This is a test document written with the tool provided at www.writely.com. It’s a pretty impressive “Web 2.0″ word processor that has what seems to be a multitude of different ways to collaborate on and share documents. The application is in open beta, meaning anyone can sign up and give it a try.
One of the cool features I’ve discovered is the ability to post to almost any blog, hosted or on your own
server, due to the use of standard blog API’s. The text editor seems to be a jump beyond the standard WordPress fare, like having a spell checker by default.
My only concern comes to light when privacy is examined. This tool writely, that’s owned by google, I imagine ascribes to the mantra of its parent company, “don’t be evil”, and for using it for writing anything besides blog posts, say collaborating on a business plan, developing a case brief, or writing about democracy as a dissident in China are all prime examples of when if a government was in need of information and wielding its power without concern for privacy rights could come down hard on a tool/company like writely and they would likely spew forth any and all documents that were asked for. As with any new application/internet technology only time will tell, but for now I’m going to consider it my main blog post editor as it fulfills many of the features I was looking for in a small snappy web client.