Google launched some great free tools - Writely is one of them. You can create, edit and save you’re documents on the web, and the best think - no license required, no money involved, just a Gmail account. Actually, I’m writing this blog with this tool. Why? It’s absolutely safe. I don’t care if my hard disk drive crashes, the document it’s safe auto-saved on their servers every 10 or 15 seconds. Robots and spiders can’t get to your documents or spreadsheets. Your Google Docs & Spreadsheets content is private by default. However, if you’d like to share your documents or spreadsheets with others, you can. For example, if you’d prefer that only a few people see your document or spreadsheet, you can invite them via the Collaborate tab by entering their email addresses. For a great many people now using some version of Microsoft Office, it’s finally possible to do it all for free using this Google newly expanded set of tools.

Writely comes up in a browser window with a Microsoft Word-type toolbar on top that includes all of the features I’ll ever need to write columns, if not entire books. This includes fancy text, a tab to insert images, undo/redo options to back out of errors and a lightning fast word counter, even a spelling check tool. What’s great? You can save your file as any type you want: Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, .rtf, .pdf, HTML, zip. Also big is a set of collaboration tools that let users do things like work on the same document at the same time no matter where each individual collaborator may be on the planet. I can work from China, and a friend of mine, who’s helping me, from Brazil, it really doesn’t maters, we would work at the same time. 

All you need is a Web browser and a Gmail account for Web-based e-mail and other Google services. That is available for free at http://gmail.google.com. Gmail exploded in less than a year from just another Web e-mail player to an advertising-financed scheme that incorporates the same tools that cost several hundreds of dollars per computer in ad-free Microsoft Office. Gmail comes with an associated Calendar module that mimics much of the scheduling and meeting invitation features of Microsoft’s Outlook for Office. Gmail’s own address book service has most of the features of Microsoft Outlook’s Contacts module. Gmail also permits live chats and even voice mail for those with microphones plugged in. For me, I think that Writely it will pretty much replace the “classic” MS Word. :)