Online writing tools

Created with http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

There are so many online tools now that you could spend hours playing and then deciding it's not for you. We might look at some key attributes to help us make decisions about what might be appropriate for what we want to do. Web 2.0 tools all share the attribute of being, usually freely, available and usable online ( some tools of course still require physical installation to your local computer). For those that 'run' online, one distinguishing characteristic seems to be how flexible they are in allowing you to download content for local use (eg the Vokis) or whether you leave content on a web server somewhere and you link to this (eg Youtube).

As you can see this tool allows online text generation, which is then downloaded as an image, which I was easily able to embed in this posting so this could be added to a class writing blog. You'll see there are different formats for the output, though I'm not sure about all of these - the newspaper clipping seemed to have some potential.

But this does make me think about the role these tools in stages of writing development - many seem to relate to 'publishing' (not to be minimised in terms of motivational power and establishing a sense of audience) but  not to facilitating processes associated with drafting and revising. Any thoughts?