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Off-line outlining with ghosts

One of the really tough problems Matt's had to solve whilst building ThinkFold, is how to deal with the loss of internet connectivity whilst someone is in the middle of typing into a realtime outline. During normal realtime outlining, your text is sent to the server as you type and displayed to everyone sharing the outline. video screenshot

But what should happen if you temporarily lose your internet connection whilst typing? We don't want you to lose any of your ideas or flow, or even worse, lose any text that you just typed.

So, we've built a feature into ThinkFold called 'ghosting' that auto-saves your work. (click the image to see a QuickTime movie of auto-save and ghosting in action) If you're unfortunate enough to lose your internet connection while outlining in ThinkFold, you can still keep on typing for a short while.ThinkFold will auto-save your typed text into a small, hidden file on your own computer.

When you're able to reconnect to the internet and reload your real-time outline, a 'ghost' version of yourself enters the outline and types your auto-saved text into the outline.

ThinkFold's 'ghosting' feature lets you use an outline in with a 'patchy' connection, (like a 3G modem), safe in in the knowledge that everything you're outlining will be saved.

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