iStorm - 3.41

iStorm is a program which a group of people, serious or not, can use for an impromptu collaboration on a shared media rich document within the LAN and over the internet.

Over the last few years, Apple has made revolutionary strides with their iApps, iTunes, iMovie, iChat and iDVD. With the exception of iChat, however, they are geared toward creative "solo" activities. A Cassandra, if on a bad day, would go even further and worry that they are supreme digital "consumption" vehicles which submerge us further deep in digital garbage.

iStorm started with a somewhat rebellious pose. Why not simply connect creative people together and let them stare at a blank page for a while? That was version one. Over the past year, it has acquired useful tools, which are discreetly hidden in understated user interface lest they should disturb the gathering creative pulse.

For scientists, it taps into the TeX engine in a very creative way. Mad inventors would enjoy doodling on the shared chalkboard. High school students attempted to use it to duplicate their reports on the Scarlet Letter. (The square ones later decided to use MS-Word instead, since it made their paper look more "polished"?) Your bosses sync-navigate your PDF report and add their comments, welcome or not. Future New Yorker cartoonists work together on their panel stroke by stroke. What it does not allow, to our dispair, yet, is to collaborate on music making over the Pacific in real time.

Among the features of the current version are:

• syncPDF: Shared Navigation and Annotations of PDF Document
• Captions in the chalkboard, perfect for cartoons and chemical formulae.
• Cool HTML editor with innovative archive function
• Simultaneous editing in shared scratchpad
• Voice Messages
• Webcam Snapshot
• Distraction-free One-button interface for creative collaboration of any kind
• Zero configuration hassle with Rendezvous technology for LAN
• Real time update of edited document
• Innovative emotion conveying chat module.
• iChalk: Built-in shared chalkboard with
  • Realistic chalk simulation with full color
  • Optional background color change
  • Automatic scaling-down of large image files
  • Annotation/tracing over imported background picture
  • Archive into Quicktime movie
  • Support for Pressure sensitive stylus
• An innovative TeX interface with
  • Attached source code option
  • Intelligent in-line equation generation
  • Latex, context, Amstex support
• Convenient inline calculator with
  • In-line numerical evaluation of formula
  • Virtually limitless userdefined variables
  • Unit conversion/Predefined constants