Notational software joins the internet realm with the launch of Noteflight online music software, a web-based application that allows you to create, edit and share compositions over the net without having to download or install any software. Scores can play directly from your browser, published, printed or shared. You can even embed the notation in your blog or actual website.

It's the first web-based application of its kind, supporting editing, layout, rendering, playback and printing of music notation. Its convenience makes it great for creating and sharing musical documents for musicians and composers, and music teachers will find it especially helpful in creating and distributing notational material. Just ask Dr. Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of African-American Music at Harvard University.

“Noteflight is a godsend to anyone teaching music. It’s very easy to use, and saves so many error-prone steps compared to putting music online with other notation editors. To me, the most valuable feature is that whenever I revise one of my scores on Noteflight, the music in my tutorial Web pages changes instantly without my having to do anything else.”

Meanwhile, Joe Berkovitz, Noteflight's founder, commented on the vision behind his application.

“Making music is not a solitary pursuit -- nearly everyone who works with music eventually wants to share it. As both software creators and musicians, our team knows how painful it is to share notated music online today. That’s because most musical applications treat the Internet as an afterthought: they’re geared to saving your music on your hard disk, not to sharing your music with other people. We saw that our vision of creating, hearing and sharing high-quality music notation on the Web could finally be realized with technology that’s already installed on everyone’s computer -- and that’s exactly what we did.”

One of the challenges behind Noteflight was framing all of its features in a simple, accessible way. Adobe Flash Player and all of its audio-visual capabilities fit well. All in all, Flash is pretty sweet.