INERTIA

in·er·tia - (ĭ-nûr'shə)

According to wikipedia - "the tendency of a body to maintain its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force"
More aptly in my case - the resistance of a programmer to get started on the work that so obviously needs to be done... :(

It's been a while since my last update, there are many skrblers I've not responded to, to you, and to all who noticed my absence, my sincere apologies.

Just want to let everyone know, I am back, and trying to be good.

To scribble and perchance to learn?

This week, November 12 - 17th is "International Education Week". Organized "... to recognize the global exchange environment between the United States and other countries".

The official site lists a lot of global events, but here is something else I came across. David in New Zealand is planning on using skype and skrbl to teach a couple of graphics classes to students in the UK. What better way to establish a relationship between two schools and students in two different countries.

NZ to the UK is very nearly as distant as you can get while still staying on planet, more power to you David. I hope things go smoothly (Please send me your feedback). Here's hoping you and the students all have an exciting story to tell, I look forward to seeing your video.

Happily ever after?

This is what I came across on our home page today (on the graffiti board).



Skrbling a marriage proposal!!!
Talk about user participation, this is a first for us, a use case we never dreamt up(guess I need to update the user documentation :). The online equivalent of shouting it out from the rooftops, a new paradigm for the new Millenium (I do 2.0 ?).

Good luck kids, hope it all works out for you, and if you feel like sharing, do write in and tell us how it played out... always love a happy ending.

skrbl in class 2

"The best compliment anyone can give your product is to actually use it" - ???
I dont know if someone ever said that, but if not, someone should.

Last week it was a classfull of students discussing Steinbeck on skrbl. This week it is a classfull of students discussing Arthur Miller, read about it on the blog and see it on VIDEO...

skrbl in the classroom

Users keep coming up with cool new uses of skrbl and (perhaps not surprisingly) teachers are particularly innovative in using skrbl in the classroom. Here is a good example. 19 students discussing Steinbeck, no less, collaborating on the skrbl whiteboard, writing, commenting, reacting... tres cool.
Here is end result.


Much thanks Mr. Lewisberry for using skrbl and writing about it, it's users like you that keep our wheels rolling.

Introducing skrbl team edition

What it is - team collaboration, sharing, communication features built around the skrbl whitebaord.

Some of the new features on the group whiteboard are -

• Co-browsing - open up a website in skrbl, co-browse & annotate. Your annotations (notes and freehand) are saved and reloaded anytime you return to the site on your skrbl whiteboard.
• Documents - upload and view word documents, annotate - great for discussing, reviewing drafts.
• Video phone - make a video call to online group members or whiteboard guests.
• Skype calls - if you prefer skype calls (and how wouldn't :) just add team members Skype ID to their account and call them on a click.
• Text chat - for when texting is better than skype or video phone :)

There's a whole lot of other stuff I need to talk about but I need to update documentation on our site first (tomorrow hopefully). Once that is done I will come back to plugging the team skrbl. It is really a big deal for us.

Right now you get to evaluate it risk free before we ask you for payment and even then your first month is free. In any case introductory fees for team skrbl are $10/month which is really low for a team of 5 users.

So do try it out, we think you will find it useful.

So easy even a 4 year old can skrbl

My niece is the youngest skrbl user I know of.
Basically she likes sitting in front of the computer drawing 'pictures'. Happy with her creations and eager to show off 'artwork'.
Seeing her in action one day I had a brilliant idea, "If she thinks this is cool, how amazed will she be when I skrbl on her drawings over the web?" I thought I'd impress her by magically changing her drawing right in front of her eyes.

sigh!!!

Skipping over the unnecessary details (it is deflating to admit defeat to a 4 year old), here is the moral of the story.

Life lesson - never mess with an artist's work (no matter how gentle, young, small and defenceless the artist seems).

My laptops near death experience

Last Wednesday my laptop flatlined.

Basically the laptop did not 'stand by' properly, or somehow started up in the bag. The fan eventually failed & that triggered all kinds of system level alarm bells (not mention things got even hotter)... To cut a long story short, my laptop got cooked :( And here's another funny story, by an amazing coincidence, Thursday we also blew both hard drives on our office server, sigh!

Much ranting, raving and gnashing of teeth later my laptop is back in play, and we got lucky with 1 hard drive (the one with most data :), the other drive I've kept aside for now, trying to build up the courage to fiddle with the MBR.

Work continues apace though, we have a skrbl update planned for tonight. Todays update is to enhance the drawing toolbox on skrbl, delivering some features users have requested. You can get a taste of these new features on graffiti on the skrbl home page or in this blog.

Until next time and as always, thank you for skrbling.

Back in the groove

Whoops! its been a while since my last blog.
Just to catch you up, this is what I've been busy with during this time.

1 New skrbl features - Enhancing the skrbl drawing menu et al...
2 An entirely new online collaboration product (to be launched soon).
3 skrbl mash ups with other applications (under development).
4 Graffiti - the embeddable whiteboard (check out the sample on this blog) AND
5 A business product, still in its early stages but really exciting.

Of course this is in addition to the business of business (a regular paycheck is quite a motivation no? ;)
These are exciting times for us as we prepare to launch new products and skrbl enhancements and try to step up to the next phase.

Hope you find our new products as exciting as we think they are.
As always we are counting on you, wish us luck.

Drawing lines...

We rolled out freehand drawing yesterday.
*fireworks and applause*
We had planned to release drawing in January so it is some 5 days later than expected, sorry folks, and thanks for being so understanding.

So in addition to text, you can also draw freehand on skrbl, whiteboarding/brainstorming/just plain doodling suddenly became more fun. We've been spending a lot of time at the office creating 'skrbl art'. This is all supposed to be us 'testing' but it feels too much fun to be work. I have a widescreen tablet and am 'hard at work' drawing directly on the screen with a stylus.

What we have now is plain simple freehand line drawing, use the pen tool to draw lines of different colors.
Use the pointer tool to select drawn lines.
Use the (right click) context menu to delete lines.

Drawing became so much fun that our skrbl boards became very cluttered very quickly and we had to add a 'Erase all' button. The 'erase' button is available from your 'My skrbls' page and you use it to clear the entire whiteboard - Notes as well as drawings.

The last month has been hectic, we have been adding features into skrbl while the rest of the site (FAQ etc) did not keep up. We have one more big feature to be launched next week and then we will get the site up to date, promise.

Meanwhile keep skrbling, let us know what you think and as always thanks.