Webware

Webware is a media sponsor of the SFBeta mixer that's on tonight. I'm looking forward to finding some new companies there to cover. Most of the official presenting companies are not new to Webware, so I'm hoping that somewhere in the crowd I'll find the CEO of some tiny, unknown, and very cool start-up. Wish me luck.

The official presenters get demo table space, but there's a changeover halfway through the evening since there are more presenters than tables available. With any luck, there will be a CEO stare-down--or worse!--when the first shift of presenters doesn't want to give up their space to the late-night crew.

Here are the companies we know we'll be seeing tonight. New (to us) ones first:

New to Webware

• YourStreet: New company. Officially launches April 11. This company is similar to StreetAdvisor (review), in that it aims to collect information about the tenor of local real estate markets, so people can decide if they want to move in to a neighborhood, or so they can determine how to price a property in the neighborhood if they want to sell it. Run by former CNET employees (and friends), with some current CNET staffers freelancing for it, so I can't review it; check it out yourself.
  

  Chesspark: A site for chess geeks.

  (Credit: CNET Networks)

• Chesspark: Chess meets Web 2.0. Play against the site's own bots or mix it up with other members. Rich functionality on the Web site. There's a download, too. The service does not appear to support wagering, so Chess hustlers will have to head elsewhere.

• SoftSearch: Helps you find business software apps for your particular industry or function.

• FreePledge: Site that collects affiliate marketing fees from big online retailers on your behalf and gives them to charity. An easy way to do good (reminder: you can also just donate money to your favorite charity directly).

• Rightround: Site by and for indie musicians and the people who listen to them.

  Previously covered

• SpotDJ: Cool service that lets you listen to--and record--commentary blurbs between your iTunes music tracks. Webware review.

• Kongregate: Flash games site. Recently got a big pile of venture money, so should have some new features coming soon. Review; News.

• Xcellery: Makes Excel spreadsheets collaborative over the Web. A Webware Top Five Under the Radar pick. See also our review.

• Fliptrack: Makes slideshows with music. Review.

• Wrike: Project management through e-mail. Review. This company also presented at last week's Stirr event.

• Prosper: Lets you lend to, or borrow from, other Prosper users. See our previous review.

• Facebook: Right. Them. Don't know if they have anything new to show us tonight. We'll check.

Thirty-two start-ups and 11 established companies pitched their Web-based business products at the Under the Radar: Why Office 2.0 Matters event last Friday. That's a lot of productivity right there. Webware bloggers Josh Lowensohn and Erica Ogg covered all the start-up pitches--click the "UTR" tag beneath this blog to read about them.

From the 31 start-ups, we picked five favorites (see video). They are:

• Calgoo has a neat solution for working with schedules from your work and home lives. It's a problem we all have. See previous Webware coverage.

• Sandy is the new e-mail assistant from the team that makes Stikkit. You cc: "Sandy," the e-mail bot, on your correspondence, and the agent will decipher what you're saying, like "let's have lunch tomorrow," and put the right information in your calendar. It will be very cool, if it works. (See also: Wrike.)

• Xcellery adds real-time collaboration to Excel spreadsheets. We like the idea of making the spreadsheet tool, which we all know how to use, into a Web 2.0 application. See previous Webware coverage.

• ConceptShare is a beautiful application for sharing creative work, like photos and layouts. It's targeted at a niche of users (designers and their clients), but it could bring Web-enabled collaboration to a large number of people. See previous Webware coverage.

• WuFoo is my favorite Web application. It's a simple, cheap, and reliable database service masquerading as a forms designer. We use it (and pay for it) at Webware.com. See previous Webware coverage.

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 see who has made edits--an option that's missing from most collaborative spreadsheet tools. In our tests, we also found that several users could be working on or delete a cell without warning. To avoid this, having the option to hand off control of the cell to the other user (like Xcellery does) would be very helpful.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Presenters for the post-lunch session today focused on two challenges. First was how to help people simultaneously collaborate on projects. Equally important was how to keep a room full of sleepy bloggers, analysts, and venture capitalists awake and alert after a lunch of turkey sandwiches. Luckily, we've played with all four of these applications before, and so we stuck with the roast beef.

Editgrid kicked off the round of presentations. Instead of PowerPoint, they used a tabbed spreadsheet in Editgrid to present. One of the really great features of Editgrid, which we've discussed before, is the option to archive and roll-back various versions of your work--something you don't get in Excel without managing a folder of file back-ups. Also notable is an Editgrid spreadsheet containing a feature comparison between Editgrid to Google Spreadsheets. It's one the most popularly shared spreadsheets on the service.

SmartSheet is another shared spreadsheet application, but it is aimed at small teams. Smartsheet has a handy feature for tracking and easily pulling the history for each individual cell in a spreadsheet. This provides several extended possibilities beyond just entering data. You still have to hit a button to save your work, which is something we've griped about in the past.

Wrike was a good follower to SmartSheet's presentation. Wrike is similar to SmartSheet, but has the added benefit of giving users the option to push tasks to the Wrike project tool whenever they get cc'd via e-mail. See our hands-on demo here..

Xcellery is the only tool presenting today that uses Microsoft Excel. In fact, it does something that--even 11 versions later--you still can't do with the industry standard application. The one thing Xcellery doesn't do is real-time viewing of another person while he or she is typing on a cell--something we've gushed about with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Luckily, the service will alert you if the other person is working on it and will give you the option to choose which person gets the edit. Previous coverage here.

Stay tuned as the next group up handles sharing through the Web, which should be interesting to watch after Zoho's announcement yesterday of their new meeting application..

As I said in a recent post, Webware relies on Google Spreadsheets as our groupware application for tracking which Web services we want to write about. But because it is sorely lacking in the features department, I always have my eye out for alternatives offering more Excel-ish features as well as the killer collaboration function that makes Google's Spreadsheets so useful.

Xcellery's Web control panel. Simple.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

One new alternative: Xcellery, a service that turns ordinary Excel spreadsheets into shareable documents. With Xcellery, multiple people can have the same spreadsheet open at the same time. Everybody's changes get recorded and shared since the system tracks things at the spreadsheet's cell level. (If two people try to save over each other's edits to the same cell, a conflict warning pops up, and the user gets to decide whose edit to keep.)

This isn't a real-time service, like Google or EditGrid. You won't see other people's edits popping into a sheet that you are working on. But every time you hit the Save button, the document is reloaded with the most recent changes from the sheet's other users.

It's Excel, but with new tools.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

To use Xcellery, you create new files on the site's Web page. The site launches Excel for you. You'll get a scary macro warning the first time you use the product, but after that, it's mostly seamless. Xcellery doesn't save some data, like charts and window layouts, but Xcellery founder Reto Laemmler told me his team is working on a version that works in real time, like Google, and that will save screen layout modifications and graphics.

Xcellery also has a Web-based spreadsheet editor if you don't want to fire up Excel to work on your files. But if you want a Web spreadsheet, you can do better. (See our write-up on EditGrid.)

Like Collanos, a collaboration tool I covered earlier today, I consider Xcellery to be a bit too new to adopt in the real world. But also like Collanos, I really like the direction that Xcellery is going. Both of these products challenge pure Web applications by offering both the collaboration tools that could only work over the Internet and the rich features and fast speeds we get from our desktop apps.

Xcellery, and more than 40 other Web products for business, will be shown at the Under the Radar: Office 2.0 conference (click here for Under the Radar's official blog) on March 23 in Mountain View, Calif. I'll be moderating presentations all day. If you'd like to come see the start-ups, and maybe grab a free Webware T-shirt, use this link for a discounted conference pass.