Every day I’m amazed by the kinds of tools people create. Sometimes they’re small free projects, and other times, they’re just tools that solved a specific problem. Thankfully, like me, developers love giving them away for everyone to use.  Today I stumbled across a cool whiteboard tool that lets you collaborate with others for free[1].

Developed by a Croatian company named GoodCode, the tool is simply called A Web Whiteboard and can be found at awwapp.com. The interface is quite simple and lets you start drawing immediately. Along the left (or top, depending on your view) is a toolbar that acts much like a software toolbar. That bar allows you to change many things, but as you get deeper, you’ll see that you can add stuff like images, text, and even erase or undo previous efforts. It will take a few seconds to get used to it, but then you’re good.

The real power here is to share this workspace with others and draw on the same image in realtime. To do that, click on the small user icon, then click “Invite to Board” and you’ll be given a screen that shows a link. Share this link with others you’d like to include in this whiteboard. While collaborating you can also chat with other users too. Currently, this functionality is still free.

The tool also includes the ability to share the image itself (with yet another, longer, unique link). In that interface, the image can just be saved for later use or shared on various supported social media services.

For what it does, Web Whiteboard is a useful way to collaborate with others (or even quickly mark up a picture). If you have a need for a tool like this, it’s worth checking out. I can see a few cases where a phone meeting would be greatly enhanced by the ability to view and manipulate images in realtime.

A Web Whiteboard is free for basic use and includes a number of premium plans.

1. For now, anyway.