Writely - The Web Word Processor

Writely is a Web 2.0 application that provides a fully web based word processing tool.

It provides a WYSIWYG interface with all the usual features you'd expect from a word processor, including a lot of stuff I haven't seen in similar web based tools before, eg undo/redo options, table support, etc.

It seems to use AJAX technologies to automatically save any changes you make, and provides an easy way of seeing and comparing all revisions of a document.

As it is a web application, it is able to support collaborative editing of documents. To do this, the document creator can invite other people (via email) to edit document, and they can all work on the document together. I have not tried this feature yet, but it implies that each person sees the other users edits when it refreshes every few seconds (or they click the refresh button). A handy indicator at the bottom of the screen lets you know if anyone else is also editing the document. It sounds pretty neat!

As it's web based, one important aspect is what you can do with the document once it's finish, and Writely seems to provide a whole host of options in this area. You can publish your document to a (Writely hosted) web page for everyone to view, export the HTML code to reproduce the document, export as a Microsoft Word file, or even publish directly to a blog. In fact I have used Writely to publish this post, and I don't plan on going back to the standard Blogger interface anytime soon! :)

There are loads of other features I've not looked at yet, such as Archiveing and tagging of documents, and RSS feeds, but so far I'm very impressed.

It's not going to replace Word in the business environment anytime soon, but for simple documents it provides all the features you need. And being web based gives it a number of advantages: real time collaboration, access form any location, etc. that I'm sure will create a huge user base!

Don't press the RED button....

Scoble linked to this site, and I couldn't help posting about it!

It's one of those old pointless sites, but it made me laugh :)

Yahoo joins the 2nd generation mapping game!

Yahoo have recently joined the like of Google and Microsoft by launching the beta of their new online mapping service.
Unlike the big two however, they have decided to use Flash for their application rather than the basic AJAX approach.

I don't think using Flash is a problem (as nearly every web user has the plugin installed!), but the yahoo interface does not seem as 'snappy' to me as the other ones out there!

I find it interesting to see the different emphasis the companies are taking. For example, the new Yahoo service doesn't appear to include overhead satellite imagery (as far as I can see), but seems to be better at driving directions than the others.
You can add as many stops as you want in the driving directions by simply entering each address in term and hitting go! I also like the way you can show all the 'direction step' pictures together (as opposed to one at a time with Google).

Some other neat things with this Yahoo site is the fact that everything you do automatically updates the URL in the browser's address bar, removing the need to click a button to get a 'permalink' for a map!
They also have a neat 'Live Traffic' tickbox to immediately show traffic information on the map. I know this sort of thing is available for the others via third party 'mashups', but this is the first time I've seen it built in directly!
There's also a 'Send to Phone' link which seems interesting, but seeing as this is a US only service (as usual :( ) I've not been able to try it out!!

So overall it seems a pretty good application with some neat features, but I think I still prefer some of the others! If only you could get one with the best points of all three! :)
Of course its all a bit of a mute point really, as Google is STILL the only one available here in the UK!!

While I'm on the subject of Google Maps UK, they have made some changes in the past month or so that improve the interface a bit! Firstly when your not looking at directions, the map now expands to fill the full width of the screen (a bit like Microsoft's VE), making more map area visible.
Secondly, when you search for a location, in the popup box you now have the option to set that as your default start location when using the application in the future. (Again I think they've copied this from a VE feature)
And finally, they've fixed it so that when the directions are long, you can scroll through them without loosing the map off the top of the screen!

AJAX Desktops

OK, so I've not written much lately, but what with working, watching TV, and reading books I just haven't got round to it! :)

Anyway, AJAX is still one of the buzzwords of the moment, and there are a lot of so called AJAX Desktops coming out at the moment, including Microsoft's recent announcement of live.com.

This appears to be their official version of the start.com site that I've mentioned previously, and is in direct competition with the likes of Google, Yahoo, Netvibes (my favourite), ProtoPage, Zoozio etc.

These are all trying to become your browser homepage, and provide options to customize the content that is displayed on them. For now the main feature seems to be adding rss feeds to show the information you want (I'm sure you'll all want to add http://gerardsmyth.blogspot.com/atom.xml :) ) which is pretty neat, but I think its the stuff that Microsoft are calling 'Gadgets' that can make these pages really useful.

I think when these pages start showing email, to do lists, calendars, bookmarks, custom notes etc along with the feeds content they will become really useful Some of these features are already available, with Netvibes being the closest I think, but Microsoft making the live.com API available will really increase the number of gadgets available for it I reckon!

There's still gonna be a few issues to sort out though.
Firstly screen space. When you start adding a few components to any of these pages, you quickly run out of space. I think they are gonna need to implement some kind of 'page' system at some point.
Another issue is you never get the history of your feeds. When you load it up you get the first 5 or so posts in each feed, but anything older than this is not available. So if you don't log on for a day you could be missing a lot of important information and not even know it!

So I think there is still lots that can be done to improve these services, but their development is happening very quickly, and it sure is gonna be interesting to see what comes next!

Einstein writes what you want!!!

This is a pretty cool site, although rather pointless :)

Just enter whatever text you want, and it will create an image showing Einstein writing it!!

(Link from Robert Scoble - and as mentioned in his comments, The Generator Blog has a whole load of similar things!)