Google + Writely

The earth moved today upon the news of Google's acquisition of Writely.

This quote from Gary Edwards explains why...

My wife is a Realtor who uses Writely to "collaborate" with clients, other agents, and property professionals also playing a part in the typical real estate transaction; (mortgage officers, loan processors, title reps, inspectors, appraisers, lawyers, insurance carriers, brokers, etc.) The "Purchase and Sales Agreement" is of course one of the more important documents in the real estate transaction process, and it demands collaboration. 

Typically my wife would write such a document in ODF, using the XForms binding model to wire in database and spreadsheet fields such as listing price, offer amount, address, etc. Then she uploads the ODF to Writely, invites others to join her, and they proceed to hammer out the details in record time. And do so with everyone, including her clients, satisfied with their level of participation. Saves time. Saves money. Saves the hassles of scheduling a convenient meeting time. And everyone lands in this collaborative process with their information processing systems (their computers and information resources) cooking full speed.

See Gary's whole piece ________, when it gets published.

More need not be said, except that this is where all desktop productivity is going with OpenDocument as the baseline platform for data.

Gary Edwards is Founder & President of The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc., a US not-for-profit 501(c)3, and a founding member of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee.