Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Google Enters Web-Office Market

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looking-forward-to-online-clippy dept.

jaiva writes "Google's official blog tells us that Google has acquired Writely, a collaborative word processor." From the article: "To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it's far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we're not accepting new registrations until we've moved Writely to Google's software architecture. If you're interested in giving us a try, we hope you'll get on the waitlist so we can let you know when you'll be able to try out Writely."

7 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. Login Info by ZiakII · · Score: 3, Informative

    Typical slashdoter... not checking www.bugmenot.com .... Try this

    Login: boston@dodgeit.com
    Password: Boston

    Enjoy! (Yes I tested it unless some troll changed the password. )

    1. Re:Login Info by ZiakII · · Score: 3, Informative

      whoops password is boston

    2. Re:Login Info by Sima · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nope, don't work, I got this:

      Sign In to Writely
      The e-mail address and password you
      entered do not match any users we know of.

  2. Best features by Beuno · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the most impressive features of Writely is that it integrates perfectlly with Word and OpenOffice.
    From their FAQ:

            * Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch).
            * Use our simple WYSIWYG editor to format your documents, spell-check them, etc.
            * Invite others to share your documents (by e-mail address).
            * Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
            * View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.
            * Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
            * Download documents to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF*, HTML or zip.
            * Post your documents to your blog.

  3. Writely pros + cons by Damana+Mathos · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've used Writely for about 5 months now. Obviously I like it, but what I see as the pros + cons are:

    Pros
    * Good, clean user interface
    * Access documents from anywhere (main reason I use it)
    * Don't lose your documents if your PC dies
    * Sharing documents is good when planning things in groups

    Cons
    * Privacy issues
    * Not as feature rich as Word

    Privacy wasn't really a concern of mine, mainly because the documents I work on aren't highly confidential -- I'm not writing down my PIN numbers and not plotting evil plans. ;) If you're not doing those, then it just becomes a trade-off between privacy and convenience.

    Features I'd like them to add include: user-defined styles, ability to copy/paste graphics, and improved table layouts. So far though, it's pretty good.

    In other words, check it out once it's open again. ;)

    --
    MyLinkVault - online bookmarks with a fast drag-and-dr
    1. Re:Writely pros + cons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      While Writely is down you can have a look at www.e-nnovate.com -- they offer some similar functionality.

  4. Coming in Moodle 1.6 by MichaelPenne · · Score: 2, Informative

    From Mark Aliers team. Gives you a wiki with access control, wysiwyg, and all that cool wiki stuff.

    Actually there is a wysiwyg wiki in Moodle now, but the new one is better:-).

    Get the beta here, (get 1.6 for the wiki) :

    And tell Google to hire us all, I mean shouldn't google have an LMS too?