Mitch Kapor’s Cambridge, Massachusetts-based On Technology Inc, which was to revolutionise the whole way we approach personal computing but found it a rather harder task than it expected, reckons it has at last made a start with Instant Update. On reckons it to be a breakthrough collaborative application for Macintosh networks, helping people to communicate with unprecedented ease and effectiveness through live documents. Instant Update fills the communications gap between word processing and electronic mail, a gap that exists because static word processing files can’t keep up with evolving information, and electronic mail isn’t built to consolidate replies. According to On, a live document solves both these problems at once. Instant Update eliminates many of the time-consuming steps that plague your life as you struggle to turn fast-changing information into group decisions and actions, On claims: With a live document, you know you’ve got the latest version, whether you open it at nine in the morning or five in the afternoon. The firm did not put a price on it.
