Back in the mid-80s an interesting issue cropped up in discussion with a not entirely computer-literate senior executive. “What does ‘saving a file’ mean?” he asked. It completely threw me. By then I was so inured in the ways of CP/M, and later, DOS, that at first I didn’t even understand his question. I explained that of course you had to save a file, otherwise when you switched off the computer the contents of the spreadsheet or word processor file would be lost. “Why?” he asked. At the time I thought it was a damn good question. Now I realise it was prophetic.

The computer holds modifiable data in volatile memory before committing it to non-volatile disk, but this isn’t something that needs to be waved in the face of the user. For the past six months I’ve been using a new word processor that gets this right. And it gets a lot of other things right too. Every word I type is not just automatically saved, it’s also automatically backed-up.

I can revisit not only any particular piece I’ve written since I started using it, but also any major revision of that piece. And speaking of revisions, I can optionally co-edit my drafts with anyone else on the Internet, and also publish my finished text to particular individuals or to everyone. Oh, and all this deathless prose of mine is available across all the different computers I use. Anywhere in the world. And if all my computers blew up tomorrow – heaven forefend – I’d still be able to borrow yours, and my data would be right there, ready for me to carry on working without batting an eye. And of course it’s all free.

If you have anything at all to do with writing – whether it be novels, stories, poems, articles, reports, whatever – and don’t know what I’m talking about, stop everything right now and surf immediately to www.writely.com. Put together by a trio of Silicon Valley software engineers collectively known as Upstartle, Writely was first unveiled to the public in the summer of last year. Even in its beta version I immediately found it so useful I switched to using it as my main word processor. Thousands of others apparently have too, and I can guarantee those thousands will soon become millions, because in March of this year Writely was acquired by Google.

The transfer of the Writely entrails across to Google means that at the time of writing the system is still in beta and closed to new enrollments. You can visit the site and get ready for it, and if you’re lucky enough to have a friend who’s already signed up you can get her to invite you in. Alternatively you can seek out other sites that offer similar services. One such example is Thinkfree (www.thinkfree.com), although in my view it lacks the elegance and sheer cluefulness of Writely.

Maybe you’re wary of Google, though. I know I am. A company with the motto “Don’t be Evil” is certainly inviting a measure of cynicism, particularly when it’s sitting on a ton of our personal data.

The Web site GoogleWatch (www.google-watch.org) is keeping a close eye on Google’s data mining and other activities (and another site, Google Watch Watch at www.google-watch-watch.org is keeping an eye on Google Watch). Personally I don’t have much fear that Writely is going to plagiarise my prose. But my dependence on Google is growing to the point where I’ll need to think about how the brilliant brains behind the company may be planning to ‘monetise’ the many disparate bits of information they’re inevitably accumulating about me as I surf the web, scan the planet with Google Earth, send my email (yes, I use GMail too), and draft, redraft and eventually publish my articles and columns with Writely.

One of the most important questions I find myself asking is: Can I easily get my data off Writely if I want to move it to somewhere else? The answer appears to be yes. The file menu gives me a choice of saving the current file I’m working on either as HTML, RTF, Word or PDF to my local drive. Or from the main document overview I can zip all or any of my files into a single local backup.

With that in mind I’m happy to let Writely do its magic for me, knowing that if things go sour, unwanted ads begin to distract me, or my brilliant ideas start popping up on unexpected websites, I can just fold up my tent and move to a different location.

One thing’s for sure: no matter what happens, I know that new location won’t be back to a word processor that saves in a proprietary format to a local drive. Writely is a superb example of the new kind of broadband-enabled ‘out there’ computing that’s been dubbed ‘Web 2.0’. It’s as big a step forward as connection to the Internet was in the mid-1990s, and – in case you hadn’t worked it out – I’m thrilled with it.