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The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

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Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#101

Post by gcheong »

pg wrote: post #2

I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…

When can we have a playback of HN posts showing a time-lapse version of comments and up/down votes?

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#102

Post by thorax »

jodrellblank wrote: post #65
pg wrote: post #2

I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…

I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back You often talk about releasing early, building something people want, etc. Since you carry a lot of influence, and (I guess) invest in Etherpad, and they've adjusted it to your personal request - do you worry that this effect might give you a distorted view of how well Etherpad specifically, and YC startups generally, are building what people want?

Look at the attention this is getting Etherpad. I'm pretty sure this was a pretty high ROI day of work!

To further drive that thought home, my company hereby offers to add any 1-day-effort feature request made by any popular tech figure, provided they're willing to share our work with their audience. (Sites for those would be http://bug.gd or http://www.yumbunny.com or any other site in my profile.)

Seriously, they'd be silly not to have taken pg up on this even if he wasn't helping to back them.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#103

Post by wmeredith »

swombat wrote: post #73
jodrellblank wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back You often talk about releasing early, building something people want, etc. Since you carry a lot of influence, and (I guess) invest in Etherpad, and they've adjusted it to your personal request - do you worry that this effect might give you a distorted view of how well Etherpad specifically, and YC startups generally, are building what people want?

Convincing someone of something you believe in and abusing your influence are two very different things. I don't think pg implied that he bullied them into implementing this, only that he talked them into it. And I can't imagine that YC would last long if pg got into the habit of bullying its start-ups into implementing his personal requests.

I think it would last an even shorter amount of time if he never talked anyone in the YC program into anything.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#104

Post by omouse »

shimon wrote: post #83
dfranke wrote: post #72

I might implement an emacs minor mode that does this.

You're probably thinking of an emacs mode that does this on its own, but it would also be excellent to have an emacs minor mode that integrates with Etherpad. Ideally, you just do M-x etherpad-buffer and emacs tells you a URL that you can then send around and let other people watch / co-edit whatever you're editing in emacs. To make this work, Etherpad would need to provide an API, though not necessarily a well-docum…

He actually does mean a minor mode. Imagine using it while writing code, not just essays.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#105

Post by ralph »

pg wrote: post #48
aak wrote: post #41

What exactly about this makes it the most surprising thing you've seen in two months?

Being able to watch how I write. It's like seeing a photograph of oneself for the first time. I had no idea how often I restarted sentences, for example. There's other stuff I want to see that should be even more interesting. When it's replaying, I want to be able to see characters that make it into the final version in one color, and others in another. Then I'll be able to tell when I'm writing well and when I'm wri…

Was it Ian Fleming that said you should never start writing a sentence unless you know how it's going to end? It seems we're now in an age where sentences are started without knowing how they're going to start.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#106

Post by derwiki »

pg wrote: post #2

I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…

Going off of the "show your work" idea, is it possible to analyze the writing style to prove that it was -you- who wrote it? Or is there too much variation? There was a bad episode of Numb3rs where they used someone's "typing profile" to identify someone, so it just got me thinking :)

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#107

Post by lann »

derwiki wrote: post #106
pg wrote: post #2

I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…

Going off of the "show your work" idea, is it possible to analyze the writing style to prove that it was -you- who wrote it? Or is there too much variation? There was a bad episode of Numb3rs where they used someone's "typing profile" to identify someone, so it just got me thinking :)

It's been done before, like the (now defunct?) BioPassword: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/tech/news/article_1295216....

If high-resolution timestamps for each keystroke aren't too much of a burden it seems like this would be straightforward to implement, given an algorithm like BioPassword's.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#108

Post by derwiki »

lann wrote: post #107
derwiki wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going off of the "show your work" idea, is it possible to analyze the writing style to prove that it was -you- who wrote it? Or is there too much variation? There was a bad episode of Numb3rs where they used someone's "typing profile" to identify someone, so it just got me thinking :)

It's been done before, like the (now defunct?) BioPassword: http://www.monstersandcritics.com/tech/news/article_1295216.... If high-resolution timestamps for each keystroke aren't too much of a burden it seems like this would be straightforward to implement, given an algorithm like BioPassword's.

It looks like BioPassword works best on short, often repeated phrases like login names and passwords. I'm not sure how it would work for larger, unpracticed blocks of text. Etherpad would also need to store information about the timing of when each key is pressed, and based on the demo it doesn't look like they're doing that.

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#109

Post by jimbokun »

alyssumclimbs wrote: post #92
pg wrote: post #2

I've been wanting to play back the writing of an essay for years. Since Etherpad saves every keystroke, I convinced the founders to add a way to play them back. "Startups in 13 Sentences" was the first essay I wrote on Etherpad. Now I'm going to write all of them on it. Playback is just one little feature of Etherpad, but think of the implications of this alone. Among other things it will make cheating impossible in…

This 'feature' seems ripe for a MS Word add-on, if it catches on. I doubt everyone will abandon their word processing software and user Etherpad.

"I doubt everyone will abandon their word processing software and user Etherpad."

They will probably give up Word for something, eventually. Especially among the current generation, writing is something done online; a blog, an email, a tweet, writing on someone's wall. At some point, it stops making sense to have a word processor distinct from the web. Right now, Word has more features that people like than online writing tools, but that will change over time. Online writing tools are a more natural fit for collaboration and integration with words' final destinations.

Microsoft could make the online tool that replaces Word, but it is probably too dangerous to their current revenue stream. I don't think they can get the same revenue for an online version of Word, and it would be difficult for them to rationalize trying a new business model that may never regain the revenue they get now.

(And yes, I'm basically just making the Innovator's Dilemma argument for word processors.)

Re: The most surprising thing I've seen in 2009, courtesy of Etherpad

#110

Post by eru »

gojomo wrote: post #52

I'd been kicking around the idea of doing something like this in Javascript for a while. My working title was 'TimeWriter', but I never got beyond some notes on delta formats and UI, and discussions with friends. There's lots more potential in the graphical dimension: sliders, text color/weight that varies with age/volatility; timelines of activity (gross keystrokes or net adds/deletes) that go by either keystroke-ti…

I would pay for a black board with history.
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