2007MAY291656
'... had a quick demo and as a substitute word processor I was underwhelmed ...'
I had a quick demo and as a substitute word processor I was underwhelmed. There are little things that bugged me like the clunky spell check, the lame privacy details that don't let you remove your documents (even if you leave) the monitoring of your documents. If you upload a file (in my case a OpenOffice doc) it misses grabbing the title from the document itself. They also missed the print functionality. I don't want to download a doc to have to print it. [0]
If you've created a document and want to edit with others it looks ok. I did like the way the worked with the screen (lots of whitespace), revised documents, the input parser for various documents, the atom feed. The fact you could export the data in various formats and support for UTF-8. I missed the point of it being a collaborative blog tool. That certainly is a useful feature but not a killer.
Then I took into account the fact it's a new product. Bare minimum to get launched. It's not going to be used for corporates for security & privacy reasons. But if you have to create something with someone else in a different location it will get usage.
That's from a user perspective. From an application perspective it's slick & I wonder how they got such a service up and running so fast. [1] It does not take the radical steps of say Rael's stickit, [2] making little affordances as the user enters data, remembering it and getting the application to help you. [3] I also miss an API. But it's early days.
I wonder how they intend to make money off it? Expanded functionality, number of documents you can create, edit. Guess there is plenty of scope for this.
Reference
[0] This little step is something found in Word if you don't supply a title, word uses the document title.
[1] Now I remember reading the writenow story, 'Writewith: who, what, why, when, where and how?'
http://blog.writewith.com/2007/04/11/writewith-who-what-why-when-where-and-how/
[2] Rael Dornfest’s stikkit, "values of n", stikkit which is exploring new ways of 'organization and collaboration.'"
[3] values of n, "A presciently-timed vote of confidence"
http://www.valuesofn.com/blog/2007/03/presciently-timed-vote-of-confidence.html
next >>>
2007MAY291656
'... had a quick demo and as a substitute word processor I was underwhelmed ...'
I had a quick demo and as a substitute word processor I was underwhelmed. There are little things that bugged me like the clunky spell check, the lame privacy details that don't let you remove your documents (even if you leave) the monitoring of your documents. If you upload a file (in my case a OpenOffice doc) it misses grabbing the title from the document itself. They also missed the print functionality. I don't want to download a doc to have to print it. [0]
If you've created a document and want to edit with others it looks ok. I did like the way the worked with the screen (lots of whitespace), revised documents, the input parser for various documents, the atom feed. The fact you could export the data in various formats and support for UTF-8. I missed the point of it being a collaborative blog tool. That certainly is a useful feature but not a killer.
Then I took into account the fact it's a new product. Bare minimum to get launched. It's not going to be used for corporates for security & privacy reasons. But if you have to create something with someone else in a different location it will get usage.
That's from a user perspective. From an application perspective it's slick & I wonder how they got such a service up and running so fast. [1] It does not take the radical steps of say Rael's stickit, [2] making little affordances as the user enters data, remembering it and getting the application to help you. [3] I also miss an API. But it's early days.
I wonder how they intend to make money off it? Expanded functionality, number of documents you can create, edit. Guess there is plenty of scope for this.
Reference
[0] This little step is something found in Word if you don't supply a title, word uses the document title.
[1] Now I remember reading the writenow story, 'Writewith: who, what, why, when, where and how?'
http://blog.writewith.com/2007/04/11/writewith-who-what-why-when-where-and-how/
[2] Rael Dornfest’s stikkit, "values of n", stikkit which is exploring new ways of 'organization and collaboration.'"
[3] values of n, "A presciently-timed vote of confidence"
http://www.valuesofn.com/blog/2007/03/presciently-timed-vote-of-confidence.html
next >>>