Online Word Processor Comparison

A lot of times when I start writing a blog post I only get part way through it when I get side tracked. Or, I have an idea for a post that I don’t want to forget but I’m not in the mood to write the whole thing. I’ve been using a Word Doc to keep my notes and ideas in, but it has started getting long and it is a pain to keep a current copy between work (If my boss is reading this I only blog on my breaks) and my house. Sure there are a lot of options to remedy that. I could email it to myself or use a USB drive, but then I have to remember to take that extra step at the end. I also tried using Blogger’s New Post option and just saving my partial posts as drafts, but I kept accidentally posting half finished ones so that option is out. I decided using an online word processor is probably my best option. It lets me work on my partial posts from home or work without having to keep track of where the most recent copy of each one is since the most recent copy is always stored online. I checked out Zoho’s Writer, Writely Google Docs, ThinkFree, and AjaxWrite since they seem like the most common ones. I should specify that I tried all of these in Firefox and not Internet Explorer because that is my preferred browser. So, if you use Internet Explorer you may have a different experience.

Zoho Writer
To start with it has a very nice interface. They have a couple rows of buttons and drop down options across the top toolbar. Along the left side bar is a listing of my documents . There are options for templates, sharing docs, publishing to blogs, and exporting. They allow you to customize the interface to look how you prefer it. All of these additional options are nice, but what really makes this my preferred online word processor is the simplicity of all of. There are tons of options, but they don’t hit you over the head with all of them (couge*google*cough). The options are there if you need them, but it still has a clean streamlined interface. The more I use Zoho Writer the more I find things I like about it. For example, a lot of the standard Word keyboard shortcuts work. Without even thinking about it I just ctrl+S to save and it saved my document. It has contextual options that show up on the right side of the toolbar depending on what you have highlighted. The whole thing is very well designed and laid out. Documents open in tabs and it is a very quick to respond to commands like saving or creating a new document. In my experience it is faster to load and respond to my commands than the other online word processors. Zoho Writer is in Beta still, but I was looking through their forums and they have a very active team working on peoples questions and issues there.

Google Docs
It has the standard Google interface that I'm use to seeing in Gmail. They provides tons of options for collaboration and publishing. I’m not a huge fan of the interface for actually editing documents, but it works well enough. I think the issue, for me, is that I’m use to using Word so the lack of a decent toolbar takes some getting use to. Also, you can only have one document open at a time. Opening a document from the main start page opens a new window with that document in it. As far as I can tell there is not simple way to have multiple documents open in tabs like some of there other online word processors. The other thing that bugs me is that a lot of the different options don't just pop up on the main edit screen but instead open a unique interface for that option. For example, when I open the Revision option it opens a new interface specific to only the revisions that have been made. Then, when done in the revisions section I have to go back to the editing portion. Why these aren't in just one simple interface I don't know.

AjaxWrite
It loads fairly quickly, but it does open in a new window. Documents are opened in tabs so it is easy to switch between open docs. It has a simple toolbar and interface that is clean and nice. However, I quickly ran into trouble when I tried to save my first document. I could not get it to save as any of the 5 supported formats. It game me an error every time. So, I quit trying it right there because what good is it to write up a document if I can't save it.

ThinkFree
ThinkFree is probably the closest an online clone of Microsoft Word. It does open a new window for documents which I don't like, but at first glance it looks remarkably like Word. The menus and toolbars are almost identical. I also like that you can very easily make folders to group your documents in. Due to the complexity of the interface it does take almost a minute to open a document and have the full interface load. Since I'm just looking for something quick and easy to write my thoughts and ideas ThinkFree is just not quite right for me. It does have a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to the improvements the make as it comes out of beta.

So. that really means it is down to Google Docs and Zoho Writer. Google Docs will probably ultimately become the standard online word processor because they are a heavyweight in the industry, but they really could use the help of a good designer. Even though I'm a Gmail user their interface takes to much effort to use. It is because of the interface that I will be doing my writing with Zoho Writer. It is very well laid out and runs very smoothly. The only issue I ran into with Zoho Writer is that you can't make folders for grouping documents (or if you can I can't figure out how to do it). However, it is still in Beta so I sent in a request for this to be added. Still, Zoho Writer is the best choice for what I need. If you have experience with any of these online word processors leave a comment and let me know how you like them.

Top Traffic Exchange Site for Blogs

I’ve been looking around the internet for way to make sure my blog is listed when people are searching for it (or for related topics). Since I’m pretty new to blogging I wanted to make sure there was not some sort of obvious thing I was missing. I already was using FeedBurner and a couple of pinging services so when I update the various search engines get notified. While I was in this process I stumbled across the idea of traffic exchanges sites. For those of you not familiar with them basically they work like this: I visit your website and in exchange you visit mine.

The idea seams a little like speeding. Everyone seems to be doing it, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right. It seems a little like I’m whoring out my blog to whoever will look at it just to boost the number of hits I’m getting. However, just because traffic exchange sites increase the quantity of hits to my blog they don’t necessarily increase the quality hits my blog gets.

As I was looking at the various traffic exchange sites I noticed that some of them offer “targeted traffic exchanges.” These allow you to surf only sites you’re interested in the effort to help not only increase the quantity of hits, but do so with people are interested in what you’re site is about. Hopefully this would allow for an increase in quality hits. So, it is still speeding but only to the extent that I’m following the flow of traffic. This sounds a lot better to me. It put my web site in front of people interested in the topics I post about, and I only have to surf sites that I’m interested in.

So, I narrowed my search for traffic exchange sites to ones that allow for target surfing. I checked out each of the following sites and found the best to be BlogMad.net. It offers the best ration of surfing to visits with targeted traffic.

Here is what a brief review of each service I tried out.
BlogMad.net
They allow for surfing of by category. It is not specifically a targeted exchange because by default every category of site is turned on to surf, but users can go in and edit the categories they want to surf. Most of the sites I surfed were personal blogs. Not a lot of them were in the same category as mine, but there were a few cools ones. They have a 1:1 ratio for surfing. For every site I visit one person will visit my site. Their website is one of the nicer ones that I found and the return visits come in pretty quickly after I surf.

BlogAzoo.com
This was not my least favorite exchange sites but it was not that great either. It does not show you very clearly how many sites you’ve surfed. Also, the only have a 2:1 surfing ratio so for every 2 sites I visit one person will visit my site. They do give you bonus credits at after surfing 25 sites, but not enough to get the ration anywhere near 1:1. Their site is not the best I’ve seen, but it is not the worst either. The return visits come in about an average speed. Not right away like some, but not as slow as others. All around an average traffic exchange site.

BlogSoldiers.com
This site is very busy. Once you login all of the options are listed on buttons on the middle of the page. There is no easy button to see your stats, but it is very easy to get started surfing quickly. My first complaint about this site is that the return visits take quite a while to come in. If I surf 25 sites today through BlogSoldiers it might take 2 or 3 days to get 25 visitors back to my site. My guess is this is because they don’t have a lot of users. My other complaint is that their return visitor ratio is only 4:3. So for every 4 I visit I only get 3 visitors back. If you don’t mind the return visits trickling in this site is ok, but nothing special.

BlogExplosion.com
After signing up over a week ago my blog is still pending Admin approval. I’m loosing hope that it will ever happen. If it does the site has potential. It is nicely laid out, but the ratio of site surfing to visitors is only 2:1. They do have some options for users to specify what category of blogs they want to surf and what categories they don’t want to surf so it is somewhat targeted, but it looks like you can only specify one category for each of these options. So, while it might be a good site it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort given that other sites have better surf to visitor ratios.

BlogAdvance.com
This site is one of the better ones I’ve seen. The surfing to visitor ratio is 1:1, but the return visits come in very slowly. Again, if you don’t mind the slow return visits then this is not a bad deal. My only real annoyance is that BlogAdvance resizes the browser window, for some unknown reason, with each site load. I prefer my browser to be maximized, but each site drops it down to a smaller size. Also, I don’t see any way to do targeted surfing, but with a good ration it is still a pretty decent site.

I also tried out some Traffic Exchanges sites that were not Blog specific but are targeted. TrafficG was the first one I tried and it is probably my favorite. They start out with a 1:1 ration and the return visits happen within minutes. Over time, by surfing sites, you can get up to a 10:11 ration. So, for every 10 sites you surf you get 11 unique visitors back. The only thing that bugged me about this one was that a lot of sites seemed to be miscategorized. So, the sites were not all ones I was interested in but most of them were ok.

Overall, I’m not sure that any of these are worth the effort in getting quality traffic, but if you have a little extra time and don’t mind surfing random sites you can easily get a lot of hits to your site or blog.

A place for me to post my thoughts

I have a couple of reviews I was going to write up for a website I frequent and I thought that my friends might also enjoy reading them as well. So, I started this blog. The only thing I promise is that the things I review will be stuff I have actually tried and that I will be honest about if I liked it or not. No guarantees I will post anything on any regular basis, or that they will be grammatically correct.