Author Archive

Desktop search integration with Writely? Yup - the good people at Ask Jeeves Desktop Search added the ability to search Writely docs in their latest beta release. Send us feedback if you have any ideas for other desktop-bound integration with Writely that you'd like to see (I'm thinking things like desktop shortcuts to Writely docs).

International Writely? Absolutely - we have users all over the globe, and we like it that way! Since we are small and so quite resource constrained at the moment, we're trying to figure out a way for our users to help us translate some key pages. Makoto just volunteered to translate our FAQ page into Japanese, so when she's done with that translation we'll link to it from the English FAQ page. If you're interested in helping us translate a Writely page, just email me and I'll make a copy of the page for you to work from.

Italian Writely? Si - Italy's Corriere della Sera recently ran an article mentioning Writely. Here's a rough translation of our mention: "To say it in more explicit terms than Microsoft would use, if you can write a document using a free service like www.writely.com and share it with distant collaborators, will you still need Microsoft Word, Hotmail or Sharepoint (a Microsoft software particularly aimed at cooperative work in a group)?"

Which reminds me that since I'm relatively fluent in Italian, shouldn't I personally step up to translate the FAQ page into Italian? OK, if noone else volunteers by this weekend, I'll suck it up and do the Italian translation! (E credetemi, sarebbe meglio per tutti quanti se io non facessi la traduzione visto che la mia madrelingua non 'e italiano e allora far'o un sacco di errori stupidissimi!)

While I'm on the subject of Italy, one of my public Writely docs is the entire text of Dante Alighieri's Vita Nuova in which Dante meets and falls in love with the beautiful Beatrice. And since this blog has no images, I leave you with an image (filtched from Flickr) of one of my favorite Italian hamlets: San Gimignano.

Happy 2006 to you & yours from the Writely Team!

We especially want to thank all of our 2005 users for being willing to try Writely as "early adopters" and helping make Writely better through your day-to-day usage and feedback. We love you! :-)))

2006 is going to be a big year for Writely. We have a LONG list of "new year's resolutions" - ambitious plans to build improvements and big new things, many of which originate from our user feedback and user forum, of course.

On a personal note, I hope you all enjoyed new year's eve more than I did. I rang in the new year with stomach flu...so sick I couldn't even log into my computer to respond to Writely user feedback. But now I'm back on my feet & eating like a normal person, thankfully.

The team is cranking on a Writely release that we hope to get out by this coming weekend. I am working on our first quarterly Writely newsletter, which I'll send out after the release goes live. I'm toying with the idea of creating a user competition of sorts - like "most creative use of Writely" - and giving out a prize to the winner(s). We'll see if that makes it into the newsletter...

53% of Writely users who have voted think that we're ready to end the beta! You may very well ask (and some of you have) what ending the beta actually means, in concrete terms. To my mind, it means that Writely has reached a high level of quality such that it should be officially launched as a finished product. (In case you're not sure what the beta means in the first place, I personally like this definition of what a beta test is.)

The higher the beta meter, the closer we get to ending the beta period and officially launching Writely. Launching Writely essentially means that we remove the "(beta)" label from our logo :-) Seriously now, it means that a solid majority of users find that Writely does what they need it to do. To be quite honest, we haven't yet had a conversation about what number the beta meter has to reach before we make the decision to leave beta...but we'll know it when we see it, I'm sure.

Here's how the beta meter works: Each Writely account user has a vote. While you have only one vote, you can actually change your vote whenever you like. Re-voting doesn't add another vote to the tally; it changes your one vote, and that change will be reflected in the next tally. Every week or so, Steve runs a script that re-tallies all the beta votes.

Some very candid people have emailed us feedback (because of course if you vote "no" we ask you to tell us why not) that they don't want Writely to end beta because they want Writely to be free forever. They're concerned that the minute we end beta, we'll start charging all our account holders. I'd like to encourage those people to rethink their votes, because we intend to offer the basic Writely service for free even after the beta ends.

To be clear, we also intend to create a premium service level with additional functionality that folks can subscribe to, optionally. Any features that we think might someday be part of the premium service offering are noted in Writely with a little "Premium/$" flag...so far there's only one...let's see if you can find it!

Having missed the opportunity to do an April Fool's blog post, we actually have something reasonably blog-worthy to share today.

In response to your requests, we've just raised the new collaborator invitation limit from 20 to 50. And we've been working very hard (no vacations for the Writely gang) to move Writely to Google's systems, too. We've made good progress, but we aren't ready to open the beta up again to uninvited registrations. Raising the limit, though, should especially help you teachers out there who are using Writely for class assignments and need to invite a slew of students as new Writely users.

Also in response to your feedback, and to help ensure that we get back to you more quickly for urgent support issues, we've put up a new feedback page. It's much better than our old one because now you can categorize what you're emailing us about. That way we can quickly spot the really important stuff (like if you're having trouble signing in or accessing your documents) and get back with you promptly to resolve issues.

A lot of you have asked us how and when you can get Writely accounts, so we put together this quick Q&A which may answer your questions.

Q: I joined the wait list 2 weeks ago, and I still haven't gotten an invitation. When can I expect to get one?

A: Our plan is to start giving Writely accounts to folks on the wait list in early July. So if you're on it already, our goal is to give you access to Writely over the summer. If you're not on the wait list, get on it!

Q: I have a Writely account, but 12 of my friends are begging me for one. What can I do?

A: No need to wait until Writely registration opens up again. When you have a Writely account, you have the power to get your 12 friends in immediately. Just add them as collaborators on a Writely document and click "OK" to email them. You can invite up to 50 new people by adding them as collaborators to Writely documents.

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Q: I have 75 students that need Writely for a class assignment in the fall - can you help?

A: As above, getting your students Writely accounts doesn't depend on registration opening up again. If you have a Writely account, invite several students and then ask them each to invite the rest. If you don't have a Writely account, get on the wait list and you'll most likely be able to get accounts for your students over the summer.

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Q: So when *exactly* will you be opening registration again?

A: You have no idea how much we wish we could answer this right now! But there's still much to do, and we don't want to promise something we can't deliver. We're working as fast as we can -- really. And we really appreciate your avid interest in Writely.