There are numerous ways to easily collaborate on documents either in a serialized fashion or in real-time thanks to services like Google Docs, Etherpad and too some extent, DocStoc and Scribd. And let’s not forget about Google Wave.

Google Docs lets you work together on a document in real-time, as does Etherpad. (and of course, Wave which practically does everything in real-time…) DocStoc and Scribd allow others to provide comments, either publicly or privately. It’s not real-time editing, but sometimes you don’t want to offer that kind of access – comments are just fine.

It’s the latter category where startup SharedDoc squarely plants itself. SharedDoc lets anyone upload a document and invite collaborators to comment using text or photos. The service currently supports only Microsoft Word documents.

But who reaps the benefits from these services? Everyone! Well, except for corporate enterprises. Since these services are all on the public internet and not behind a firewall on a corporate network, they create significant hurdles for enterprise adoption but make great solutions for small businesses. In fact, many of us have begun to take this new found capability for granted – when we encounter an inability to collaborate, we question why.

Such is the new norm.

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Collaboration is the New Norm is a post from: TechStartups.com