Review my startup: Revizr. You haven't seen this before.

This is really quite cool. A few thoughts:<p>- When I click "claim your identity," it should take me to the create an account tab. At this stage, why not make that the default tab?<p>- I'm no designer, but the tan / pink / fleshtone color isn't working for me. If it's dear to you, ignore me. I just redid my site's color scheme because people told me it looked like a developer's hobby project, not a business tool. I used <a href="http://kuler.adobe.com/" rel="nofollow">http://kuler.adobe.com/</a> and was pretty happy with results. On a similar note, anti-alias your logo and save as a png (with a background if you don't want to alienate the ie6 crowd).<p>- The killer use of this, IMHO, would be the ability to integrate your technology into an already existing block of text hosted elsewhere just by dropping a line of js into the page (like <a href="http://www.apture.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apture.com/</a>). I know that's not a tiny feature, but I imagine a lot of bloggers would love to offer this sort of "live editing feedback" on their blogs (and might be a paying audience). Either that, or provide tools to "publish version to blog" and have integrations for popular blog software.<p>- More on screen help. This is really hard, particularly for an interface that requires users change their behavior. We're so used to looking at text and assuming it's static that we need some tooltips or something that says "here's how to use _this_ text." Maybe something that can be dismissed once a user has seen it (that's what we're doing), but don't rely on your document creator to add directions on how to use revizr in the document directions. They're already advocating for you by using your tool; don't make their job any harder by making them explain it to people they want to use it with.<p>- "Tag the new version" -- tags are cool and useful and keep things organized, but why do I get prompted to tag my version when I advance to a version? I'm trying to do one thing and the software is asking me to do another.<p>Overall, it's a really neat app; a mix of google docs, wiki, and document publishing, with better change documentation and integration control tools.<p>--<p>Hope that helps, and good luck!

There's a problem when your software doesn't fit into an existing category. You have to simultaneously explain what it is and why it's good. Revizr reminds some people of Track Changes in Word, and other people of wikis. It's neither, but a whole new way for readers to communicate with writers.<p>No matter what you think of Revizr, I'd like to say thanks to the HN community for pointing me to so many useful places on the web. I'm also grateful to YC putting on Startup School '08 which gave me the confidence to work on this full-time.

Nice app. BUT:<p>1, It looks a lot like the ( now defunct? ) ycombinator startup <a href="http://www.writewith.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.writewith.com/</a>, which didn't gain any real traction.<p>2, For general purpose editing task, I find the realtime editor etherpad a lot more useful.

I think it's really cool looking. One thing that I think needs tweaking is the exact graphical representation of the edits. I think it's smart to try and replicate what it would look like if someone were to write on your document, rather than simply strikethrough words and the like, but I think you need to go further in that direction.<p>Right now the thin, angular red lines and tiny triangles don't communicate that association to me. They because they're so rectilinear, regular, and small, they just look like busy interface crud that's obscuring my text. They therefore have no semantic content to me and I find myself having to consciously interpret them, in exactly the same way I interpret the weird strikethrough/underline scheme of your competitors.<p>This looks like an area where you might have to find somebody with a real professional eye; actually managing to implement the precise and rich graphical look you need in order to make your new idea work won't be easy, but I think it's hard to ignore.

Functionally this is awesome - we use etherpad a lot for collaborative text editing but having something a bit more structured like this could be very useful. The experience of entering a rewrite and having it broken down into several distinct edits is great, and there's lots of thoughtful touches in the UI (like starting off as anonymous and "claiming" vs. having to create an account up front).<p>Visually there's a lot of work to do - if you can get even a day or two of a great web designer's time it will be very worthwhile. For example, although you describe the two icons as "pen" vs. "pencil" they just look red and yellow to me - and then they both create (different kinds of) red text. Your logo needs to be antialiased.<p>On the pricing page, it's clear that there's lots missing from the free editing, but it's not clear what the free edition actually <i>does</i> provide. It seems like you can still use it to create private documents, but that's not obvious from the description. You might want to have some more rows on that comparison table that have checkmarks all the way across.<p>One group I can imagine loving this is lawyers, although they'll hate that it's hosted. You'd probably need to add more features but it would be interesting (if you haven't already) to talk to some and see if there's a custom version you could build with workflow targeted to contracts.

I think the functionality is great, however I think you should reevaluate your color pallet. Choosing bolder colors would be a great first step in my opinion.

I own the domain wordsmither.com<p>I was going to do something different, but similar targeted towards small bits of text. If your interested in discussing, contact me on twitter (same username).

You can't say "You haven't seen this before" when you were covered on ReadWriteWeb 2 weeks ago -- that means a lot of us have seen it before. ;)<p>That said, it is a cool app. Nice work. One critique: There was no easy way that I could see to show the document with out edit marks. I.e., there should be a way to switch between showing the document with edits implemented by each editor.<p>I make my living as an editor, and when I'm editing in Word with track changes I often like to view final with the edits hidden so I can read through what I've changed and make sure my edits are good. The edit marks get distracting and make heavily edited docs hard to read.<p>Also, add in the ability to easily push edited documents into Wordpress, and I could use this at work. ;)

I think this is really nicely done. I have looked at solutions like this in the past and found them really lacking in terms of what text can be selected and how the selection is indicated -- and it looks like you have gone way beyond what I remember seeing.<p>Last year I created a prototype to play with some ideas that are similar to this, except that I created my application using Flex. It is here <a href="http://www.annospace.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.annospace.com</a> for comparison. However, my interest at the time was only in social commentary and organizing lots of comments, not in group revising/editing.

Some feature requests that would make this <i>VERY</i> useful to document-centric companies like the one I work for now:<p>- Allow me to specify reviewers via e-mail. The reviewers should have roles (whose names the admin should be able to specify). Some should be required, some should be optional.<p>- Let me export a CSV or similar of the review comments, their owners, and the location in the document where the comment or change occurred.<p>- Let us run it on our own servers. Provide a downloadable version.<p>This would easily be able to replace our Excel review log/Word doc e-mails that I get every day...

Sell an enterprise version for use in intranets. Hire a good salesman to sell it. This is a great replacement for Word documents that are manually versioned (to create a paper trial).

This is an outstanding idea and distinct from current GoogleDocs or other wiki implementations precisely because it's asymmetric (one owner, many commenter/editors). I think you could enable a business model based on remote copy editing by 3rd party labor where the owner has the ability to accept or reject the changes. I can definitely see this as being offered as an alternative to the basic browser WYSIWYG editor for blog and wiki systems where the user ask for help with final edits or copy editing. I see a lot of potential for this. We did some research a while back for a wiki startup and this supports a mode that some prospects were asking for which wikis today do not support: an individual owns the page and can accept or reject additions/edits. This is different from the wiki model but appropriate for many projects (or as a finishing step where a lot of peer review/development has already taken place in the wiki).

Very cool!<p>Just take good look in the design, the point that should be improved is the presentation, works on a landing page, improve you logo, the design of the page and it should help you to get new users.<p>The features are awesome, the idea is more than awesome :D, BUT if you reduce the number of clicks to execute the most common tasks it would be amazing also.<p>Congratz!!!

Very cool. One problem I have is that the edit menu feels a bit laggy to me - it takes a short while for it to open. Also, when you're clicking around the document, I would want more instantaneous feedback on what's going on, if anything. I have the sense that it is just slow.

When I tried out Revizr(only a very quick pass-through so far), my first impression was that this doesn't sound that innovative, but then I read more and realized that it's a really cool idea.<p>Unfortunately, then I saw how Revizr displays changes. Several of the examples look ugly to me(especially the differ example), and the way moving blocks of text is notated seems like it may be slightly confusing with regard to where the block is being moved to.<p>That said, despite my dislike of the notation, ‍I really like the idea.<p>A minor complaint is that the bold text displaying one's username isn't a link, which wasn't obvious until I tried clicking it from several different locations. I think it would be better to fold the "Home" link into the username text.

I like it. Only negative for me was that it didn't seem to recognize my open ID (@gmail). But I did find it fast and intuitive. Too bad I'll never be able to sell my technophobic boss on it (who tends to sit at his desk and dictate micro-edits to marketing copy but also insists on receiving <i>everything</i> as email attachments).<p>I have some textual suggestions, but I'll add them directly on your home page when I get to the office later :) On a more general level, perhaps you could aim the community version at the wiki-using market, which might speed your adoption.

Clicking the little icons each time (especially since they don't stand out from the text very well) is a bit tedious. I noticed selecting and typing automatically defaults to "revise". This is a great feature. Are there keyboards shortcut for adding a comment?<p>The move text functionality is probably the weakest link. Why do I keep getting the message "Can't move content like that."? Also, it would be greatly enhanced with drag and drop ability.

My business partner recently gave me the book "Confessions of an Advertising Man" (by David Ogilvy) and one thing that struck me is that ad research data shows that using photos of people (as opposed to nothing or to sketches) in marketing dramatically increases interest in the product/article.<p>Your home page is very informative - great. But maybe sprinkle one or two photographs alongside the text?

My friend does copy writing and editing for a living. These are her thoughts:<p><pre><code> (8:33:14 AM) Laura: this editing software is cool but impractical (8:33:28 AM) Zach: why? (8:33:39 AM) Laura: you have to highlight to delete things (8:34:00 AM) Laura: where with track changes you can just write over it (8:34:45 AM) Laura: it looks cool once you've changed stuff</code></pre>

I found the page rather hard to read and it took a "long" time until I understood what it is all about. Putting the text in 2 columns might help. Not sure about the serif font too.<p>Nice idea. I like it. The revizr name does not appeal to me though, it sounds a bit too fresh and young. My first association was a razor and green/metallic colour, heh.<p>The logo has some weird spaces ("kerning"?).

Quite good, I didn't try the functionalities, but it will be very helpful for me.<p>I'm trying to write some articles and as I'm not native I get help from other people who master English. We use IM for that, so there's lot of problems especially we can't have the exact time to meet and be online.<p>I think your app can solve my problem so they revise my writing and then I see the correction.<p>Nice work!

You realize that by stating "You haven't seen this before", you are just challenging readers here to find and name products and projects that are similar to yours, don't you?<p>Although I have to say, the editor that pops up for "Rewrite selection" looks extremely nice, although you might get in trouble for basically aping the look and feel of Word.

What does this site do??<p>Maybe I am having a display error (Firefox 3.0.11 on Ubuntu 8.04), but I am not seeing anything that gives even a clue as to what this website is supposed to do.<p>EDIT: enabled cookies and I can now see the instructions. That seems like a problem. I normally never surf to unknown sites with cookies on...

I don't have time for a full review at the moment, but this reminds me of a widget offered by <a href="http://goosegrade.com/" rel="nofollow">http://goosegrade.com/</a><p>Different approaches, but seems to be very similar functionality. (The interface barely worked for me with FF2 and Vista).

Just a quick question from someone who has worked on a similar app before. How are you importing word documents? When I was working on something like this every solution was either extremely convoluted or very unreliable (AbiWord was basically all I could find).

Great, now all you need to do is integrate it in a service like fanstory.com or fanfiction.net. Users could then point out all the writing mistakes perspective authors make as they read, beautifully and elegantly. Beta-readers would love it.

Cool, but I would be worried about its remarkable similarity (functionally) to Apple's iWork.com. They serve the same purpose, and although Apple's offering has less features for now, it is integrated with their iWork suite.

Pretty cool! I can see this being used in the classroom a lot.

I think I spotted a small bug. When I triple-click somewhere on the page then it locks up my firefox solid for a few seconds. Other than that: nice work!

I'm curious, how are you dealing with the embedded markup in HTML? I imagine it makes it really difficult to keep track of overlays, no?

I don't even have NoScript on this Firefox and it won't load... are cookies required to even see your page?

I could see this working as a gadget in google wave as well.

This is very very cool.<p>Unfortunately, the UI sucks in Safari and basically doesn't work.<p>I would try to cut to the "this is an editable document" chase in the second paragraph. Maybe even the first. Probably the first. Definitely the first.<p>Awesome idea!

Just in case anyone's interested there's an competitor called <a href="http://www.redliner.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.redliner.com</a>

Great You should submit it to <a href="http://AppUseful.com" rel="nofollow">http://AppUseful.com</a>