Saw a few things about Adobe’s AIR today, including a New York Times piece describing the “Webtop” play. In that NYT piece, a mention was made of Adobe’s own Buzzword “online word-processor.” Tried it out and, if it’s a sign of things to come, there might be some cool stuff happening for the webware enthusiast.
Buzzword has some niceties over other “online word processors” like Zoho Writer and Google Docs, especially in terms of interface. It does feel right, which makes for a more pleasant writing experience.
One thing I quite like about Buzzword is the list management. It seems more efficient that what is available in desktop word processors (most notably, in Microsoft Word). As a fan of outliners, I think this could even be a deal-maker for me.
I just wonder why it is that nobody’s integrating all of these cloud computing/webware/online productivity apps in an actual workflow. No, not AppleWorks-style “integrated software.” But some cool way to bring content from one online app to another.
I agree that Buzzword looks really cool. It definitely has a few improvements over other offerings like Google Docs, and hopefully will get even better with the upcoming AIR version.
If you’re interested, I have written a bit more extensively about this here – http://tomscrace.blogspot.com/2008/02/buzzword-web-word-processor-weve-all.html