Fool Me Once, Shame on You...Fool Me Twice (ajaxLaunch disappoints again)

I was fairly critical of Michael Robertson's ajaxWrite last week, particularly because it was more Notepad than Word yet the blogosphere seemingly fell for Robertson's self-tout hook, line and sinker. So it was with moderate interest that I saw Zoli's post on ajaxSketch; the second of Robertson's ajax-y apps. Zoli seemed reasonably impressed with ajaxSketch, and unlike a basic word processing document (ajaxWrite), the idea of a web-based diagramming and graphical presentation applet has considerable appeal to me for various reasons.

 

But after repeated attempts to launch ajaxSketch were met with "Unable to Connect" errors, I'm left feeling like Charlie Brown believing that Lucy would keep the football in place this time.

ajaxsketch ajax zoli woodrow

Comments

[Zoli Erdos]

Jason, I take all the enthusiasm back. Whats the point in a Web application storing its files on your PC only? That was a huge oversight on my part - they are now off my WebOffice list :-(

[Jason Wood]

Zoli,

Fair enough. I tried to access the Americas server this morning and, sure enough, I finally got on. Not sure I see it as any great shakes, but it seems functional enough if you don't happen to have MS Paint handy.

[Zoli Erdos]

Jason I really think it's a different story. Your issue with ajaxWrite was that it's really not a Word-killer. Personally, I haven't even checked that one, since I am quite happy with Writely, which, btw. is not a Word-killer either. At least not as far as functional richness goes. But - and I had this dispute with Scoble - a large majority of users don't use all the power of Word, but are "forced" to buy it for compatibility reasons. For these users a light app could be a replacement 90% of the time.

Back to ajaxSketch: I've seen some references on another blog that after the announcement the US server was unavailable, only the European was up, but rather slowly. I guess it comes with being small but suddenly popular:-)