Real Time Collaboration

A new edition of Google Docs takes a new approach to collaboration on documents in process. Collaborative tools so far, like wiki's and Sharepoint have taken a traditional approach of locking out a document or the part that is being edited, so that the actual changes being made cannot be seen until they are completed. In Google Docs, however, this is changing and it is possible to see changes being made in real time. Google thinks this will result in more efficient document completion when groups are involved. They draw an analogy to personal productivity when word processing on computers was introduced, enabling real time editing. An article on Google Docs and Collaboration is in Informationweek. Here's the link.