Web2.0 :
Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.
I think I spend too much time on the web. This occurs to me when I excitedly tell one of my friends about Web2.0 or Ajax web applications and they just kind of look at me with that blank stare I get when I talk to them about existentialism or late 19th century idealism or the implications of emergence in complex systems. It just blows my mind when people are completely unaware of the new developments in next generation web apps These new services like digg, gmail, del.icio.us, Google Maps, flickr, stumblupon, tiddlywiki , Wikipedia, (& many others ) are not just new technologies, but a new view of how to use technology. This view says that the end-user is the expert. It is letting organization emerge naturally, in all its forms both technologically and socially, instead of some company trying to control it. In brief, Web 2.0 is a further development in web technology that shifts the web from a static textual medium to a more dynamic, richly interactive and social computing platform. In Web 2.0 the internet is becoming the Operating System.
One of the most exciting developments in Web2.0 for me is the development of online word processors that utilize some form of Ajax or other type of advanced web programming. I lump these services together under the tag “ajaxOffice ,” (1) and that is the term I use to describe these services. This may not be the most precise term for all of these services, but it captures the essence of new web services replacing desktop software, and it sounds much better than “web2.0 Office.” These web services all have their strengths,weaknesses and quirks. Most of them get the job done in terms of processing text via an internet connection. Three out of the six deliver word processing that is compatible with MS Word, OpenOffice, and exportable to pdf. Three of them also offer RSS feeds for the documents. From what I have seen it seems like each service is targeting slightly different user groups. Writely & Zoho Writer aim for the web savvy crowd, Thinkfree is aiming at the corporate types, gOffice seems to target the computer/web beginners. These apps have been tried out on Firefox 1.0.7 on Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu Linux 5.10. In the following post I will review (in no particular order) gOffice, Thinkfree Writer, Writely, Zoho Writer, WriteBoard, and EyeOS. All of these services are relatively new and are adding features all the time. I will just focus on word processing in this review, since that is the one application shared by all of these services.
gOffice
Philosophy:
“This website produces high quality output with almost no effort in part because we
are careful not to provide too many options.” -http://www.goffice.com/
gOffice has some interesting features like free text you can use as a template to get you started on whatever it is you are writing. There are hundreds of these entries from apologies to sales letters, and even creative writing. One of the things I liked the most was that you can donate your own original text to the Free Text Library for others to use. There are ten free stationary templates you can use as the background for your text and they are attractive. There are also a variety of important settings you can change, such as skipping the page number on the first page and line spacing, but the philosophy behind gOffice is to not overwhelm the user with too many settings, which they do a nice job of. This philosophy is manifest in the document creation, which is unique, and could be described as a document creation wizard.
From their site :
Unlike conventional word processing programs, this browser-based application requires 3 steps to create a finished document, as follows:
Step 1 - Type document
Step 2 - Select letterhead
Step 3 - View document as finished PDF file
This unique way of creating documents can be a double edged sword however. I imagine it would be good for relative newcomers to computers or the internet, but for more experienced users it can feel a bit stifling, and cumbersome. I think I understand the concept and can see its use, but it would be better as an option instead of the only way to create a document. In fairness to gOffice, you can save documents before continuing to step three, and they actually offer “limitless storage” for documents, which is really nice. The problem for me is having to go through each step whether I want to or not to get a finished document, and also the limit of only being able to output your final document as a pdf. I also had a problem getting to the last step on my office (Windows) computer. Adobe Acrobat reader kept telling me it couldn’t open my file. On my home (Linux) computer I was able to get the pdf with out a problem.
Nice features:
- free text-sample text for many different situations
- free templates (10)
- you can donate your text to the free text library
- upload private letterhead
- important settings like skipping the page number on the first page are
- available, with others like document protection coming soon
- includes desktop publishing application
- unlimited online storage, according to the website
Not so nice:
- sign up process is cumbersome
- document creation feels forced and artificial-3 step process
- getting to online documents not intuitive
- can change font color but can’t highlight text
ThinkFree
Philosophy:
“ThinkFree Office is a suite of Microsoft® Office-compatible applications, which includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation graphics and file management software that all look, feel and behave just like Microsoft® Office. Additionally, ThinkFree Office is delivered and upgraded over the Internet, giving users an unprecedented level of computing choice and freedom.” http://www.thinkfree.com/register.jsp
Thinkfree has a lot going for it. It has word processing, spreadsheet and presentation applications. There is a web based dashboard called My Folders where you can Upload files, create folders, store up to 30 MB of documents, copy and paste files to other folders, delete files, move files, and send them (via email I assume, the service isn’t available as of 12/16/05). ThinkFree Write looks and behaves like a traditional desktop word processor. It even has the “Draw” toolbar just above the status bar on the bottom left of the window. All the features of a desktop word processor are there. The first time you open ThinkFree Write you have to download a Java applet, which can take a minute or two or three. It is supposed to be faster after this point because the applet is cached on your local machine. It does get faster, but not as fast as the strictly web based word processors or even the desktop word processors. On average, opening two different documents a total of six times, it took Thinkfree Writer about 28 seconds to open a document on my home computer with a broadband connection.(2) It took OpenOffice 2.0 about 5 seconds to open and 6 seconds for Word 2003 to open. One other thing I noticed, that was a bit surprising was that when I copied text from Writely into Thinkfree, font effects like bold, italics, color, and highlighting weren’t preserved. The only reason I mention this is because these effects were preserved in all the other services except for Writeboard and ThinkFree. This could be related to the OpenDocument Format (ODF) which Writely supports but Thinkfree does not , but I am not sure.
There are a lot of good things about this service. sign-up is easy, you can save to Word, OpenOffice and pdf. Misspelled words are automatically underlined, which makes it unique among these services, (although you can’t add words to a custom dictionary if the spell-checker doesn’t recognize the words). It also has an emergency backup feature so if ThinkFree terminates unexpectedly it will save a copy to your desktop, which actually happened to me and it did save a copy. Right-clicking is much more fruitful in Thinkfree as well, so when you right click a word there are many options to choose from. Besides the normal cut, copy & paste, there are menu items for Font, Paragraph, Bullets and Numbering and adding a hyperlink. ThinkFree Write is also integrated well with all the popular blog services and API’s, but when I tried to upload to my blog I got an error message.
Overall the minor glitches are far outweighed by what ThinkFree offers in terms of features, ease of use and polish. And although it is a bit slow at the start-line it is very robust at the finish.
Nice Features:
- sign up easy- 5 item form
- Word-processing, spreadsheet, presentation
- word processor is very responsive
- very feature rich
- save as pdf in the file menu
- will look the most familiar to MS Word users. Looks like a desktop program
- toolbars are attractive and have useful features shown by default
- automatically underlines misspelled words.
- has many right-click menu-items
- integrated well with popular blog applications
- includes spreadsheet & presentations applications
- emergency back-up to desktop
- after the first time the java applet is downloaded the loads very quickly (Average 28 Seconds)
Not so Nice Features:
- written in java, can be slow to load applet for the first time
- can only save copies on local computer
- will look the most familiar to MS Word users. Looks like a desktop program
- no rss support
- unable to post to Wordpress blog
Writley
Philosopy:
“Writely is not a carbon-copy of existing desktop solutions. Rather, Writely is an innovative, Web-centric word processor that leverages the connected nature of the Internet to provide online storage, editing, sharing and communication of documents - documents that users can now upload and save in multiple formats. ” source page
Writely is the hottest web word processor out there right now.It has many great features, a clean interface, and is very responsive. They are adding features all the time, and just recently added “Save as a PDF” feature, but as a paid service. According to Writely they plan on having a basic service remain free, with added features requiring a subscription.
The registration process is simple and fast, only your email twice and a password, and you are in. The dashboard is attractive and intuitive. You are presented with four tabs, Active Document, Starred Documents,Tagged Documents, and All Documents. The tagging feature is great, if a little clunky. With tags you assign your own personal categories to your documents. You can assign as many tags as you like. So instead of organizing with folders, you organize with tags. Tags are assigned via a drop down menu in the dashboard. The menu seems a bit unresponsive, and there is a lag between your click and the menu opening, and a lag between assigning a new or existing tag to a document and it actually appearing. This is a minor point, but after using del.icio.us for so long I guess tagging seems like it should be smoother. Documents can also be starred if they require special attention, and once you are done with a document it can be archived, and retrieved using the tags or in the All Documents Tab.
All the main word processing features are included in Writely. Styles, fonts, font size, bold and so on. You can also insert table, links, and bookmarks which are shortcuts to specific places within the document itself. Under the Actions menu you can among other things save as a Word, OpenOffice, RTF, or zip file. Saving as a pdf is a premium service, which to me doesn’t make too much sense with all the other free ways to save a document as a pdf already out there, but I suppose it would be nice to be able to do it from Writely.
Some of the other great features of Writely, which don’t conform to traditional word processors are the ability to share and collaborate documents with others, the auto-save feature, which actually saved me when Firefox unexpectedly closed on my Linux computer. One minor glitch with Writely on my Linux desktop is that whenever there is an auto-save the screen flickers. It seems to auto-save quite often, which is good, but the flicker gets to you after a while. There was no flicker with Firefox on Windows XP. There is a feature that keeps track of all the revisions you make and will let you revert to an older version if you choose. You can also subscribe via RSS to individual documents or to different categories (Active, Starred or All Documents) or even to tagged documents. This is a very nice feature. I was able to add my active documents to Netvibes and Google home page, and if you subscribe to a single document you also get the last five revisions as well. This feature has been changed somewhat since I started this review. a few days after I added the feeds to my readers they started showing up as “Restricted.” I emailed Writely and Jen from Writely got back to me really quick. It turns out that when you make your documents into RSS feeds, there is no way to keep them private, so in order to get an RSS feed for Writely document you have to make it public. You do this by goint to the Publish Tab and publish the document for everyone to see. Then you can get an RSS feed. One of the most useful features is the ability to publish Writely documents directly to your blog. They support Blogger, MovableType,Metaweb and a whole list of others. Blogger,MoveableType and Metawebblog can be added from a drop-down menu. Wordpress and others can be added by clicking a link to get a URL to the API. I was able to add my Wordpress Blog with out a problem, and it worked great. There is also a good user forum that has a lot of tips and information; I learned how to set a bookmark up here. There is a help page too.
Late update: Now there are even third party add-ones to Writely. This is the first one I know of : Quick Note Bookmarklet for Writely. I couldn’t get it to work for me, but it is a sign that the del.icio.us effect may be underway for Writely.
One other minor limitation is that you can’t right click to copy,cut or paste. This isn’t terrible, because you can ctrl-c,x, or v, to access these functions, but if you are used to working by right clicking and copy/pastingit takes a while to get used to. Overall Writely is a great service and I think it deserves the buzz. I just hope they keep the main service free.
Nice Features:
- sign-up is easy- 3 item form
- auto save
- eature-rich
- easily collaborate
- easily post to many different blogs
- add “Active Document” RSS feed
- add specific document RSS feed with last 5 revisions
- save as Word, RTF, OpenOffice, or Zip file
Not so Nice Features:
- only one right-click menu item-”manage Bookmarks” and spell check
- page flickers with auto-save feature on Linux with Firefox. No flicker with XP
- pro with Firefox
- “Save as PDF” a premium service
Zoho Writer
Philosophy:
“…an online Word Processor to Create, Format, Store & Share Documents
online.” -http://www.zohowriter.com/Home.do
Zoho Writer is a word processor that shares the basic philosophy of Writely. It just recently went from an alpha release to a beta. The sign-up is easy, the interface is sleek and friendly. You can share documents and tag them. When you first log in you are presented with your main page with a list of your documents on the left and the latest document already open. There has been quite a drastic change in the look and feel of Zoho Writer from the alpha to beta version. It used to look and feel very similar to Writely, but not any more. I don’t see to much in terms of new word processing features, but the basic interface seems more responsive and AJAX oriented.
When you sign-in now on the left of the screen there is a sidebar that has all your documents. Above the sidebar are buttons to open new documents, import or delete documents. The sidebar itself has My Documents, My Templates, Shared Documents and Trash. The main screen opens to the latest document you have worked on. This is where the editing is done. The main window can be easily expand to fill the whole screen or shrunk down so the sidebar can be seen. From her you can tag it, post it to a blog, see a print preview, share it, email it , export it, see a history of your revisions, and also see a list of recent documents. The Export option lets you export as a Word, OpenOffice or PDF file, all are free and work good. All of the common word processor features are included here, and a few less common like subscript and superscript. Nice.
Also, they now have a good selection of items when you righ click on the document: cut,copy paste; justify left,center right, and full; and a remove html tag element option. Another nice feature is the ability to email a document into your Zoho Writer account. So you can write a document say in Open Office then not only save it to your desktop but email it to Zoho Writer for online access. There are a lot of good reasons for this, and hopefully this will show up in other services too.
The post to Blog Feature only works for Blogger and MetaWeblog API’s. MoveableType is not supported, and apparently many other common Blogs use the MoveableType API, like WordPress, so consequentially I could not connect to my blog. But I would guess this is an upcoming feature. There is also a user forum for Zoho Witer, although there are not so many posts yet.
Overall I am very impressed with Zoho Writer, it is very close to Writely already in terms of features, and (like Writely) will be adding features all the time.
Nice Features:
- nice interface
- can upload documents by emailing them
- share documents
- allow/disallow editing by others
- supports tags
- save as Word Doc, PDF, OpenOffice Document
- create a javascript to roll your published documents on website/blog
- right click menu has many items
Not so Nice Features:
- Limited support for blogs. Supports Blogger,Typepad, Livejournal
- Edit page area is a window within the browser that has its own scroll bar-
- makes navigation in a document a little frustrating by having to scroll both
- scroll bars to get where you want
Writeboard
Philosophy:
“Writeboards are sharable, web-based text documents that let you save every edit, roll back to any version, and easily compare changes. Write solo or collaborate with others.” -
http://www.writeboard.com/
Writeboard is provided by 37Signals, the makers of BaseCamp a web based project management service. The idea behind Writeboard seems to be to provide a quick easy way to write short text. The features are pretty sparse and formatting is done through text- think HTML without the <>. I don’t like that there is no user dashboard where I can get to my saved documents. You either have to remember your document title and password, or look up an email you get when you create a Writeboard. Also, Writeboard lacks spell-check.
There are nice features, like being able to keep all the revisions of a text, collaborating with others, and subscribing via RSS, but overall this could be more closely compared to Notepad than Word. If you just want quick and simple this may be right for you. Also if you use Basecamp this could be nice, since it is integrated with that service.
Nice Features:
- quick and easy sign up
- good for short text needed fast
- subscribe via RSS
- good collaboration
- keeps good track of revisions
Not so Nice Features:
- not so many traditional word processing features
- formatting text with text tags
- getting back to a saved document not so easy- no dashboard
- no spell-check
EyeOS
Philosophy:
“EyeOS is a free, cross-platform Personal Content Manager System based upon the style of a Desktop Operating System. The base package includes the whole Operating System structure and ten apps, as a Calendar, a File Manager, a Text Editor, an Internal Messenger, a Browser and a Calculator. EyeOS’s is thought to provide a complete, scalable and free (GPL Licensed) Organization and Work System. It’s scalable, so everyone can port an existing PHP app to EyeOS and create a meta-package for installing it.” (fromhttp://www.eyeos.org/index.php?section=Whatis )
The philosophy of EyeOS is perhaps the most ambitious of all the services reviewed here. The goal of EyeOS is not just to create an internet based word processor, but a whole internet based operating system. EyeOS is an open source project that has only been released in August of 2005. In that short time it has already won praise as a “HotPick” from Linux Format Magazine , and a “5/5 Softpedia Pick” fromSoftpedia.com . In the short time it has been out it is already a robust and feature packed application.
On the downside, right now you need your own server with PHP 4.2.0 or better to host EyeOS. If you don’t have access to your own server you can email me for an account on my server to check it out. (I won’t share your email with anyone.)
The word processor in EyeOS is called EyeEdit and is described as a text editor, but it is really a full featured word processor, (much more feature rich than Writeboard for example). It has all the features you would expect from a word processor, from choosing font to font color and highlighting. You can insert links, images and tables; undo and redo; position text left,right or center, etc. I was surprised when I copied this post from Writely into EyeEdit that all the formatting including font color, highlighting and links were preserved. Some of the other nice features include being able to save it as an EyeEdit document and as an HTML document. You can also make it a public document so other people on your EyeOS installation can view it and edit it.
The one thing it really lacks is spell-check. Hopefully it will be added as time goes on. Some other features that would be icing on the cake for EyeOs would be support for Word, OpenOffice and PDF. One last bug: before you save an document in EyeEdit, make sure you name it, otherwise it will disappear.
There are a ton of cool things in EyeOS but eyeEdit alone would make it worth setting up on you server. Probably the neatest thing is called EyeApps, which enable you to download and install programs into your EyeOS. Right now you can view a list of the EyeApps that have been contributed by the community of users ateyeapps.org .There are a lot of games, a paint program, and a new IRC client. At some point perhaps someone can write an EyeApp spellchecker. There is a lot of potential in EyeOS, and because it is open source we don’t have to worry about it being gobbled up and ruined by some big corporation- very nice feature. The next release of EyeOS, release 0.9 is supposed to make EyeOS fully Ajax based. It is supposed to include a new blog feature and improvements to the EyeApps feature. It is due out by the end of December. You can support the eyeOS project here->
Nice Features:
- feature rich word processor
- responsive
- lots of other services/applications included
- collaborate with other people on the system
- open-source
- write own EyeApps
Not so Nice Features:
- no spell check
- need your own server, (or a friend with a server)
- make sure you title your documents
Conclusion:
I honestly like all of these services, but at this point Writely is my favorite in terms of features and ease of use. It is responsive, lets me do what I want and it is integrated well with my blog. Despite all the hype these services offer evidence that Web2.0 is more than a fad or buzzword. Because word processors are so useful they give Web2.0 some serious heft. They aren’t alone. In a recent comparison by Nature magazine a panel of experts found that the Encyclopedia Britannica had on average three errors per article. Wikipedia the online encyclopedia written by volunteers had on average four. The emergent properties of the world wide web seem to be amplified by Web2.0. The emphasis on collaboration, bottom up organization, trust in others, and free flow of information all add to the excitement of this particular moment in time, and is what makes projects/services like Writely and especially EyeOS so compelling. They add a sense of anticipatory excitement to using the web. A sense of many divergent threads coming together, like something much larger going on in the depths and it’s getting closer and closer to the surface. Web2.0 may not be perfect, but then again termite mounds in Northern Australia are not perfect either, but I imagine they are pretty cool to termites. (4)
Notes
1. ajaxOffice is also the name of this open source project that should be live soon. None of the links (FAQ, Blog,etc.) work at present but it looks like it will be
good. They have a mailing list here. I honestly don’t remember if I saw this project which inspired my tag or saw the project after the tag. Either case is entirely possible. I do know it sounds like a great project.
2. With a high of 50 seconds and a low of 15 seconds.
3. See Link, Link, Link
4. See Talbot, Michael “Beyond the Quantum” 1986, MacMillan, New York.
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