zoho

Zoho, a collection of Web-based office tools, has recently rolled out an iPhone-friendly suite of applications. Called iZoho, it provides access to Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show. The iPhone also supports Word docs and Excel spreadsheets, but the iZoho application lets you edit certain documents like the Zoho Notebook.

iPhone link: http://mini.zoho.com/

Web site link: http://www.zoho.com

This morning, Zoho has unveiled its new Facebook app, which allows users with Zoho accounts to work on and share their Zoho docs without leaving the boundaries of the social-networking service. Zoho has included three of its services in the new app: Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show. Users have access to their entire directory of saved files for each app, along with quick options to create new ones.

Unlike some other Facebook apps, there's no profile presence or status feeds as to when you're editing or have created new documents. There's also not a way … Read more

Zoho, the suite of Web-based productivity tools that's often considered the most formidable challenger to Google Apps' domination in the field, has entered the iPhone app blitzkrieg. It just announced iZoho, a version of its software that's been optimized for the iPhone's touch-screen architecture. Currently, you can only view existing Zoho documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, as well as edit the Zoho Notebook documents.

You can check out iZoho's Web site from your PC and see the neat sliding interface whenever you click on anything. No, it won't rotate if you turn your computer sideways!

The … Read more

Zoho released its Notebook service today, better rounding off its suite of Web-based productivity tools. Zoho Notebook (more here) is really more like a scrapbook than a notebook. You can add spreadsheets and word processing files from your Zoho folders. Even more fun is Zoho's capacity to hold songs and video--as well as Web pages and RSS feeds--from a hard drive or from around the Internet.

The capability to share your stuff with other people makes Notebook a potentially cool tool for group projects at school or work. Chatting with other users in addition to recording and playing audio … Read more

Tomorrow, ThinkFree will announce a new way to publish documents: ThinkFree Docs. The feature looks a lot like Scribd: It's a publicly accessible, YouTube-like document directory. And like YouTube, documents stored on it can be embedded in blogs and Web sites.

Docs rounds out the publishing options for the online suite ThinkFree, which already had a method for sharing documents that's much like Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and other online productivity suites: from within the suite, you can e-mail an invitation to other people so they can view or edit your documents on the ThinkFree site. That's what you want for collaboration. But when you want to publish a document to the world at large, you might want the much simpler ThinkFree Docs instead--it will spare viewers unfamiliar with ThinkFree the confusion of using a new service.

You can use Docs independently of the ThinkFree suite. The service does a decent job of displaying standard Microsoft Office (2003 format) files, as well as other formats like PDF and RTF.

As on media sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr, shared files all get their own comment threads. Docs' commenting system is rudimentary, though, and the comments are not visible or accessible when a document is embedded on another site. For that matter, very little else is available from an embedded document. There's no way to download a file, nor is there a link to the file's dedicated URL, where the download link, embed codes, and comment board reside. Scribd, by contrast, offers links back to the sharing page on the Scribd site, as well as download and other useful links.

ThinkFree Docs is a useful feature for ThinkFree suite users who want to publish their documents to the Web, but as a standalone document sharing site it comes up a bit short.

Below: An embedded ThinkFree Docs viewer.

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If you're anything like me, you've got a ton of documents that have piled up over the years. People my age (recent college grads) are some of the worst, with nearly a decade of research papers, projects, and various snippets saved along the way--many of which took hours of hard work and are now relegated to a hard archive somewhere in your documents folder or on burnt optical media. Luckily for your files, there are a few places to share them with others who might be interested in reading.

Scribd is one of the most popular solutions, and … Read more

Peepel is a new Web-based office suite that's managed entirely within one browser window to emulate the feel of a desktop workspace. Included is a word processor, a spreadsheet application, and a calculator. Multiple instances of each application can be run at the same time, and all share the same tool bar (which takes design cues from the ribbon in Office 2007). The idea is to emulate the desktop experience, which is aided with the equivalent of a central start button to launch the applications.

To help you work within the confines of your browser, there are a few handy tools, like a workspace "save" feature that lets you organize and save a group of files, so you can open and save them as a group. The function is similar to Adobe Photoshop's custom workspace feature. There's also a button to cascade and group together applications according to their type.

Files are saved in the OpenDocument format, which will work with OpenOffice (but not Microsoft's Word or Excel applications). Each file is limited to 2MB, and files can be saved to your hard drive or to a virtual drive on the service. (We couldn't track down information on the storage limit. ) If you're crafty, you can also save as a PDF file by using the print function.

The one thing missing from the otherwise slick interface is the capability to collaborate with others--one of the benefits and standard features of major Web based word processors and spreadsheet tools like Zoho, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets. According to the site's FAQ (PDF file), sharing will be enabled later.

The Peepel creators have put together an explanatory video (sans audio), which I've embedded below. For some screenshots of Peepel in action, click the "read more" link.

[via Startup Squad]

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Zoho, who was at Under the Radar last week, upgraded their spreadsheet application, called Sheet, on Friday. The team added Zoho Chat integration and the ability for multiple users to work on a spreadsheet at the same time. Users of Google Spreadsheets will be accustomed to this functionality, and with the update, Zoho joins the fray of online collaborative tools (see our Under the Radar roundup of this category.)

Also new with the update is support for OpenDocument Sheet, which allows users of OpenOffice to work on and freely exchange documents.

Zoho Sheet still doesn't have the option to … Read more

Zoho, makers of more than a dozen office and productivity tools, have announced a new meeting app called Zoho Meeting. It's currently in private beta and will be available to all Zoho users next month.

Zoho Meeting is screen-sharing without the need to install an application, as we've seen with Vyew, Yugma, and others. It also integrates Zoho Chat, allowing participants to talk without the need for a separate phone solution, although an integrated VoIP solution is said to be coming soon. What may be the standout feature is the ability to record, save, and share meetings for … Read more