Dropbox reportedly is doing a great job that's said will
make it as one of the tight competitors of Google Docs when the project is
released later. Named as Paper, this Dropbox's new project is now entering the
beta phase with significant changes.
Paper is a collaborative tool where users can write
documents and distribute them to other users. No wonder when the service
which's formerly known as Note is predicted as a competitor to Google Docs due
to the similarity function.
For this moment, Paper is still in the form of a minimalist
text editor with several style options such as reports, lists and others. The
provided tools are still very limited, such as changing the font size, bold,
italic, underline, and strikethrough.
Just like Google Docs, in Paper, multiple users can
collaborate to modify the documents at the same time. Each user will be marked
in the form of colored cursor, credit for contribution which is also
accompanied with the full name in the margin.
Paper also includes mention feature,"@", which
works almost the same as the mention feature you usually find in the social
networking sites today. Provide notification to users as a sign to examine the
documents at a certain point, or simply as a reference. Its function can
certainly vary depending on the users' interests, for example to request
additional images, or a YouTube video link as an additional option.
For now Paper is available in web
format, but Dropbox explains that it has a plan to bring Paper to mobile
platform in the future. Unfortunately, if you want to try Paper, you should get
an invitation first. But you can still register in dropbox.com/paper, maybe
you'll be one of the lucky ones.