Let the ‘wow’ start! Buzzword is really just a word processor, much like Google Docs or some other counterpart. What separates Buzzword from the rest, you ask me?

Heh… almost everything.

You see, I use Google Docs for word processing (sometimes Zoho) only because most of the people I work with use it - it’s become a kind of a standard. Now Buzzword is not you everyday ajax app, it is built on top of Flash, which means teh interface looks much better than your standard web writing application. Now that Preview 7 is available, you can really enjoy the full power of Flash 9 : as Emily Chang wrote, Buzzword is not WYSIWYG, it is WYSIWYP.

And now for my favourite feature, the collaboration support: simply by selecting ‘Share’: now all your friends who have a Buzzword account work with the same version of the document. Neato! More points for web productivity there.

Of course, Buzzword still has a few flaws which I would like to point out: I’m not a big fan of the black interface, black interfaces are not for serious apps in my opinion, let the football manager games keep it. Also, don’t't forget, it’s still Flash. That means you’ll see the loading screen a few times.

That’s all I noticed, in comparison to others, it’s a great choice, especially for Opera users, because it ’s a Flash based app, so it’s not supposed to have any compatibility issues. You can sign-up and try Buzzword by signing up here.

In short, the guys at Virtual Ubiquity (purchased by Adobe somewhere in the beginning of winter 2007) have done a great job. Congrats!

Has anyone else tried Buzzword? How do you feel about it in comparison to other online word processing apps?

I spend a lot of my free time surfing the internet and almost half of my income comes from here. That means I’ve got a lot of contacts, but little time to IM anyone. I tend to use email a lot, even when I’m on the road.

I used to be an Outlook Express user until 2004. I was new to the whole security thing back then and frankly didn’t care whether my inbox is safe or not.

My next e-mail client was Thunderbird. I’m sure lots of you also use Outlook, Spicebird or something similar for managing your everyday tasks. Well, the opensource alternative was fine and all, but there was a big problem involved.

With webmail, your e-mail stays on the server. E-mail clients, on the other hand (if you don’t specifically tell them), ‘pull’ your mail onto the computer.

And while this may be an advantage for offline reading: what happens if you (my case here) have 3 computers and 5 operating systems?

Ease of access is the keyword here, I suppose. With my Gmail, I have all the functionality I need, and more. It’s always there, and if I get some important mail I can easily archive it or forward it, thus increasing my web productivity.

If you liked what I said and want to jump n the bandwagon, simply sign up for some webmail space: Gmail or Yahoo!Mail will suffice, but you also have Hotmail, Inbox and Spymac.

Do you use webmail? Why (not)? Tell us!

There’s a new product in town that I’m very excited about, called Spicebird.

It was made by a very inovative startup named Synovel, based in India. It’s not even out of Beta (0.4) yet and has already reached 10 thousand downloads. I don’t know about you, but that is a lot - in comparison, I’ve got trouble getting more than a few hunded visitors per day!

Spicebird is actually a heavily modified Thunderbird, Sunbird and Xmpp4moz (IM add-on) stitched together to form the ultimate collaboration tool, something a bit like Microsoft’s Groove.

Of course it is released under open source licenses - a tri-license, to be exact. In short, it gives you a great deal of usage freedom and a price of 0$.

I found Groove to be very interesting and was dissapointed that there is no solid opensource alternative, and that’s why I think Spicebird is a great app.

The ‘front page’ features a tabbed interface, where you may add, delete and rearrange widgets of your own choice: a clock, a calendar, an rss news feed, upcoming events agenda - by being opensource I expect Spicebird to have gazillions of widgets by the end of this year, if it gains enough popularity. And that’s what I’m waiting for. Don’t forget why people still use Firefox 2.

For now, it’s got an e-mail client, a calendar and an instant messenger. You can also use it to read RSS feeds. If you’re to lazy to download it, check out the online demo video.

In conclusion, I find it to be a great idea with a lot of potential. The opensource community has already proven that it can produce tons of neat and useful apps, but what it lacks is some serious software for bussineses, just like Spicebird will soon become, in order to spread into this demanding market.

What are your thoughts on Spicebird?