Introducing Writely!

It's not spectacular. It's not complicated. Why, it's not even unique any more, but it is an example of the success of simplicity, and for the vast majority of document authors, it's good enough to continue attracting more and more attention.

It's Google's Writely, the word processor anyone can use with nothing but a web connection and a browser. Documents on a budget is probably enough for students and people with a lot to do and only a little to spend, but there's far more to Writely than just documents.

Writely was invented on the web, and its feature set is constructed around web-based publishing and collaboration. It has multiple-user features, including change tracking and document permissions. Writely can publish to a variety of blogging platforms as well, including Movable Type, Blogware, and so on. Writely supports most popular document formats, and can export to PDF or RTF and can also be used to author web pages.

Documents can be published as RSS feeds, and tagged just like blog posts, and can also be uploaded from other platforms for editing, even through an e-mail interface. Because Writely is web-based, any time the user logs on, no matter which computer they are using, all of their documents are right there, stored on the server.

This particular iteration of Web 2.0 is a great example of "good enough for most people." Writely is a simple, straightforward, clean and easy-to-use word processor that is perfect for those who just need New, Write, Edit, Print, Save, and not much else.