Jeff Keeping It Real!

Microsoft Online Tools

Office Live Workspace offers more collaboration surrounding documents and workspaces.  Think of Office Live Workspace as a miniature, personal version of SharePoint.  You can simply share office documents or alternatively, click “Create A Workspace” and build either: Project Workspace, School Workspace, Sports Team Workspace, and so on.  Each workspace type has specific site features for that audience.  For example the Meeting workspace will facilitate a attendee list, meeting notes, minutes archive, and a to-do list.

Windows Live SkyDrive was recently bumped to 5GB from 1GB of online storage for its users.  SkyDrive is plainly a storage area on the web. Think of it as your own locker for you to keep files on.  The online storage space was thought to be a more contested market.  Google has been rumored to be offering a Gdrive (the user-created name for their online storage space).

Tired of paying for Microsoft Office try this free office suite.

OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute.

 

Google fans don’t forget.

Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users.

As we reported in yesterdays post Google continues its dominance over Microsoft with the Google Sites.  Makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document with Google docs.

What the heck is Zoho online?

Zoho is a suite of online applications (services) that you sign up for and access from their website. The applications are free for individuals. There vision is to provide their customers (individuals, students, educators, non-profits, small and medium sized  businesses) with the most comprehensive set of applications available anywhere; and for those applications to have enough features (depth) to make your user experience worthwhile.

As you can see there are viable and sometimes free online packages to accomplish your collaboration, word processing and spreadsheet needs.  These tools also offer much more in the way of office suite tools check them out.  Why spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars for Microsoft’s Office 2007.

Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all types of information — from videos to presentations — and share your site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world.

Google acquired JotSpot a wiki company along time ago and we almost forgot about it.  Now Google finally shows why it bought the company many moons ago.

Watch for tomorrow’s Freaky Friday Link Love and I will show you other tools that do the same thing as Google Sites.  They are not the first to offer an online collaboration but will they gain momentum or just be the headline of the day?  We will have to watch and see.  In the meantime watch this video to see what Google Sites has to offer.

Google Sites