Writely makes word processing free, fun and easy to use . . .

I'm always on the lookout for useful and free online tools for writers, and Google's Writely word processor fits the bill nicely. Writely is Google's online word processing program that allows writers to compose, store, collaborate and share their documents. Google opened it for general use in late August and I immediately signed up for a free account to test it out.

Writely's interface is clean and simple and very easy to use. And I really like the fact that I can access my documents online from any computer and also share documents and allow collaborators to edit them online.

This is especially helpful when you are working on a writing project with someone else. Writely also stores all the revision versions you make to a document and allows you to go back to a previous version.

So what can you do with Writely?

- Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch).

- Use the simple WYSIWYG editor to format documents, spell-check them, etc.

- Invite others to share your documents (by e-mail address).

- Edit documents online with whomever you choose.

- View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.

- Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.

- Download documents to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip.

- Post documents to your blog.

To take Writely out for a test spin of your own, just sign up here: http://www.writely.com/

Linda Locke
MidLifeWriter.com