Thoughtslinger FAQ

• What can I do with Thoughtslinger?
• What does it run on?
• Is there a fee?
• Who should use Thoughtslinger?
• Do my friends also need to sign up for Thoughtslinger?
• How can my friends edit a document with me?
• What kinds of documents can Thoughtslinger read and write?
• How simultaneous is Thoughtslinger's co-editing?
• Is Thoughtslinger secure?
  
• What are the Thoughtslinger keyboard shortcuts?
  
• Can I work offline with Thoughtslinger?
  
• How do I load a Word document (.doc) into Thoughtslinger?

• Create a new document or open an existing document.
• Share the document's slinger ID with your friends.
• Edit the document together. You see their changes and they see yours.
• Turn change-tracking on. Accept or reject changes.
• Freeze completed sections so that they can’t be changed by others.
• Print the document.
• Save a local copy of the document.

Thoughtslinger needs a compatible we browser with JavaFX and Java SE 6 update 10 or later. Mac users need a 64-bit Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

No, it's free.

Who should use Thoughtslinger?

Groups that want to work together on text documents.

Do my friends also need to sign up for Thoughtslinger?

We would prefer that your friends sign up too, but they don’t have to. They can join in as guests.

How can my friends edit a document with me?

When you create or upload a document, Thoughtslinger assigns it a slinger ID, like fuzzybaseball48.
Share the slinger ID with your friends. They can join in as guests by entering the slinger ID on our home page.

What kinds of documents can Thoughtslinger read and write?

• Microsoft Word 2007 (docx)
• Open Document Text (odt)
• Rich Text Format (rtf)
• Plain Text (txt)

Thoughtslinger is in beta form, so please don’t expect uploaded documents to look exactly the same in Thoughtslinger as they do in Word or Writer.

How simultaneous is Thoughtslinger's co-editing?

Thoughtslinger shares every keystroke with all co-editing participants in real time. Latency is similar to that found with internet telephony applications. Factors affecting performance include:

• the level of data encryption
• the speed of participants' computers
• the speed of participants' Internet connections, both upstream and downstream
• geographic proximity (number of router hops) of participants to each other and our servers
• the load on our servers

Thoughtslinger currently uses 128-bit encryption for all communication.

Can I work offline with Thoughtslinger?

No. You and your co-workers must be connected to the Internet.

What are Thoughtslinger’s keyboard shortcuts?

Download and install the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack to enable earlier versions of Word to save documents in the new Word 2007 (docx) format. Open the document in Word, save it as a docx file, then load it into Thoughtslinger.