Son of video

First there was the skrbl video on YouTube. Released January 22nd 2007 (ah the good old days... sigh!) with commentary in German.
And now many moons later here is (trumpets & drums) another.


This video is by a teacher & shows the skrbl whiteboard in action as a classfull of students discuss Arthur Miller online. The quality is a bit fuzzy but it really shows off skrbl in action. With all those students skrbling simultaneously, the whiteboard is like a live thing. I can imagine how good it must feel to a teacher just watching the online interaction freeflowing action, reaction, collaboration... 'group think' is a good description.

I've blogged about skrbl in the classroom before and I think this is the same teacher.
Thank you sir.

Scribbling...

Ever needed to copy text from one computer to another? Got frustrated trying to reference complicated bits of text (GUIDs, registry keys, file paths…)? This is where the original idea for skrbl came from.

I work from multiple computers (2 laptops and a few servers), also I use remote access tools to get to offsite servers. Sometimes there is a need to copy text from one box to another – for instance an error code or debug message from test machines that I have to refer to on the dev machine. Sounds so very simple, but anyone who works from multiple computers can vouch for my frustration.

Sure there are workarounds
- Log into email from both computers and email yourself
- IM yourself using 2 different IDs
- Save your text in a file and share the drive
There probably are many other hoops you can jump through to make it happen, but we figured there had to be a better way. Getting a scrap of text from one computer to another should be as simple as 'copy AND paste', hence the core idea of skrbl- a web based clipboard. A place to park notes on the Web so you can get to them from any computer. From this original concept of sharing notes with yourself, it was natural progression to go on to 'share notes with others', and skrbl grew from a personal tool to also becoming a whiteboard for team collaboration.

Keeping in mind the simplicity of 'copy AND paste' we have tried to get that degree of simplicity and ease of use into the core skrbl functionality. It is the simplest thing on the web to start skrbl, just one click, you don’t even have to login or register! It’s equally easy for others to get to your whiteboard – just give them your URL.

This is just the beginning for skrbl, while it is useful as is, we are working on adding new features. Saving and sharing notes on the web is the first step, so many scenarios suggest themselves that it is difficult to pick one. Our users are a big help, we rely on you to tell us how you want to use skrbl, and we prioritize what you ask for. The end goal is to grow skrbl into an online ‘desktop’, with features for personal use and for team collaboration, to merge the convenience of your desktop with the access of the Web.

Hopefully we’ll get there… one feature at a time.