Groupware on the cheap

I've always liked the idea of working with people using a software application, a virtua group. However I've only ever heard of IBM and Microsoft producing software with that in mind. Recently I came up with a real use. Two of us wanted to co-author a document. I suggested Googledocs as an option, and we tried it. With a couple of glitches, it basically works. Even in the silly situation of both of us working on the document together. It seems to keep track of who did what, but that's of less interest than both being able to read/write the same piece of paper! It works.

Another caution I had was that I wouldn't be able to get it into a format I could work with when it settles down. Nope. Export as ODF format, Then save as html. Then tidy up with tagsoup - or even transform it to something usable using the Saxon version of tagsoup, i.e. XSLT with bad html as input. Really useful tool.