Irunabiz: Technology » Productivity

Fast Read: Email Organization

Jeff Spiller — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:30:46 +0000

Email Organization for Greater Productivity

Office Applications in the Cloud

Jeff Spiller — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 01:33:30 +0000

There are two major free Office Suite Zoho Office (zoho.com) and Google Documents (docs.google.com) that I am aware of. Both are competent suites but they have limited functionality. Google Documents includes a word Processor, spreadsheet and presentation application. Zoho has the same as well as a number of other applications including an organizer, invoices, and CRM. The office applications are free but some of their other applications are subscription based.

Having worked extensively with the Google Applications, my general feeling is that it is good for basic word processing and spreadsheets, but if you are interested in slightly more sophisticated formatting, you will be disappointed. Google Does not allow you to create columns, and embedded table formatting is quite limited.

I’ve looked at Zoho as well, and tried some basic formatting on it as well and came to the same conclusion. While the tables have more formatting options, it also doesn’t support columns. Overall, I think that Zoho has better features than google, and its worth a look.

While I don’t do the most sophisticated formatting on my documents, I do like to have a certain level of features, and I don’t feel that either of these free suites will suite meet my needs. If you choose to use them for your primary office application make sure that they will do what you need before you throw away your PC based software. I think I’ll stick with OpenOffice for now.

If you know of any other suites, please feel free to let me know in the comments.

Everything (Almost) You Need for Your New Business for Free

Jeff Spiller — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 02:30:03 +0000

You made a new years resolution to start a business, but you don’t have alot of money. Below is a list of quality, free applications you can use to help run your business. Many of these apps are web based so you may want to read my post Cloud Computing: the good, the bad and the ugly before you dive in.

Free Office Suites

(Word Processing, Spreadheet, Presentations, and more)

OpenOffice.org–Full function office suite similar to Microsoft office
Google Documents – Online office suite from google
Zoho – Online office applications and more

More info on these apps

Free Productivity software

(Calendar, Address Book, Task Manager, Email)

More Info on the email portion of these apps.

Free Accouting Software

(Full featured basic accounting sofware for the small business)

Free Web Hosting

More info on other Google apps

Free Email Client

Thunderbird

Free “Everthing-but-the-kitchen-sink”

Google Apps

More info on other Google apps

4 Free Ways to Create PDF Documents

Jeff Spiller — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:44:59 +0000

The PDF (portable document format) document has become a standard for distributing documents electronically. Almost anyone either has a PDF reader. PDF’s can contain images and hyper links, but cannot be easily edited, making them perfect for everything from contracts to marketing materials. Many companies sell full fledged applications for editing and creating PDF’s, however, if you just need create a basic document in PDF form, I have found 4 good free solutions.

More information on the first three choices can be found in my post Save hundreds of dollars with Free Microsoft Office Alternatives

Web Based Tools

1. Zoho is a web based office suite that allows you to create documents & spreadsheets, save them on the web, and export them to various formats including PDF. (They have a choice to export presentations to PDF, but it gave me an error when I tried it.)

2. Google Docs is also a web based office suite that allows you to create document, spreadsheet and presentation and export them to PDF.

PC Based Tools

3. OpenOffice.org is a free office suite that installs on your PC. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application (and more). Any of the documents that it creates can be exported to a PDF.

4. Primo PDF is a free pdf printer application. It allows you take a document from any application and convert it to a PDF from the print menu with a ‘printer’ that creates a PDF document. The nice thing about Primo PDF is that it lets you make a from any application that you can print from (Web Browser,Drawing, etc) not just a specific application. Primo PDF also allows you to set security on the PDF so you can’t cut and paste or print the PDF.

Save hundreds of dollars with Free Microsoft Office Alternatives

Jeff Spiller — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:07:52 +0000

Microsoft Office is known as the premier Office Suite application, it has hundreds of really cool features–that you will never use. So, why pay for Mercedes when all you need is Chevy? Below are three applications that may meet your needs, and best of all, they are all free.

OpenOffice. Open Office is a full featured office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation application, database, and drawing application. I terms of features its nearly on par with Microsoft’s offerings. Its about 80% compatible with Microsoft Office so you can read and create documents that can be shared. Open office is pretty easy to learn if you are familiar with Office 2003. I use Open Office and I have yet to come across a situation where I couldn’t read document from a Microsoft app or save a compatible one.

Google Documents. Google documents is a web based suite of basic office applications that you can run from almost any web enabled computer. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application. Google Document isn’t as full featured as OpenOffice or Microsoft Office, but its fully capable of most basic word processing and spreadsheet operations. Its easy to use, but since it web based it does take some getting used to compared to the PC installed applications. It can read and create MS office compatible docs, but is more limited than Open office as to the features that it can read.

Zoho. Zoho is an interesting suite of office products. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation application and more. They also have a planner application, note application, a wiki, and quite a few trial versions of other business applications. I have not worked much with this application but it I have seen good reviews of it, and it is certainly worth looking at.

Remember that with any web based application, you won’t have access to you documents if you don’t have Internet access, and if there is a problem with the provider, you could loose some or all of your work, so back up your documents locally from time to time. (Make sure you also have a system to backup your documents on your PC as well)

Organize your to-do list with Backpack for Free

Jeff Spiller — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:07:17 +0000

I live and die by my email. I check it constantly when I’m on the computer, and I can check it on demand on my Blackberry. Frequently I find that I need be reminded of repeating tasks, and other special activities. While most calendaring tools offer pop up windows to remind you of a task, I tend to close them a to get them out of the way, and then forget all about them. On the other hand a reminder email is there until I delete it, nagging me until I get the task done.

One tool, that I use, that offers automated reminder emails is backpack www.backpackit.con from 37Signals. You can setup one-time and repeating reminders. However its real purpose is to be a basic todo list. If you currently use a legal pad (I used to) to keep you todo’s, this tool is an easy transition to a web based list. You can list your todo’s, and categorize them in sections. You can also add note elements to the page. The todo list doesn’t have the advanced features of some lists like due dates, categories, filters, and sorting, but if you don’t use them there’s no point in having them. (Any time I get a more advanced system I spend a lot of time setting it and then ignore most of the features–a big waste of time.)

The free version includes the todo list, notes , and reminders. There are various paid version as well that include the addition of file storage, and message boards, and a calendar. All the versions support multiple users so you can share lists/and notes for group projects. If you dig into this application, you will see that it has a lot of cool features beyond the limited description I have given here, and and a quick look may be well worth your time.