I don't understand what colabopad does (besides something education-related)

Colabopad is a web based smartboard... the current focus is on educational applications. However you could create interactive games also, for instance it should be possible to create a simple chess or checkers implementation and 2D adventure games... Simply put:

Take and share notes on tablet devices Deliver E-Learning Collaborate with others on graphics related tasks Have fun

good way to beta test a product :-) I created a dev account and tried using the room. It works fine but how is it different from many other ajax based whiteboards out there? and yeah, why jsp?

Being able to develop and use widgets on a whiteboard is quite a differentiating feature I think. I don't know of any AJAX based whiteboards doing this. Secondly, the application isn't just an AJAX app, it is based on SVG.

JSP/J2EE is used for several reasons that I won't get into:)

However creating a widget requires only Javascript.

widgets, whiteboard, --> interesting!!.

Actually I was looking to build a collab whiteboard app myself some time ago, but then I decided to focus only on one, the one I am currently building. I explored what is out there at that point of time and I found quite a few, a few good one's will be http://www.jotspace.com/, http://www.instructure.com/ [not a whiteboard, more of other collab features], http://etherpad.com/. Check them out. That interest was the reason why went ahead and explored it. The UI is prototypical, needs a lot of work.

I will play with it sometime when I get time.

Keep up the good work.