Quite 'Writely' Said!

Once I read somewhere that the future of IT lies in centralization. The computers of tommorow will not have a hard disk of their own, instead each user will have space in a central server where all documents would stored. Similarly all applications which a person needs to use would be located on that central server, and can be accessed through Internet by everybody.

If for a moment we overlook the concerns of Security and Internet Connectivity, then the most obvious benefit of this scenario is that all one needs at his end is a PC and an Internet connection.

Writely is a step in this direction. This is a completely web based word processor, which gives almost all the functionalities of word processors like MS Word, Open Office, Frame Maker etc. As off now Writely is supported only on IE5.5+, Mozilla 1.4+ and Firefox 1.0.6. Netscape and Opera do not support this application yet.

The application works very smoothly on a broadband connection, i.e. as fast a web application can possibly work. However its performance on a dial up connection is yet to be tested.

Writely allows HTML, 'Plain Text, MS Word, Open Office and RTF Docuemnts to be directly imported. However, you may just open a blank document in Writely and copy the contents from the clipboard. While you are working on a document, Writely provides a host of Formatting Features, Spell Check, ability to insert comments, pictures, tables, page breaks etc. However, you will have to stay content with the handful of fonts provided by Writely, as you are not allowed to add any fonts of your own. Besides, the possibility of decorating your document with stuff like Word Art, Clip Art as in MS Word is also not yet there. But then we should remember, that this is just the first step. May be Writely wants to preserve these features for its paid services.

But whenever you create a document, you will like to take a print or atleast see a print preview. Both these features are still quite primitive, infact, there is no such thing as Page Setup. So for taking a print you will have to first save the document in doc, rtf or odt format and then make the necessary page settings.

If Writely lacks in the Print department, then it certainly offers a lot more when it comes to the Web. The docs from Writely may be published directly on the web. You can make the document public, so that it may be viewed by all, or else you may also restrict the viewers to a chosen few. All you have to do is to provide the email id's of the people who are to view the document, and they would receive a mail from Writely, with a temporary password and a link for the document.
The document may also be directly posted into a blog. All blogs are not yet supported but a few popular once are covered. (I have posted this review from Writely) Whatmore, the published documents may be accessed by RSS feeders too.

Since Writely is now a part of Google, we may rest assured as far as the security aspect is concerned. No document is searchable on the web unless it has been given the 'public' status.

If more than one person needs to edit the document, then all the owner has to do is to add more users or Collaborators as Writely prefers to call them. Each of them will receive a temporary password and a link to the document and they all can edit the document simultaneously. The document may be shared between as many as 50 people.

One more feature of note is that Version Control is possible and more than one version may be compared at the click of a button.

With all these features, Writely is certainly the best possible solution for anybody looking for a web based word processor. Other similar services like Whiteboard and JotLive are still in the stone age when they are compared with Writely.

Writely still has some work to do as far as features like Headers & Footers, Page SetUp, Columns, User Defined Styles, End Notes and Foot Notes are concerned. But I can't wait till such things come, Writely is my MS Word of the Web for now and I hope it will be the same for you all too.

What is web2.0?

The dot com fiasco of 2001 has resulted in
the evolution of a brand new concept of delivering content on the internet,
aptly named as Web2.0, as it is a new avatar of the original style of web
design.

Web2.0 is not exactly a new technology, but rather a set of principles and practices, which govern the design and content of sites which knowingly or unknowingly adhere to these principles.

The Web2.0 era lays more stress on providing Services to its users than dishing out the products in the form of releases as done previously.

Some of most popular services provided by the Web2.0 genre of websites are GMail, Wikipedia, Flickr, Amazon, ebay etc. What is common in all these services is that they are not very heavy applications but rather simple open source technologies, which might be hacked and reused by anybody. These sites rely not only on open source but also use light weight scripting techniques like AJAX.
Scripting languages like java script and perl were once decried by the software engineers as pseudo languages. But now these very scripts have become the backbone of quick and simple web applications.

Another essential feature of Web2.0 is that it relies on harnessing collective intelligence. Therefore, these applications are updated and enhanced on a regular basis based on the updates received from the users. The main benefit for the users is that they do not have to wait for new releases to come. Most of these applications may stay in a beta stage for years together. Moreover, this kind of a structure prevents the user from getting stuck between different versions of an application. All users of MS Office know how cumbersome and painstaking it is to maintain different versions of the same document!

Companies like Amazon and Google at first started off with a basic database, and then went on refining it with constant inputs from their users. Eventually they have now created a database which is tailor made to suit their specific requirements.
The online image data website, Flickr is another example! This online database of images allows all users add multiple tags to the images. This enhances the value of the images as now people can dig a lot deeper into the database and find out just the right image which they were looking for!
Point to be noted here is that, unlike as it existed in the Web1.0 era, Flickr does not decide the classification of its database, but has given its users a complete free hand.

Advertising on the internet has also seen some radical changes in the Web2.0 era. Earlier, most online advertisers focused on the major (read very large) websites to promote their wares. And the prevalent mode of advertising was mostly banner ads and pop-ups.
But off late, with the advent of Google's adsense, small, non intrusive ads can find place in almost any web page. Thus not only the major websites but also the small sites which incidentally comprise the major chunk of the web can also be utilized.
Now-a-days any serious website owner would like to use the viral marketing techniques of adsense to popularize his site, rather than going in for the more conventional methods of advertising.

However, apart from the above mentioned features, what really sets Web2.0 apart is the rapid growth of blogs. Earlier, people used to have personal web pages on which they voiced their thoughts. But Blogs have given a new dimension to the concept of freedom of expression. Use of RSS feeds have given a further boost to blogging as now one can access the blogs of his choice right from the desktop of his computer!

Web2.0 also encourages the application builders to break free from the PC Platform and explore the yet mostly uncharted territories of hand held devices, and other communication channels. One such example is iTunes, which lets users download music files to their iPods using their PC as a local database.

Lastly, Web2.0 always lays stress on rich user interface. That time is not far away when we will be using most of the applications like spreadsheets, word processors, email and chatting softwares etc on the web. With the vastly improved internet connectivity of today, the concept of keeping local databases and applications is a passe; the future is in web based applications like Gmail and Writely!