Firefox

Most of us have used the suite of tools under the Google Docs moniker to do all sorts of collaborative things. Giving us a web-based, multi-user version of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint has been a good thing. I’ve had my ups and downs with the tools since the Writely days, but I think in general they are a very powerful and flexible set of tools. This is so clear when working in committee or as a student working in teams — the idea that you don’t have to shuffle individual documents back and forth is an amazing benefit.

Buzzword, a Flex/AIR based word processor from VirtualUbiquity is amazing. It kicks the crap out of Google's Writely. Hell, it kicks the crap out of MS-Word and it's not even out of beta yet. That's the cornerstone of any office productivity suite. Now, toss in a speadsheet app and slide show app and you have the big three covered.

For those mistaking Preezo to be comparable to other lesser presentation mortals, they don’t realize the fact that it has an editor which was built from ground up instead of being another “design” mode hack. Trust me, there is almost no startup or company that has tried doing that, not even much acclaimed Writely. With the kick-ass editor in place, Preezo is all set to deliver real powerful features soon like transformations and animations that will make sure you won’t miss Microsoft Powerpoint at all.

Especially if you happen to use Google Docs for a significant amount of your online writing tasks, you may have noticed that there was a notable lack of integration between Google’s suite of “Office-esque” products. The simple reason is because each of these products were independently designed and stitched together over the course of the last year (anyone remember Writely)?

GOOGLE now owns Blogger, Writely, Dodgeball, Feedburner, YouTube, and Picasa. EBay took over Stumbleupon and Skype. YAHOO snatched up Del.icio.us, WebJay, Jumpcut, Upcoming.org, Oddpost and perhaps Facebook soon.

The best example of this emerging, and rapidly developing, marketing need is the online word processing and document battles. The most publicized part of this trend is the battle between Google’s (formerly Writely) online Docs and Spreadsheets platform and Microsoft’s offline (but with a few online features) Outlook. However, there are other serious competitors in this space such as Zoho, who are gaining momentum and followings. For Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets and Zoho to seriously compete, or gain sustainable adoption, the need to move word processing and spreadsheet data offline is paramount.

Ok, enough of the Biblical references. Point is, I wrote about Google Docs about a year or so ago, while they were still Writely and not owned by Google. I made the point that, yeah, it was a good enough service for basic word processing needs, but that was about it. Formatting quality left a lot to be desired. If you were looking for a better alternative to Microsoft Office, there was always OpenOffice.org that didn’t cost anything.

WordPerfect Lightning is one of a wave of applications integrating desktop applications with online features for greater access and easier collaboration. In March 2006, Google bought Upstartle, a company that created the online word processor Writely.

I think Microsoft’s acquisition brings up a bunch of things. Vertical search engines in the past haven’t had their 15 seconds of fame — given the volume, they’ve rather been ignored and overlooking. Microsoft acquiring a search engine and Google acquiring things like JotSpot and Writely seem to show how important both the company’s fields are and how important it is for them to expand.

If Excel had been made in Flex originally, Microsoft wouldn’t have to change a thing. Their biggest challenge would be to create a business model that supported a web-friendly version of the product, but practically none of the code would need any sort of update to be ready for the web. Countless man-hours could be saved. The same comparison could be made between Writely, now Google documents, and Word; outlook and gmail, or yahoo mail, or even hotmail; Flickr and iPhoto, or just about any other desktop application that has an online equivalent.

Most likely, the final name will not be Presently, but, going with the Docs & Spreadsheets theme, the additions will be Google Presentations and Google Databases. I’d be shocked if they got a creative name, especially after Google dumped the Writely name for “Docs”.

Writely is an example of this tactic — Google bought the company while the software was in beta, and now the Writely team works at Google.

I am adding some Form Templates from FormAssemby, which will be covered under the Creative Commons license. I originally heard about them from the Wall Street Journal, and they look like another candidate to be bought by Google. Just like Writely and JotSpot.

After Epic 2015, we figured it apropos to begin our exploration of Web 2.0 tools with those offered by Google. A few people already had Gmail access, but most had to create new accounts. We briefly looked at the e-mail and calendar, partly as a familiar starting point for discussions, but also as way to demonstrate briefly how AJAX and other similar technologies are changing the landscape of the web. Our main reason for using the Google offerings, however, was to introduce Docs & Spreadsheets (formerly Writely), looking especially at the remote access and collaboration features.

Gizbuzz, with Jen Mazzon and Sam Schillace of the Google Docs and Spreadsheets team (both ex-Writely).

In general, I don’t blog about new products and ideas but this one really caught me; Fleck is a great utility for web developers; it’s a browser extension (currently Firefox only) that allows you to take notes on web pages and share with your friends, colleagues. This will be very useful for me, I’ll use it in my projects and to take private notes about pages I like. The last site I’ve found that useful was Writely.. I don’t know how will Fleck end up! By the way, to give it a quick try, see my blog flecked!

Surprise surprise, got redirected to docs.google.com - writely is now known as "docs" and is open to anyone with a Gaccount, and is furthermore integrated into Spreadsheet.

Buen ejemplo es el de hoy, ya que ha salido Google Docs & Spreadsheets, página que amalgama el estupendo procesador de texto Writely y las tablas de cálculo google spreadsheets. Suelo usar writely para escribir y almacenar documentos personales, de hecho, muchas de las entradas de este mismo blog han sido escritas y enviadas desde allí ya que el editor de Wordpress es un poco parco. Google ha cambiado su estética adaptándola a su imagen de empresa haciéndola muy similar al insuperable Gmail (de hecho ya no se lee Writely por ningún lado) pero por lo demás las funcionalidades siguen siendo las mismas, se pueden subir y descargar archivos de texto, bloguear desde allí, compartir escritos con otros usuarios, crear un documento simplemente enviándolo como email o como attach de un email… una gozada.

More tightly integrated with its owner, that is. I’ve always wondered how Writely was supposed to make any money. Today’s email brings a clue. New users or the users you invite to collaborate on documents will need to get themselves a gmail/gcalendar/gpersonalised account to participate. Good move, I think. Writely is a cool tool, but it’s a poor vehicle for advertising. If it starts to pull its weight by drawing more people into the Google empire, then it will remain free and a focus for development for a bit longer.

Writely - the site I most wanted to get invited to (besides Gmail) has just accepted an invitation provided by these guys. If you noticed the test posts (which I deleted a short while ago) You know I was playing around with the ‘Publish to Blog’ feature Writely brilliantly provided. I cannot express enough how happy I am that this feature works.

Writely is a web application which allows you to create, edit and share documents online. The application allows you to upload from Word, publish on the web and even post to your blog. I recently got hold of an invite to beta test this nifty tool. If you would like to try it out, please leave a comment below with your email address. Right now, the beta release is by invite only.

Yes, Google's Services are very cool, nice features, we all love them. But think more about them, think about the search engine itself. Google is tracking every step you do on the internet. First they watch on you while searching for interesting stuff, then they track you (with AdSense and with Analytics) during your visit on a site you found as a search result. They get your credit card information on Google Checkout, they get your personal information an contacts on Orkut, they get your other contacts on Google Mail, they get your letters on writely and your calculations on spreadsheets. Oh don't forget about your interests on Google Movie Search and Google Music Search... and your contributions and searchs on Google Groups. Whew! That's heavy!

YouOS er et “operativsystem” som kører i browseren, og i et Windows-lignende interface har implementeret omkring 100 populære Web2.0 programmer, som f.eks. Writely, ThinkFree, Google Calender, Google Spreadsheets og mange andre web-applikationer.

A guy on the Gentoo forums was giving away invites to Writely. For those of you who dont know, Writely is an online word processor designed to be used in your web browser. The plus of this service is all the files you work on are saved online, and best of allyou can invite folk to view and edit your documents with you. This sort of program is to me extremely usable, as I like to have folk read over what I’m working on for fics as I work.

Google recently bought Writely, the online word processor. Microsoft is also moving in this direction and will be offering a lot of their software as online applications. Over the weekend, I was searching for a good word processor for screenwriting and I discovered ScriptBuddy.

When I’ve explained Flexcar to people, I’ve sometimes heard the response, “You mean the car might not be there when I need it?” expressed in the exact tone of voice people use when they say, “Store my documents online? What if I’m not online?” Like Flexcar, Writely (which I’m using right now, just for fun) could change its software or its terms of service on me, and all I could do is complain to Google. (Now serving #3923804. Your estimated wait time is three geological ages.)

Hace no mucho comentaba acerca del lanzamiento de GoogleShpreadSheet, el cual junto con Writely eran una gran combinacion para llevar la oficina a donde quiera que vayas. Sin embargo, ninguna oficina esta completa sin la posibilidad de realizar presentaciones.

I agree with Marc. It is really good to see a move to so many applications like Google spreadsheet, Microsoft Live, and Writely available on the net, but the reality is that I still find myself in situations where I need to work, but I still don’t have access to the net.

Widgets are useful for displaying user-created microcontent such as: Flickr photos, Writely documents, events calendar, and to-do lists, and del.icio.us bookmarks. Similarly, these gizmos are an effective way of enabling non-user-centric microcontent such as updates on sporting events, stock quotes, quotes, news, and Sudoku puzzles. Start pages may be considered a superclass of widget themselves, allowing users to add multiple widgets within them. Pageflakes has over 70 “flakes” or widgets available for users, and Netvibes offers over 150.

What Google Spreadsheets does do is confirm the rumors of Google competing directly with Microsoft Office by releasing a web-based office suite of their own. Despite their recent aquisition of Writely, I still refused to believe that this is actually what they were doing. Because, well, it doesn't sound very smart to me. Google's core business – what they do best – is search. And straying from that in order to take on a suite of desktop applications doesn't seem to be in their best interest.

Smallwire.net has compiled a list of all Google web application keyboard shortcuts. There are complete keyboard shortcuts for Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Writely, Google Video, and Google Maps.

I am well aware of the downside, risks etc. but plain and simple: it works, it’s smart and I predict that small businesses and startups will rush to embrace their answer to Excel fairly quickly. In fact, if Google wishes to keep that stock price at such a lofty levels, it should start to aggressively tie up things like a lightweight Corporate Gmail service, Calendar, Excel, Writely, Maps, etc., into a Small & Medium Business Solution.

80% of the people I know would be perfectly happy using Writely, iRows and Gmail and saving the $200-300 they normally spend on MS Office. Once someone implements a "disconnected mode" that allows users to edit files without internet access, and to download and backup our files, I'm going to start advocating pretty hard for this golden combination of simplicity and convenience.

Let's face it, we're all reading these blogs because we are looking to optimize our systems to become the most effective in getting things done. The creation of sites like Lifehacker are manifestations of our need to increase efficiency in our lives. We're all becoming productivty experts. I am as guilty as the next. Constantly tweaking my system to gain that 1% increase in my ability to get the job done. I've recently done in-depth studies on how Web 2.0 applications can better help me get the job done (in fact, I am writing this blog post in Writely, which then posts to Wordpress…)

With the whole web 2.0 hysteria a new breed of webapplication is finally available. Instead of of using your word processor or any other application from your local computer you get it all over the web. Complete office packages as well as nifty single applications (Writely and Kiko, are already waiting for you and your data.

After an invitation from Brad I’m using Writely, and have discovered that I can even use it to post to my blog, and in fact, almost any format of blog. This post in fact is sent directly from Writely.

I suppose, by now, everyone’s heard that Google has developed a Calendar. I think Google was smart to acquire Writely, which is one of the best collaborative tools out there — I’m not counting Wiki’s, of course, because they’re collaborative but way higher-functioning and for mass-user-revisions, unlike Writely, on which I’m currently writing/revising two articles with a few co-authors.

Writely is a full-fledged web-based word processor that you can access from anywhere. It can be thought of as Microsoft Word for the Web.

At a glance, I thought the Writely is a suitable tool for my school team writing project. However, its FAQ didn't mention anything on multiple checkout on a single document. It may still require some manual editing during merging. I never used Writely personally. However, the screenshots looks promising. It seems like it is more of a team document collabration tool rather than a web WYSIWYG word processor. The Writely supports importing from a number of popular file formats, including OpenOffice, MS Word, RTF, etc. It can even export to PDF, a feature mostly supported by commercial word processors.

Inscris depuis quelques temps pour bénéficier du traitement de texte en ligne de Google, Writely, j’attends toujours une réponse du moteur de recherche Américain.

The recent trend to create rich internet applications with AJAX has put preasure on Macromedia and it’s Flash technology. Products like Backpack, Writely, etc. make heavy use of Javascript and and XML. They interaction allows for dynamically adding items, drag-drop, even searches like “Windows Live Search” are done using AJAX.

The developer of this application is Michael Robertson. He believes that AjaxWrite, and similar applications like Writely and Zoho Writer, will significantly reduce the need to purchase products such as Microsoft Word in emerging growth markets.

Ajaxwrite is the newest online wordprocessor. It opens and saves documents in Word format (you can also save in PDF), has good basic functionality and is fairly fast. (Techcrunch)(I will do a thorough review next week).

This is very frustrating. I’ve been using Safari for several days now prior after the purchase of my brother’s iBook. The browser break at several sites that I pretty much loved such as Writely. It even broke on my WordPress Admin section by not displaying any quicktags (which I sometimes used).

Danny over at SearchEngineWatch claims Google’s purchase of Writely.com (a browser-based word processor) drove him over the edge last week. The growing number of things Google “haven’t finished, gotten right or need to fix” led him to compose a list of 25 Things I Hate About Google.

I don't know what Google has up their sleeve for this product, but it's a break from their previous acquisitions. Sketchup is a serious piece of software, which isn't to say that their previous acquisitions weren't, but think of the difference between Microsoft Paint and Autodesk… Google just bought the equivalent of Autodesk. Sketchup, which is an application not a service like Writely, is also targeted at design professionals and architects, a group of people who wouldn't think twice about coughing up $500 a seat for a tool, which is what Sketchup sold for. I wonder if the Google Earth plugin for Sketchup had anything to do with this?

Does anyone remember how, less than a year ago, several commentators suggested Google was compiling a series of products that could emulate an online operating system? At the time, Google steadfastly denied such rumors. Yesterday, Google purchased Upstartle, the maker of a browser-based word processor called Writely.