Over the past while, I’ve been working with some friends on an exciting problem:
How can we make writing on a computer easier and… awesome-er?
A couple years ago, some friends of a friend came to me and my friends (Eric and Kevin, who do fun projects with me from time to time) and asked us if we could design and build a collaborative writing website, where people could get together to write novels. After a good long think, a bunch of meetings around a table in an office we no longer have, and a whole heck of a lot of calls, we came up with a different sort of thing, correcting a smaller problem: it sorta sucks to write on a computer. I’ve tried Scrivener, Writeroom, Ommwriter, Microsoft Word, Pages, Textedit, and others, and none of them really made sense. They all either did too much or not enough. And with Google Wave and Basecamp around, the collaboration thing is/will be nailed.
So now that Will, Ryan and Robbie have gotten the funding out of the way and the development underway, we’re ready to start talking about it.
The first thing I’d love to get your feedback on is some of the initial application screens that detail a bit of the marketing and account management functions of the product.
Homepage:
The bottom bit is the footer, and hopefully the screen grabs/video bits are compelling enough to get people to sign up.
May need some more detail here, though. Note to self. Thoughts?
Welcome Page:
Let’s say you’ve signed up, and you’re ready to write. What’s the first thing you’ll see? This page.
Individual Document Page:
Okay, you’re a pro, you’ve made a few documents. Perhaps you want to compare your work to previous versions, or just edit what you’ve got. Here’s where to do that. The stuff you see on the Version 6 bar: that’s a rollover state.
Old Version Rollover View:
For launch, we’ll only have the most recent version be editable. Too many complications with version comparison…
General Account Admin Page:
And the settings page is pretty straightforward. You can see that we’re trying to have a bit of personality with everything about the site, even for the boring bits.
Password Entry View:
So that’s that. Would love to know what you think.
And of course, stay tuned for details.
Comments
Very very cool. Will this be available for corporations? We at my agency explored using Basecamp but had lots of compatibility issues. Google docs also leaves much to be desired. I’m a big fan of writeroom and look forward to this launching.
Chris:
Glad you’re liking it. We’re still ironing out some of the details when it comes to final pricing and whatnot, but the vision for this is for it to be useful for all kinds of people—corporate or not. At first it won’t do everything that corporations need, but it’ll get close. And we’ll keep refining it as time goes by.
I can definitely see this being used by Planners, Copywriters, and the like, especially when it comes to composing and storing ideas, briefs, etc.
nice, very very nice.
Hey dude, good idea!
I’m going to be trying to write a novel later this year as a new years resolution. I’ll definitely give this a whirl if it’s ready.
Thanks, Kevin.
What a resolution! It should be ready sometime in February, if *everything* goes right. So let’s say March?
You’ll definitely be on the beta list.
This would be fantastic if a few people were collaborating to write a business plan or a marketing plan. Great tool for entrepreneurs.
I would say within the document if the different people working on the document could have a different color text or highlighter? So, you know who added what edits.
Also, if there was a section to share links. Say, you find something incredibly inspiring on the web and want to share it with your partners.
LOVE THIS!
The excitement continues. The logo and site concepts have been designed. To see how Clay’s wireframes as manifested into a visual design, check out http://kpanke.com/?p=103. It is a glimpse into what WriteMinds will look like. The app design just went through the approval process and we are all excited about what’s to come. Should have those off to the developers on Tuesday. Enjoy!
Dude. Totally awesome work, as usual. Can’t wait to reveal the next stage.
This could be a fantastic product guys for all the budding writers out there. I have always wanted to write my life storey but never really found anything to help me along the way. I also think that anything which could help and encourage the younger guys out there to write without needing a degree in computers, a great and welcome addition to the computer wourld tankyou for taking the time to read this and goodluck with Write Minds .
Chris.
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