The First Real Web-Based Word Processor

I’ve been aware of Rick Treitman’s Virtual Ubiquity from the beginning, but after seeing the latest demo at Adobe Engage, I’m blown away by how far it’s come.

Rick, who Boston-area readers probably remember as the long-time proprietor of tech bookstore Softpro, was at a meeting we’d organized several years ago for our retailers. I happened to give a talk about technology trends, with a focus on Web 2.0 and the coming internet platform.

Rick said, “Holy sh*t. Every time there’s a platform transition, there’s a changing of the guard in applications as well.” He sold his store and got back into the software business. (Before starting Softpro, he’d been running Lotus’ word processing efforts, so he decided to get the band back together to take another run at it. And what a run.)

This is a REALLY sweet word processor. It’s got amazing typography, pagination, resizing and reflowing, all in Flash (and Apollo, for offline use.) Unlike Google Docs, this isn’t a lightweight word processor. It may well just be the slickest word processor I’ve seen anywhere. Nice work, Rick! (It would also be a killer blog front end, as Robert Scoble noted in the Q&A.) Rick titled his presentation “The First Real Web-Based Word Processor” and if the reality lives up to the demo, I think he may not have to eat his words.

Wait eagerly for this to come out of alpha!

tags: