IRows is an online spreadsheet, a competitor with NumSum, in other words. One of the criticisms I have always had with NumSum is that it is just so damn ugly. Not something that IRows can be accused of, which is much prettier:

As you can see from the crappy test sheet I created, it’s easy enough to enter data and tot columns of numbers up with a SUM function. There are a load of other functions included too, which should serve for most people’s needs in a portable spreadsheet.

File exports come in three flavours: Excel, .csv and HTML. Of these, the Excel one works fine – it keeps formatting; the .csv seems ok though it obviously loses the formatting; and the html one looks pretty good and is the only one that keeps the graphs. There is no provision though to export to OpenOffice.org which seems a shame.

IRows, then, is very easy to use, easy on the eye and features most of the functionality one might expect from an online spreadsheet. Like Writely – with which IRows has much in common, not least in its interface – it offers a useful alternative to a desktop app, especially for the casual user and for those who need to collaborate over the web on a single sheet. Unlike Writely, it isn’t (yet) owned by Google, and so I don’t have to feel guilty about using it.

So the two main parts of the traditional office suite are now online and usable. Given the plethora of calendars and webmail systems out there, it should be possible for a user with a reasonable internet connection to get by without needing to buy or install bloated office suites. The one issue remains in getting them all to talk together. This could be solved in two ways: by one large company buying up a selection of these tools and forcing them to work together exclusively; or by some open standards being developed and adhered to by all concerned. No prizes for guessing which is the most likely.

I just activated the Akismet anti-blog comment spam plug-in. Let’s see how well it works – I am not being flooded with spam right at the moment because this blog is so new. We’ll see how it goes.

I am pretty sure I read something on MJR slating this plug-in, but couldn’t find it on a quick trawl of his site. Maybe I misremembered and got it confused with Spam Karma 2.

Lorelle on WordPress is a great blog for people who use the universe’s greatest blogging app.

Her last two posts are both pretty interesting and I’m going to investigate them both a bit further:

• Ultimate Tag Warrior WordPress Plugin Update Released
• Adding RSS Feeds to WordPress

K2 seems like a really interesting theme for WordPress. It is still in beta at the moment, but I have installed on World of Dave just to see how it works and looks. I actually really like the feel of the Contempt theme I have in place on here, so it will take something special for me to move away from it.

One thing I need to add to Contempt is an edit link on each post – having to go through the Admin panel each time I want to correct a typo is a pain in the neck.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote about the applications I use on a regular basis. This was obviously on the Windows laptop I am using right now. This is going to change in a major way pretty soon, when I make the big switch to Linux.

So, I thought it would be pretty interesting to make a quick list here of the desktop apps I use on a regular basis, and then in a few weeks time I can compare back. There may be fewer changes than you might think, as I have stuck to the open-source option more often than not anyway!

Stuff I use now:

• Openoffice.org
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• FeedDemon
• BlogJet
• Gaim
• Filezilla
• 1st Page 2000
• The GIMP
• Limewire
• ITunes

…and I am bound to add more when I think of them. Of course, one type of app I am certainly going to be using a lot less of are anti-virus and -malware programs.

So, what made me want to change things round? Well, there have been, or are going to be, several changes to the way I am doing things generally, IT-wise.

One thing is that I really wanted to move away from using things that I don’t really consider ethical. The obvious one there is Microsoft, so, when I get my new PC delivered (hopefully) next week, I will be immediatley over-writing the default Windows installation with Ubuntu Linux. Expect to read a lot about my trials and tribulations in getting used to things over the next couple of months.

The other one was Google. Their actions over the latst few months have become ever more disturbing – or maybe, they are just starting to act like every other propriatory IT company out there. Anyway, stuff like the China thing, the plans to archive people’s entire hard drive on their servers and the rest of it have really put me off them. I still think that some of their products are pretty good – Gmail is a great, great interface, but attached to a very creepy system, for example – but generally I felt less and less comfortable relying on them in any way.

How do these things affect my blog? They don’t, really, except that I wanted a new URL to start up a new email address on, and that this change in my attitudes could be used as an excuse for a wider change in my blogging. The split between Tech and non-Tech is a good one, for I really can’t believe that people who like looking at some of my links and stuff to current IT stories really want to see photos of the snowman I built today.

Anyway, this is a bit of a rambly start to the new blog. But this is where I am starting from, and it will be interesting to see where I end up.

Right, so I have put in place the new blogs.

The tech blog, which is what most people will be interested in, is now at http://da.vebrig.gs and the feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/davebriggs.

The ‘personal’ blog is at http://da.vebrig.gs/worldofdave and the feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/WorldOfDave.

So, that’s it for this site. Update your aggregators to the ones you want and you’re away!

Thanks for reading.

Dave

Here’s the first post, taking over from where davebriggs.net left off. Well, some of it.

This is where I am going to be doing all of the tech stuff I used to write about – in other words, most of what made up the previous site. All the other bits, like photos, books, music, films, footy and politics will be on another blog, World of Dave.

Here’s the RSS feed for this blog. You should be able to get it via autodiscovery in your aggregator anyway. It’s through FeedBurner now.

Anyway, enjoy the site. Hopefully it will be a bit more focussed than before.

You may have noticed a complete lack of action on this blog of late. That’s partially because of life getting in the way, but more a case of me planning to move away from it.

I am going to be starting another, new, blog soon. Probably two: one for my usual tech-trawlings and another for more personal stuff, all hosted at a new URL. It’s all part of me trying to reorganise my online life and bring some sort of order to it all.

So, this is the penultimate post to this blog. There might be a couple more del.icio.us automatic posts before the very last one, which will give the URL and the new RSS feed for my new blogs.

Cheers!

From the Guardian‘s perennially unreliable Rumour Mill:

And we’ll usher in the weekend with a long-awaited bit of good news for Nottingham Forest fans after more than a year of Gary route-one Megson: Nigel Clough is rumoured to be tempted by a return to the City Ground.

Hmmm. I have long said that Clough Jnr would be mad to take the job – but maybe, just maybe, he is the man to bring the club a bit of self respect back, if not the glory days like those enjoyed under his father.

Google’s recent page creator has drawn some conflicting views. I’ll pluck two out here.

Scoble is broadly in favour:

I see a lot of bloggers saying “so” about Google’s new Web Page Creator. I think bloggers often miss the larger conversation that we should be having: the Office Live team tells me that 45% of small businesses don’t have a Web site at all.

Congrats to Google for trying to do something to bring more people onto the Web. That’s the conversation we should be having.

While Dave Winer states:

This evening Google launched a totally unremarkable page creator web app. It’s a nice Ajax text editor, with templates, but why isn’t it part of Blogger, or at least connected to Blogger, and where is the feed? The sites have no structure.

Where is the Mind of Google these days? Seems to be back in the mid-90s, re-discovering Geocities. Give me a ring when there’s at least some rudimentary content management in there.

I’m actually with Scoble on this one. I think a lot of the criticisms are missing the point. Some people don’t want a blog, they don’t want to update their sites on a daily basis. I think this is a good, easy to use solution for folk who just want to have a few photos up on the web, or a message to pass on to friends or family. Issues like CMS and RSS would mean nothing to these people, and nor should they.

In truth, the new Google service simply isn’t for people like Winer, or indeed Scoble. I myself can’t think of a reason why I would need to use it. But for the thousand’s of non tech-savvy web users out there, it could be really helpful.

Stikipad, which I mentioned in my brief round up of wikis recently, has now made it’s free account have unlimited edits. Thank goodness sanity has prevailed – 5 edits would be nowhere near enough for someone to work out whether the service was worth paying for or not. A good example of a company listening to their users’ views.

Thanks to Matt at Stikipad for the email informing me about the change – I’ll be giving the service another try soon.