Google Docs vs. Zoho…Who comes out on Top?

This article was written on June 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

GoohoReadWriteWeb has put together a quick comparison of five different online office suites to see how they stack up to each other, and so I thought that I would give my take on Zoho vs. Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Google and Zoho have both been leaders in the online office suite arena, and each are great for different reasons.

First I’ll start with Zoho, which has a collection of services that is unmatched by any other online office suite. They’ve got everything from project managing, a presentation creator, spreadsheet capabilities, and word processing. Heck, that’s just a small list of what they offer. They tie everything together beautifully by letting you, for example, add a Zoho Sheet into your Zoho Notebook. When Zoho launches their mail client it will integrate almost everything which you can see in this interactive demo.

Zoho also offers a ton of features and configuration options that other online suites don’t have. An example of this can be seen in the Zoho Writer options where they let you choose which buttons are shown on the toolbar:

Zoho Buttons

So why would anyone want to use Google Docs? The name of course! Google Docs and Spreadsheets only has a fraction of the features that Zoho’s offerings have, but Google already has a large fan base because of their search engine. Google Docs users love the simple interface and the intuitive design that makes it so easy to use. Zoho gives you the feeling that you’re using Microsoft Office 2003, while Google didn’t try to take that route. Google Docs is more unique, and someone unfamiliar with Microsoft Office could probably pick up on using it faster than using Zoho.

The thing that Google is missing the most is strong integration between their products. Gmail should be the central hub for users to create documents, manage their notebook, read feeds, and do just about anything. It should take just a few clicks from within my Inbox to send off a document to someone in a format that I can choose (PDF, DOC, etc….).

To be honest Google greatly disappoints me when it comes to integration because they have some really great products and services available. I feel like a broken record talking about this, but Google announced last October that they were not going to be releasing new services for awhile because they wanted to start integrating their things together, yet we haven’t seen much indication of this going on. Just the fact that Gmail isn’t integrated with Picasa Web Albums still astonishes me.

So the winner between the two services (in my opinion) is Zoho, which is also what Donation Coder thought when they compared a few of the online word processors. If Google can begin integrating some of their services together with Gmail I would undoubtedly use them over anything else.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Google Updates Feed Reader Module: Expand/Contract the Article

This article was written on January 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Google Feed Reader

It looks like Google just updated their Feed Reader Module for the Google Personalized Homepage. I’m sure that this is to help compete with Netvibes who offers an amazing built-in feed reader for their customizable homepage. The screenshot above demonstrates how the Feed Reader Module works.

As you can see each of the items can be expanded/contracted so that you can read the feed items without ever leaving the homepage. One thing that I did notice was that the module will display summaries of an article if the feed supplies them, instead of displaying the entire article. We want to give everyone the best experience possible when reading the feed from the Google Personalized Homepage so we have removed these summaries from the feed. This means that after Google erases the cached version of our feed (probably after we post this article) it will start to display the full article when expanding them.

Before you all go rushing to check your homepage for the new feature, it does look like they are rolling it out to the accounts. One of my accounts has it but some of the others don’t, and sometimes if you logout and then log back in you’ll receive it. You can also try switching browsers because the account that I used to take the screenshot above displayed the updated module fine in Firefox, then when I refreshed the page it was gone. I switched over to Internet Explorer and then the feature popped back up. I think it is just temperamental right now, but I’m sure all of the kinks will be worked out soon.

P.S. This is not some separate module I have installed…it is a real update by Google.

Thanks for the tip Eric!

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More Bad News for AllofMP3.com

This article was written on May 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

Allofmp3logoThere’s more bad news for AllofMP3.com today after an announcement was made that a man out of London who was selling vouchers that users could purchase to buy music from AllofMP3.com was arrested.  Thus far, the largest legal action that the RIAA has pursued was the filing of a 1.64 trillion dollar lawsuit (here and here).

While that lawsuit is a major move to try and shut the site down, it appears as though they’re taking smaller steps, like the arrest just mentioned, to win the battle. The way the vouchers work is that people would purchase them from auction sites like eBay, and then the money would be transferred to off-shore accounts that are operated by the site’s owners.

All of MP3.com is certainly the biggest site of its kind, but it’s definitely not the only one.  If they take AllofMP3.com down, the RIAA will still have others to worry about. Those who were once loyal to AllofMP3 will just move on to the next service like the one I recently came across, MP3Search.RU.

As it stands, AllofMP3 is running out of ways that they are able to accept payment.  The voucher system that resulted in the arrest was one of the biggest ways in which AllofMP3.com was able to accept payment. With PayPal, Visa and Mastercard stepping away from the scene and not accepting payments anymore, eventually there won’t be many ways in which AllofMP3 will be able to operate.

Of course, AllofMP3.com is maintaining that they are operating legally in Russia and complying with Russian laws, but the RIAA says that they’re not, and that it’s illegal because artists and music labels receive no royalties for the music that is sold.

And so, the saga continues as the RIAA plans their next move…

Source: PC World (Thanks for the tip Cory!)

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2007 YouTube Video Award Winners…

This article was written on March 21, 2008 by CyberNet.

The second annual YouTube Video Award nominees were announced last week (view 1st annual here). After a week of voting, the winners have been chosen! YouTube does this to reflect on the year and recognize the best videos of 2007, although now that we’re three months into 2008, we’ve just about forgotten the happenings of 2007. Winners get “bragging rights, a trophy and a special invitation to an event later this year.”

Below you’ll find a “YouTube viewer” to make it easy to switch between the videos, but it only works if you have JavaScript enabled. In no particular order, here are our favorite five YouTube Video Award Winners for 2007:

Video will be displayed here. JavaScript must be enabled!

To checkout the complete list of winners, click here. Have a favorite? Let us know in the comments below!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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The WB Reemerges as Re-runs Web Site

This article was written on April 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

WB.pngSlowly but surely, television networks are starting to understand new media. They get that there are other places than the TV where people want to watch their favorite shows, and they are finally starting to come up with ways to bring TV to the Internet. Hulu is a great example of television networks “getting it” by offering premium content from Fox, NBC, MGM, Sony, and others, online for free. The President of Time Warner “gets” it as well. Bruce Rosemblum was quoted in the New York Times saying, “My 20 year-old daughter and her friends are watching “One Tree Hill” and “Pushing Daisies” but not on television.” He continued, “They’re watching on laptops and cellphones. Here’s the interesting part – to them, that is television.”

Time Warner gets new media enough that they’re about to embrace it. Remember The WB? It was a television network here in the United States that launched back in 1995 and had hit shows like Dawson’s Creek and 7th Heaven in the early days and Gilmore Girls, Smalville, and Everwood more recently. Despite being successful for many years, they slowly started to decline in viewership and on September 17, 2006, the WB was shutdown. Well, it’s coming back. Yes, the WB will be back but this time around it’s coming back as a website.

The New York Times was the first to report the news, and they explained that there will be two different sites, TheWB.com and KidsWB.com which will cater to different audiences. TheWB.com will be playing episodes of Gilmore Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, and other shows like re-runs of Friends and The O.C. All of the shows will be free, but will be ad-supported, and in general, they will cater to the 16-34 year old demographic. The WB websites won’t just be about TV shows, they’re also going to experiment with “made-for-Internet video series.”

Another promising bit of information to come from all of this is that Time Warner said that it was “reasonable to expect that content would be shared with other sites, and shows from other studios could appear on TheWB.com.” Wouldn’t it be great if all of the television networks could come together to share their shows with one another? Even better would be if there was one central site where all of the networks placed their shows and each network was responsible for their own advertising. That way there wouldn’t have to be multiple sites that users had to keep track of, and the networks wouldn’t have to argue about the finances. A one-stop destination for quality TV shows on the Internet would be great, wouldn’t it?

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Google Enhances “View as HTML” in Gmail

This article was written on July 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

Gmail Preview of a DOC file

One of the things I use the most in Gmail is the "View as HTML" feature for previewing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that are attached to an email. This lets you scope out what a document is about without having to download it to your computer.

It does, however, have some limitations. One of the things this feature never did in the past was display images or graphs. That’s no longer true when you’re viewing a DOC file in an HTML format as seen in the screenshot above. I took one of our recent posts that we did this morning, copied the content into Microsoft Word, and saved it in a DOC format. Then I emailed it to myself and used the HTML preview to see how well it rendered the image.

Judging by the side-by-side comparison above I would say that the two results are pretty identical, and the View as HTML feature in Gmail just got a lot more useful! The bad news is that this feature only works for DOC files for the time being, and doesn’t seem to apply to spreadsheets or presentations. To get a preview of what those files you would need to use the specialized Google offerings, such as this one for presentations.

Now I would like to see Google do is add some support for the Office 2007 file formats. I’ve been receiving quite a few attachments with the DOCX filetype, and I have to download them in order to view the contents.

Source: Google Operating System

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2007 CyberNet Awards: Most Powerful Websites

This article was written on December 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

There are hundreds of millions of websites out there, but how many do you use on a regular basis. We’ve come up with what we believe to be the three most powerful websites on the Internet. Sites that save you time, make you more productive, and focus on making otherwise hard tasks extra easy.

The 2007 CyberNet Award for Most Powerful Website goes to…

–3rd Place: Zoho

Zoho has developed an incredible suite of online office applications. In all they offer 18 different products and services, many of which are completely free for users. You can write documents, manage spreadsheets, create presentations, organize notes, and more with a single login.

Personally I do enjoy Google Docs because the interface is a little nicer, but when it comes to sheer power Zoho wins hands down. It’s the most complete online office suite available.

–2nd Place: Yahoo! Pipes

When Yahoo! Pipes first launched at the beginning of the year I wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about. It didn’t really seem that great, but it didn’t take long for me to see the true power that it harnesses.

Over the last few months I’ve used Yahoo! Pipes to customize RSS feeds from around the web so that they are tailored to my needs. We’ve also put together several different tutorials that have used Yahoo! Pipes, including: How to Translate Feeds, Create a Custom Software Update Notifier, and Custom Deal Finder.

I’m also using the service on several personal feeds that I like to read, and I’ve really come to see how valuable Yahoo! Pipes can really be. It takes some getting used to, but if you sit down and figure out how it works I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as well.

–1st Place: Remember the Milk

This was actually a last minute decision by me, and it’s all due to the new Firefox extension for Gmail 2 that Remember the Milk launched yesterday. In my mind this took task lists to a whole new level since you can now turn an email into a task with just one click. And being able to manage your entire to-do list from your Inbox is absolutely priceless.

Not only is Remember the Milk available in Gmail, but you can also manage your tasks in Google Calendar, Netvibes, iGoogle, Twitter, Jott, or IMified. It seems as though Remember the Milk is everywhere you turn, but it wasn’t until the incredible Gmail integration that I realized it should be at the top of this list!

–And Your Winners–

Now it is time for you to chime in! Let us know in the comments who earned your “Most Powerful Websites” award.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Google Customized Search adds a “Dynamic” Feature

This article was written on June 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Google Custom Search Engine

Google just released a pretty cool feature for their Customized Search Engine (CSE) creator. For those of you unfamiliar with the CSE it is just a way for users to create their own search engine that returns results only from the sites they specify. For example, you could make a technology search engine that only queries technology websites for results, and all you would have to do is provide the URL’s of those sites.

The new feature that was added for the Customized Search Engine lets users include the sites listed as well as the sites they link to. To demonstrate this I’ve created a search engine for our site that will also search all of the sites we link to. Then if you do a search, such as this one for "review," you’ll notice that the results included are not just for our site.

You can also go to the "On the Fly" site and type in the URL of the site you want to test out. This is an easy way to see what this feature might be like on your site because it doesn’t require that you fill out information prior to doing a search. If you like how it turns out just grab the code they provide on that page and paste it into your site.

This feature adds a lot of possibilities to the existing Customized Search Engine, and this is something users will probably start to take advantage of. If you use this in conjunction with the Google Marker you could probably develop some pretty nifty search engines.

Source: Google Custom Search Blog

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Google Minesweeper to Replace Microsoft’s Classic?

This article was written on June 19, 2006 by CyberNet.

Google Minesweeper to Replace Microsoft's Classic?
 

What all started as a joke has been taken a little bit further and turned into a reality. The joke being that Google was releasing an Ajax version of Minesweeper with features such as ‘online collaboration cooperate with co-workers to uncover mines or “Integrated GTalk for real time trash talking.”

The joke was taken a bit further when someone actually designed an on-line version of Minesweeper complete with fake ads on the side to resemble an official Google page. Check it out!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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iPhone Dev Team Posts Jailbreak Stats

This article was written on May 11, 2010 by CyberNet.

jailbreak stats-1.png

If you have an iPhone there is no doubt that you’ve at least heard of the iPhone Dev-Team. They are the ones that are behind most of the iPhone jailbreaks and unlocks out there, and continue to deliver with each major release that Apple puts out. As of April 30th the team says that there have been over 9.8 million installs of ultrasn0w, which is the most recent unlock solution that can make the iPhone work on other carriers.

If you follow their Twitter account you may have seen some of the postings they made about their visitor stats going from January 2008 all the way up to present day. The screenshot above is from their Google Analytics account, and shows off their 56.3 million visits, 22.3 unique visitors, and 93.7 million pageviews. What I thought was cool was the graph showing the gradual increase of traffic as well as the spikes. Some of the surges in traffic can be related to Apple product releases, such as the iPhone 3GS in June 2009 (the largest spike) and the 3rd generation iPod Touch released in September 2009 (the following spike).

The team also broke down some other stats from their site…

Top browsers:

  1. Safari
  2. Firefox
  3. Internet Explorer
  4. Chrome
  5. Opera

Top visiting countries:

  1. United States
  2. Germany
  3. United Kingdom
  4. Canada
  5. France

Countries with the lowest number of visits:

  1. Åland Islands (lowest number of visits)
  2. Zimbabwe
  3. Zambia
  4. Yemen
  5. Wallis and Futuna

This kind of stuff may not interest a lot of people, but I’m kinda a stat nerd so I found it to be pretty interesting. I’d be curious to hear what their operating system breakdown is.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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