I haven't tried Writely yet, and am eager to see what tweaks Google has made since acquiring it. However Zoho looks like a good competitor. Like Writely, you can use Zoho to post to blogs and export to PDF, among other formats. It does searches and you can import documents (Microsoft Office, Open Office).
Zohoshow is another AJAX-based web application which creates slideshows similar to Eric Meyer's s5. [Update: View my first slideshow. Looking at the code, they really ARE using s5! This is going to save me time. Absolutely cool!]
Microsoft should start to get worried soon...
[Update 2: I managed to convert a simple PPT file with graphics and bullet points. However the graph did not get imported. ]
That's awesome-- thanks for the pointer! I'll have to get them onto v1.2 of S5, so that users can have the "notes" view, at some point in the future. Like when v1.2 is actually done.
I'm also intrigued by their claims about remote viewing of presentations. I know of three other implementations of that feature, but two of them were pull-based (the remote viewer had to ask the server every second or so if the slide show's state had changed) and so didn't scale to classroom settings. I don't know what the third implementation does. I'd be interested to know what Zoho does in this regard.
Though S5 is intentionally public domain specifically so that people can freely build on it, exactly as they've done, you'd think I'd at least have merited an entry in their blogroll. Ah well...
Hi Eric,
My pleasure! Looking forward to seeing version 1.2.