Our Online Office Operative by Jonathan

They’re trendy, they’re hip, and they’re amazingly accessible! But will online office software function for the mainstream? Or will it be restricted to the techie crowd? Just read a nice piece from Ryan Carson on how he perceives the transition for small teams. It goes without saying that some people are ingrained with their current working software, but the transition might not be quite as scary as some may fear.

Our toolbelt looks like this…

  1. Text Editor: I think we think that we’ve settled down on Google Docs. We’ve had runs with the Zoho suite and Writely, who was bought by Google and why we seem to be using their product.
  2. Spreadsheet: Google Spreadsheets, alot has to do with the synching in to the above product, but along with Zoho, you’ll find NumSum, irows, EditGrid and a few others out there.
  3. Code Editor: Aptana. Nicely designed and functions rather well for our use.
  4. Graphics: We’ve just transitioned over to Paint.Net and if you need to take a load off your computer, it’s a good alternative to other weightier options.
  5. FTP: Filezilla.
  6. Email: Thunderbird, Gmail. Waiting for a better solution. Would really like to have one color-coded inbox that gives us a quick overview of which email addresses have messages.
  7. Chat: GoogleTalk. File sending speed and the superior audio quality made us make the move from Skype. Although we still use for conference calls.
  8. Calendar: None. At present, things get done when they get done. But WHEN we do adopt a calendar, GoogleCalendar or Sunbird would be viable options.

It should be noted that we also use basecamp and occasionally stikipad for project collaboration… and are worth checking out. Please note, that these products (above) are all have free versions under the relative terms of services, otherwise I’m sure we’ll be getting an email/call real soon.

So, I guess time will tell whether mainstream audiences pick up these hip little products and it will definitely be interesting to see future development, such as Adobe Apollo, where the worlds of online and offline become a little more seamless…

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November 4, 2006 / 1 Comment.

One Comment

  1. aloni replied:

    why not use bugile.com to track your bugs online too?

    November 24th, 2006 at 10:17 pm. Permalink.

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