Five months after being bought by Google, the Writely online word-processing application is now open for anyone who wants to sign up and use it. Writely has been closed to all but its existing members ...

Most people are familiar with word processing packages such as Microsoft Word or Writer (part of the Open Office suite). The use of cut, copy, and paste is not necessarily limited to text.

Is Apple’s iWork a viable alternative to Microsoft Office? To find out, we asked Jeffrey Battersby—our go-to expert on word processing programs—to use Word 2008 and Pages ’08 to create the same ...