Web-based word processors add collaboration and remote access to Microsoft Word, but little else. Often, their makers claim stripping down Word for the web is a selling point — they say complicated functions would be better left to a desktop app. But Boston-based startup Virtual Ubiquity is a little more ambitious with its first product, BuzzWord, built with Adobe’s Flex technology.
In fact, many features of Virtual Ubiquity’s alpha “BuzzWord” product improve on frustrating processes in Word, like dropping in photos, flowing text around embedded items, creating lists, and manipulating tables. With the added benefit of living on the web, this could be a contender. (Screenshots after the turn.)
Virtual Ubiquity got quite a bit of positive feedback after showing off BuzzWord at the private Adobe Engage event yesterday.
The new word processing tool is not likely to be available until fall 2007, but it’s worthy of being on your radar. (Apologies for writing about something you can’t try for yourself just yet.)
Treitman said his team brings the gang back together from “all sorts of ’80s companies” such as Lotus, eRoom, and Interchange. They saw the potential for getting back to stranded DOS word processing projects with the arrival of the web as a platform, as heralded by Tim O’Reilly.
Dismissing AJAX due to the limitations of HTML as far as printing, pagination, and typography go, the group looked at Java and .NET, eventually going out on a limb with an alpha version of Adobe Flex 2.0 released in late 2005. They worked without funding for a year until securing an investment (amount undisclosed) from Adobe’s venture fund last October.
We had seen an early (pre-UI design) demo at an Adobe event in January and have been working since then to get a better look. Virtual Ubiquity CEO Rick Treitman shared some screenshots and details with us today.
In terms of utilizing the web for collaborating on documents, BuzzWord gives granular control over whether contributors can share, make comments, and write to a document. The commenting structure is rather nice — you highlight a piece of text and then affix a virtual sticky note in the margin.
The service will support an offline version through Adobe’s Apollo. I asked about a print window, and Treitman replied, “You’re looking at it.” There’s also virtually unlimited undo as well as full versioning.
Virtual Ubiquity wants to fully release BuzzWord (under a new name) by the fall, in the hopes it can attract students to use the product for term papers when they return to school. A private and then public beta-testing process is set to start in May.
9 trackbacks so far
1:58 PM PT
[...] post by Liz Gannes and plugin by Elliott [...]
3:33 PM PT
[...] Virtual Ubiquity Screenshots [...]
10:04 AM PT
[...] Word Processing: The Next Generation? GigaOm has the goods on a company that hopes to release the next generation of online word processors [...]
2:38 AM PT
[...] Web Word Processing Gets Upgrade“In fact, many features of Virtual Ubiquity’s alpha BuzzWord product improve on frustrating processes in Word, like dropping in photos, flowing text around embedded items, creating lists, and manipulating tables. With the added benefit of living on the web, this could be a contender.” GigaOM [...]
8:11 AM PT
[...] for a public beta-release of their Flex-based word-processor BuzzWord (Screenshot courtesy of GigaOM) in summer 2007. thanks to Apollo, BuzzWord will run both on- and offline, which puts it way ahead [...]
1:23 PM PT
[...] service is built on Adobe’s Flex 2, like some other cool products we’ve written about lately. For watching Kyte on your computer, you also may need to upgrade [...]
6:03 AM PT
[...] Via Giga OM - Read full article [...]
11:36 PM PT
[...] UI unamenable to the RIA experience? As Om himself points out earlier in his article, if you can do Buzzword or Adobe Remix that way, surely the IM experience can be handled in the same [...]
8:46 AM PT
[...] plan.” Never mind, there isn’t many people who have actually used this product? (Liz gave them a great review when they launched, but still not clear how the start-up did in terms of sign-ups and users.) How [...]
20 comments so far
2:16 PM PT
“Virtual Ubiquity wants to fully release BuzzWord (under a new name) by the fall, in the hopes it can attract students to use the product for term papers when they return to school.”
In other news… Virtual Ubiquity is also planning to release a research and term paper purchasing website sometime in early 2009…
2:43 PM PT
Virtual Ubiquity’s URL in the hyperlink is mistyped as (link) instead of (link)
3:14 PM PT
Macromedia comes up with a new name for everything. What is the difference between Director, Shockwave, Flash, Flex and Apollo?
10:11 PM PT
What will spell the demise of Office? New web-based products like these or Microsoft’s own blunders…
4:07 PM PT
A clean new interface that’s better than Word, universal access and collaboration via the net and offline access thanks to Apollo. Now that’s a killer app. (Or at least one can hope it will Kill Word.)
6:49 AM PT
hen bu cuo a , suo yi wo you lai le
8:51 AM PT
I think, regarding SaaS Applications is an important need of protection personal data. I think storing and editing personal and business data is a risk for people and companys.
12:32 AM PT
In my opinion it’s very important to protect personal data. So this application is only a nice tool to play a while and not to work with it!
11:27 AM PT
I think it’s a very cool idea! There will be many new apps like this in future…
12:21 AM PT
I think applications like this will get more and more important in future! - A clean new interface that is better than Word, universal access via the net and offline access thanks to Apollo.
5:33 AM PT
Brilliant idea Liz. Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading all of your articles. It’s interesting to read ideas, and observations from someone else’s point of view… makes you think more.
12:01 AM PT
This is exactly what we need. A solution that will do away with the current monopoly of a certain word processor, and will allow users to do the same thing anywhere -web based.
Great article Liz. Keep it up.
6:14 PM PT
I hope theres gonna be a more apps like this in the future
6:03 PM PT
Really a fine article, thank you
Robert
7:26 PM PT
new application wich is able to kill word :) fine I have to test it..
3:41 AM PT
In my opinion, regarding SaaS Applications; it is an important need of protect personal data. I think storing and editing personal and business data is a risk especially for companies…
8:01 PM PT
glad to see someone stand up to MicroGiant:-)
12:41 AM PT
I agree with iphone…
Great Article BTW.
1:02 PM PT
Hi. You know what guys? I think this is very good idea, but I am affraid but not for me :|
11:18 PM PT
Just started using BuzzWord a few days ago and it’s really good. Nice clean intuitive design. We should see this around for some time to come. Nice work by the Virtual Ubiquity team.
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