Give Zoho a Chance

Better sources than I are covering Zoho’s announcement that you can now use Zoho Writer offline using Google Gears, meaning that you can use a rich, useful, web application, even when you’re offline, and then sync the data back up to the Internet when you’re connected.

Look at all these apps:

Online Office, Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, CRM and more - Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 1 (Build 2007110903)

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So, for free, you can have access to a web-based, simple, networked, collaboration-focused suite of powerful tools, including a database software, presentation software, groupware, chat, etc, etc, etc.

I met the guys form Zoho at TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. Good bunch. The thing I can’t figure out, and this is just in my head, is why I haven’t made the switch to their products. They’ve got EVERYTHING. What the heck am I waiting for?

So maybe I’ll make this a personal project in December. Maybe I’ll do everything officey, except my email, inside Zoho’s walls, and see how it all feels.

How about you? Want to take the Zoho Challenge? Swing by Zoho, set up an account, and see what you can get done with their products.

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Charlie B

Chris,
Zoho seems to be a decent product. Another project management software that is very efficient is Communiclique. I Have been using it in my company for a while and have seen great results from it's use .It also includes VoIP software which really helps when planning those conference calls.

Jeff O'Hara

I have

Jamie Phelps

I would totally dig this if Gears worked with Safari. Can't for the life of me get why Safari always gets the shaft on so much of this stuff.

Tommy Vallier

Let me ad one to Chris' list: convenience.

My calednar, email, appointments, contacts, documents, pictures, to-dos, invoicing... and even my simple notes to myself are all done online these days. I've actually begun slowly uninstalling desktop apps to focus more online.

What makes this more convenient? Well, Chris' laptop, in a pinch can be my entire office. So can yours. So can a public machine at an internet cafe (Though not recommended, clearly). Or one of those freestanding online machines at the airports or bus terminals. Or the iPhone/iPod Touch.

chrisbrogan

Benefits:

* Security- no documents on your laptop means no documents to be compromised once your laptop is stolen.

* Collaboration- online documents mean flexible collaboration and version control, without several files passing back and forth in attachments (thus adding storage strain to the servers).

* IT expenses- Office Professional single copy retails for $499. Even if you've got a multi-seat license (like your company has), that's probably still $200 a seat. My cost per suite? Zero.

* IT management- No version issues. No server upgrades. No desktop rollouts. All in one spot.

There's just a few. : )