Writely Bought by Google

I first learned of Writely, an online service that lets you create documents and edit them online, kind of like an online word processor, back in February, when Stacy wrote about it in her News Sun article "Getting Connected". Now, not surprisingly, Writely has been acquired by Google.

Right now, Writely is closed to new registrants as it completes its migration to Google, so I haven't been able to try it. Those who have, however, say that

[Writely] is a very functional word processor with most of the bells and whistles you’d expect - a range of fonts and styles, embedded images (up to 2 megs each), spell checker, etc. It has a fantastic wysiwyg editor. It also has an option to upload and/or save in Word format. (from TechCrunch 8/31/05)

Writely is made possible by new web development technique called called AJAX, which stands for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML". Says Wikipedia (which, I have to admit, is often useful for understandable explanations of technology):

The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire Web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user makes a change. This is meant to increase the Web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

Here's another good explanation of AJAX: Why AJAX Matters Now by Jesse James Garrett.

Another example of AJAX in action is Google Suggest, which suggests terms you may want to search for as you type. Those in the know also say that Gmail and Google Maps make use of AJAX as well.

If Writerly is something that interests you, you can find out more about it on the Writely Blog , not surprisingly hosted by another Google acquisition, Blogger.