Back in January Cody reviewed SyncPad, a collaborative online whiteboard with web, iPhone and iPad applications that allow people to collaborate on sketches, wireframes or PDFs in real-time. SyncPad is a very powerful app, as it lets you create multiple rooms, work locally or over the Internet, share with Dropbox and even import PDFs in seconds to quickly mark up a document and show it to your colleagues. From the review:
As soon as you open SyncPad, you’re asked to enter a room name. You can make up anything, and a URL will be spit out enabling you to share that room with collaborators. With no sign-up required, collaborators can simply plug the URL into a web browser to watch you markup content in realtime. There may be a slight delay between what someone will see in a room as you draw on the screen, but it’s rather minor and personally unimportant. The WOW! factor is immediate as the simplicity behind SyncPad is astounding, and it’s an easy way to impress others on the other end. They’ll tell you, “it’s the future,” and I’m not exaggerating - SyncPad is a great way to share content with others because it’s such a fascinating little tool.
The “WOW” factor Cody mentioned is indeed well visible in the video shared by the developers, in which 40 iPads are running the same whiteboard simultaneously. The devices are on the same local WiFi network (they’re not connected over the air from different countries in the world – like Cody and I did in our tests), but the tech is still impressive. The animations are smooth, everything happens in real-time, and we can only imagine the possibilities offered by SyncPad during, say, meetings or conferences where all attendees have an iPad with the aforementioned app installed.
Check out the video below.
