Writely-an Online Word Processor

2006-12-21 Update: Writely is now part of Google, which provides both word processor and spreadsheet. 

While surfing the web, I stumbled across www.writely.com, an online word processor that permit collaboration, i.e. many people can simultaneously edit the same document.
Sign up to the service is easy: all you have to do is entering the email address twice and supplying a new password; it takes less than one minute. Inviting other people to collaborate your document is easy: just click “Collaborate” and add your collaborators’ email addresses. The invitees will receive an email notification with the login URL, and the password.

Writely also associate a unique email address to each account (email in). The user can send document to this email address.

Pros

• Fast, easy to use
• WYSIWYG editor
• Email in feature

Cons

• No spell checker
• Flat folder structure, better to have hierarchical folder structure.

Peanut Butter Wiki

After evaluating some Wiki, I settled with Peanut Butter Wiki for its balance between ease of use and wealth of features.

Pros

• View without log in
• Easy-to-remember formatting style
• Apply for a new wiki is very easy
• Nice and clean interface
• Automatic table of contents
• The ability to backup your wiki

Cons

• Non-standard formatting style, prefer WYSIWYG editor
• Not easy to create page, cryptic syntax
• No community features: the wiki is meant for one person to use. That rules out such possibilities as project pages and team editing effort. Now, we can get around this problem by having each team members to log in using the same email/password, but different name.

Check out the PBwiki tour!