Survey.*
Explanation
writely word processing and collab
Writely is a full featured word processor constructed as an online app. It
also has a publishing feature and collaboration/editing facilties with
version tracking. The collab features
show more...
don’t appear as feature rich as writeboard but the word processor which has
many of the features we expect form a desktop word processor.
All my comments re: 37Signals apps applies here: why move something that
works perfectly well at the local into a proprietary online system. If you
are working alone you write in word and upload for editing in a wiki with
decent version control. If you are writing in collaboration write in a wiki
installed on server you have some control over….
Many of the sites that serve these apps suggest that the principle benefit
of writing online is having the work accesible on numerous computers (as
long as they are connected to the network) but given I write locally on a
lap top and rarely use anything else I am not sure what I would achieve….
Of course collab features are nice and that’s why I can see the value of a
wiki…but not a proprietary system whose longevity is all but assured…
There is a tendency to call any web-based app web2.0 but if this shift is
indeed a major upgrade then I hope it does more than strip back my desktop
apps to make them fit as net based models and offer a little more in terms of
networked porosity or other forms of generative potency than what we are
seeing in the bulk of these sites.
There are ways that we could radically shift the network dynamic of a
writerly environment but writely doesn’t achieve these…
Plenty of ideas about how we could develop a writerly collaboration
app…writely.com is ideed missing more than one letter if this is what you are after ..I’ll write those ideas sometime…but not under the guise of this survey. If you’re a developer and interested then email me or comment…
show less...
Tags:
