Word processing, preparing documents etc. was, and is, something you do on your PC, from the comfort of your own computer. You’ve got everything around you, your copy of Word or Works – whatever tickles your fancy.

This site was brought to my attention this morning, having launched privately back in August of this year. The reason is came to my attention is that they just announced support for the OpenOffice format. I’m big on OpenSource software and all the things ‘it’ can do for the greater good.

Writely is a web word processor that provides simple and secure document collaboration and publishing on the web using only the browser.

What exactly does Writely do?

• Upload Word documents, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch).
• Use our simple WSIWYG 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’ complete 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, HTML or zip.
• Post your documents to your blog.

It’s best feature has to be the collaboration factor, which is done in almost realtime. You can share any documents that you like with your friends, you are sent a notice online when someone is editing one of your documents and the changes are reflected every few seconds in front of your eyes.

While its in beta, its free. There is a 500k limit per document which is pretty good, and you’re allowed up to 2mb per embedded image, outside of the document size.

Anyway, if you’re interested, it doesn’t hurt to click and visit Writely!

Earlier in the week, possibly only yesterday (time has no meaning any more!) I posted that Google Base had launched. Upon delving into the depths of base and exploring existing content as well as my own little profile page it occurred to me that this could get pretty big.

Perhaps, a little too big. Fair enough, content can exist for the 31 days, but if every Google user submitted one article alone you’ve got a wave of information to sift through to get something worthwhile.

In an interesting article I read this morning at ZDNet, I would like to just highlight the following which I completely agree with.

Google could in fact be building the world’s largest database of structured shite.

Well worth a read for those of you interested in Google Base. Click here for the article…

While out doing the browse on the tea break, this little ditty surfaced. Nice take on the whole Kill Bill theme… but moreso, it provides 13 reasons to switch to Firefox In summary….

1. You’ll only see porn when you want to.
2. Your kids will only see porn when they want to
3. Your computer won’t spend its free time telling the world about Viagra soft tabs.
4. Mozilla doesn’t inflate prices and use the money to vaccinate children in Africa.
5. If we knew web designers would hurl themselves off it, we wouldn’t have put the Golden Gate bridge so close to San Francisco.
6. Keep squinting and your eyes will get stuck like that, stupid
7. It will make Bill Gates soooooooooo mad.
8. Mozilla has never made a talking paperclip.
9. Ritalin is fun, but A.D.D. is not.
10. It’s like switching from dating a 14-year-old to dating an 18-year-old.
11. Reduce your weekly family & friends tech support load to 8 hours.
12. More effective than throwing pies.
13. Because the Department of Justice Lacks Balls.

For the matching descriptions and explanations, which are worth a read in themselves, check out Kill Bill’s Browser

A busy week for Google, so it seems. But when is it never busy in that place?

Their latest offering is Google Base (beta). Another free service if you’ve got a Google account or gMail address. What are they running with this time? “Help The World Find Your Content”.

To be perfectly honest, its hard enough to find my own site on Google. I can find my ICQ profile from 1998. I can find my deviantART print store. No sign of my domain there. But thats another matter altogether. What I’m more interested in is that if people keep continuing submitting their sites to Google and you can’t find them – how on earth are you expected to find that Chicken Korma recipe you wrote yesterday, or that ad you posted looking for a temp for the office?

Social tagging!

Is Base a jazzed up version of del.icio.us?

Google Base enables you to add attributes that better describe your content so that users can easily find it

So I tested it out myself. Base allows you to submit ‘people profiles’, so I throw Ken McGuire up in a profile… a short while later, bang – there I am. Search ‘Ken McGuire’ on Base and you’ll find me! Search on Google and you’ve no chance.

What kind of items can you put into Google Base?

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

At least it works in the sense that your details are published almost immediately. Whatever you post, does expire after 31 days max, which is good for keeping content fresh – though you can choose to reactivate it at a later date. It’s supposed to integrate with Froogle but if it can help improve a search result on Google then I’m all for it!

Update:

I’m impressed with the relative speed and ease at which material goes up on Google Base. They are touting it as a great research tool for students, parents etc (isn’t that what the Internet is!?), I just hope it doesn’t become overcrowded with junk. Want to see my little entry…. click here.

So yeah…

eBay are finally opening up their API’s eh? No more charges on developers looking to access them. Good news for certain projects? Good news for certain developers? Or have eBay finally woken up to the realisation that allowing that extra openness is just good for business.

The upside for eBay?

• More sales, more conversions, more exposure…
• New ideas, new business opportunities for the great marketplace that is!

The downside? Well, I’m not sure if its a downside at all but it does mean for certain that there’s gonna be an awful lot of new auction sites popping up – but its all good for eBay. They’ve enough money to throw around these days anyway, buying VeriSign, buying Skype…. at least they’re giving something back to the community even if they’ll surely reap the rewards for it now!

WebServices are the way forward, there’s surely no doubting that. Having been involved in developing simple web services over the last 12 months you get to see first hand the benefit of having them in place. Amazon do it, Flickr do it, eBay had been doing it – but at least now they’re doing it for free!

Interesting times ahead….