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?'
Now this is exactly the kind of criticism we like to see.
Thanks so much for your comments, bootload. Thanks for the compliments on the parts you liked. We're with you on the blogging - it's a big part of writewith, but we're making a tool that's useful any time you're working on something with other people.
The stuff you found underwhelming is mostly near the top of our to-do list, but hearing what people want definitely helps us prioritize.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean about privacy details. We actually do let you delete your documents, if you go to the home page, and nobody can see what's happening in a document unless you invite them in. If there are other privacy features you want, we'd love to hear about it (get us at honchos@writewith.com)
Oh, and we do try to extract titles, but we might be missing some. If you're comfortable sending us a document where that didn't work, we'll take a look.
'... I'm not sure I understand what you mean about privacy details. We actually do let you delete your documents ...'
Hi Phil.
I just tried a simple set of tasks of an old file that I had (open office) and worked on it as I would each week. I remember reading your article a while ago on how you started, so I'm not surprised its so polished. Re-reading the original parent article I missed the collaborative blogging bit.
So I took some time and tried some more stuff and it works fine. I wouldn't go overboard on the 'underwhelming bits' I mentioned (spelling - because real-time could hit you on the server & you could optomise. eg: Firefox 2 with spelling included on the textboxes). So what I found, was pretty factual for a single user working on a document.
'... I'm not sure I understand what you mean about privacy details ...'
The privacy deletion bit, I mentioned happened when I did a bit of a poke around in your licensing files [0]. It states you keep a copy but remove the viewing capability, but not remove the file. This could be a problem for users (it would for me) but I don't know.
'... but we're making a tool that's useful any time you're working on something with other people ...'
I didn't get to do this bit. I assume you differentiate the users additions to documents? Can 2 users work at the same time?
'... If there are other privacy features you want, we'd love to hear about it (get us at honchos@writewith.com) ...'
I'll add it to the todo list I have, can't promise ... gotta work on my product as well :) One thing I will add is, check flickr for the way they license their text/images (creative content).
Regs PR
Reference
[0] writewith, legal privacy, 'Your Preferences: ... If you close your Unimedia account, we will remove your name and other personally identifiable information from our publicly viewable data. Content posted by you may remain on Writewith.com ...' ~ I interpret this as you can keep a copy of content!
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 DornfestÂs stikkit, "values of n, stikkit which is exploring new ways of 'organization and collaboration.'"
http://www.valuesofn.com/blog
[3] values of n, "A presciently-timed vote of confidence"
http://www.valuesofn.com/blog/2007/03/presciently-timed-vote-of-confidence.html