantly recognize and understand it (and they can see me collaborating at the same time and I don't need to explain anything).
- ingrownpsyche 13y agoTitanpad.
- akanet 13y agoIf you are looking for Etherpad-like tools specifically for collaborating on code, check out https://coderpad.io https://coderpad.io It's a tool I make that's geared around collaboratively editing and running code in the browser.
- unclesaamm 13y agoMade me giggle trying to say MOORDC
- king_magic 13y agoHackpad looks great, but I tried the link ("Yesterday, we created this document on Hackpad.") and it immediately froze Safari - each and every time I tried it. Needs to work reliably before I'll consider even a free trial. I could see myself paying money for something like this - so I suggest they fix these issues :-)
- devcpp 13y agoYup, same on the latest Firefox Nightly. This isn't really acceptable behavior for a released product.
- jaffa 13y agoKilled my Firefox 25.
- Hackpad_Julia 13y agoJulia here from Hackpad. Sorry to hear you're having performance issues in Safari and Firefox. We just launched a new feature that shows the live position of your active collaborators' cursors, and we're in the process of polishing it to ensure optimal performance across browsers. Thanks for your patience and stay tuned!
- king_magic 13y agoThanks for writing back to us on here - good luck, looking forward to the improvements :)
- debergalis 13y agoThe Meteor core team uses Hackpad for almost all our internal text -- technical design documents, checklists and procedures, note taking, drafting emails and website content, and documenting much of what we do and how we do it. I find the spare UX just about perfect for getting ideas down. We've also experimented with using public hackpads for some core framework design discussions once or twice. It feels like a promising option. I hope we can try more of this. One of the most valuable tools in our kit.
- panabee 13y agoOut of curiosity, why don't you use Google Docs?
- Numberwang 13y agoI prefer Simplenote. Hackpad is nice, but feels a bit slow.
- jey 13y agoI tried to login to Hackpad with Google, and it's asking for permission to "manage my contacts"? No thanks.
- Hackpad_Julia 13y agoMy name is Julia and I'm Hackpad's Community and User Research Manager. Hackpad uses your Google contacts in one way only: to expedite the process of inviting collaborators to a Pad. As soon as you begin typing your contact's name, we suggest their email address. We take user privacy very seriously.
- cmpitg 13y agoPerhaps it should be opt-out?
- ashrust 13y agoWe use Hackpad as our wiki at SendHub and it's awesome. Great job guys and congrats on the well deserved coverage.