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.

Using Office Web Apps

In order to use this facility, you can sign up to your Windows Live account, or navigate to http://office.live.com.

Once you have signed on, you will be presented with a new “live” page similar to below:

The page will list all recent documents created using Office Web Apps as well as giving an option on the right to create a new document.

The interface is uncluttered and is user friendly. Hovering over an existing document displays a menu that allows for additional options:

These menus allow the user to share a document, view version history, download a local copy, etc.

When creating a new document, the first thing Web Apps asks for is a file name

Because this is a web application, the speed at which the application opens is dependent on your internet connection. It can take a bit of time to open the applications themselves.

Word

Any existing user of Microsoft Word will be familiar with the lighter online version of the application. It has a subset of functionality, but enough common functionality to be a good alternative at a pinch.

Opening up the document locally directly from this interface won’t work unless you are running Office 2010. Note: 2007 does not meet the requirements.

Excel

Again, a familiar interface to anyone who has used a spreadsheet before.

The one thing I couldn’t locate in here was a charting option. Which is a big omission. Maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, but given the limited functionality, I couldn’t seem to see it anywhere.

PowerPoint

This allows you to create quick presentation slides or brochures. A lightweight again compared to the full version, but it comes with a variety of themes that can make a good looking presentation quickly and easily.

Because this can be graphically heavy, it can get cumbersome to work with online.

OneNote

OneNote is Office’s version of a catch all information store for storing ideas, plans, etc. It can contain multiple “notebooks” that can have pages that can hold all manner of information.

The online version is similar to the full version and while it hasn’t got the place notes and clips everywhere, it has enough to allow the user to jot quick notes down and store in an organised manner.

Conclusion

Working with the online version can present a bit of an issue if you have been using the full versions and are used to having functionality that suddenly is not there.

However, the subset of functions available are usually enough to use on demand.

I don’t believe this suite will replace the desktop versions (I don’t believe that is the aim). But if required, this can be a good half way house.

To enable full integration, you will need to use Office 2010 which supports opening documents from the web.

Related Posts

• Live SkyDrive – Mounting as a Network Drive via Gladinet
• Live SkyDrive – Saving files larger than 50 megs
• Zoho Personal – Online Office Suite

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.

Chunking has the following advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

• Useful when the storage provider (in this case Live SkyDrive) limits the size of each file that can be stored onto its servers.
• Improves transfer speeds as multiple chunks are uploaded or downloaded simultaneously.
• In the case of a failed transfer, only the affected chunk is retried. This will reduce bandwidth usages and the “oh bugger” moments when you are at 99% of a large file transfer and the network falls over.

Disadvantages

• The files are stored as “chunks” in SkyDrive, hence shown as multiple files within its user interface.
• Once chunked, the only way to restore the original file is through the use of the Gladinet application. Downloading via the Gladinet client will restore the original file.
• Chunking should only be performed on little used files or files that are required for archives etc.

As above, there is a word of warning here. Chunking is not without its risks. Its always advisable to keep an original copy somewhere.

Prerequisites

In order to use this, you must firstly have a Live SkyDrive account. Click here if you need a guide to set up your own SkyDrive account which gives you 25 gigs of online storage space for free.

In addition to that, you will need a copy of Gladinet Cloud Desktop installed. There is a free version that you can use. Click here if you need a guide on how to set up Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

Lastly, you’ll need to ensure that you have configured Gladinet Cloud Desktop and mounted your SkyDrive Account.

Step 1

Click on your Gladinet icon on the mini task bar to bring up its menu.

Click on Virtual Directory Manager

Step 2

You will see the Gladinet Management Console with a list of all your online storage drives that you have mounted.

Click the little tool icon on the left of Windows Live SkyDrive (circled above).

Step 3

You will see your login details to Live SkyDrive along with an option for Chunking at the bottom:

To turn on Chunking, ensure the checkbox is checked. The default size of each chunk is 20megs. For Live SkyDrive, I would recommend changing this to something like 40megs. This is below the maximum size of 50, but should suffice for most purposes.

Once finished, hit Apply and close all windows.

Uploading Large Files

Once the configuration is complete. Open your SkyDrive folder using My Computer. Navigate to the folder that requires the files and simply drag the file across.

For the purposes of testing, I left my Chunking size to 20megs and uploaded a 30 meg file. Gladinet broke the file into two pieces and started uploading immediately.

Both parts were simultaneously uploaded to the server.

Once completed, the file will appear as a single file when browsing through your Windows explorer:

However, if you look via the Live SkyDrive website, it is shown as multiple files:

Downloading Chunked Files

Downloading a chunked file is as simple as dragging and dropping onto a local folder.

Again, both chunks gets downloaded simultaneously and when complete, Gladinet automatically rejoins the chunks and makes the file available.

Conclusion

Chunking is an interesting technology and Gladinet has had quite a bit of time to ensure that it is robust and safe to use with SkyDrive. I’m not the kind of person who would store large files on my SkyDrive account, so the use of Chunking is limited for me.

I did have a few gotcha’s while testing. One was renaming a chunked file using the Gladinet client does change the name displayed, but not on the Live SkyDrive website itself.

Also, I did have difficulty downloading a previously chunked (at 20meg) file after I changed the chunked size to 30megs.

My advice here would be to pick a chunk size and stick with it :) Changing it may cause unpredictable behaviour.

Relevant Links

• Introduction to Live SkyDrive – how to log on and use SkyDrive
• Gladinet Home Page
• Gladinet Blog
• Gladinet Edition Comparisons – between Starter, Professional and Premium editions.

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).

Prerequisites

In order to mount SkyDrive using Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you must have an existing Live SkyDrive account. If you don’t have one, you can follow the following guide to create one first: Live SkyDrive – 25 gigs of space for free!

Step 1

The first step would be to download Gladinet onto your machine and install it. There are two versions available on the website (http://www.gladinet.com): a Free Starter one and a Professional Edition. The Professional Edition is on a limited introductory offer, but as it costs money, I will use the free version You can download either of them on the following page: Gladinet Editions Download Page.

It comes in both 32 bit and 64 bit versions, so download the one that is suitable to your operating system.

Step 2 – Install the Application

Once downloaded, start the install process by clicking on the .msi file. Hit Next and agree to the license agreement. Hit Next again

Ensure that Start WebClient service and Register Gladinet Cloud Desktop to Windows Firewall are ticked and hit Next.

Choose a location to install the application to (I selected the defaulted) and click Next.

Click Next again and the install process will start. You may get an authorisation request from Windows which you will need to agree to in order to continue.

Once the install is complete, ensure that Launch Gladinet Cloud Desktop is ticked and hit Close.

Step 3 – Configuration

Gladinet 2.1 comes with a new configuration wizard. We will be installing the application as a free application. There is a professional version available. However, for everyday purposes, the free version should suffice.

Click Next (or if you have purchased a license, then this is the place to enter it).

I would recommend registering with Gladinet to receive future updates and news. This step is optional. If you don’t wish to receive emails from Gladinet, then simply click Next.

This is the main screen that we need to configure. You can add as many services as you like here. I prefer to start with Windows SkyDrive and add others as I go along.

For the purposes of this post, tick the Windows Live SkyDrive and click Next.

Leave all values as is. The only one you may wish to change (as I’ve done above) is to change the location of the cache. My c: drive is quite small, so I changed it to another drive by clicking the Change.. link.

Once happy hit Finish to complete the configuration.

Step 4 – Mounting Drives

When the configuration is complete, there will be two visible changes to your desktop:

There will now be a small notification icon on your mini task bar. Click on it will present the following menu:

In addition to this, there will also now be a new “drive” set up on your computer under the drive letter Z.

Open the Z drive by either clicking on it via My Computer, or clicking on the taskbar icon and selecting My Gladinet Drive (Z:)

Double Click on Windows Live SkyDrive.gvm

Simply enter your Windows Live Id and Password here and hit Next. Hit Finish to complete the mount operation.

Gladinet will then proceed to complete the configuration. If this is the first time you are setting up SkyDrive, a “Loading Online Storage Plugin” dialog box will appear.

Click on Yes to allow it to complete.

The creation process can take up to a minute to complete. Once complete, the following dialog box will be shown:

This is where you can specify your backup configuration. As this can be done later too (and I’ll write a post on this subject later), for now hit Cancel.

Your explorer window should now show Windows Live SkyDrive as a folder on your Z drive:

Double clicking on it will show you the contents of your drive just like any other folder on your local machine.

You can copy and move files to and from your SkyDrive account just like any other folder. Because the storage is cloud based, every time you transfer files to and from, it gets scheduled in Gladinet’s task manager and the transfer happens in the background.

Creating new folders using Gladinet defaults the permissions on the folders to you only (ie, not public).

Adding other Cloud Storage Types

This is as simple as going to your Gladinet Drive and clicking on “Click to mount [cloud storage].gvd”

Choose the Storage Provider from the long list of storage options and proceed through the very user friendly wizard to complete the configuration.

Using this method, I now have one place to access and manage my Google Docs, Picasa

Conclusions

As a simple drag and drop access to your online storage, it does what’s asked of it. It gave me a network drive that allowed me to access my online data stores and i can easily upload and download documents to and from my drives.

Currently, its one of the best ways to really make use of SkyDrive without having to go through a web explorer.

You can continue to explore Gladinet on your own by right clicking its mini-icon and checking out the various options.

You may also wish to read our guide on other storage and collaboration solutions. Click the following post to have a look (opens in a new window):

11 Free Services for Online Storage, Sharing and Collaboration

Relevant Links

• Introduction to Live SkyDrive – how to log on and use SkyDrive
• Gladinet Home Page
• Gladinet Blog
• Gladinet Edition Comparisons – between Starter, Professional and Premium editions.

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….

To install SkyDrive Explorer, go to http://www.skydriveexplorer.com and click on the Free Download menu.

Step 1

Download the setup via the download link and run through the steps to install the application:

When you hit Finish, the installer will close. At this point in time, there is no “executable file” that you need to run to start the application itself.

Step 2

Open up your “My Computer” and you’ll see the SkyDrive Explorer under the list of your “Other” drives:

Step 3

The first time you double-click on the icon, the following dialog box will show:

Put in your Live user details and hit Sign In

Step 4

Once authorized, your windows explorer will now show the contents of your SkyDrive account:

And that is pretty much it! Again, you can treat this just like any other windows folder and/or drive on your computer. The advantage of this drive is that it is stored on the cloud and so available wherever you go.

Warning

SkyDrive Explorer communicates with your SkyDrive account by HTML Web page parsing, which means that should Windows Live decide to change their content format, this application may not work any more. However, I’m sure that the SkyDrive Explorer folks will update regularly should any of their functionality gets disabled due to Live SkyDrive changes.

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!

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:

1. Windows Live Mesh 

A popular product that gives you 5 gigs of online storage space as well as file synchronization across devices. It has additional functionality around remote access and ability to add many “devices” to your Mesh. I’m actually using this quite extensively to connect to my home machine. I’ll write up a post about getting this working on your machine soon.

Links: Windows Live Mesh

2. Adobe Buzzword

A service that supports document storage and collaborative editing of these documents. Its limited to document types only but has a flashy interface and once you got used to it, it can quickly become a tool that you can use everywhere.

Links: NewbTech Review, Adobe Buzzword

3. Windows Live SkyDrive

Another excellent file storage system that gives the user a whopping 25 gigs of storage space and is not limited to document types, so you can store all manner of files here.

Popular file types (such as images) are recognized automatically and SkyDrive will adjust its presentation of these files accordingly.

Links: NewbTech Review, Windows Live SkyDrive

4. Google Docs

An online document management system that allows for storage and editing of documents straight from their user interface. There are limitations on file sizes and functionality if editing through their applications, but, its suitable for everyday needs. The online applications are provided via Google Apps.

Links: Google Docs

5. Zoho Office Suite

A free online office suite similar to Google Apps and includes a variety of collaborative ready applications. It includes versioning and online storage (I believe its 1gig for document storage space)

Links: NewbTech Review, Zoho Office Suite 

6. DropBox

Has functionality that allows for users to create shared folders and drop all manner of files in them. The free version allows for 3gigs of online space and its perfect for quick storage requirements.

Links: DropBox

7. MozyHome

An online backup service that gives you free 2gigs of back up space and you can dictate which folders you wish to automatically back up.

Additional space costs more. It is widely used and highly recommended especially amongst small businesses who may or may not have a robust backup strategy.

Links: MozyHome

8. Spideroak

A cross OS service that allows for online backup, synchronization, sharing and storage solutions. Its available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems and gives the user 2gigs of space for free.

Links: Spideroak 

9. RapidShare

A file hosting service that allows you to upload a file and get a download link that you can send to anyone to download. This service allows for very large file sizes and is popular around gaming and media sites.

Links: RapidShare 

10. drop.io

Allows for private sharing of files and real time collaboration. It creates a virtual folder up to 100megs and supports all file types. You can specify a name to call the “folder” and share this as part of the drop.io URL.

It allows for password protection and other users can drop their files into this folder.

Links: Drop.io

11. GBridge

Offers file synchronization across your devices over the Google GTalk network. It can go through most network firewalls and can allow you to create “shares” on your machines that can be opened to other authenticated users.

Links: NewbTech Guide, GBridge

Conclusion

A lot of online storage services can be made to integrate seamlessly into your desktop using products such as Gladinet so that they appear just as another folder on your computer. In actuality, the documents are stored on the online facilities servers.

The above are just some of the huge variety of options you may have in terms of online storage, synchronization and collaboration. If you use or recommend a similar service, feel free to comment below :)

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. It means doing things online, like talking to friends on social networking sites or playing in a virtual casino, are that much easier to do. 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.

Prerequisites

you have an existing SkyDrive account. Easy enough to do if you follow my earlier guide: Microsoft SkyDrive – 25 gigs of space for free!

Step 1

The first step would be to download Gladinet onto your machine and install it. There are two versions available on the website (http://www.gladinet.com): a Free Starter one and a Professional Edition. The Professional Edition is on a limited introductory offer, but as it costs money, I will use the free version You can download either of them on the following page: Gladinet Editions Download Page. There is a version for both 32bit and 64bit operating systems (sadly no Linux).

Step 2

Once downloaded, complete the installation process. Select all the defaults (you may wish to change the install location, but apart from that, all else should be as normal).

When you launch the application for the first time, you’ll have an initial “Run Once Initial Settings” for the Cloud desktop.

Here, choose a drive letter that you want to assign to Gladinet and hit OK. In my case I chose “R” as my drive. Leave everything else as is and hit OK.

Important!

If you are running a server operating system (or one which has IIS running), you may get a message that states that Port 80 is being used already. It will ask to install a virtual adapter. Click Yes.

At this point, the Gladinet Virtual Driver will be installed.

If you continue to have an issue installing the virtual adapter, there is a troubleshooting guide in the install folder\WosHome called “GladinetTroubleShoot.pdf”. It may help resolve issues around Gladinet behaving with applications that also use Port 80 (such as Skype or IIS).

In my case, I changed my unassigned port on my local web server to port 81 and it worked fine. There are ways to preserve port 80 and have Gladinet coexist with your web server. Its detailed in the Troubleshooting guide.

Step 3

Assuming you have any possible conflict resolved, Gladinet will start. You can tell from a taskbar mini icon it will place on your start bar and it should show you an initial menu screen.

Click on “Mount Disk Storage or Web Storage As Virtual Directory”

Step 4

This will open up the Virtual Directory Manager.

As we’re adding SkyDrive, select “Windows Live SkyDrive” as the Service Provider.

The dialog box will change slightly to collect your SkyDrive credentials:

At this point you can create a “safe card” (refer to Gladinet for details) or just type in your SkyDrive credentials and click on Add.

Your username is your Windows Live Id (usually same as your MSN Messenger or Hotmail Id)

It will take a while to create the virtual directory and progress will be shown at the bottom of the screen. You may get a “Loading Online Storage Plugin” agreement dialog box. Hit Yes to this.

Step 5

Once its finished, a new Windows Explorer window will open up and show you the contents of your SkyDrive!

At this point you can navigate through the folders just like any other folder on your computer. If you happen to close your Windows Explorer, opening up My Computer later will show you the drive under Network Location (Vista) or Network Drives (Windows 2003).

You can also open up your drives by right clicking the Gladinet mini icon and selecting your drive

Via the same method, I managed to add Google Picasa as well as Google Docs to Gladinet as well.

When you drag a file into your SkyDrive, (if you chose the professional edition), you will be asked if you want to upload immediately or schedule it for later. Additionally, right-clicking on an “office” type document will display and option to read it in an appropriate viewer.

Conclusions

As a simple drag and drop access to your online storage, it does what’s asked of it. It gave me a network drive that allowed me to access my online data stores and i can easily upload and download documents to and from my drives.

Currently, its one of the best ways to really make use of SkyDrive without having to go through a web explorer.

You can continue to explore Gladinet on your own by right clicking its mini-icon and checking out the various options.

You may also wish to read our guide on other storage and collaboration solutions. Click the following post to have a look (opens in a new window):
11 Free Services for Online Storage, Sharing and Collaboration

Relevant Links

• Introduction to Live SkyDrive – how to log on and use SkyDrive
• Gladinet Home Page
• Gladinet Blog
• Gladinet Edition Comparisons – between Starter, Professional and Premium editions.

For many years, the only way to work with a full suite of productivity tools was to purchase/download and install Microsoft Office or Open Office onto your machines. Documents were created and stored locally and shared via Email or Shared folders, etc.

With the Internet fast becoming the medium of choice for storage and collaboration, there has been many products being developed and trying to take a share of this market. I’ve recently test driven applications such as GBridge for desktop sharing and collaboration and Adobe Buzzword for document authoring and collaboration. These are specialized in doing one thing well. And they do.

Meet Zoho. Zoho is a full suite of applications built to cater for all your productivity needs. It comes with a wide range of applications designed specifically with flexibility and full functionality in mind.

Many of us are currently using Microsoft Office or Open Office as our main suite of office applications. These cater for most of our everyday needs. However, for those of us on the move or just wanting an online option, Zoho presents an extremely viable alternative.

Main Features

• Free for personal users
• Wide range of applications
• Reduces costs by doing things online instead of purchasing software
• Secure storage and back ups
• There is a mobile (iPhone) version available for some of the applications
• Supports multiple languages
• Supports Sharing and collaboration.

Zoho is built to be relatively compatible with your current office suite and are targeting to become a viable replacement option to these suites.

Step 1

Open up your web browser and navigate to http://www.zoho.com. In order to use Zoho, you’ll need to sign in via a simple registration. You also have the option to sign in using your Gmail or Yahoo email account. As most of my applications go via gmail, I thought I may as well continue using that option.

Step 2

Once logged in, you can either go directly to an application by clicking the relevant "Try Now" link. Or alternatively in the top box, you have a link to go to personal.zoho.com that takes you to your dashboard. If you use the dashboard feature, you can switch applications using a menu on the left bar. Otherwise, there is a drop down menu on the top that allows the switching.

One thing to note, the first column of applications are all free to use for individual use. The second column (called Business Apps) do have some restrictions on them (listed in light gray next to the application name). To use them fully, you’ll need to upgrade. Suffice to say, most of us newbs will limit ourselves to the left column only :)

Secondly, by default Zoho will create you a mail account (yes, yet another one!) called username@zoho.com but you can add your existing email addresses there as well.

Lastly, be aware that when you first go to Zoho using Google Chrome, you do get a warning message that it works best in Internet Explorer and Firefox. However, they do allow you to close this warning and continue in Chrome. I’m currently doing all my work in Zoho via Chrome and it hasn’t misbehaved at all.

With so many applications available, the most commonly used ones will be Mail, Writer, Sheet and Show. I will go into more detail with some of the applications and do a compare against Microsoft Office and Open Office in later articles. Until then feel free to play around with these.

If there is any particular application that you need me to drill down into, leave me a comment and I’ll focus on that! Until then, I’ll work through some of the lesser known applications in the new few posts.

Read Part II here – Adding a new email account to your Zoho Mail

Recently i looked at Microsoft SkyDrive as online storage mechanism and actively use Google Docs to hold a lot of my documents. Adobe is coming out with a similar offering in terms of online document storage and collaboration.

Main Features

• Its an online word processor
• It allows you to store and access your documents from anywhere (internet access permitting)
• Its got an excellent collaboration functionality – allows multiple authors to make changes to the same document
• Key to any collaboration tool is tracking changes, versioning and reviewing edits. It comes with an tools to do all these things.
• Ability to add comments to the document inline as well as controlling access to documents/functions through roles.
• It supports image imbedding and formatting words around these images.

Right.. so lets take this for a quick test drive…

Prerequisites

In order to start using Buzzwords, you’ll first need (yes you guessed it), a username and password. Buzzwords uses Adobe Id to define its users. So, before we go on, lets create a username for us to use.

Step 1

Open up your favourite web browser and go to http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ . You’ll see a "Sign Up Now" button on the top right hand corner. Click it to be taken to their login/sign up page.

Click on Sign Up! at the bottom of the login box.

Fill in the form that pops up in screen to complete the registration process and it will sign you in automatically.

Note: Google Chrome users may get an Unsupported Browser warning. It suggests running Buzzword on IE, Firefox or Safari.. strange! It did have a link to tell me to try anyway in case i’m feeling adventurous :)

If you have just registered, you’ll need to verify your email. So feel free to do that via your Inbox and then navigate to https://buzzword.acrobat.com to sign in.

Step 2

Once logged in, you’ll see the main working screen of Buzzword.

You can import a document here or create a new one by clicking on the Document Menu.

Feel free to mouse over all the various buttons and seeing what they do. The user interface looks sleek but takes some getting used to. Its Macromedia driven, so has all the usual swishes and sliding menus..

Step 3

I created a new document and started putting some text in. Again, the user interface is slightly different to popular word processors (such as Microsoft Word) but once i got used to it, using the word processor was actually quick and painless.

Again, the menu bar expands and rolls to show you your current choices as well as available options. I got used to the icons really quickly.

Adding images was quick and painless as was adding comments and doing spell checks.

Once you have finished with the document, you can print it out or save it using the Document menu. Closing the document takes you back to the main menu.

Closing thoughts

With features such as sharing and history/versioning and the ability to import documents from a variety of sources, i can see a future for Buzzword as a quick online editor and document manager. It will be useful in particular to students who would like the word count facility as well as the ability to access ones document from anywhere.

The Document Organiser (ie, main screen) can get cluttered and i haven’t found a way to create folders yet..

I liked the image upload and formatting options. The texts flows around the image appropriately and resizing an image was as simple as clicking on a corner and dragging.

It could do with more Fonts though and sometimes, dragging an image to the right of a paragraph can get problematic with it dropping everywhere but at the end.

Will it be a viable replacement for Google Docs? I actually think there is a space in the market for a product that specialises in word processing and gets very good at document collaboration and authoring. Google Docs tries to bring all manner of document authoring to the front. Adobe Buzzword just sticks to one of those products and they have shown that not every word processor out there has to mimic Microsoft Word to be useful.

If you need more information or help when using Buzzword, the first document that is available on your dashboard is "Welcome to Buzzword" – this is a good read for more information on the features available to you.

I’ve intentionally kept this article open-ended as I want to encourage the readers to play around for themselves and make their own mind up. Its not a product that will replace your desktop/laptop word processor, but with moves towards lighter applications and cloud computing, this may just be what the future looks likes a few years from now…

Relevant Links:

• https://buzzword.acrobat.com – Main page for Buzzword
• http://www.adobe.com/acom/buzzword/ – Adobe Information Page for Buzzword

One of the more popular online storage providers out there currently is Google with their GoogleDocs application. This is a pretty cool application that allows you to upload and share all manner of documents.

Microsoft has done it one better with their latest offering called Microsoft Skydrive. Similar in concept, it’s one of the services provided by Windows Live that gives you your very own online drive where you can store just about anything.

More impressively, the space you are allowed to store is a mind boggling 25gigs! Thats a whole lot of space :)

So what would you store in these 25 gigs? Here is an idea.. practically everyone out there now has a digital camera of their own (my four year old has her very own.. in pink). And how many people out there keep back ups of their photos? I bet a lot of folks out there have no back up strategy and dump all their photos on their local hard drive only to lose it in the next boom-event (ie, virus, hard drive failure, accidentally formatting your hard drive while trying to install Linux on a separate drive – yeah.. that happens too ;) ).

So how do you get access to this free space and use it as an alternative to Google Docs and other sharing systems (such as Picasa and/or Flickr, etc)?

Right.. lets start shall we? 

Pre-requisites

We have to have a Windows Live account. If you use MSN Messenger or Hotmail, its likely you already have a live account. If you don’t use MSN Messenger, or you know you don’t have a live account, don’t fret.. we’ll create one on the way. (not really a prerequisite aye?)

Step 1

Open up your favourite web browser and go to http://skydrive.live.com

At this point, one of two windows may pop up. If you have already used live.com before and have marked yourself as always log on, then you’ll go straight to your home screen. If you haven’t yet (and i’m assuming you haven’t), then you get the following window pop up (left)

If you don’t have a Live id, then here is the time to create one. Its free and easy to follow through. Simply hit the Sign Up button on the left and follow through the wizard to get your live id.

You can also associate your live id with your current email address so are not creating yet another email address just to use Windows Live.

Once you have got it, return back to Step 1 and go back to the login page and log in with your Live Id.

Step 2

Right, we got the login page and our live user id. Simply log on by filling in your username and live password on the right hand side of the screen. You can use your own judgement if you want the user to be remembered on your computer or not. Ideally, if you are in a public or friends place, i would suggest not ticking the tickboxes :)

Click on Sign In when you’ve entered your information.

You will be taken to your Skydrive. The main parts of the screen are:

• Your Recent Folders (as well as any new folders you may create here)
• Amount of space free (at the top right corner)
• And anything new in your network (note: you get a whole bunch of options similar to facebook that you can play with by clicking on the "Profile" menu on the top of the screen. I’ll let you play with those).

Step 3

Lets create a folder to hold some photos. Click on "Create Folder" (a link just on top of Recent Folders). A small wizard will appear to ask for the name you want to give your folder as well as sharing options.

You can make this folder Public (ie open to all) or limit it to people you trust or just yourself.

Hitting next then shows you an upload page. You can upload documents in one of two ways, either using the "browse…" button and locating a file, or installing the upload tool. You’ll get a link on the top of the browse boxes if you haven’t installed the upload tool yet.

I would recommend installing it as it offers a nice drag and drop functionality. Simple enough to install. Email me or leave a comment if you need specific instructions.

Step 4

Lets upload some things into our new folder. If you have installed the load tool, you’ll see see a large box on your screen with "Drop files here" instructions. Open up My Computer and navigate to the document you want to upload and simply drag it into this box.

It should upload and appear in your new folder :)

The "Drag here" box will drop down and the photo will appear on the top window. If you want to add more files, simply drag more into the Drag box.

Step 5

Once you have finished adding the files you wish to upload, simply hit the Upload button. At this point all the documents you have selected will now be uploaded into your folder. It may take a while if you have chosen large files or large number of them. Once they are all done, a successful message will appear and you’ll be taken to the gallery.

And thats about it :)

Clicking on an individual photo will open it up in its own page. You even have facilities to add captions and if you share with people, they will be able to add comments against your photos too.

As an exercise, i created a Public folder to hold Windows 7 Wallpaper that someone released around the net :) You are welcome to browse my public folder by clicking on the gallery picture below:

I have only shown Image type files being uploaded here. Its also possible to upload other types of files and share them if required. I haven’t gone through all the features of Skydrive, so feel free to play around and leave a comment here to tell us if you like it or not :)

Above all, its 25gigs of space that you can put to use.. and for free.. and you can’t beat that.

Relevant links:

• Exploring Windows Live SkyDrive
• Wikipedia for SkyDrive
• Windows Live SkyDrive Team Blog (on live spaces)