[unhush]

My favorite parts of Hackpad were the features that weren't intended to have mass-market appeal (ex: code syntax highlighting, markdown-inspired keybindings, ability to easily create/delete accounts). These will likely be gone in whatever notes product that Dropbox makes with the help of the (wonderful) Hackpad team.

So for me, this acquisition seems like a loss. I realize that Hackpad has said that they'll keep the site alive, but I expect it to be less functional if everyone maintaining it is a full-time Dropbox employee now. Fingers crossed that there will someday exist a good collaborative doc editor for hackers that doesn't fall over when >10 people connect or require a Google account!

Full disclosure: I have written code and done security auditing for Hackpad. I tried to get them to add vim mode. :)

[dublinben]

Have you tried Etherpad? I'm pretty sure it supports both markdown and syntax highlighting.

[unhush]

I'm aware that there's modules you can add to do those things. Are there public instances that have those installed? It's been a while since I used Piratepad et al.