Not really library related, but what an interesting tool for distance students (or any students). Writely – The Web Word Processor, is just that, plus some. Create an account, and you can upload or create a document online. It’s got a WYSIWYG editor, and multiple people can collaborate on the same document, which can be either public or private. Distance students always seem to have these collaborative group projects they’re working on – great tool for that type of thing. But what else is neat is that now students don’t actually have to buy a copy of MS Office, because the documents created with Writely can be saved as an MS Word file (just remember to include the .doc in the filename in the lower right corner). It’s like a small bridge across the digital divide – I know there are some students who can’t afford MS Office, so this is a nice solution.
Right now you can upload Word docs, HTML, text or images. PDF is not supported, but they say just "not yet". Could this be used as a document delivery option somehow? Probably wouldn’t be a very streamlined workflow, but hey, if I could password-protect an uploaded PDF…
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3 Responses to “Writely – The Web Word Processor”
Writely wrocks
Thanks to Paul over at The Distant Librarian — who always seems to find the coolest things — for introducing me to Writely.
Another similar tool is WebCollaborator (http://webcollaborator.com/). You can export as MS Word or PDF.
For document delivery, have you tried Prospero (http://bones.med.ohio-state.edu/prospero/? Each patron gets a password, which stays the same for all their documents, but they also get reminders in each notification email. We had pretty good luck with it in my last job (mostly firewall problems).
Thanks Rebecca, I’ll check out webcollaborator. I know Prospero, but the problem here in Canada is that we’re still not legally allowed to turn something that’s born paper into digital and deliver to the end user in a digital format. Sigh. Change is in the wind, but right now it seems the letter of the law prohibits us from using something like Prospero.