Dave
Zoho go all wiki
Zoho, one of the challengers to Google’s online office crown – and a damn good one at that – has unleashed its wiki service, to go along with the whole raft of other services they provide. The editing functionality comes from Zoho Writer, so is very easy to use with full wysiwyf functionality.
TechCrunch covers the story:
Two things make this product stand out. The first is that the Wiki supports embedded data from other Zoho products. For example, a spreadsheet from Zoho Sheet can be embedded directly into the Wiki. Any changes to the spreadsheet, whether they are made in the Wiki or in Zoho Sheet, will be synced. The Wiki product also has a single sign in with other Zoho products.
Second, the entire Zoho suite of products is on the same overall architecture, making syncronization and new feature releases much easier between applications. Contrast that to Google’s suite, including two acquired products (Writely and JotSpot) and one mostly home-grown one (Spreadsheets). It will never be as homogenous as what Zoho has created.
I agree that Zoho is a great looking suite of applications and is probably the closest thing there is right now to a workable, integrated online office platform.
But is there room for a small fish in this pool full of giant sharks? It’s a shame to say so, but maybe Zoho’s eventual best hope of success will be to be bought up by a competitor to Google.
[tags]zoho, wiki, google, online office[/tags]
AskX looks cool
Ask have launched a preview of their new search page design, nominally called AskX. Appearing in a three column layout, which is similar to their AskCity product, it now displays results from other information sources inthe right hand section, as well as the usual results in the middle. The right column is reserved for narrowing or expanding your search.
It’s quite cool. I did a test search for my hero, Brian Clough, and as well as the web results, it dragged up stuff from Ask News search, their blog search and Wikipedia.
The main problem is the speed at the moment, but I guess this is something they can work on…
[tags]ask, askx, search[/tags]
Vecosys launches
Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher, erstwhile editors of Techcrunch UK have launched their own site covering ‘Web 2.0, mobile and new technology firms in Europe’ called Vecosys.
Not sure what I make of that name, and the domain forwarding thing they have got going there is pretty annoying – all the pages seem to be held on a Glaxstar server.
The incident which caused the two to leave Techcrunch was explained from TC head honcho Mike Arrington today. It sure is a mess.
Update: Sam Sethi has counterposted giving his version of events. It is difficult to know who to believe, but as much as I like reading TechCrunch, my instinct is to side with the underdogs…
[tags]TechCrunch, Vecosys, Sam Sethi, Mike Butcher[/tags]
Loïc on LeWeb
Loïc Le Meur responds at length to the many criticisms going round the blogosphere about LeWeb3:
I apologize to the speakers and audience for the last-minute changes to the second day program and take personal responsibility for those changes. For opening the program beyond bloggers, however, I have no regrets
…
Criticism focussed on the politicians I invited at the last minute.
The background is that we in Europe are fighting a battle to raise interest about the Internet and its deeper changes to society. We do not yet have the Silicon Valley ecosystem, but opening an exchange with our politicians is a start. We need to talk to them and they need to understand us.
We need to encourage risk taking in Europe, teach entrepreneurship at school, make fiscal reforms to encourage creation of more start ups supported by investment from business angels and venture capitalists. The Internet creates millions of jobs in the United States. Why not in Europe?
[tags]Loïc Le Meur, LeWeb3[/tags]