Wednesday, August 30, 2006
The disappointment of Zoho
Microsoft Office is a suite. So is OpenOffice.org. The advantage is that once you have mastered the basics in one app - say printing, saving, spell-checking etc. - you find that the same methods work in all the other apps in the suite. The same buttons, icons, dialogue boxes and interactions. It's a great time saver and means you can feel right at home with powerful software quickly.
Zoho provide almost a complete online office suite - wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentations, database - the main guys are there. However in using them I was very disappointed to find that each program had a *totally* different look-and-feel to them - they were, in effect, four entirely separate applications. They in no way felt part of a suite, and do not have any of the advantages outlined above.
I suspect Zoho managed to generate so much software in such little time by having separate groups working on the projects in effective isolation - little or no co-ordination on such matters as the GUI. I sincerely hope Zoho overcome this and work to unify their offerings - if they do, they will have a killer on their hands.
For a good review of Zoho's suite, click here.
Zoho provide almost a complete online office suite - wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentations, database - the main guys are there. However in using them I was very disappointed to find that each program had a *totally* different look-and-feel to them - they were, in effect, four entirely separate applications. They in no way felt part of a suite, and do not have any of the advantages outlined above.
I suspect Zoho managed to generate so much software in such little time by having separate groups working on the projects in effective isolation - little or no co-ordination on such matters as the GUI. I sincerely hope Zoho overcome this and work to unify their offerings - if they do, they will have a killer on their hands.
For a good review of Zoho's suite, click here.
Goodbye Flickr, hello Picasaweb!
Yep, I've changed my mind again. I was with Flickr, but now I'm uploading my pictures to Picasaweb. Why the change? Let me take you through it.
I originally chose Flickr due to its maturity, features and aesthetic design compared to competitors. (I still think Zooomr is ugly). After that, I uploaded over 1,000 pictures to the site.
But Flickr has its downsides too: first, it's very slow to load. Pages take a while to appear from links, and photos load even slower. Second, the pictures are small. Flickr must have big bandwidth costs, and no doubt as a result of that the standard image size is rather small.
Since I made my decision to go with Flickr, Picasaweb was launched. I initially ignored it as I was quite happy with Flickr. However one day I was reading Jeremy Zawodny's blog and upon clicking on some pictures, was suprised to see that they were hosted on Picasaweb. (Suprised as Picasaweb is a Google product, and Jeremy works for Flickr's parent, Yahoo!.) Several things struck me at once: how fast the pages and pictures loaded, how much less distracting clutter there was around the pictures, and how large the images were. This made me want to investigate further.
Picasaweb utilises a new version of the Picasa photo-organising software, which I swear by. It's pretty much the perfect way to store, manage and view your digital photographs. Picasaweb's intergration within Picasa is simplicity itself - you select the images you want to publish to the web, click the new "Web album" button, select a few options (album name, privacy controls, image size etc.), and hit "upload". That's it!
Compare that to what I had to do to get my pictures form Picasa to Flickr: I had to select the pictures I wanted, "Export" them to a seperate folder on my desktop, launch the Flickr Uploadr, open the folder, select all and drag them into the Uploadr (usually having to resize the windows so I could see both at the same time), then add the tags etc. and finally upload the pictures!
Even the current limit of 250Mb of pictures (compared to the 6Gb I have with my $25 Flickr Pro account) is not a big problem. In fact it might even be a plus. I had a tendancy to upload a lot of images to Flickr (as said, over 1,000 since April!) and truth be told a lot of them were rather mediocre. Picasaweb forces me to pick only the best shots to conserve space. (I save more space by limiting uploaded images to 1024px - why do you need more on the web? I back-up my pictures seperately.).
In fact, a years worth of carefully-chosen images has only taken only a little over 50Mb of my quota - so I could, in effect, go for some four years before needing to upgrade my account :-).
The one big thing I miss from Flickr is the embeddable Flash slideshow, which showed the latest 60 pictures you'd uploaded. It was quite nice to have that on my personal blog - and I'd seen people viewing it with interest - and I've had to replace it with little more than a big link to my Picasaweb page. That said, losing the slideshow let me undertake a much-needed redesign of the site :-).
So there you have it. Picasaweb is much easier to use, and better to view, than any of its competition. If you're looking for a way to publish your photographs online, I highly recommend checking it out.
I originally chose Flickr due to its maturity, features and aesthetic design compared to competitors. (I still think Zooomr is ugly). After that, I uploaded over 1,000 pictures to the site.
But Flickr has its downsides too: first, it's very slow to load. Pages take a while to appear from links, and photos load even slower. Second, the pictures are small. Flickr must have big bandwidth costs, and no doubt as a result of that the standard image size is rather small.
Since I made my decision to go with Flickr, Picasaweb was launched. I initially ignored it as I was quite happy with Flickr. However one day I was reading Jeremy Zawodny's blog and upon clicking on some pictures, was suprised to see that they were hosted on Picasaweb. (Suprised as Picasaweb is a Google product, and Jeremy works for Flickr's parent, Yahoo!.) Several things struck me at once: how fast the pages and pictures loaded, how much less distracting clutter there was around the pictures, and how large the images were. This made me want to investigate further.
Picasaweb utilises a new version of the Picasa photo-organising software, which I swear by. It's pretty much the perfect way to store, manage and view your digital photographs. Picasaweb's intergration within Picasa is simplicity itself - you select the images you want to publish to the web, click the new "Web album" button, select a few options (album name, privacy controls, image size etc.), and hit "upload". That's it!
Compare that to what I had to do to get my pictures form Picasa to Flickr: I had to select the pictures I wanted, "Export" them to a seperate folder on my desktop, launch the Flickr Uploadr, open the folder, select all and drag them into the Uploadr (usually having to resize the windows so I could see both at the same time), then add the tags etc. and finally upload the pictures!
Even the current limit of 250Mb of pictures (compared to the 6Gb I have with my $25 Flickr Pro account) is not a big problem. In fact it might even be a plus. I had a tendancy to upload a lot of images to Flickr (as said, over 1,000 since April!) and truth be told a lot of them were rather mediocre. Picasaweb forces me to pick only the best shots to conserve space. (I save more space by limiting uploaded images to 1024px - why do you need more on the web? I back-up my pictures seperately.).
In fact, a years worth of carefully-chosen images has only taken only a little over 50Mb of my quota - so I could, in effect, go for some four years before needing to upgrade my account :-).
The one big thing I miss from Flickr is the embeddable Flash slideshow, which showed the latest 60 pictures you'd uploaded. It was quite nice to have that on my personal blog - and I'd seen people viewing it with interest - and I've had to replace it with little more than a big link to my Picasaweb page. That said, losing the slideshow let me undertake a much-needed redesign of the site :-).
So there you have it. Picasaweb is much easier to use, and better to view, than any of its competition. If you're looking for a way to publish your photographs online, I highly recommend checking it out.
Oi, Amazon, upgrade our site too!
Amazon.com has a lovely (if "web 2.0") design. I can't say if it's a new design as, being a Briton, I don't visit very often. But it is a good-looking and very usable design.
However amazon.co.uk is still stuck with the old million-of-tabs design. It's ugly, and not as nice a place to browse as amazon.com. I hope we get upgraded some time, and soon, preferably!
However amazon.co.uk is still stuck with the old million-of-tabs design. It's ugly, and not as nice a place to browse as amazon.com. I hope we get upgraded some time, and soon, preferably!
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Why Office 2007 will rule the roost
This blog post from an MS Office developer explains how they used human-computer interface theory to design the best possible GUI for Office 2007 (and having used the beta, I say they achieved it).
It goes to show just how far behind all "web apps" aiming to replace tge desktop-based Office suite will find themselves in a year. Many more features, yet much easier to use.
It goes to show just how far behind all "web apps" aiming to replace tge desktop-based Office suite will find themselves in a year. Many more features, yet much easier to use.
Friday, August 25, 2006
The bizarre tale of "GuillameB" and TechCrunch France
This is a strange one: someone who claimed to have been "working" for TechCrunch France has "quit" after not getting paid for his work. Except that he seemed to make the job for himself:
This appears to be what happened:
1. Guillaume was asked by Ouriel (the real editor of TCF) to cover for him while he was away.
2. Guillaume is asked by Ouriel to TCF work for translating articles written by Arrington and co. on TechCrunch, but doesn't bother with such little details as finding out what he's going to be paid.
3. Guillaume wait for the paycheck to arrive.
4. It doesn't. Guillaume "leaves".
5. Guillame attacks the main TechCrunch staff, who haven't even heard of him before.
What did you expect exactly, Guillaume? That after volunteering your services you would magically start getting paid without even asking if your help was needed or wanted, or would be renumerated?! The world certainly doesn't work like that!
TechCrunch would make a good soap opera...
This appears to be what happened:
1. Guillaume was asked by Ouriel (the real editor of TCF) to cover for him while he was away.
2. Guillaume is asked by Ouriel to TCF work for translating articles written by Arrington and co. on TechCrunch, but doesn't bother with such little details as finding out what he's going to be paid.
3. Guillaume wait for the paycheck to arrive.
4. It doesn't. Guillaume "leaves".
5. Guillame attacks the main TechCrunch staff, who haven't even heard of him before.
What did you expect exactly, Guillaume? That after volunteering your services you would magically start getting paid without even asking if your help was needed or wanted, or would be renumerated?! The world certainly doesn't work like that!
TechCrunch would make a good soap opera...
TechCrunch getting yet another redesign
TechCrunch is getting yet another redesign (see note at the bottom of the story). The new design will the one already used on CrunchGear and the new TechCrunch UK, produced by Thissideup, UK design firm.
This is the redesign that has been on the cards as soon as the last make-over was completed. Jeremy Baines (the man behind Thissideup) e-mailed Arrington with some notes, which Arrington then crassly said he would use. This rather under-mined TechCrunch's then contracted designer, Rachel Cuncliffe, who promptly resigned. Michael - rightfully - received a lot stick over his behaviour.
So it's not suprising that Baines has now redesigned all the Crunch offerings. Only problem is, the new designs aren't very good.
The Cuncliffe design features a neat and highly useable menu bar across the top of the page containing all the links you really need (and, equally-importantly, no more). It also contains a neat subscribe-by-email box, and a Feedburner circulation chicklet. This leaves lots of room for the panel of Federated Media adverts straight underneath, next to the main content.
The new design, however, junks all this. The menu bar is still there but has only three links, leaving the rest of the bar (which still reaches across the whole site) as wasted empty space. The About, e-mail subscribe and RSS subscribe links are instead replaced with large clunky boxes in the right-hand side bar (where the FM ads used to be). Advertising is instead restricted to a narrow column of Google Ads, noisly sandwhiched between main content and the info boxes.
The main criticism of Rachel's design was the strong green colour. As I said when I wrote about the May redesign, it may have been "in your face" but it was certainly memorable, which is what you want! It seems that Arrington is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the new design is much inferior in terms of useability and user experience.
Furthermore, I've already come across a lot of Cuncliffe's and Baines's work "in the wild", and I must say I've universally preferred sites designed by Cuncliffe.
This is the redesign that has been on the cards as soon as the last make-over was completed. Jeremy Baines (the man behind Thissideup) e-mailed Arrington with some notes, which Arrington then crassly said he would use. This rather under-mined TechCrunch's then contracted designer, Rachel Cuncliffe, who promptly resigned. Michael - rightfully - received a lot stick over his behaviour.
So it's not suprising that Baines has now redesigned all the Crunch offerings. Only problem is, the new designs aren't very good.
The Cuncliffe design features a neat and highly useable menu bar across the top of the page containing all the links you really need (and, equally-importantly, no more). It also contains a neat subscribe-by-email box, and a Feedburner circulation chicklet. This leaves lots of room for the panel of Federated Media adverts straight underneath, next to the main content.
The new design, however, junks all this. The menu bar is still there but has only three links, leaving the rest of the bar (which still reaches across the whole site) as wasted empty space. The About, e-mail subscribe and RSS subscribe links are instead replaced with large clunky boxes in the right-hand side bar (where the FM ads used to be). Advertising is instead restricted to a narrow column of Google Ads, noisly sandwhiched between main content and the info boxes.
The main criticism of Rachel's design was the strong green colour. As I said when I wrote about the May redesign, it may have been "in your face" but it was certainly memorable, which is what you want! It seems that Arrington is throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the new design is much inferior in terms of useability and user experience.
Furthermore, I've already come across a lot of Cuncliffe's and Baines's work "in the wild", and I must say I've universally preferred sites designed by Cuncliffe.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
MyKin's road trip saga
The founders of family social-networking website MyKin have been keeping a blog of their roadtrip in a VW bus to promote their site. Sadly, their trip came to an abrupt end when their bus burned out on the way to Oregon. The blog, however, makes a great read!
Facebook fix their biggest omission yet: lack of blogs
Today, Facebook have introduced blogs to their system. Before, users had no way of making any kind of blog or online diary entries on their profiles, which I have always felt made the site rather dull to browse.
Now however Facebook has brought in "Notes", which is essentially a blogging system. But the really neat aspect is the ability to import blogs from other services. So instead of creating and maintaining a seperate blog on Facebook, I can feed my existing Blogger blog straight in. This is a great "best of both worlds" play: users without blogs can start adding notes to their profiles, and those who already have blogs on external servicse can pipe their posts straight into the pages.
Now however Facebook has brought in "Notes", which is essentially a blogging system. But the really neat aspect is the ability to import blogs from other services. So instead of creating and maintaining a seperate blog on Facebook, I can feed my existing Blogger blog straight in. This is a great "best of both worlds" play: users without blogs can start adding notes to their profiles, and those who already have blogs on external servicse can pipe their posts straight into the pages.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
TagWorld down: is being down the new in?
As I write this, Tagworld is down, and Amazon was just a few hours ago. GAIM was broken (but is now fixed). YouTube fell over for the first time just last week. MySpace fell over big-time a few weeks back and CouchSurfing managed to delete their database (and in fact are currently running extremely slowly).
It seems being down is the new fashionable thing to do...
It seems being down is the new fashionable thing to do...
Rojo: for me, rubbish
I just tried Rojo, the current hip web feedreader. I happily imported my OPML from Bloglines, and ewww, is the Rojo interface horrible!
First, all feeds are mixed together, so I can't, say, just read TechCrunch stories for a bit while letting Digg backlog. Second, to read the stories within the reader page I have to click a tiny "plus" symbol, which then jerkily reveals the post. I got bored of doing that on my second click.
Definitely staying with Bloglines. It's deeply uncool, but very effective: feeds on the left, with number of unread posts in brackets. Posts on the right, in a simple (blog-like) series, one after another, so to read them I just scroll.
First, all feeds are mixed together, so I can't, say, just read TechCrunch stories for a bit while letting Digg backlog. Second, to read the stories within the reader page I have to click a tiny "plus" symbol, which then jerkily reveals the post. I got bored of doing that on my second click.
Definitely staying with Bloglines. It's deeply uncool, but very effective: feeds on the left, with number of unread posts in brackets. Posts on the right, in a simple (blog-like) series, one after another, so to read them I just scroll.
Monday, August 21, 2006
More thoughts on Office 2.0
My post on web apps drew a response from Craig.
He makes a number of good points - I'll briefly highlight my favourites.
Craig has a "Quick launch" module on his Google homepage for, well, quickly accessing web apps. It's not publically available yet, but looks like a killer.
If you're offline and you can't work - take a break! He's quite right there.
Fullscreen mode: to enlarge a web app's screen real estate, just hit whatever key on your browser gives you fullscreen mode.
At the moment I'm giving Writely a work-out. (Like many web apps, it won't load in Opera, so I keep an up-to-date copy of Firefox on system to test apps). It's quite neat, but the big problem is a simple lack of power. There are a lot of things only a desktop app like MS Office can do which I need to use - styles, generation of indexes of table and captions, inserting images and charts and giving them captions that update in the text, etc. etc.
When online apps are essentially online versions of Office, then I might be ready to switch! Until then though, they are ideal for people with simpler requirements.
He makes a number of good points - I'll briefly highlight my favourites.
At the moment I'm giving Writely a work-out. (Like many web apps, it won't load in Opera, so I keep an up-to-date copy of Firefox on system to test apps). It's quite neat, but the big problem is a simple lack of power. There are a lot of things only a desktop app like MS Office can do which I need to use - styles, generation of indexes of table and captions, inserting images and charts and giving them captions that update in the text, etc. etc.
When online apps are essentially online versions of Office, then I might be ready to switch! Until then though, they are ideal for people with simpler requirements.
GAIM fixed
Despite my doom and gloom over the weekend, the GAIM folks have managed to get a beta3.1 out the door, fixing the MSN sign-on issue four days after it appeared. Phew!
Sunday, August 20, 2006
GAIM down
GAIM, the popular instant messaging client that allows you to access multiple IM networks from one app (and sans the ugly advertising), is U/S. It's crashing when it tries to connect to MSN, rendering it pretty useless at the moment.
A fix is planned but the GAIM team never seem quick to post new versions. If GAIM remains unusable for much longer (it's been down since August 16 already), it could be the end for GAIM - certainly I'm switching to a new client, and may well never switch back, and I expect many more users will be doing likewise.
Ironically, considering my last post, a strong contender to be a replacement is Meebo. It doesn't work too nicely in Opera (can't move or resize the chat "windows"), but it is perhaps the neatest and handiest of all web apps being quick and simple to use.
While I rarely feel the need to do work from a public computer (and hence no need to use the majority of web apps), I often like a quick chat with friends to go with checking email and news.
A fix is planned but the GAIM team never seem quick to post new versions. If GAIM remains unusable for much longer (it's been down since August 16 already), it could be the end for GAIM - certainly I'm switching to a new client, and may well never switch back, and I expect many more users will be doing likewise.
Ironically, considering my last post, a strong contender to be a replacement is Meebo. It doesn't work too nicely in Opera (can't move or resize the chat "windows"), but it is perhaps the neatest and handiest of all web apps being quick and simple to use.
While I rarely feel the need to do work from a public computer (and hence no need to use the majority of web apps), I often like a quick chat with friends to go with checking email and news.
Web apps - no future?
This post is an excellent rundown of the reasons why "web apps" have little future.
For me, the most compelling point is We have to type in addresses to get to applications. Websites run applications. But instead of just clicking naturally, we type in an address, then fill in login information, then click. This is a key point - why would people want to use a clunky browser interface instead of a (relatively) quick and clean desktop app? The only reason might be to be able to access their data from any web-connected computer. Omnidrive may well provide a solution to that as it matures with a virtual "drive" for desktop use and a website for remote data access. Of course the machine you're using to access your data might lack the needed desktop apps to view and manipulate your data - here web apps have a place.
Or maybe a simple online version of Office will spring forth from Microsoft as part of its "Live" strategy?
For me, the most compelling point is We have to type in addresses to get to applications. Websites run applications. But instead of just clicking naturally, we type in an address, then fill in login information, then click. This is a key point - why would people want to use a clunky browser interface instead of a (relatively) quick and clean desktop app? The only reason might be to be able to access their data from any web-connected computer. Omnidrive may well provide a solution to that as it matures with a virtual "drive" for desktop use and a website for remote data access. Of course the machine you're using to access your data might lack the needed desktop apps to view and manipulate your data - here web apps have a place.
Or maybe a simple online version of Office will spring forth from Microsoft as part of its "Live" strategy?
Friday, August 18, 2006
Dick Carr?
Ouch. Nick Carr has drawn a lot of flak for his post - mostly fairly - but why the need to drop to the level of school boys?
Thursday, August 17, 2006
"Why would you want a private blog?"
This is a question I'm hearing a lot in response to Blogger's announcement of forthcoming new features for Blogger, among them the ability to render a blog private (i.e. invisible to the outside world).
I think this is a very useful feature. It enables the keeping of a private diary remote from any one computer, and thus safe from theft, hardware crashes etc. It also enables one to update their diary from any computer, where-ever they maybe (e.g. travelling abroad).
I think this is a very useful feature. It enables the keeping of a private diary remote from any one computer, and thus safe from theft, hardware crashes etc. It also enables one to update their diary from any computer, where-ever they maybe (e.g. travelling abroad).
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Why is Youtube so much better than Google Video?
Simple - you can upload videos to Youtube and have them go live straight away. With Google Video, you have to wait for your video to be viewed and checked for suitability first. Not to mention that Google's upload system is a lot more involved than Youtube's.
You might remember me rating Grouper before now. Well, Grouper's user interface is still my favourite - fresh, clean, fun. But Grouper falls short on what's perhaps the most important part of a video sharing site: quality. The resolution of videos on Grouper is considerably - unacceptably - lower than that of Youtube.
You might remember me rating Grouper before now. Well, Grouper's user interface is still my favourite - fresh, clean, fun. But Grouper falls short on what's perhaps the most important part of a video sharing site: quality. The resolution of videos on Grouper is considerably - unacceptably - lower than that of Youtube.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Web 2.0 heating up
It's interesting to note that things are beginning to get more heated in the web 2.0 world, with major plays publicly slugging it out. Witness Rose vs. Calacanis, Arrington vs. Douglas, the Rocketboom breakup...
What's the reason? I really don't know. Maybe people are jealous of other's success, so feel a need to attack them. Perhaps established personalities feel threatened by up-and-comers. Or maybe teamwork doesn't come naturally to these people - they can't collaborate with others, so go their separate ways.
What's the reason? I really don't know. Maybe people are jealous of other's success, so feel a need to attack them. Perhaps established personalities feel threatened by up-and-comers. Or maybe teamwork doesn't come naturally to these people - they can't collaborate with others, so go their separate ways.
