After seeing an article on Slashdot concerning Writely, which is an online wordprocessing app that was bought by google, I decided to give it a spin. As with other online apps from Google it makes great use of AJAX in order to give the user an experience similar to something that’s on your machine locally. Here are some of the features:
Import from a number of sources including MS Office and OpenOffice
Export to the same formats as well as HTML and PDF
Collaborate on files with other users
Post entries to your blog after editing in Writely
Nothing is perfect however, and so there are flaws as well:
Must store files on Google’s server in order to always have them available
Overall I think it’s a good start. Apparently it’s been in an invite-only beta stage for about a year now. How often will I use it? Probably not very. When I’m on a computer I usually have MS Office or OpenOffice installed. The blog posting feature is nice but not really an improvement upon the built-in editor in WordPress and not as feature-rich as Windows Live Writer, which I’m using now.
To learn more, the original blog post located on Slashdot is located here.
[tags]word processing, online, google, OpenOffice, MS Office, Writely[/tags]
I’m posting this using the new beta version of Windows Live Writer. It’s a new, free blogging tool from Microsoft. So far it appears that it offers a few new features compared to say w.bloggar, such as post previews. Now I don’t mean the typical here’s your post in HTML form preview. It actually shows you a preview of your post ON YOUR PAGE. I think that’s a really neat feature. Another nice feature is the integration with Virtual Earth from Microsoft. From within Live Writer, you type in an address, zoom in, and insert your map or picture directly.
So in short I think that I’m going to give this a shot and start using it for my postings. For a more in-depth review, go read what Paul has to say.
Not much news to post about. Plus I haven’t had time to write about any neat things that I’ve found on the net lately. Mostly just trying to tweak some of the parts of the blog. For now I’ve made the del.icio.us feed a bit easier to read, integrated my Flickr photos, and am now displaying my favorite albums from Last.fm. So mostly I’m just trying to make it easier for everybody to see my geek side….
Found a neat GPL’d game today while reading Download Squad. It’s called Frets On Fire and basically it is a free, open-source version of Guitar Hero for your computer. There are both Windows and Linux versions available. In fact, I’ve mirrored the Windows version here for people that want it.
[tags]games, GPL, Guitar Hero, PC, Frets On Fire[/tags]
