Real Time Collaboration and Web 2.0 tools, tips, and reviews

Word is nice, and Word, Excel and PowerPoint form the powerful trinity of my consulting life, but let's face it - 90% of their features aren't necessary.

Fred post over on A VC got me thinking about that.  What do I really use in Word on a daily basis?

• Some formatting like headings and normal text
• Bold, italic, underline (rarely)
• Hyperlinks
• Left justify and center
• Bullet lists
• Blockquotes
• Tables (occasionally)
• Headers and Footers
• Insert graphics and photos
• Basic fonts (Arial, Times New Roman, etc) and sizes

That is pretty much it.  The rest are bells and whistles.  For an online application like Writely, these are the absolute musts.  That and the ability for any non-technical personal to create a Word-style document and save it on the web.  No figuring out how to email it (yes, some people still have trouble with this).  No saving it to your computer, but you can't find it again (I get lots of calls about that).

Many people, for daily writing needs, just need the basics.  Anything extra is confusing.  And they don't want to have to spend $200, $300 or $500 for their basic needs.  That is why Writely (and online spreadsheets) are taking off.