This is kind of cool, but I’m still trying to figure out who would use it and why they would use it.
Someone who travels a fair amount but doesn’t carry a laptop?
Possibly for someone whose ISP doesn’t provide a web page, but they want to post documents on the web.
djm
My ISP provides a web page, but . . . gasp! . . . I’ve never used it.
I wonder how I’d find it???
I think the original idea behind Microsoft’s .NET movement was that
all applications would be written in C#, and would reside on a
webserver rather than on your harddrive. Then, you would basically
do everything through a web browser instead of on top of the OS,
and the server owners (presumably Microsoft) would maintain control
of the applications.
The idea spawned many over-the-web apps by other parties. Some
were preemptively jumping on the proverbial bandwaggon, and some
just thought it was cool. Since .NET hasn’t really taken off, we’re
generally not sure what to make of them, (as demonstrated above).
Usually, your ISP will tell you what your home server’s name is. This is the server that you set up your net access to connect to first. Then your home page might be a directory named with your email-id. This is just an example. Your ISP should be able to tell you very quickly how they are set up.
djm
HI Dale, Writely is one of a class of net-specific programs designed to overcome incompatabilities inherent in documents generated on disparate platforms and processors. Usually, you will find mention of easy tracking and management via some kind of document-manager software.
It’s all part of ECM or Enterprise Content Management (Gartner-coined acronymn) and represents a revolution (of sorts) in collaberative distributed workplaces and projects. It would also be teamed with some fairly powerful workflow software to ensure documents and processes proceed along a disciplined lifecycle. There is a lot of stuff to also bind-in rich-content stuff such as mp3. Secure archiving and paper document tracking is also in there somewhere. I recently installed an archive system for a local telco. It’s tightly synchronised with their transactional ERP system in such a way that scanned documents (invoices, proof-of-delivery receipts etc) get linked to the transaction with media protection strong enough that a retrieved document can be used as evidence in a court of law or to pass an audit (read Sarbanes OXley). Once committed, the stored documents cannot be hacked and can only be deleted with an axe - in both the live and mirror-sites - the storage is self-healing to protect from partial failures and media errors. If the US had used one of these babies in the last election it would have killed a good number of the threads in “Politics”. rofl
(btw .net is at best a transitional technology - it just don’t scale.)
I’m looking at it with an eye on security. They claim that when you publish a document on-line on writely.com, no one can see it except those whose email addresses you’ve entered. Given that a lot of people don’t have encrypted email, it could be a useful way of conveying confidential information.
Therein lies the problem. I have a hard time believing corporations will allow their confidential documents to reside on the internet. The FDA compliance issues in the pharmaceutical business are enormous.
Besides that, I personally abhore the Microsoft idea that everything we do should be on the web.
Hi Flying cursor. you are right - big corps don’t put things on the web per se, but they do use the web for transport. If it’s been done correctly access will be using a complex set of certificates and at least one strong password to read anything. Access is usually via a secured bridge into an intranet which connects to the workflow, transactional and library systems. most the ports are disconnected at the bridge. This is how the pharmceuticle guys do it.
As for writely - they are not saying enough to know - I would be asking them about the use of certificates. I would also ask them about what imbedded objects it can handle and publish - particularly if you are used to using any windows style software such as visio or excel - you might find there’s gaps. If you want one that has all this you are talking about Open Text, Tower, Documentum and a few others - these are v. expensive but do the stuff and have their indemnity paid-up.
You should also ask about workflow - what config can you apply to the lifecycle of a document before it’s published? What protections are applied to saved documents? What method is used to track changes in documents? Is the change history kept? Does writely accomodate strong meta-data search criteria? Does it use open source? The list I work from is about 12 pages, but these are the main ones.
I just had a look - writely does not show up on gartner’s radar yet but they are in beta so that’s no great suprise. It could be a bargain - but remember, they’ll not be in beta forever - depending on their business model, you might end-up paying for the nice-to-have features as they get developed. It kinda looks like a free to public style thing with corpies picking-up the tab but they have massive competition and I would expect them to be looking for ancilliary cash-flow before too long. The big question is - if you commit to it, how hard will it be to move everything if they go belly-up?
Yep except we call it an intranet as opposed to internet. Even though it’s global in scope all access into and out of is strictly controlled and resides on our own servers. I get the impression that Microsoft would hold business hostage in the sense you’d have to use their servers which gives me the shivers.
Funny you should mention Documentum. I’ve been a Documentum system admin for 9 years, (Sun server) with the exception of the short time I was layed off and over the past few months while I’ve been on another project. I miss it. I loved goofing off in UNIX. I was the master of the AWK script.
Insight seems so show promise but from what I’ve seen it suffers some problems.
Funny you should mention Documentum. I’ve been a Documentum system admin for 9 years, (Sun server) with the exception of the short time I was layed off and over the past few months while I’ve been on another project. I miss it. I loved goofing off in UNIX. I was the master of the AWK script.
[/quote]
I’m a great fan of EMC and Documentum - mostly for the reason that it uses delta storage. It’s just a religious thing for me coz it works exactly like Endevor code management which I admined for a few years once. The bit I like best is that none of this stuff is worth a nickel if the admin is half-hearted, but if admin is rigorous then things just go so easy 
Something about Writely seemed appealing to me and, of course, Google agrees with me. 
3Fish Productions came THIS close to buying it.
I’ve been pondering email security for a while. We had all that fuss about PGP when it leaked out of the States.
But very few of us need crash-hot security for an email. After all, we don’t put a lock and chain on our real-mail letters.
If you use WORD (and a few of us do) you can put a password on a file so that it can’t be opened except by those who know (or can guess) the password. I don’t imagine that any Government Security Agency would take as long as ten minutes to open the thing, and I’m sure a competent hacker could get past it, but it would evade casual inspection.
All it needs is an understanding of the sender’s password.
I shred all of my papers, even the non-important ones. If someone wants to reconstruct a document they would have to put together many junk mail offerings and letters of non-importance before reconstructing a useful document. The same is true with encryption. If you only encrypt the sensitive data, people will know where to look and will not have to waste their time with decoding useless documents. Yes PGP is almost unbreakable for now, but good security practices are a nice back up.
I shred all of my papers, even the non-important ones.
Fair enough, ID.
But how many letters do you send in anything other than a paper-and-cardboard envelope?
Even if you always sent the password with the WORD file, it’s still more secure than a raw email. Which is about as open as a postcard.
The sad truth is that before the 90’s I would write long letters by hand (due to my spelling I would often have several drafts) and even had fountain pen that I used to write them. It amazes me that I rarely see anything longer than a one sentence note hand written. I wonder how many people are currently comfortable reading cursive. I always purchased the “security” envelopes, but knew that they were just a way of keeping honest people honest. The last non-bill that I mailed was an application, and before that I cannot even remember when I needed to send anything.
I’m sorry to say so but there is NO link whatsoever between something like Writely and .NET. First of all, .NET is about distributed computing, it’s an architecture that puts buisness logic on a server instead of your computer. It’s more an idea/strategy/philosophy that’s been around for many years now, with Java Entreprise (J2EE) and other solutions using Corba.
The idea behind .NET, and other distributed computing/middle-tier architecture, is to have the client application on your computer as “thin” and “stupid” as possible. It has to contain no logic and has simply to be told what to do by the buisness server.
Since your client is thin and lightweight, it is easy to update, and also doesnt require updating often because the buisness logic logic is NOT on your computer application but on an external server. The tax rate changes in some state? You simply update one server (and it’s mirrors) and that’s it, no need to change your client application, which queries the tax and other info from the server anyway.
Anyway, I could go on and on. distributed computing is about buisness logic, functionality, load balancing, etc, and NOT about providing a way to share word documents online from a web browser, it’s really not. Maybe .NET hasnt taken off yet, but it’s being used a lot and most companies use similar technologies from Java/J2EE, so the architecture itself is very popular and used by the most serious, multi-users applications out there.
Sorry, when I see apples being compared to bananas I gotta say something