I too am a software developer so I approach very similar.
I have been using Google Platform to organize and publish my thoughts for some time now. I have wanted to start blogging on how I do this and work to organize my thoughts in a way I can share with others. I was reading Development Approaches to Writing?, by Fred Stutzman today about his development process approach to writing. So let me start with a basic post about this and I will work to refine.
Everything starts in Google Notebook, because I can harvest from a web page or blog with just a right click and it keeps the reference to the original piece. I can also just capture my own thoughts as I am surfing using my firefox add-in as well.
I can then organize these "notes" into notebooks by relevancy. I can further refine and handle the evolution by scripts using the Google Notebook API.
Then as information and throughts mature I migrate to Google Docs with a simple right click in Google Notebook.
Once in Google Docs I can refine more formally and with the assistance of others if necessary through collaboration.
Then I can also organize data in spreadsheets and evolve aspects into presentations.
From there I can publish to blogger, PDF, a book or whatever publishing format I wish.
I like the Google Platform because of how the applications compliment and work together, however the API is the biggest piece that allows me to work with things programmatically using scripts.
