Web Whiteboard: collaborate with others online for free

Martin Brinkmann
May 27, 2015
Updated • May 27, 2015
Internet
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Web Whiteboard is an online collaboration application that brings whiteboard functionality for groups to the web.

Communication is one important cornerstone of projects. While it may work well if all team members are working in the same office building or region, it can be problematic if that is not the case.

If you work with freelancers for instance, you may need to communicate with workers living in different countries.

While there are plenty of options to do that, phone calls, emails, messaging, online voice chat to name a few, most limit what you can do to text, video or voice communication.

Web Whiteboard's free version offers a simple no-registration required solution. It is a web-based whiteboard application that teams can use to work on ideas and communicate with each other.

First thing you do is create a new invite link for the board that is created for you automatically when you open the site. The link is a simple share link that you can paste in emails, chat messages or message boards.

Each team member has the same rights once they join which means that anyone can draw and modify what is shown on the screen.

This is a limitation of the free version only. Paid versions introduce read-only boards that limit access rights so that only select members have write access while everyone else has read access only.

The second big feature that paid accounts introduce is voice chat. While you get around that easily through Skype or other voice communication software, the integration on Web Whiteboard makes it easier to use.

The whiteboard app itself is basic but should be sufficient for many different use cases. You can draw freehand using different brush sizes and colors, add images to the board or use the text tool to add plain text to it instead.

There is also an option to undo changes, erase parts on the board or throw it all in the trash to start anew.

Creations can be saved to the local system. Since there is no requirement for an account, boards cannot be saved online which can be problematic in some cases, for instance when you need to continue working on the board the next day or after the break.

The whiteboard has been designed for mouse-controlled and touch-devices. It should work fine on most devices including mobile devices provided that a modern web browser is being used.

Boards exist for as long as there is activity and get deleted automatically if there has not been any activity for a two hour period.

Verdict

Web Whiteboard is an interesting online application. It is simple to use, does not force users to register an account before they can start using the app, and works well all across the board.

It could use a couple of improvements though. Hotkeys for instance would help improve some operations, undo for instance, and additional drawing tools would improve the usability of the application further.

Summary
Web Whiteboard: collaborate with others online for free
Article Name
Web Whiteboard: collaborate with others online for free
Description
Web Whiteboard is a free online application that lets you collaborate with others using an online whiteboard.
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

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