I was worried that Google's integrated suite of Web 2.0 office applications would pose a threat to Zoho but another, more immediate competitor has just launched this week.
ThinkFree provides a similar service to Zoho offering free, Web-based Word, Excel and PowerPoint software. I found ThinkFree's charts matches the features in Excel (and is better than ZohoSheet and NumSum).
In fact, ThinkFree's compatibility with Microsoft Office is so awesome, at times, it is easy to forget you are not actually using Word/Excel/Powerpoint. I am surprised the use of the small toolbar icons does not constitute not a breach of copyright.
ExtremeTech produced an excellent, comprehensive review of ThinkFree which describes the features in more depth.
Just wrote a quick letter using
ZohoWriter. An interesting product. Think of Microsoft Word on the Web. ZohoWriter supports the standard WYSIWG editor, document versioning, collaboration, blog publishing and export to Word/PDF formats. My document is saved safely on a server in the event of any media based disaster striking my PC.
The only comments I have was that it wasn't obvious how to suppress the header and footer when printing the final hardcopy, I couldn't see a speel checker and WordPress.com wasn't listed in the list of supported blogging platforms. But don't quote me as I never took the time to RTFM so all of this may be possible.
Otherwise a decent product although I suspect
Google will be unleashing a revamped version of
Writely soon which could be interesting competition (nail in coffin) for ZohoWriter.
Web 2.0 aficionados, across the globe, held their collective breath today as Mr. Norman Brightside, a little known and largely unsung blogger, from Newcastle (near Norway) delivered his much awaited, quarterly update to his renowned 'State of the Blogosphere' address.
Fresh from the successful launch of a
book club, Brightside told an adoring and expectant audience:
The blogosphere is in a right old state. There are a few more blogs appearing and the rate of growth is directly proportional to a fascinating new factor.
Blogging growth = Technorati apology growth
For example, last month you might see the apology appear once a day. Now you see the apology twice a day. You can immediately conclude that the blogosphere has doubled in size during the period.
And, err, that's it.
I was seriously considering selling all my stock options and purchasing a 1GB USB memory
stick for an amazing 30 GBP.
Then I thought I would get an account at
box.net and upload all the precious files, that my wife sadly lost when my hard disk died a couple of years ago, there instead. This has the advantages that if I ever need to take my memory stick to Seattle to show Auntie Rita, this will be possible, I won't be able to leave the memory stick in a client's PC in Eastern Europe and, finally, it will cost me 30 GBP less.
I haven't used the box.net service much but there is a nice drag'n'drop interface for uploading folders and multiple files and it seems intuitive and quick. There is a free 1GB service available and you pay for additional storage which seems fair enough.
If you are interested in trying out the box.net service, then please, please click
HERE! (so I can upgrade to the Deluxe, Premium, Gold 512GB service free of charge) as all the worst Web sites (used to) say.
Lorelle is getting a little
vexed about the the precise semantics and usage of tags and categories.
I must confess this isn't a subject that keeps me awake at night although I do agree that the WordPress category list tends to get a little verbose with all those pesky tags.
However, due to circumstances outside my control, I have just had to endure some pain and wasted time converting Outlook Tasks and Contacts to use a flat structure with 'Categories' (rather than my previous folder structure Contacts-Personal, Contacts-Work etc etc). Forgive me, Father. I do not know what I was thinking of.
This is OK but it does mean that when I actually finish something I now have to reassign the category to 'Done' instead of the incredibly satisfying feeling of dragging the Task and dropping it down onto the 'Done' folder.
Maybe Lorelle should tell Scoble that Microsoft Outlook is using the term 'Categories' when they really mean 'Tags'. Shock, horror.
I understand that an individual Contact may fall into several categories - 'Friend', 'Personal' and 'Work' but part of me still thinks in hierarchies.
When I create a directory, I normally have to think about the parent directory so my brain is forced to think 'hierarchy'. I simply don't have 4,563,231 files in the root directory with tags.
When I see an organization chart, I see a hierarchy.
So it is relatively easy to continue to operate in folders and hierarchy mode when organising emails (in fact I still do) and continue in that mindset when dealing with Tasks and Contacts in Outlook. Maybe
Foldera will help to change this way of thinking.
Whenever I find myself being lured by the dark side and thinking in terms of hierarchies, directory structures, folders and parents, I remind myself of this excellent technical
whitepaper. This document is all about Oracle performance I/O tuning on HP-UX.
Previously I might have saved this PDF to a folder named 'My Documents-Technical-Whitepapers-Oracle-Performance'.
This would pose a problem when I tried to find it again. Where did I put it ? Was it in 'Technical-Whitepapers-Oracle', 'Technical-Whitepapers-Performance', 'Technical-Whitepapers-Unix' or 'Technical-Whitepapers-HP' ? Or did I forget to file it ? Yes. I know all about Google
Desktop.
Now I just add it to my
BlinkList with the following tags 'Technical, Whitepaper, Oracle, Performance, Tuning, HP-UX, I/O'.
Consequently, I also have now seen the light and removed the two level hierarchy of WordPress categories on this site into a single flat structure.
Now, what categories/tags/labels shall I use for this wide ranging article: 'tagging', 'tags', 'GTD', 'Outlook', 'Oracle', 'WordPress', 'categories' 'meta-data' ? Decisions, decisions.
Oh forget it. This one is 'Uncategorized'