Writely

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My brother alerted me to Writely, an online, collaborative word processor which can read or save documents in both Word (boo! hiss! down with the Evil Empire!) and OpenOffice.org (Viva la open source!) formats. (You can even post the finished document to your blog!) Seems like something that could be a useful tool.

It’s now in open beta. When it goes final, the basic service will be free but certain bells and whistles will be reserved for a paid “pro” membership or some such.

  • http://www.themidway.com Michael

    For the record, your brother’s endorsement of this product does not represent an agreement with your views on Microsoft, just as my support of Microsoft does not represent any rebuff to open source.

    =+)

    Isn’t there room for both in this life?

  • http://www.themidway.com Michael

    For the record, your brother’s endorsement of this product does not represent an agreement with your views on Microsoft, just as my support of Microsoft does not represent any rebuff to open source.

    =+)

    Isn’t there room for both in this life?

  • http://lakeneuron.com John

    The whole point of the post was that Writely used both formats, so I don’t think I implied anything about your opinion of one or the other.

    I’m actually less concerned about Microsoft now than I was a year or two ago. It seemed at the time that they really had so much power over technology that it just bothered me. It really did feel like a functional monopoly. Now, things seem much more competitive — not only from open source projects but from companies like Google and Yahoo! But it’s still fun to poke at Microsoft (and I’m not exactly the only person who’s ever done so).

  • http://lakeneuron.com John

    The whole point of the post was that Writely used both formats, so I don’t think I implied anything about your opinion of one or the other.

    I’m actually less concerned about Microsoft now than I was a year or two ago. It seemed at the time that they really had so much power over technology that it just bothered me. It really did feel like a functional monopoly. Now, things seem much more competitive — not only from open source projects but from companies like Google and Yahoo! But it’s still fun to poke at Microsoft (and I’m not exactly the only person who’s ever done so).