Here?s something useful which could actually stop many of you from breaking the law, as opposed to a few of my previous posts which may be on the boundaries of legality. I know many people who when they?ve got their new PC have found that there wasn?t a decent word processing programme on it, and have then got themselves a copy of Microsoft Word, because that?s what everyone else uses. This is where Writely.com steps in.
Writely brands itself as ?The Web Word Processor?, and that?s what it does. Instead of installing software to your PC just visit the website and do all your work there. Cool eh?
Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time.
Pick exactly who can access your documents.Edit your documents from anywhere.
Nothing to download ? your browser is all you need.Store your documents securely online.
Offsite storage plus data backup every 10 seconds.Easy to use.
Clean, uncluttered screens with a familiar, desktop feel.
Signing up was simple, all I had to do was fill in my email and choose a password, and then go to my email inbox and verify it by visiting the link they sent me.
I was pointed to Writely.com by my good friend Chris who has been dealing with solicitors who insist on sending him info in word documents. Chris doesn?t have Word and doesn?t want it and so something like this is the ideal thing. By simply clicking on the upload button it is possible to upload Word documents, along with many other types of document files.
Writely is currently in beta mode and I?m sure there are some functions that will be altered at a later date such as saving to PDF [this may be part of a subsciption service, running alongside a free service], so it will be changing in the future. Oh and did I tell you that Writey is owned by Google??
One of the best features is the ability to save to either the desktop or online. I?ve had many times when I?ve had to email a document to myself just so that I could edit it at another location. This also means that if my computer breaks, gets a virus, blows up, whatever, I?ll still have access to my documents online, instead of having to try and salvage my hard-drive. It automatically saves but also keeps all the past revisions and lets you revert to these if you like [or if you've accidently deleted some important info].
Other features incude the ability to save your documents as posts on your blog, allowing others to view your documents, plus other ones that you can see by taking a tour.
Writely will work wherever you have access to the Internet via a Windows or Macintosh computer with one of these browsers:
- IE 5.5+ (Windows)
- Mozilla 1.4+, not including SeaMonkey (Mac & Windows)
- Firefox 1.5.0.6+ (Mac & Windows ? except for 1.5b1 on the Mac!)
Writely is not supported, and probably won?t run on:
- IE 5 (Mac) or IE 4 (Windows)
- Netscape 4
- Opera
- Safari
- SeaMonkey
Why don?t you give it a go?
A cunning idea indeed but it only accepts documents up to 500k
Dunno if that?s a beta restriction or one that?ll be increased if you start paying, but?
Would you give up your ?ooky copy of Word to use this exclusively though? I can only see myself using this if I?m stuck on a PC in a café or something and need to open up Word attachments I?d been sent just to save the bother of installing the free Word viewer.
We?ll see how it all develops though.
I think that there will be a time when all software is exclusively on the web.
Companies will offer free versions and subsciption versions [which will obviously have increased features such as unlimited file size uploading]. This already happens with email and also things like Flickr which is great anyway and free, but I have also paid the £14 [or whatever] so that I can have increased uploads. If the service is good then I don?t mind subscribing to it.
In the long run there is more money to be made this way than by selling physical copies, which will often get passed around and copied.
For the moment I will stick to using Word but there will be a time when I will try and use soley web-based products [within limits... I doubt Photoshop would run too well on the web].
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It seems like Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon too.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5370144.stm
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