Thing #13 of “23 Things”

Web-based Applications

I am a big fan of MS Office, but I can see that Microsoft will have to freshen their approach and think of something similar to this ZOHO Writer, free, on the web, colorful, elegant, user friendly and fun, otherwise they will lose their grip and become part of the past.
As I write this blog I am expecting in-line spell check with word suggestions and sinonims and antonyms as in MS Word but so far I don't see anything happening. I read in the welcome document that ZOHO Writer has spell checker for more than 70 languages and that it checks for all those languages automatically. I misspelled some words on purpose but so far I don't see any corrections. I see… you must click on the button labeled "Spell Check"; it doesn't do it automatically. This is understandable since this application is on line and "in-line check" needs speed and resources not available to a web application. I spelled "sinonims" wrong and the suggestions were simonizes, simonize, singsongs and singletons. MS Word suggested synonyms, simonies and synonyms'. Clearly MS Word did a better job. The word "blog" was underlined as a misspelled word with 13 suggestions while MS Word acknowledged it as a correctly spelled word.
One thing I've been waiting for years is to have tabbed Documents in Word, but for some strange reason Microsoft has not decided to include this feature in their editor even though several other word processors such as this one and even MS Excel and MS Works have it. These last two had tabbed documents for years, way ahead of everyone else... but MS Word doesn't!

The three previous paragraphs were written using ZOHO Writer. They were made public and can be seen here: http://writer.zoho.com/public/ridelto/Thing-13

Obviously ZOHO Writer is a good solution for those who can’t afford or just don’t want to spend money buying MS Office and with time is going to be a very strong contender of MS Word. Microsoft already has a strong competition in OS. For example, Linux, an open-source OS with many variants, some of them actually with a price tag, or Open Office which is a free open-source software suite similar to MS Office. By the way, if you are a student you can buy MS Office (and other software) for a fraction of its price (see http://www.studica.com/, http://www.campustech.com/, http://www.academicsuperstore.com/ or, in some cases, at http://www.amazon.com/
Online applications are not a new thing. Ten years ago it was clear that one day will came when all applications will be online with perhaps some exceptions for security and high speed reasons. We used to imagine an internet where the computers at home were just terminals connected to a supercomputer, the internet, running all kinds of web programs free to everyone or available for a small monthly fee. Something like Netflix, which lets you watch any movies (in their repertory), but better.
Of course, ten years ago that was impossible because the internet was too slow (dial up). We used to talk about a wireless internet with access directly from our brains… well; we still talk about this one, but as a future technology. However, the wireless internet is already here. Amazon Kindle is a good example.

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