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We recently created a website for collaboration in creative writing - Collaze that uses cc licence. We wanted the contributors to write freely for the public domain without losing the rights to commercially utilize their work later. CC seemed to be custom made for this purpose. So, tomorrow if some entity wants to commercialize the collaborative work, it can do so provided it has the permission of the contributors. Writers can agree and give thier permission to the publisher with or without taking royalty - this depends totally on the writer. I think this is just the beginning. CC will be great for a variety of collaborative work in the future.

Well, I have nothing against Sun but I am worried. It pains me to see a relentless innovator like Sun resorting to gimmicks like $1 per CPU to boost its sales. I am particularly worried about Java, which I like. While competiting frameworks like RAIL, PHP, .NET, are all catching up, the incredibly slow and bureacratic JCP is churning out more volumes of useless and incredibly gloated frameworks. I am not a CEO but simply a stock holder and user of Sun software. BTW, I have helped create http://www.collaze.com/ . Will appreciate it if you can take a look and give your feedback.

It is interesting that I sent "Ask Slashdot" posting yesterday about "What is the future of Hotmail". That posting got rejected, but we got to discuss a lot about it today. I think it is worth a wait and see what hotmail does for you. I am hoping that Bill Gate wakes up to all this news and sends his force to revive hotmail. Yahoo is making improvements already. If one has the desire to provide good features to his users, one always can without the need to hire rocket engineers. While working on http://www.collaze.com/ any feature, however radical it may be, can be added after doing some research and experiments with AJAX/DHTML and back-end processing.

Can simply wait for hotmail and yahoo(well, it is pretty good already) to wake up and introduce smooth AJAX and WYSYIG interface, add more memory, clean up their advertising and spam filters. For a company like Microsoft with billions in cash, it should not be a big deal. So, my guess is if one waits for about 6 months, one does not have to abandon his 9 year old Hotmail account.. Is Microsoft listening? Providing a good interface is a matter of willingness to think about the user and innovate rather than hire rocket scientists. I recently worked on http://www.collaze.com/ and found that any feature I want to give to the user can indeed be implemented in DHTML/Javascript, if you are passionate enough to research and experiment.

I really appreciate your taking some time and providing valuable feedback. I agree with your point about registration and will work on adding a guest login or read-only view. Still, most of the advantages of the site will become apparent only if someone starts writing. I spent lot of time on the navigation part to keep everything on the writer's fingertips. There is a "View Demo" link ( http://www.collaze.com/home/demo.htm ) link to show some of the features. I have a WYSWIG editor in the site with a dictionary always available on the left. To make it really sweet for the writer, I worked extra hard to make sure that the spell-checker is not a pop-up and hilites the incorrect word directly on the WYSWYIG editor. Unlike Wiki model, writers can save chapters as draft, and come back later to edit them. Also writers get a quick save option that saves the document without disturbing the cursor position in the editor or taking the writer to a new page. Business model is primarily advertisements (Yes, there is one adsense 120X600 in every project page). The purpose of the site is more to help creation of quality work than to make money. I quit my job and spent 3 months creating the site and I am confident that I can support the site with the cash flow from my next day job, provided I get some acceptance and confidence from the community. Of course, I cannot support a million users today, but everything starts small and if people like it I am sure there will be more fincancial support later. What I desparately need now is for some willing participants to see it, feel it, and tell me what I can do to improve it. I am a fan of Wiki myself, but I don't think it is the best model for creating literary work. What I have done in Collaze is to separate out idea inflow and content inflow. If someone doesn't want to write a chapter, "plot ideas" and "characters" lets the user put some ideas for other writers to use. Each chapter can be written by multiple authors, but not by editing the same document. Each writers submits his version of the chapter and the best version is selected by voting by other readers and writers. There is a 30 day deadline for each chapter, but the writers can keep revising and refining their work based on reader feedback before the deadline. In addition to this, a chapter has to be of 1000 words. This ensures that a chapter is consistent and author gets freedom to maintain his natural flow in a chapter. There is a link "Why Collaze is different" in the home page http://www.collaze.com/home/howIsCollazeDifferent. jsp BTW, I wrote a blog http://ambikasukla.blogspot.com/ that touches upon most of these points.

I really appreciate your taking some time and providing valuable feedback. I agree with your point about registration and will work on adding a guest login or read-only view. Still, most of the advantages of the site will become apparent only if someone starts writing. I spent lot of time on the navigation part to keep everything on the writer's fingertips. There is a "View Demo" link ( http://www.collaze.com/home/demo.htm ) link to show some of the features. I have a WYSWIG editor in the site with a dictionary always available on the left. To make it really sweet for the writer, I worked extra hard to make sure that the spell-checker is not a pop-up and hilites the incorrect word directly on the WYSWYIG editor. Unlike Wiki model, writers can save chapters as draft, and come back later to edit them. Also writers get a quick save option that saves the document without disturbing the cursor position in the editor or taking the writer to a new page. Business model is primarily advertisements (Yes, there is one adsense 120X600 in every project page). The purpose of the site is more to help creation of quality work than to make money. I quit my job and spent 3 months creating the site and I am confident that I can support the site with the cash flow from my next day job, provided I get some acceptance and confidence from the community. Of course, I cannot support a million users today, but everything starts small and if people like it I am sure there will be more fincancial support later. What I desparately need now is for some willing participants to see it, feel it, and tell me what I can do to improve it. I am a fan of Wiki myself, but I don't think it is the best model for creating literary work. What I have done in Collaze is to separate out idea inflow and content inflow. If someone doesn't want to write a chapter, "plot ideas" and "characters" lets the user put some ideas for other writers to use. Each chapter can be written by multiple authors, but not by editing the same document. Each writers submits his version of the chapter and the best version is selected by voting by other readers and writers. There is a 30 day deadline for each chapter, but the writers can keep revising and refining their work based on reader feedback before the deadline. In addition to this, a chapter has to be of 1000 words. This ensures that a chapter is consistent and author gets freedom to maintain his natural flow in a chapter. There is a link "Why Collaze is different" in the home page http://www.collaze.com/home/howIsCollazeDifferent. jsp BTW, I wrote a blog http://ambikasukla.blogspot.com/ that touches upon most of these points.

i came across a site http://www.collaze.com/ that provides some cool features lik specllchecking within its built-in editor. They also have a dictionary. I guess the concept is about people forming a team and writing some fiction novel.Preety neat..