Writely.

Writely is definitely one of the coolest Web 2.0 apps out right now. Browser-based word processing, collaboration with other users and publishing capabilities make this app stand out as more than just a word processor.

They recently re-opened the beta program and I snuck in and I am really digging the experience. Writing "online" may take some getting used to, and it does have some drawbacks – what happens away from a network connection?

You can also upload Word docs and even save your Writely files for Word. Really useful for collaboration or quick, away-from-my-own-computer sort of work.

Works with most of the major browsers, except Safari and Camino for Mac. But Firefox is not a bad thing to have to use, so give it a shot.
Writely

Camino.

Camino is almost 1.0

This new alpha release is extremely stable (hasn't crashed on me once). It's a gorgeous Mac OS X-style broswer, based on the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine.

It's very, very fast.

It's not yet at the level of sophistication and adoption of Firefox. It's missing the cool-kids add-ons and some sites have issues with it (Blogger's post edit form, for example). But for the most part, it rocks. It's nice to see the Camino team still at it in the face of overwhelming success of Firefox.

If you use OS X and are looking for a faster broswer than Safari, check out Camino. Once it goes 1.0, it may become my browser of choice.

You Tube.

You Tube is a new service that allows you to host video clips, tag and share them with the world. It's like Flickr, I suppose, for video.

From the horse's mouth:

What is YouTube?

YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. With YouTube you can:

* Show off your favorite videos to the world
* Blog the videos you take with your digital camera or cell phone
* Securely and privately show videos to your friends and family around the world
* ... and much, much more!

The compression isn't QuickTime-esque, but for quick little clips, it's great for sharing. It's Flash 7 video based so the the interface is easy to use. I didn't notice as much frame stuttering or even buffering as I expected. For a free service, this is definitely one to check out.

This is a pretty dramatic video of two guys who actually drove into Katrina to shoot video.

Google Blog Search.

Google announced a new Blog Search Engine, entitled....wait for it....Google Blog Search (beta, of course).

Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you’re looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.

I think it's great that Google continues to support blogs in the mass-scale that they do. Owning Blogger gives them a perfect reason to do so, but I like how a search engine encourages content rather than just trolling the web looking for keywords. Taking a proactive approach to content creation will hopefully lead to better content.



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