I've been taking a look at Buzzword, an online word processing tool that I first heard about through Cammy Bean. Now I've tried quite a few online apps that try to do what M/S Office does and they have been rather disappointing, but not this one. Now obviously it doesn't have the functionality of Word, but then that's not the point. The point is that I can create and edit the simpler documents I have to work on (which is a high proportion) from wherever I am in the world and on any computer, with all my work stored securely online. It doesn't (yet) support styles, which I use all the time, but it does work very smoothly because it's built in Flash rather than HTML, and this makes a big difference to performance and functionality. It also looks really nice, and aesthetics are important (see my posting on Getting in touch with your feelings). Not only that, you never get to feel guilty because you're failing to take advantage of all the 10,000 features that your normal word processor offers. Expect plenty of buzz when this product launches.
Hi Clive,
ReplyDeleteBuzzword looks very interesting - thanks for sharing. I've been a big fan of Google Docs, but this has a much nicer interface from what I've seen (you're right - aesthetics are very important!). Plus, according to this article, Virtual Ubiquity will eventually build an Adobe Apollo version of Buzzword, which will let it span both the desktop and the web. Should be interesting to see.