Free productivity tools are fine, but I still like 'em on my desktop. For free, I can get OpenOffice and have it on my PC. The project management software on Zoho is limited to one project. Anyway, I got a great little project manager on a computer magazine disc for the price of the magazine. The next month I also got a mind mapping program that integrates with it. It seems like there is a free photo editor or video editor on almost every computer magazine disc that I see these days. When I'm looking for free software or shareware, I also go to download.com and usually find something, including pdf converters.
Slideshare is OK. Now that I have a Google account, though, in the interests of simplicity I'll stick with Google docs. Zoho's wiki interface has the best range of toolbar functions of all the free wikis that I've looked at but the lack of responses on their help page is a worry, especially as they have left them there for all to see for months. Not a good sign. Have a look at Nexo. It combines blog, wiki, docs storage (including photos and video), chat/forums etc in one site. Privacy settings are a bit complicated , though, but worth a look.
Overall, I'm experimenting with these free productivity tools, but they still have some way to go before they are really compelling to use. Having said that, they certainly have some potential to become compelling. In the workplace, I think the security factor may work against them. Setting up similar file sharing on an intranet using something like MS Sharepoint may appeal more to the Council IT dept. For sharing non sensitive and non confidential stuff, especially over many sites using virtual teams, these tools will be fine. I've even put up one of my favourite marketing planning documents on Google docs. It was published in 1996 but I think it still has a lot to offer today.
7 comments:
Pete : Thanks for your compliments on Zoho Wiki! And my sincere apologies regarding many of the comments not being answered in the Help pages.
We get feedback mails & have a separate forum for Zoho Wiki as well. So, having to track all the Help pages (we have help for Zoho CRM, Projects, Show, Invoice all hosted on Zoho Wiki) and answering comments in each of these pages turned out to be impossible.
We are coming up with a new Help section for Zoho Wiki which will have comments turned off & asking users to use the forum or feedback link instead.
And have no worries about Zoho Wiki. You can follow important updates to Zoho Wiki here : http://blogs.zoho.com/category/wiki
Once again, sorry. We'll try to do a better job in handling our user queries.
Regards,
Arvind
http://zoho.com
Thanks for the info arvind. I'll give Zoho Wiki a go.
Cheers
Pete
Thanks, Pete!
The Help documentation revamp is getting done : http://wiki.zoho.com/WikiHelp.html
Hi Arvind.
Had a longer go with Zohowiki yesterday. Still a bit hard to find out what I want to know, but that's also true for the other four wikis I've tried, too.
Overall I think wikis are a good idea. I just think the software available is a bit less than simple for the novice. For me, its fine. I'll play around until I work it out but to set up something in the workplace requires training other people and wikis just ain't WYSIWYG. There are little formatting glitches, especially when pasting from Word say, lines jump around, graphics jump around etc. For those less than technologically keen, they can be a bit frustrating to use.
I think I'll wait until the software is a little more mature to do anything else with it. Although your toolbar is still the best I've come across.
Cheers
Pete
Pete : Thanks for having another go at Zoho Wiki and for the continued feedback! Your points are duly noted & will go a long way in bettering Zoho Wiki. Come back soon :-)
- Arvind
about openoffice, have you tried portableapps.com for a version you can keep on your flash drive? there are portable everythings that you can keep with you and use wherever you find a computer. nice 2.0 blog, by the way, it looks like you learned a lot (or maybe you already knew it and are just showing off :) ). cheers
Thanks for the tip eff, if I may call you that. Australians love to shorten everybody's name.
Portable apps look good. I'll test them out.
And, yes I did learn a lot from this course. Knew a little bit about it but not nearly as much as I do know after doing the course. I probably wouldn't have gone searching for all this stuff if it hadn't been packaged in to this training course. It made it more of an adventure.
And, yes I do like to show off a bit, too. I can't believe how much stuff can be packed into a blog.
Keep up the good work, too. You and the Annoyed Librarian are my favourite doses of library reality.
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