Word processing, preparing documents etc. was, and is, something you do on your PC, from the comfort of your own computer. You’ve got everything around you, your copy of Word or Works – whatever tickles your fancy.

This site was brought to my attention this morning, having launched privately back in August of this year. The reason is came to my attention is that they just announced support for the OpenOffice format. I’m big on OpenSource software and all the things ‘it’ can do for the greater good.

Writely is a web word processor that provides simple and secure document collaboration and publishing on the web using only the browser.

What exactly does Writely do?

• Upload Word documents, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch).
• Use our simple WSIWYG editor to format your documents, spell-check them, etc.
• Invite others to share your documents (by e-mail address).
• Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
• View your documents’ complete revision history and roll back to any version.
• Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
• Download documents to your desktop as Word, HTML or zip.
• Post your documents to your blog.

It’s best feature has to be the collaboration factor, which is done in almost realtime. You can share any documents that you like with your friends, you are sent a notice online when someone is editing one of your documents and the changes are reflected every few seconds in front of your eyes.

While its in beta, its free. There is a 500k limit per document which is pretty good, and you’re allowed up to 2mb per embedded image, outside of the document size.

Anyway, if you’re interested, it doesn’t hurt to click and visit Writely!