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Writing On The Web
I hated to write when I was a kid. I couldn't do it very well. I'd hold the pencil really tight, press so hard that I ripped the page, and my hand would cramp up before the first paragraph was finished.
I never really outgrew that problem. My handwriting stinks as anyone who has seen it can attest to. And I can't stand to write with a pen or pencil.
The typewriter was a godsend when I finally took typing in high school. I was never a great typist, but at least I could write without physical pain. But I never got particularly good at whiteout and tape to fix the errors I made on a regular basis.
It was the computer that really opened up writing for me. I could easily edit. I could write the way I wanted to; stream of consciousness followed by edits, lots of them.
I've written with a word processor on a computer almost exclusively for the past 25 years. I've used WordPerfect and Word for the most part. I mastered WordPerfect in undergraduate school (reveal codes!) and partially paid my way through grad school teaching my classmates how to use it and Lotus 1-2-3.
I've written so many documents in Word and WordPerfect over the years and I know these programs like the back of my hand.
But something odd has happened to me lately. I don't want to write in a desktop software application anymore and I don't want to save my documents to a local drive.
I am sure it's blogging that's done it to me. But I want to write online. In a browser. I want to save my work in the cloud. And share the work with others both as a publisher and a collaborator.
I have started to use Writely instead of Word and I don't miss the power of Word one bit. It's liberating to get away from all those features and funcitons to be honest.
From pencil and paper to the web in 40 years. It's gotten better each time I've moved to a new medium. Thank god for technology.
Comments (15) | Posted September 12, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
a while ago you asked what comes next - becasue that is what USV is going to invest in- perhaps you just nailed it- its all about new UI methods and technologies. you want to edit in the cloud now - what about in five years?
Posted by: james governor | Sep 12, 2006 7:02:44 AM
I havent been around as long, but I have started to feel the same way. I dont want to create data anymore, unless I can access it from any desktop in the world. Using FolderShare, and Writely, Bloglines and gMail, now Im almost totaly mobile without any real hit on productivity.
Its only going to get better from here too...
Posted by: PRoales | Sep 12, 2006 8:41:54 AM
Interesting to see GEMAYA's involvement in this as well. I think Google's invested in Writely, and Microsoft's Office Live promises could be a sign that this will infact shift shortly. 37 Signals is doing a lot of work in the "save your information in a cloud" erm... cloud...(?) ass well. The issue I came across when looking into this was whether or not larger organisations mind putting some information in the cloud, or if its just a you and me and james makes three type tool.
Posted by: Farhan | Sep 12, 2006 8:45:36 AM
yeah but no technology will ever better the (ahem) efficacy of a new prospective lover scrawling a phone number on a cocktail napkin. ;)
Posted by: steve | Sep 12, 2006 9:37:43 AM
I'm a big fan of Writely as well and promote it when I get the chance. The other day at a work dinner of my wife's I spoke with the IT expert at her library. I figured Writely would be a perfect thing to offer because the lack of the need to have a disk or flash drive to save your work as a patron. Also it's free from the library's perspective.
The response was a privacy one - I don't trust my files being kept online.
Posted by: Rob Deichert | Sep 12, 2006 9:48:18 AM
I like writely, but I really can't write without an outliner. I am totally stream of consciousness. The way I pull my stuff into shape is to drag around the pieces into a structure. When writely adds an outliner, I probably wont turn back.
Posted by: Hank Williams | Sep 12, 2006 10:06:43 AM
Is that where you want to keep your term sheet edits as well? ;-) I believe there's still a few categories of content that most of us would not want in the cloud.
My concern is always more about the Web search engines inadvertently (or not) indexing this stuff and making it publicly available w/o my knowledge or after it's too late. That's not likely to happen w/my PC content as I only use a local search engine (Copernic) there.
Posted by: P-Air | Sep 12, 2006 1:15:36 PM
I've become a big Writely fan, too. Best part is that I can edit from any computer anywhere, and share with anyone I want. It's really liberating. Not sure if all my work can be this way (see debate at GigaOm and Infectious Greed) but I wish it was. And secure, of course.
Posted by: Pamela | Sep 12, 2006 1:38:03 PM
What if you want to work on a plane, or anywhere else where internet access isn't available? What if you are at a client site, and you want to edit a document in the lobby before going into a meeting.
Writely is cute, but not for business people.
Pete
Posted by: Pete | Sep 12, 2006 1:43:26 PM
I mostly use Notepad to start my writing simply because it is so fast and I can see the whole thing before sending. If I am consciencious about what I am saying I'll send it through Word just make sure my spelling is right. When I write typos, I don't see them until I put them through a speller checker.
Posted by: Bob Boydston | Sep 12, 2006 1:54:57 PM
pete
i am a business person and i use writely a lot.
i think the proper statement would be "writely isn't for all business use cases".
fred
Posted by: fred | Sep 12, 2006 2:17:52 PM
I am a person trying to startup several business, hoping one will stick. One of the businesses is fresh off the press with a new assembled team of developers, and it will answer any problem that is discussed in this blog entry, or the problems brought up by individual posters.
The vast majority of people enjoy web-based applications for one main reason - their data is available on ANY system. What we need is data centralization, not disparity. Nobody will benefit if they need a "hard drive" for Writely, a "hard drive" for Zoho, and a "hard drive" for Salesforce - it's just not going to work.
What we are planning on developing is essentially two components:
1) A set of API tools and protocols, combined with a web-storage router
2) A server-side application and SDK that will allow business to run web-based applications in-house (and tunnel applications/storage out to employees via WWW)
If you can't see the benefit yet, think about this:
Amazon S3
Google GDrive
Microsoft MDrive
Comcast CDrive
Using our tools, all of these storage applications would operate on the same protocol. A user would only have to login at ONE (1) interface, and they would automatically be routed to their correct web-storage drive. Integration with MS Office? No problem. Integration with Writely? No problem. Access your data when and where you want.
In the next decade, the following would be possible, and our system would enable it:
1) Cellular phone platform that uses a back layer to access "external storage and applications"
2) PDA's that can interact with data directly from the storage drive
3) Stereo's that stream your music via a simple login
4) DVR's that store your content at a web-storage facility
Storage drives are the future, and thin-client computing will be the future for basic level computing (cell phones, PDA's, embedded electronics, and productivity).
Posted by: Robert Dewey | Sep 12, 2006 2:47:21 PM
Completely with you on using Word increasingly infrequently. Any offline or "extended session" writing is being done in a plain vanilla text editor and then copy / pasted into the wiki or the blog. Rich local apps now are for presentations and spreadsheets, not text.
Posted by: Michael Sippey | Sep 12, 2006 8:51:17 PM
Rick - good thought-provoking post. I think the best answer is... it depends... on what kind of writing you're doing. I'm working on a book right now in MS Word 2007 and surely wouldn't want to do that in Writely or another online editor. But correspondence, working drafts I'm collaborating with others on, and items it's handy to have readily avaiable in a tab in my browser window are all ideal candidates for an online tool like Writely, ThinkFree Office, or Zoho Writer (all of which have their merits).
The new Windows Live Writer is a very slick tool for crafting blog posts offline (as are Blogjet and Qumana). OneNote and EverNote are great capture tools for grabbing rich content from a variety of sources including the web for future reference.
I use a combination of these tools for the many kinds of research and writing I do and would feel poorer for not having the flexibility to choose the right tool for the job.
Posted by: Marc Orchant | Oct 5, 2006 2:01:22 PM
I started using Writely recently and I must say, I love it. Perhaps I could say it's a little bloated for me, having used text editors exclusively in all my 'computer life.'
If I were to pick a favorite feature of Writely, that would be the 'autosave' thing.
I live in the "other part of the world" ... with an ADSL service that's slower than a dialup I used to use in Europe. So the autosave feature is a real time saver for me -- I don't have to be sitting back waiting for the page to reload everytime I click the save button.
But my primary writing tool has been, and still is, the Bluefish text editor. Oh, and I've used Ubuntu for quite some time now.
Posted by: George Appiah | Oct 29, 2006 12:55:50 PM
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