Zoho What Fun!

Web-based applications, like Zoho Writer and Google Docs, are being touted as the next big thing in social networking and office productivity. For our Web 2.0 exploration project at our library, we took a look at both of these tools. We even created a document on Zoho Writer

I thought Zoho Writer was easy to use, especially since I have been using Microsoft Word and Correll Word Perfect for about 20 years! However, I got stuck when I tried "publishing" my document to my blog. I kept on getting an error message saying "blog not available".

Eventhough I like to try to figure things out for myself, I finally gave up and consulted my friend. He discovered that Zoho gets hung up on any punctuation or symbols that are in blog titles. I had to take out the comma and ampersand in my title in order for the publish feature to work. Interesting...

These tools can be useful for collaborative projects: for authors co-writing a book, for editors of newspapers and magazines, for employees working on a project together. It's handy if you don't want to fool with sending email attachments or if you have to remember to carry your flash drive with you. As long as these applications remain as safe as possible from hackers (or corporate spies!), then these tools can be a convenient and easy way to share information.

Namaste.