Buzzword- An Excellent Online Word Proccessor

By Samuel Guzman | August 16th, 2007 at 09:57 pm ET         

While there are more then enough options to choose from for editing documents online, each one of them come with a catch. You can get an app with tons of features but that load real slow, while there can be an app skimp on features, lightweight and fast. Stealthy startup buzzword is trying to find the middle ground. Of all the online word processors I have tried, none strikes a more perfect balance between features, user friendliness, aesthetics, and speed.

Unlike most of the competition, buzzword is a flash based application. It loads in about five seconds, which is a bit tooo long. But once through that, it is lightning fast and responsive. While editing docs, you can create tables, identify margins with a ruler, view document editing history (useful for collaboration), insert notes, insert images, edit colors and everything else you would expect from a light-weight word processor. It doesn’t however, have the features you would expect from a full fledged Microsoft Word clone, but I don’t get the impression that that is what the buzzword team is going for. They have just the right useful features and not much more. It will be interesting to see what features buzzword adds in the future as they evolve.

The best part about buzzword is the UI. That’s usually the first thing I notice about a web app. The interface is user friendly to the max, and the black color scheme is beautiful. Actual document editing is just as pleasant as the flash interface makes the documents look just as nice as a PDF. All the above mentioned features are hidden and out of the way, and they don’t show up until you need them. Most of them are indicated by icons that reveal menus when you mouseover them.

In short, buzzword is the best online wordprocessor I have come across. I have willingly abandoned Google Docs for it. Of course there are still features that are lacking, such as spell check or document uploading, but these do not detract from the overall experience. Unfortunately for those of you who want to try it, you will have to wait because buzzword is still in a private beta. Until then, you can hope.