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1 pointSpyou4 comments

Hey guys,

We’d like have your feedback on a new web app.

We (my partner and I) run a small but successful Ruby on Rails and web marketing shop in the UK. We focus on launching MVPs for startups, quickly, well-made and ready for business in 6 weeks.

Now we’ve got an idea for a project of our own but we’d like to know what you think first. The idea comes from a problem we’re having. Basically we need a solution to easily format our business documents and none of the online editors (Google Docs, Backpack…) really allows us to do that.

The project is called Dododocs and is destined to be an online edition and formatting tool so people can upload their company header and footer, and then simply type in their text. Professional-looking documents without any hassle.

For the formatting, we’ll have some templates available to use, but you’ll be able to customise them or upload your own (HTML/CSS). Then you type the text in a blank editing area, using Markdown and Textile. Once finished, you can export in HTML and PDF.

So the aim is to have something really simple first. The next features will certainly be a link with Basecamp, Backpack and Google Docs, and maybe a nice and slick interface to browse the document pages.

We’re going to start working on this project in a week and try to have a first working beta version by the end of July.

Is it an application you guys would use? Do you have any input on this (brief) description of the project?

If you would consider using it and would like a voucher for 1 month’s free subscription, please enter your email address there: http://www.dododocs.com/

Thanks a lot!

Nic

How often do people need to write ad-hoc professional documents, specially online?

You don't create fancy professional documents without printing them... and if you need a printer, then you're probably at the office, so you probably already have all your regular tools.

If you are going to do anything on a regular basis (quote, contract, sales letter, etc) you already have a template of it in Word or whatever... and it's private.

You explained the features pretty well, but what's in it for me?

As a business we regularly send documents to our client. Could be a report, or a letter, or anything else that requires a nice and polished document.

The problem with Word or Libre Office is that once you've fight several long ours to make you layout or template perfect, there is always something not quite right. And when you're writing, you have to select the text where you want to change the styles on.

Using Markdown or Textile (with an already made CSS) makes it really easy to just write, hit a button and BANG, document is there, ready to be emailed.

Plus I see this process (easy Markdown editor) to be very usable with tablet devices.

But maybe we are wrong, this is why we were asking here ;)

Did I answer your questions?

So the aim is to have something really simple first. The next features will certainly be a link with Basecamp, Backpack and Google Docs,

Yep, I could see this being pretty useful if it was easy to load documents to and from Google Docs. Part of the reason I say that, is simply because I use GDocs as a sort of lightweight DMS for my startup related docs in general... but also because the Fedex Online Printing service has a built in hook to GDocs, to make it easy to retrieve docs for printing.

Yeah, yeah, I know... "paperless office" and all that. But there are still times when you want hard-copy, and being able to pull stuff over from GDocs to Fedex, submit the print job, and then pick it up at the Fedex store, is pretty handy on those occasions.

The hook on both side of Gdocs is definitively something we would consider. But I don't know yet how Gdocs copes with header and footers. We'll discover that soon I suspect ;)

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