How long will it be before a full suite of platform-independent ajax-enabled office applications becomes available? If all you need is a browser to open and edit these documents, the huge network effect enjoyed by Microsoft Office could simply vanish. techcrunch
Can’t wait to see Google’s (rumored) full Ajax suite that is (rumored to be) coming out this year. techcrunch
I'm watching: Writely, JotSpot Live, Writeboard, Chalk, Zoho Writer … Richard MacManus is watching many more sites than me and looks into the future:
I do think that long-term, the writing is on the wall for desktop office applications. Once the current crop of alpha and beta web-based office products reach a level of maturity, they will be ready to challenge Microsoft for the minds and pockets of consumers. One of the keys is achieving the level of functionality that Microsoft Office undeniably has. But there are also issues of online security and reliability that web-based apps will need to address, in time. Office apps are just too important to corporate productivity for CIOs and IT managers to entrust their businesses with web-based apps, without complete confidence in their functionality (ability to do the job efficiently) and performance (security and uptime).
The time for the web-based office will come, mark my words. When broadband is ubiquitous, web functionality is richer, issues of security and reliability have been put to rest, and most importantly of all - when Corporates are ready to make the jump. It may be 5-10 years down the track, it may be longer.
techcrunch profiles Chalk here, JotSpot Live here and Writely here. Solution Watch takes a thorough look at Writeboard and techcrunch has a brief piece about it. 37Signals has this, amongst other things, to say about their product:
Where are all those fancy “WOW! WOAH!” features?
Where’s the MS Word export? Or the real-time live editing with other people? Or the WYSIWYG editing mode? Or the ability to drag and drop text around to reorder paragraphs? They’re in JotSpot Live and Writely. If you need that stuff check them out. If you just want to write, share, revise, and compare quickly, easily, and with minimal fuss, check Writeboard out. …What about that Backpack integration you talked about above?
Starting today, if you have a Backpack account, you’ll see a “Writeboards” tab in Backpack. This allows you to create writeboards inside Backpack. Plus, when you create writeboards inside Backpack, all those writeboards will be listed inside Backpack for easy retrieval. Further, you can import any writeboard into Backpack and even attach writeboards to any Backpack page via the new “writeboards” button at the top of every Backpack page. It’s pretty slick.
