Office Web Apps – Alternative to Google Docs

Up till now, Google Doc’s has been a free service that gives the user an ability to create, maintain and store various documents online. It had functionality to allow the user to upload and read Microsoft Office documents as well.

Microsoft has now struck back by releasing free online versions of its Office Suite and giving the users an alternative to Google Docs.

Called Office Web Apps, this suite is a cut down version of the desktop applications and allows for document viewing, sharing and light editing.

The consumer version of the tools are free and store the documents on Live SkyDrive. The corporate versions can get self hosted versions of the applications using Sharepoint.

Being online applications means that the applications will work regardless of the operating system and have been tested in Windows, Mac’s and Linux based machines through various internet browsers.

If you have Office 2010 installed, then Office Web Apps takes advantage of offline and online editing and can present a richer experience for users.

Office Web Apps are also supported via mobile browsers and allows the user to view documents saved onto their Live SkyDrive account directly on their mobiles.

Read below on how to use Office Web Apps.

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How to Store Files Larger than 50megs on Live SkyDrive

Currently Live SkyDrive has a limitation of a maximum file size of 50megs per file. This is intentional to avoid abuse of the free 25gigs of space that it offers its users.

Users can use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to get around this limitation through the use of Chunking.

Chunking is a process where Gladinet breaks up a large file into multiple smaller ones (similar to multi-part zips) and uploads this to the SkyDrive account. Read below for advantages, disadvantages and how to enable this technology in Gladinet.

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Live Skydrive – How To Set Up as Network Drive via Gladinet Cloud Desktop 2.1

Now that the latest version of Gladinet Cloud Desktop is out, my previous guide is now quite outdated.

Here is an updated guide on how to install, and configure Gladinet Cloud Desktop 2.0 to map your cloud storage as a network drive.

Windows Live SkyDrive is a facility that allows you up to 25gigs of storage space for free. The storage space is available anywhere and while its an excellent storage mechanism, it can get cumbersome dealing with uploading files and working through the web based interface.

Ideally, you want to have a folder structure set up on your computer so that you can just navigate through your SkyDrive just like you do any of your other hard drives. Gladinet is a cloud based service that does just that.  It brings online applications and storage to your local machine. Read below for more information on it.

Gladinet is a fully featured service that allows for (amongst others):

• Drive “mounting” (act of setting up an online storage like SkyDrive or Picasa or Google Docs as local hard drives)
• A Cloud based desktop that enables users to use online applications to work on local files.
• Task schedulers to cater for scheduled transfers of data (eg as backup)
• Smart file transfers that allows for encryption, compression and reliability.
• It allows you to upload images without resizing!! (If you use the web interface to upload images, they get resized automatically – this way it treats image files as data, so SkyDrive doesn’t resize or constrain the image in any way).

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Windows Live Writer Updated (And How to Install on Windows 2003)

The newest version of one of the more popular blogging applications, Windows Live Writer  is now out.

Version 14.0.8117.416 is part of the new Wave 3 suite of the Live Essentials package.

Most Windows platforms are supported, however the installer still complains when trying to run via Windows 2003 Server.

I’ve extracted the MSI package for Writer and placed it on my Live SkyDrive in case you need to install it for Windows Server 2003. Read below for instructions and download links.

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SkyDrive Explorer integrates SkyDrive As A Network Drive

In my previous articles, I’ve listed of ways to get the best use out of Windows Live SkyDrive. This has consistently been one of the most read posts on my blog especially around using Gladinet to set up Live SkyDrive as a network drive on your computer.

Recently, a new product has come into Beta, that allows for the same level of functionality and allows the user to set up their SkyDrive account as a network drive without going through extended configuration steps that Gladinet takes us through.

In all fairness, connecting via Gladinet offers many more options such as connecting to other types of cloud storage at the same time (for example,  Google Picasa, Amazon S3 and Google Docs). SkyDrive Explorer only connects you to Live SkyDrive.

SkyDrive Explorer is a free product and is easy to use. It requires little to no configuration and allows the user to use their SkyDrive just like any other folder on their computer….

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How to Install SkyDrive as a Network Drive via Gladinet (updated)

Recently I created a post (turned out to be one of the most popular on this site) to show how to install Live SkyDrive as a Network Drive using Gladinet.

At that time, Gladinet was still a Beta Program. Recently, they released Version 1 and there has been some significant changes to the instructions. I’ve now updated the post to properly reflect these changes.

I’m now using the free edition of Gladinet to connect to my SkyDrive, Google Apps and Google Picasa albums all via My Computer

You can find the article here: Set Up Live SkyDrive as a Network Drive via Gladinet

Hope this helps everyone!

11 Free Services for Online Storage, Sharing & Collaboration

Storage has come a long way from the good old days of keeping data on floppy discs and DVD’s. Its advanced to external hard drives and storage media such as iPods and SD Cards and so on. These forms of data storage are very common nowadays.

All these are good methods to carry information with you as you go however they have a few disadvantages. They are physical devices prone to accidents and subject to demands of physical transportation. They can be lost or stolen and can end up placing information into unauthorized hands. They may also require special drivers or slots installed on the machines before the information can be seen. Collaboration and versioning can be difficult unless if additional transportation methods are implemented.

• The alternative to carrying physical storage devices with you is to store the information in a secure online facilities. Depending on the online facility, this can have the following advantages:
• Its accessible everywhere as long as you have access to the internet.
• It is safe and secure (provided the online facility has good authentication and authorization practice).
• It may be possible to edit your documents online directly on the online facility’s site. Alternatively, some facilities offer offline editing with automatic synchronization back to the online document.
• It is possible to share documents with selected or public audience.
• Some online facilities provide for collaborative editing of document.
• Lastly, its possible to keep physical stores synchronized across multiple devices

Here are a few applications and services that can provide for online document storage, collaboration and remote synchronization:

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Live SkyDrive – How To Set Up As Network Drive via Gladinet

This post has now been superceded with an updated one. Please go below to see the new post:

Updated Article – Setting up Live SkyDrive with Gladinet 2.1

Recently I talked about Windows Live SkyDrive, a facility that allows you up to 25gigs of storage space for free. The storage space is available anywhere and while its an excellent facility, it can get cumbersome dealing with uploading files and working through the web based interface.

Ideally, you want to have a folder structure set up on your computer so that you can just navigate through your SkyDrive just like you do any of your other hard drives. Gladinet is a cloud based service that does just that.  It brings online applications and storage to your local machine. Read below for more information on it.

Gladinet is a fully featured service that allows for (amongst others):

• Drive “mounting” (act of setting up an online storage like SkyDrive or Picasa or Google Docs as local hard drives)
• A Cloud based desktop that enables users to use online applications to work on local files.
• Task schedulers to cater for scheduled transfers of data (eg as backup)
• Smart file transfers that allows for encryption, compression and reliability.
• It allows you to upload images without resizing!! (If you use the web interface to upload images, they get resized automatically – this way it treats image files as data, so SkyDrive doesn’t resize or constrain the image in any way).

What we will do today is use Gladinet to “mount” our SkyDrive so that it is available on My Computer.

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Zoho Mail – How to add a new mail account to Zoho Mail

Welcome to Part II of my Zoho articles. (Part I here). This drills down further into one of the Zoho applications (namely Zoho Mail) and gives you some guidance around setting up Zoho Mail as your primary mail application.

Zoho Mail by default gives you a @zoho email address (yes, yet another email address), which I’m not too keen on as i have many already. Instead I wanted to add my Newbtech and Gmail mail accounts so that i can access them via Zoho Mail.

Most broadband providers have an online offering in terms of allowing you to access and create mail from the web without having to use large windows/linux based clients such as Microsoft Outlook. However, if you’re anything like me, you may most likely have quite a few of these accounts and Zoho mail allows the user to maintain all these accounts within one application.

Zoho Mail is a fully featured mail application with facilities to attach documents from your local drive through to Google Docs. It supports folders, labels and other functionality commonly found in Microsoft Outlook for instance.

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Windows Live Writer 2009 – Installing on Windows Server 2003

I’m now starting to use offline blogging software to write some of my posts. I had a look at a couple of offline blogger applications to see which one suited my needs best. The two that looked most promising were Windows Live Writer and Zoundry Raven. Both has had an excellent feedback recently especially when blogging to engines such as Blogger and WordPress.

While I had the latest version of both installed at home, I had a major issue installing Windows Live Writer at work. I run Windows Server 2003 on my desktop at work and the installer for Windows Live simply refused to work on it.

After a bit of research, i found that it was only the installer that had the issue and I could install Windows Live Writer via the .msi. In the end, I found the .msi file in my temp folder on my Vista machine at home. (I also found an .msi on the net, but that was for either Dutch or an older version). This one is for Windows Live Writer 2009

For others who are running Windows Server 2003 and the installer complaining, I’ve uploaded the .msi file to my Skydrive. You can download it from here:

http://tinyurl.com/gimmeWindowsLiveWriterMSI

NOTE: This is the 32 bit version!

If you need any other MSI’s (eg, Live Messenger, etc), please leave a comment or send me an email.

I’d appreciate a comment if this helps you in any way :)

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